Text to 3D Scene Generation with Rich Lexical Grounding

The ability to map descriptions of scenes to 3D geometric representations has many applications in areas such as art, education, and robotics. However, prior work on the text to 3D scene generation task has used manually specified object categories and language that identifies them. We introduce a dataset of 3D scenes annotated with natural language descriptions and learn from this data how to ground textual descriptions to physical objects. Our method successfully grounds a variety of lexical terms to concrete referents, and we show quantitatively that our method improves 3D scene generation over previous work using purely rule-based methods. We evaluate the fidelity and plausibility of 3D scenes generated with our grounding approach through human judgments. To ease evaluation on this task, we also introduce an automated metric that strongly correlates with human judgments.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, 3 tables. To appear in ACL-IJCNLP 201

Short-Term Solution, Long-Term Problem: The Rite of Sunday Celebrations in the Absence of a Priest and its Use in the United States of America

The Sunday Celebration in the Absence of a Priest (SCAP) has become a common part of the American Catholic experience as dioceses continue to struggle with ways to deal with the shortage of available ordained priests to celebrate Eucharist. In this paper, I look at early church history (in the pre-Nicaean church as well as the Middle Ages) to find historical and theological justification of the rite. I examine relevant background information data from American history on the availability of Eucharist and Eucharistic piety, and then outline the 20th-century movement which restored frequent reception of Communion to the laity, to explain how the current situation developed in the USA. I trace the development of the SCAP rite, from 1973’s Holy Communion Outside of Mass to the 2007 revision of the SCAP rite. I then consider a number of the most pressing criticisms of the SCAP from a variety of vantage points, including sacramental, ecclesiological, theological, and sociological

Welcome (Back): The Use of Initiatory Elements in the Reconciliation of Heretics to the Early Church

The sacraments of Reconciliation and Confirmation would be used today for a lapsed Roman Catholic to return to the church and for a non-Catholic Christian to be received into full communion with the church. These rites took centuries to develop; before these sacraments assumed the role that they have today, ritual elements of these sacraments were used to reconcile heretics and schismatics to the Church. In this paper, I examine the practices of the Roman Catholic Church, particularly before the year 700, discussing how water baptism, anointing with chrism, and receiving the Eucharist were prescribed at various times and places to admit or readmit heretics and schismatics to church membership. Of major concern is the topic of “rebaptizing” those who were baptized by schismatics or heretics, especially in the wake of Roman persecution before Constantine. While the church has never favored rebaptism, there were occasions when what was later regarded as “rebaptism” was considered to be a first baptism, and the only one validly conferred. I note how distinctions made at the ecumenical council of Constantinople in 381 become a model for the Church and contributed towards the development of a practice wherein anointing those validly baptized with chrism becomes normative. A few cases are also noted where the reception of the Eucharist is the only act marking the reconciliation of a Christian or group of Christians

Metallization of cyanide-modified Pt(111) electrodes with copper

The support of the University of Aberdeen is gratefully acknowledged. CW acknowledges a summer studentship from the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland.Peer reviewedPostprin

Multilayer Perceptron Network Discriminates Larval Zebrafish Genotype using Behaviour

Zebrafish are a common model organism used to identify new disease therapeutics. High-throughput drug screens can be performed on larval zebrafish in multi-well plates by observing changes in behaviour following a treatment. Analysis of this behaviour can be difficult, however, due to the high dimensionality of the data obtained. Statistical analysis of individual statistics (such as the distance travelled) is generally not powerful enough to detect meaningful differences between treatment groups. Here, we propose a method for classifying zebrafish models of Parkinson's disease by genotype at 5 days old. Using a set of 2D behavioural features, we train a multi-layer perceptron neural network. We further show that the use of integrated gradients can give insight into the impact of each behaviour feature on genotype classifications by the model. In this way, we provide a novel pipeline for classifying zebrafish larvae, beginning with feature preparation and ending with an impact analysis of said features.Comment: Preprin

Solving the mystery of booming sand dunes

Desert booming can be heard after a natural slumping event or during a sand avalanche generated by humans sliding down the slip face of a large dune. The sound is remarkable because it is composed of one dominant audible frequency (70 to 105 Hz) plus several higher harmonics. This study challenges earlier reports that the dunes’ frequency is a function of average grain size by demonstrating through extensive field measurements that the booming frequency results from a natural waveguide associated with the dune. The booming frequency is fixed by the depth of the surficial layer of dry loose sand that is sandwiched between two regions of higher compressional body wave velocity. This letter presents measurements of the booming frequencies, compressional wave velocities, depth of surficial layer, along with an analytical prediction of the frequency based on constructive interference of propagating waves generated by avalanching along the dune surface

Reply to comment by B. Andreotti et al. on "Solving the mystery of booming sand dunes"

This reply addresses three main issues raised in the comment of Andreotti et al. [2008]. First, the turning of ray paths in a granular material does not preclude the propagation of body waves and the resonance condition described by Vriend et al. [2007]. The waveguide model still holds in the dune for the observed velocities, even with a velocity increase with depth as implied by Andreotti et al. [2008]. Secondly, the method of initiation of spontaneous avalanching does not influence the booming frequency. The frequency is independent of the source once sustained booming starts; it depends on the subsurface structure of the dune. Thirdly, if all data points from Vriend et al. [2007] are included in the analysis (and not an average or selection), no correlation is observed between the sustained booming frequency and average particle diameter

Mystery Shopping in Community Drug shops: Research as Development in Rural Tanzania

Throughout Africa, the private sector plays an important role in malaria treatment complementing formal health\ud services. However this sector is faced by a number of challenges including poor dispensing practices by unqualified staff. The Accredited Drug Dispensing Outlet (ADDO) program was introduced in Tanzania in 2002 to improve\ud the quality of retail services and especially of dispensing practices. The study adapted the often contested mystery\ud shopping methodology and trained local community members to assess practices of ADDO dispensers. The study then compared the assessed dispensers’ practices before and after ADDO interventions. Mystery shoppers were identified in the villages with the assistance of Health Demographic Surveillance System field staff. A total of 865 visits were made to general shops and drug shops between 2004 and 2009. Three case scenarios were developed to assess the quality of treatment; a) child aged 2 - 4 months, with fever/hot body for one day and problems with drinking/breastfeeding, b) child aged 2 - 4 years, with recurring fever/hot body for 3 days problems with drinking, eating, diarrhoea and tiredness/ not playing as usual and c) adult, with recurring fever/hot body for 2 days, headache, dizziness and loss of appetite. Study findings indicate improvements in dispensers’ knowledge and practices in management of fever, especially after the roll out of ADDO program in the study area. A 30 percent increase was noted after ADDO interventions on four assessed indicators developed based on the national malaria control guideline on malaria case management. On the other hand advice on the use of Insecticide Treated Nets as a measure to prevent malaria was not consistent over years even after ADDO interventions.\ud Children aged two to four years and adults were more likely to be provided with anti-malarials than children\ud between two to four months. Despite challenges posed against the methodology, findings reveals how useful\ud the mystery shopping technique can be for community assessments of ADDO interventions in retail outlets.\ud Study findings signify the importance of ADDO interventions in improving malaria case management in drug retail\ud outlets. If ADDOs are closely monitored and strengthened to provide appropriate malaria treatment and the program\ud is rolled throughout the country, a reduction in malaria morbidity and mortality is possible in the country. Innovative community based participatory research approaches and more systematic mystery shopping techniques would allow for comparative community-based assessments of ADDO interventions across regions.\u