Beyond Stemming and Lemmatization: Ultra-stemming to Improve Automatic Text Summarization

In Automatic Text Summarization, preprocessing is an important phase to reduce the space of textual representation. Classically, stemming and lemmatization have been widely used for normalizing words. However, even using normalization on large texts, the curse of dimensionality can disturb the performance of summarizers. This paper describes a new method for normalization of words to further reduce the space of representation. We propose to reduce each word to its initial letters, as a form of Ultra-stemming. The results show that Ultra-stemming not only preserve the content of summaries produced by this representation, but often the performances of the systems can be dramatically improved. Summaries on trilingual corpora were evaluated automatically with Fresa. Results confirm an increase in the performance, regardless of summarizer system used.Comment: 22 pages, 12 figures, 9 table

A magnetic stimulation examination of orthographic neighborhood effects in visual word recognition

The split-fovea theory proposes that visual word recognition is mediated by the splitting of the foveal image, with letters to the left of fixation projected to the right hemisphere (RH) and letters to the right of fixation projected to the left hemisphere (LH). We applied repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) over the left and right occipital cortex during a lexical decision task to investigate the extent to which word recognition processes could be accounted for according to the split-fovea theory. Unilateral rTMS significantly impaired lexical decision latencies to centrally presented words, supporting the suggestion that foveal representation of words is split between the cerebral hemispheres rather than bilateral. Behaviorally, we showed that words that have many orthographic neighbors sharing the same initial letters ("lead neighbors") facilitated lexical decision more than words with few lead neighbors. This effect did not apply to end neighbors (orthographic neighbors sharing the same final letters). Crucially, rTMS over the RH impaired lead-, but not end-neighborhood facilitation. The results support the split-fovea theory, where the RH has primacy in representing lead neighbors of a written word

Visual selective behavior can be triggered by a feed-forward process

The ventral visual pathway implements object recognition and categorization in a hierarchy of processing areas with neuronal selectivities of increasing complexity. The presence of massive feedback connections within this hierarchy raises the possibility that normal visual processing relies on the use of computational loops. It is not known, however, whether object recognition can be performed at all without such loops (i.e., in a purely feed-forward mode). By analyzing the time course of reaction times in a masked natural scene categorization paradigm, we show that the human visual system can generate selective motor responses based on a single feed-forward pass. We confirm these results using a more constrained letter discrimination task, in which the rapid succession of a target and mask is actually perceived as a distractor. We show that a masked stimulus presented for only 26 msec—and often not consciously perceived—can fully determine the earliest selective motor responses: The neural representations of the stimulus and mask are thus kept separated during a short period corresponding to the feed-forward "sweep." Therefore, feedback loops do not appear to be "mandatory" for visual processing. Rather, we found that such loops allow the masked stimulus to reverberate in the visual system and affect behavior for nearly 150 msec after the feed-forward sweep

Does Phenomenal Consciousness Overflow Attention? An Argument from Feature-Integration

In the past two decades a number of arguments have been given in favor of the possibility of phenomenal consciousness without attentional access, otherwise known as phenomenal overflow. This paper will show that the empirical data commonly cited in support of this thesis is, at best, ambiguous between two equally plausible interpretations, one of which does not posit phenomenology beyond attention. Next, after citing evidence for the feature-integration theory of attention, this paper will give an account of the relationship between consciousness and attention that accounts for both the empirical data and our phenomenological intuitions without positing phenomenal consciousness beyond attention. Having undercut the motivations for accepting phenomenal overflow along with having given reasons to think that phenomenal overflow does not occur, I end with the tentative conclusion that attention is a necessary condition for phenomenal consciousness

Quantum cryptography: key distribution and beyond

Uniquely among the sciences, quantum cryptography has driven both foundational research as well as practical real-life applications. We review the progress of quantum cryptography in the last decade, covering quantum key distribution and other applications.Comment: It's a review on quantum cryptography and it is not restricted to QK

Interactions, structure and properties in poly(lactic acid)/thermoplastic polymer blends

Blends were prepared from poly(lactic acid) (PLA) and three thermoplastics, polystyrene (PS), polycarbonate (PC) and poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA). Rheological and mechanical properties, structure and component interactions were determined by various methods. The results showed that the structure and properties of the blends cover a relatively wide range. All three blends have heterogeneous structure, but the size of the dispersed particles differs by an order of magnitude indicating dissimilar interactions for the corresponding pairs. Properties change accordingly, the blend containing the smallest dispersed particles has the largest tensile strength, while PLA/PS blends with the coarsest structure have the smallest. The latter blends are also very brittle. Component interactions were estimated by four different methods, the determination of the size of the dispersed particles, the calculation of the Flory-Huggins interaction parameter from solvent absorption, from solubility parameters, and by the quantitative evaluation of the composition dependence of tensile strength. All approaches led to the same result indicating strong interaction for the PLA/PMMA pair and weak for PLA and PS. A general correlation was established between interactions and the mechanical properties of the blends

Asymmetric spatial processing under cognitive load

Spatial attention allows us to selectively process information within a certain location in space. Despite the vast literature on spatial attention, the effect of cognitive load on spatial processing is still not fully understood. In this study we added cognitive load to a spatial processing task, so as to see whether it would differentially impact upon the processing of visual information in the left versus the right hemispace. The main paradigm consisted of a detection task that was performed during the maintenance interval of a verbal working memory task. We found that increasing cognitive working memory load had a more negative impact on detecting targets presented on the left side compared to those on the right side. The strength of the load effect correlated with the strength of the interaction on an individual level. The implications of an asymmetric attentional bias with a relative disadvantage for the left (vs the right) hemispace under high verbal working memory (WM) load are discussed

Spatial representations of numbers and letters in children

Different lines of evidence suggest that children's mental representations of numbers are spatially organized in form of a mental number line. It is, however, still unclear whether a spatial organization is specific for the numerical domain or also applies to other ordinal sequences in children. In the present study, children (n = 129) aged 8–9 years were asked to indicate the midpoint of lines flanked by task-irrelevant digits or letters. We found that the localization of the midpoint was systematically biased toward the larger digit. A similar, but less pronounced, effect was detected for letters with spatial biases toward the letter succeeding in the alphabet. Instead of assuming domain-specific forms of spatial representations, we suggest that ordinal information expressing relations between different items of a sequence might be spatially coded in children, whereby numbers seem to convey this kind of information in the most salient way