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- ItemMulti-lingual mathematical word problem generation using long short term memory networks with enhanced input features(European Language Resources Association (ELRA), 2020-01-01) Liyanage V; Ranathunga SA Mathematical Word Problem (MWP) differs from a general textual representation due to the fact that it is comprised of numerical quantities and units, in addition to text. Therefore, MWP generation should be carefully handled. When it comes to multi-lingual MWP generation, language specific morphological and syntactic features become additional constraints. Standard template-based MWP generation techniques are incapable of identifying these language specific constraints, particularly in morphologically rich yet low resource languages such as Sinhala and Tamil. This paper presents the use of a Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) network that is capable of generating elementary level MWPs, while satisfying the aforementioned constraints. Our approach feeds a combination of character embeddings, word embeddings, and Part of Speech (POS) tag embeddings to the LSTM, in which attention is provided for numerical values and units. We trained our model for three languages, English, Sinhala and Tamil using separate MWP datasets. Irrespective of the language and the type of the MWP, our model could generate accurate single sentenced and multi sentenced problems. Accuracy reported in terms of average BLEU score for English, Sinhala and Tamil languages were 22.97%, 24.49% and 20.74%, respectively.
- ItemExogenous Carbohydrate as an Ergogenic Aid: Recent Advances in Dose and Form and Format(MDPI (Basel, Switzerland), 2019-03-05) Rowlands DS; Rachel Brown; Mackay S; Eyles HPerformance nutrition is as wide and complex topic as the number and diversity of sports available for human endeavor. Nevertheless, over 100 years of evidenced-based outcomes founded upon the science of energy-substrate metabolism provide a body of evidence providing almost certain support for the use of carbohydrate prior to and during most prolonged maximal efforts to enhance performance. This presentation will provide a summary of some of our recent research contributing to the refinements and translation of this general ergogenic theme. Topics covered will include: maximal exogenous-carbohydrate dose response; optimal fructose:glucose/maltodextrin ratio for gut comfort, oxidation rate, and performance; new data on the role of sucrose and very long-chain glucose polymers in glycogen recovery; effects of solid, gel, and drink format; training of the gut, new technologies in sports drinks- the Sub2/Maurten story, and inferences from lab vs in-competition field clinical trials.
- ItemValidity of Quantitative Ultrasound and Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis against Dual X-Ray Absorptiometry for Measuring Bone Quality and Body Composition in Children(MDPI (Basel, Switzerland), 2019-03-07) Delshad M; Beck KL; Conlon CA; Mugridge O; Kruger MC; Von Hurst PR; Brown R; Mackay S; Eyles HBackground: Dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) is a well-regarded device for primarily measuring bone mineral density (BMD) and body composition. However, its use is limited in children since it is expensive, time-consuming, lacks portability, and exposes children to ionizing radiation. The objective was to examine the validity of quantitative ultrasound (QUS) and bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) measurements against DXA for bone quality and body composition in children (8–13 years) living in Auckland, New Zealand. Methods: Whole body bone mineral content (BMC), BMD, and body composition were measured with DXA (QDR Discovery A, Hologic, USA), BMD and calcaneal stiffness index (SI) with QUS (Sahara QUS, Hologic, USA), and BIA measurements on the InBody 230 (Biospace Ltd., Seoul, Korea). Relative validity was assessed using Pearson correlation coefficients, cross-classification, and weighted ĸ-statistic Results: Healthy children (n = 127, 58 boys) were recruited. Positive correlations between QUS -SI and DXA (BMC and BMD) were observed (range = 0.40–0.45) (p < 0.05). QUS-SI correctly classified >50% of participants into the correct tertile and <10% into the opposite tertile when compared with DXA-BMD. Moderate agreement (ĸ = 0.4) was found through weighted ĸ-statistic analysis (between QUS-SI and DXA-BMD). Correlations existed between BIA and DXA for lean mass, fat mass and percentage body fat (range = 0.8–0.97) (p < 0.01). Cross-classification showed a range of 70%–84% of participants were correctly categorized into the same tertile. Weighted ĸ-statistic illustrated good agreement (ĸ = 0.6–0.8) between BIA and DXA variables. Conclusion: We found that the calcaneal QUS-SI appears to be a valid method for identifying children with low BMD as identified by DXA, and BIA is a valid method to assess children’s body composition status since there was a good relative agreement between BIA parameters and DXA values. Our results suggest that calcaneal QUS and BIA could be used to investigate bone health and body composition among children, respectively.
