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For the binary regression, the use of symmetrical link functions are not appropriate when we have evidence that the probability of success increases at a different rate than decreases. In these cases, the use of link functions based on the cumulative distribution function of a skewed and heavy tailed distribution can be useful. The most popular choice is some scale mixtures of skew-normal distribution. This family of distributions can have some identifiability problems, caused by the so-called direct parameterization. Also, in the binary modeling with skewed link functions, we can have another identifiability problem caused by the presence of the intercept and the skewness parameter. To circumvent these issues, in this work we proposed link functions based on the scale mixtures of skew-normal distributions under the centered parameterization. Furthermore, we proposed to fix the sign of the skewness parameter, which is a new perspective in the literature to deal with the identifiability problem in skewed link functions. Bayesian inference using MCMC algorithms and residual analysis are developed. Simulation studies are performed to evaluate the performance of the model. Also, the methodology is applied in a heart disease data.

In many situations we are interested in modeling real data where the response distribution, even conditionally on the covariates, presents asymmetry and/or heavy/light tails. In these situations, it is more suitable to consider models based on the skewed and/or heavy/light tailed distributions, such as the class of scale mixtures of skew-normal distributions. The classical parameterization of this distributions may not be good due to the some inferential issues when the skewness parameter is in a neighborhood of 0, then, the centered parameterization becomes more appropriate. In this paper, we developed a class of scale mixtures of skew-normal distributions under the centered parameterization, also a linear regression model based on them was proposed. We explore a hierarchical representation and set up a MCMC scheme for parameter estimation. Furthermore, we developed residuals and influence analysis tools. A Monte Carlo experiment is conducted to evaluate the performance of the MCMC algorithm and the behavior of the residual distribution. The methodology is illustrated with the analysis of a real data set.

We describe a mechanism in which the graviton acquires a mass from the functional measure without violating the diffeomorphism symmetry nor including St\"uckelberg fields. Since gauge invariance is not violated, the number of degrees of freedom goes as in general relativity. For the same reason, Boulware-Deser ghosts and the vDVZ disconinuity do not show up. The graviton thus becomes massive at the quantum level while avoiding the usual issues of massive gravity.

Learning invariant representations that remain useful for a downstream task is still a key challenge in machine learning. We investigate a set of related information funnels and bottleneck problems that claim to learn invariant representations from the data. We also propose a new element to this family of information-theoretic objectives: The Conditional Privacy Funnel with Side Information, which we investigate in fully and semi-supervised settings. Given the generally intractable objectives, we derive tractable approximations using amortized variational inference parameterized by neural networks and study the intrinsic trade-offs of these objectives. We describe empirically the proposed approach and show that with a few labels it is possible to learn fair classifiers and generate useful representations approximately invariant to unwanted sources of variation. Furthermore, we provide insights about the applicability of these methods in real-world scenarios with ordinary tabular datasets when the data is scarce., Comment: 28 pages

In this paper, we frame homogeneous-feature multi-task learning (MTL) as a hierarchical representation learning problem, with one task-agnostic and multiple task-specific latent representations. Drawing inspiration from the information bottleneck principle and assuming an additive independent noise model between the task-agnostic and task-specific latent representations, we limit the information contained in each task-specific representation. It is shown that our resulting representations yield competitive performance for several MTL benchmarks. Furthermore, for certain setups, we show that the trained parameters of the additive noise model are closely related to the similarity of different tasks. This indicates that our approach yields a task-agnostic representation that is disentangled in the sense that its individual dimensions may be interpretable from a task-specific perspective., Comment: Accepted by the 2022 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN 2022)

This study proposes the usage of a method called VoteRank, created by Zhang et al. (2016), to identify influential nodes on patent citation networks. In addition, it proposes enhanced VoteRank algorithms, extending the Zhang et al. work. These novel algorithms comprise a reduction on the voting ability of the nodes affected by a chosen spreader if the nodes are distant from the spreader. One method uses a reduction factor that is linear regarding the distance from the spreader, which we called VoteRank-LRed. The other method uses a reduction factor that is exponential concerning the distance from the spreader, which we called VoteRank-XRed. By applying the methods to a citation network, we were able to demonstrate that VoteRank-LRed improved performance in choosing influence spreaders more efficiently than the original VoteRank on the tested citation network., Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures

Each human face is unique. It has its own shape, topology, and distinguishing features. As such, developing and testing facial tracking systems are challenging tasks. The existing face recognition and tracking algorithms in Computer Vision mainly specify concrete situations according to particular goals and applications, requiring validation methodologies with data that fits their purposes. However, a database that covers all possible variations of external and factors does not exist, increasing researchers' work in acquiring their own data or compiling groups of databases. To address this shortcoming, we propose a methodology for facial data acquisition through definition of fundamental variables, such as subject characteristics, acquisition hardware, and performance parameters. Following this methodology, we also propose two protocols that allow the capturing of facial behaviors under uncontrolled and real-life situations. As validation, we executed both protocols which lead to creation of two sample databases: FdMiee (Facial database with Multi input, expressions, and environments) and FACIA (Facial Multimodal database driven by emotional induced acting). Using different types of hardware, FdMiee captures facial information under environmental and facial behaviors variations. FACIA is an extension of FdMiee introducing a pipeline to acquire additional facial behaviors and speech using an emotion-acting method. Therefore, this work eases the creation of adaptable database according to algorithm's requirements and applications, leading to simplified validation and testing processes., Comment: 10 pages, 6 images, Computers & Graphics