(Press-News.org) The International World Wide Web Conference Committee (IW3C2) announced today that the 2023 Seoul Test of Time Award will be presented to the authors of the paper “A Contextual-Bandit Approach to Personalized News Article Recommendation;” Wei Chu, (Ant Group), Lihong Li, (Amazon), John Langford, (Microsoft) and Robert Schapire (Microsoft).
The award will be presented during the opening ceremony of the 32nd international conference in The ACM Web Conference series (formerly known as The International World Wide Web Conference) hosted by the team in Austin. See https://www2023.thewebconf.org for details.
The paper was first presented at the 19th International World Wide Web Conference in Rayleigh Durham, USA in April 2010. It now has more than 2,730 citations and has become foundational research in the area of recommendation systems.
Ryen White, Chair of the Seoul Test of Time Award Committee, said:
"This landmark paper proposed a new approach for personalized recommendation using contextual bandit algorithms. Bandits have since been adopted for recommendation in a wide variety of settings. The paper addressed fundamental challenges in real-world recommendation systems via computationally efficient algorithms grounded in learning theory. It also showed that recommendation algorithms can be reliably evaluated offline, enabling algorithm selection without operational impact, and that contextual bandits can yield significant gains in user engagement."
Dame Wendy Hall, Chair of IW3C2, said: “IW3C2 is very happy to present the 2023 Seoul Test of Time award to the authors of this paper which the award committee felt has made profound technical, theoretical and practical contributions to the field. It still has a strongly increasing annual citation rate, many years after publication, demonstrating its lasting impact."
Lihong Li, one of the authors, comments:
“We are thrilled and honored to receive this incredible award. Back in 2010, typical approaches to recommendation aimed at improving rating prediction accuracy on a dataset. Our work was based on the observation that recommendation was essentially a decision making problem, naturally formulated as reinforcement learning. Starting with the simple yet powerful contextual bandit model, we were able to study some of the fundamental issues, such as online exploration and offline evaluation, on an Internet-scale problem. After publishing the paper, we are excited to see numerous extensions to our work, and many industrial applications of contextual bandits and their variants such as in Azure Personalizer, Amazon, Netflix, and New York Times, to name a few.
About the Seoul Test of Time Award
Inaugurated in 2014, the Seoul Test of Time Award is made possible by the generous contribution of the organisers of WWW2014 held in Seoul, South Korea, in May 2014. It is awarded annually to the author or authors of a paper presented at a previous World Wide Web conference that has, as the name suggests, stood the test of time.
The first Award, presented at WWW2015 in Florence, was made to Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, for their world-changing paper “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine,” originally presented at the World Wide Web Conference in Brisbane in 1998.
About The Web Conference
Since its first event, in 1994 at CERN, The Web Conference (formerly the World Wide Web or WWW Conference) has provided scientists, researchers, policy makers, activists and technology industry leaders with the forum to discuss the evolution of Web and its impact on business, culture and society. From 1994 the conference was organized each year by a local team of volunteers in different parts of the world in collaboration with the International World Wide Web Conference Committee (IW3C2) which managed the conference series.
In 2022 IW3C2 handed over the management of The Web Conference series to the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) and it became a full ACM conference. The IW3C2 continues to exist to manage the Seoul Test of Time award but it will no longer be responsible for managing conferences.
About ACM
ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, is the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society, uniting computing educators, researchers, and professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources, and address the field’s challenges. ACM strengthens the computing profession’s collective voice through strong leadership, promotion of the highest standards, and recognition of technical excellence. ACM supports the professional growth of its members by providing opportunities for life-long learning, career development, and professional networking.
END
NEW YORK, NY (May 2, 2023)--A study of more than 2,200 adults who attended U.S. high schools in the early 1960s found that those who attended higher quality schools had better cognitive function 60 years later.
Previous studies have found that the number of years spent in school correlates with cognition later in life, but few studies have examined the impact of educational quality.
“Our study establishes a link between high-quality education and better late-life cognition and suggests that increased investment ...