- ItemConcentration of 12 Oligosaccharides in the Milk of New Zealand Breastfeeding Women(MDPI (Basel, Switzerland), 2023-03-23) Jia LL; Brough L; Weber JL; Smith C; Mackay S; Jalili-Moghaddam S; Gibbs MHuman milk oligosaccharides (HMOs) are the third most abundant component in breast milk. HMOs benefit infant gut health, modulate immune responses, and promote brain development. The profile and concentration of HMOs vary considerably among breastfeeding women, and are reported to be associated with genetic, maternal, and environmental factors as well as feeding practices. One reason for the diversity in HMO concentration is the secretor gene, which determines the presence of an enzyme responsible for the synthesis of 2′-FL and LNFP-I. To date, there is no report about HMO concentration or profile in the New Zealand population. Our objective was to investigate 12 HMO concentrations in a small sample of New Zealand women. Sixty-eight breastfeeding mothers (mean age 32 years, 77% Caucasian) of singleton infants (median age [Q1, Q3] 108 [70, 166] days) were included, with 65% exclusively breastfeeding and 54% who had two or more children. Concentrations of 12 HMOs were measured by UHPLC with fluorescence detection. Overall, 68% of mothers were secretors, which was defined by the presence of 2′-FL in the milk. HMO profiles varied widely; total HMO concentration varied 4.2-fold between women; and individual HMOs varied from 4.8-fold to >100-fold. The median of total HMO concentration (Q1, Q3) of the secretors and non-secretors were 6774.9 (6395.4, 8245.6) mg/L and 7128.0 (6093.1, 7880.1) mg/L respectively. Significant differences in concentration of 2′-FL, 3-FL, A-Tet, LNFP-I, LNFP-II, LNFPV, and LNnT between secretors and non-secretors were found by Mann–Whitney tests. However, there was no significant difference in concentrations of LNFP-III, LNnFP, 3′-SL, 6′-SL, LNT, or total HMOs between the secretors and the non-secretors. HMO concentrations vary broadly between breastfeeding women. A longitudinal cohort of a larger sample size is required to fully investigate HMO profiles at different lactation stages of New Zealand women and to further explore the influence of maternal and environmental factors on HMO concentration.
- ItemEfficacy of needle and endoscopic lavage on the recuperation of microspheres from the adult equine metacarpo−/metatarsophalangeal joint and digital flexor tendon sheath(Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American College of Veterinary Surgeons, 2025-06-25) Beggan CP; Panizzi L; Oliver LJObjectives: To measure microsphere recovery following needle-through-and-through lavage (NTAT) of the metacarpo−/metatarsophalangeal joint (fetlock) and digital flexor tendon sheath (DFTS) compared to endoscopic lavage (EL). Study design: Ex vivo experimental study. Animals: Adult equine cadavers immediately following euthanasia (n = 10). Methods: Colored 15 μm microspheres (2 million) were injected into fetlock joints and DFTS. Synovial structures were assigned to NTAT or EL groups. Each lavage was performed using 5 L of 0.9% NaCl, sequentially collecting egress fluid for microsphere quantification. Recovery was compared using a full-factorial general linear model. Results: There was a significant effect of the liter of egress fluid and microsphere recovery in both fetlocks (p <.01) and DFTS (p <.01), with most microspheres recovered in the first 2 L (79%–83%) for both techniques. More microspheres were recovered in the first liter using NTAT than EL (p <.01) in both fetlocks (659 883 ± 20 820 vs. 567 601 ± 24 452) and DFTS (644 341 ± 17 460 vs. 550 637 ± 38 022). No difference in total recovered microspheres was observed between NTAT lavage of fetlock (981 600 ± 46 839) and DFTS (957 419 ± 45 729) across 5 L (p =.88). Conclusion: Needle-through-and-through lavage was more effective than EL at recovering microspheres in the first liter from cadaveric equine fetlock joints and DFTS. Both techniques demonstrated comparable efficacy between fetlock and DFTS in microsphere recovery following increased lavage volumes. Clinical significance: Needle-through-and-through lavage (NTAT) is a viable alternative for suspected synovial contamination when EL is delayed or not feasible. This study does not evaluate NTAT's efficacy for treating established sepsis or removing pannus/foreign bodies.
- ItemWord embedding evaluation for Sinhala(European Language Resources Association, 2020-01-01) Lakmal D; Ranathunga S; Peramuna S; Herath I; Calzolari N; Béchet F; Blache P; Choukri K; Cieri C; Declerck T; Goggi S; Isahara H; Maegaard B; Mariani J; Mazo H; Moreno A; Odijk J; Piperidis SThis paper presents the first ever comprehensive evaluation of different types of word embeddings for Sinhala language. Three standard word embedding models, namely, Word2Vec (both Skipgram and CBOW), FastText, and Glove are evaluated under two types of evaluation methods: intrinsic evaluation and extrinsic evaluation. Word analogy and word relatedness evaluations were performed in terms of intrinsic evaluation, while sentiment analysis and part-of-speech (POS) tagging were conducted as the extrinsic evaluation tasks. Benchmark datasets used for intrinsic evaluations were carefully crafted considering specific linguistic features of Sinhala. In general, FastText word embeddings with 300 dimensions reported the finest accuracies across all the evaluation tasks, while Glove reported the lowest results.
