We develop a general variational inference method that preserves dependency among the latent variables. Our method uses copulas to augment the families of distributions used inmean-field and structured approximations. Copulas model the dependency that is not captured by the original variational distribution, and thus the augmented variational family guarantees better approximations to the poste...

In the present study, we experimentally tested the role of hand motor circuits in simple-arithmetic strategies. Educated adults solved simple additions (e.g., 8 + 3) or simple subtractions (e.g., 11 - 3) while they were required to retrieve the answer from long-term memory (e.g., knowing that 8 + 3 = 11), to transform the problem by making an intermediate step (e.g., 8 + 3 = 8 + 2 + 1 = 10 + 1 ...

Protein identifications, instead of peptide-spectrum matches, constitute the biologically relevant result of shotgun proteomics studies. How to appropriately infer and report protein identifications has triggered a still ongoing debate. This debate has so far suffered from the lack of appropriate performance measures that allow us to objectively assess protein inference approaches. This study d...

In this research, the physico-chemical water quality parameters and the effect of climate changes onwater quality is evaluated. During the observation period (5 months) physico-chemical parameterssuch as water temperature, turbidity, saturated oxygen, dissolved oxygen, pH, chlorophyll-a, salinity,conductivity, and concentration of total nitrogen (nutrient level) as main pollutant factor have be...

The advent of New Zealand’s world-leading Digital Strategy underpins the increasing importance of ICTs in community settings. It also marks a significant change in government policy and the first time a government has adopted a whole of government approach to ICTs. This article provides a personal view of the policy process for creating the Digital Strategy, presented by one of the participants...

This paper will discuss recent initiatives to encourage the development of broadband networks in New Zealand. It is widely believed that the availability of good quality broadband will lead to improved economic development at the regional level. This paper considers the role played by both national and regional government in improving access to broadband. At a national level the government has ...

Organizations are increasingly adopting digital strategies and investing heavily in digital technologies and initiatives. However, to date, there does not appear to be a clear understanding of digital strategies and their purpose, which forms the motivation for this research. This research-in-progress study aims to address this research gap by exploring 1) the various conceptions of digital str...