RICHLAND, Wash. – While adding a little water is popularly thought to “open up” the flavor of whisky, a Washington State University-led study indicates there’s a point at which it becomes too much: about 20%.
Researchers chemically analyzed how volatile compounds in a set of 25 whiskies responded to the addition of water, including bourbons, ryes, Irish whiskeys and both single malt and blended Scotches. They also had a trained sensory panel assess six of those whiskies, three Scotches and ...
PITTSBURGH, May 2, 2023 — In a paper published today in Communications Biology, auditory neuroscientists at the University of Pittsburgh describe a machine learning model that helps explain how the brain recognizes the meaning of communication sounds, such as animal calls or spoken words.
The algorithm described in the study models how social animals, including marmoset monkeys and guinea pigs, use sound-processing networks in their brain to distinguish between sound categories – such as calls for mating, food or danger — and act on them.
The study is an important step toward understanding the intricacies and complexities ...
Every cell in our body is able to turn genes (DNA) on or off, producing RNA, but when genes are ‘turned on’ to the wrong level it can result in a variety of health conditions.
Rett syndrome is a rare neurodevelopmental condition that causes a loss of motor and language skills over time in girls. The condition is caused by a genetic variation in the MECP2 gene located on the X chromosome, resulting in affected nerve cells in the brain expressing the wrong levels of more than one thousand genes. The end result is that Rett syndrome nerve cells are smaller, less interconnected and less electrically active than healthy controls.
In ...
A new paper in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, published by Oxford University Press, indicates that an important part of the pay gap between men and women has to do with how they conduct job searches, with women more likely to accept job offers early while men tend to hold out for higher pay.
Women in the United States earn 84% of what men earn, as of 2020. This disparity is well documented, and economists and the general public have known about the earnings difference for decades. The reasons for this phenomenon are a matter of considerable debate.
Initial conditions in the labor market are long-lasting. Young workers who begin ...
Scientists dream of using tiny molecules as building blocks to construct things, similar to how we build things with mechanical parts. However, molecules are incredibly small - around one hundred millionth the size of a softball - and they move randomly in liquids, making it very difficult to manipulate them in a single form. To overcome this challenge, “nanofluidic devices” that can transport molecules in extremely narrow channels, similar in size to one millionth of a straw, are attracting attention ...
AMHERST, Mass. – Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the University of Alaska Anchorage are the first to characterize two different types of surface water in the hyperarid salars—or salt flats—that contain much of the world’s lithium deposits. This new characterization represents a leap forward in understanding how water moves through such basins, and will be key to minimizing the environmental impact on such sensitive, critical habitats.
“You can’t protect the salars if you don’t first understand how they work,” says Sarah McKnight, lead author of the research that appeared recently ...
Embargoed for release until 5:00 p.m. ET on Monday 01 May 2023
Annals of Internal Medicine Tip Sheet
@Annalsofim
Below please find summaries of new articles that will be published in the next issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. The summaries are not intended to substitute for the full articles as a source of information. This information is under strict embargo and by taking it into possession, media representatives are committing to the terms of the embargo not only on their own behalf, but also on behalf of the organization they represent.
----------------------------
1. ...
Climate change has led to earlier spring blooms for wildflowers and ocean plankton but the impacts on salmon migration are more complicated, according to new research.
In a new study, published in the journal Nature, Ecology & Evolution, Simon Fraser University (SFU) researcher Sam Wilson led a set of diverse collaborators from across North America to compile the largest dataset in the world on juvenile salmon migration timing. The dataset includes 66 populations from Oregon to B.C. to Alaska. Each dataset was at least 20 years in length with the longest dating back to 1951. Only wild salmon, and not salmon from hatcheries, ...
ANN ARBOR, Mich. – In recent years, experts have debated whether most birthing individuals would benefit from labor induction once they reach a certain stage of pregnancy.
But a new statewide study in Michigan suggests that inducing labor at the 39th week of pregnancy for people having their first births with a single baby that is in a head down position, or low risk, doesn’t necessarily reduce the risk of caesarian births. In fact, for some birthing individuals, it may even have the opposite effect if hospitals don’t take a thoughtful approach to ...