- ItemApplication of absolute sustainability assessment to new zealand residential dwellings(IOP Publishing Ltd, 2020-11-20) McLaren SJ; Chandrakumar C; Dowdell D; Bullen L; Jaques ROne approach to supporting the implementation of sustainable activities by industry sectors is the use of climate targets. Such climate targets have potential to be used in design and rating tools for buildings and to support government regulation for the building and construction sector. In this study, the climate targets for New Zealand residential dwellings were calculated based on assigning the global carbon budget (for limiting temperature increase to 1.5 or 2.0 °C during 2018-2050) to three building typologies: detached, medium-density housing and apartments. These budgets were assigned to the pre-existing and new-built dwellings using building stock projections for the nominated period. Separately, the climate impact of new-built dwellings in each of the three residential typologies were assessed using Life Cycle Assessment methodology. For New Zealand residential buildings, new-built dwellings exceed their 1.5 °C climate targets by a factor of 6.7, 6.8 and 10.9 for detached, medium-density housing, and apartments respectively. For the 2.0 °C climate target, these factors are 4.8, 4.8 and 7.7 for detached, medium-density housing, and apartments respectively. The results show that about two-thirds of the climate impact of residential dwellings for the period 2018-2050 is associated with preexisting dwellings rather than new-builds. The operational energy used for space heating, water heating, lighting and plug loads makes the biggest contribution to the climate impact for all typologies of pre-built residential dwellings. For new-built residential dwellings, both the operational energy and the construction materials/products contribute most of the climate impact.
- ItemStable Tree Labelling for Accelerating Distance Queries on Dynamic Road Networks(OpenProceedings.org, 2024-11-11) Koehler H; Farhan M; Wang QFinding the shortest-path distance between two arbitrary vertices is an important problem in road networks. Due to real-time traffic conditions, road networks undergo dynamic changes all the time. Current state-of-the-art methods incrementally maintain a distance labelling based on a hierarchy among vertices to support efficient distance computation. However, their labelling sizes are often large and cannot be efficiently maintained. To combat these issues, we present a simple yet efficient labelling method, namely Stable Tree Labelling (STL), for answering distance queries on dynamic road networks. We observe that the properties of an underlying hierarchy play an important role in improving and balancing query and update performance. Thus, we introduce the notion of stable tree hierarchy which lays the ground for developing efficient maintenance algorithms on dynamic road networks. Based on stable tree hierarchy, STL can be efficiently constructed as a 2-hop labelling. A crucial ingredient of STL is to only store distances within subgraphs in labels, rather than distances in the entire graph, which restricts the labels affected by dynamic changes. We further develop two efficient maintenance algorithms upon STL: Label Search algorithm and Pareto Search algorithm. Label Search algorithm identifies affected ancestors in a stable tree hierarchy and performs efficient searches to update labels from those ancestors. Pareto Search algorithm explores the interaction between search spaces of different ancestors, and combines searches from multiple ancestors into only two searches for each update, eliminating duplicate graph traversals. The experiments show that our algorithms significantly outperform state-of-the-art dynamic methods in maintaining the labelling and query processing, while requiring an order of magnitude less space.
- ItemLife Cycle Assessment of the Environmental Impacts of Virgin Concrete Replacement by CO2 Concrete in a Residential Building(Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd, 2023-01-01) Ma M; Zhou Y; Tam VWY; Le KN; Duan W; Zhang L; Shah SPConcrete is one of the most consumed materials in construction, with 25 billion tons produced globally per year.
- ItemA top-down approach for setting climate targets for buildings: The case of a New Zealand detached house(IOP Publishing Ltd, 2019-09-05) Chandrakumar C; McLaren SJ; Dowdell D; Jaques RClimate change mitigation requires the construction of low/zero-carbon buildings, and this is a challenge for designers. The use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) provides useful information to support eco-efficiency improvements and therefore, to reduce the climate impacts of building designs. However, it does not provide information about whether a proposed design aligns with achieving the global climate target of limiting global warming to below 1.5C or 2C. This study, therefore, introduces an LCA-based top-down approach for setting climate targets for the whole life cycle of buildings in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. It involves assigning a share of the 2C global carbon budget for 2018-2050 to a country, to the construction sector of the country, and finally to a building. The approach includes a stock model that accounts for the projected growth in the number of buildings and associated climate impacts in a country up to 2050. The proposed approach was applied to a detached house in New Zealand, the most common residential building type in the country; it was found that the climate target of a New Zealand detached house over a 90-year lifetime is 71 tCO2eq. This modelling approach has potential to guide designers and other interested stakeholders in development of building designs enabling the building sector to operate within a selected global climate target (such as the 1.5C or 2C target).
