164 research outputs found
A survey of the students of Bloomfield, Connecticut high school to determine whether or not there is need for a course in social relations
Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston UniversityLiterature makes the broad generalization
that youth today is in dire need of guidance and direction in the field
of Social Relations. It does not take into consideration community differences.
The matter of community differences has led directly to the
following problem: "A survey of the students of Bloomfield High School
Connecticut to determine whether or not there is need for a course in
Social Relations."
PURPOSE AND SCOPE: The survey is designed to discover by use of
a problem check list what the problems of the 170 Bloomfield High School
pupils may be. Analysis of the list may show whether or not there is a
need for a course in Social Relations
Equivalence Proofs for Multi-Layer Perceptron Classifiers and the Bayesian Discriminant Function
This paper presents a number of proofs that
equate the outputs of a Multi-Layer Perceptron
(MLP) classifier and the optimal Bayesian discriminant
function for asymptotically large sets of
statistically independent training samples. Two
broad classes of objective functions are shown to
yield Bayesian discriminant performance. The
first class are “reasonable error measures,” which
achieve Bayesian discriminant performance by
engendering classifier outputs that asymptotically
equate to a posteriori probabilities. This class includes
the mean-squared error (MSE) objective
function as well as a number of information theoretic
objective functions. The second class are
classification figures of merit (CFMmono ), which
yield a qualified approximation to Bayesian discriminant
performance by engendering classifier
outputs that asymptotically identify themaximum
a posteriori probability for a given input. Conditions
and relationships for Bayesian discriminant
functional equivalence are given for both classes
of objective functions. Differences between the
two classes are then discussed very briefly in the
context of how they might affect MLP classifier
generalization, given relatively small training
sets
MouldingNet: Deep-learning for 3D Object Reconstruction
th the rise of deep neural networks a number of approaches for learning over 3D data have gained popularity. In this paper, we take advantage of one of these approaches, bilateral convolutional layers to propose a novel end-to-end deep auto-encoder architecture to efficiently encode and reconstruct 3D point clouds. Bilateral convolutional layers project the input point cloud onto an even tessellation of a hyperplane in the (d Å1)-dimensional space known as the permutohedral lattice and perform convolutions over this representation. In contrast to existing point cloud based learning approaches, this allows us to learn over the underlying geometry of the object to create a robust global descriptor. We demonstrate its accuracy by evaluating across the shapenet and modelnet datasets, in order to illustrate 2 main scenarios, known and unknown object reconstruction. These experiments show that our network generalises well from seen classes to unseen classes
Isolating endogenous visuo-spatial attentional effects using the novel visual-evoked spread spectrum analysis (VESPA) technique
In natural visual environments, we use attention to select between relevant and irrelevant stimuli that are presented simultaneously.
Our attention to objects in our visual field is largely controlled endogenously, but is also affected exogenously through the influence of novel stimuli and events. The study of endogenous and exogenous attention as separate mechanisms has been possible in behavioral and functional imaging studies, where multiple stimuli can be presented continuously and simultaneously. It has also been possible in electroencephalogram studies using the steady-state visual-evoked potential (SSVEP); however, it has not been possible in conventional event-related potential (ERP) studies, which are hampered by the need to present suddenly onsetting stimuli in isolation. This is unfortunate as the ERP technique allows for the analysis of human physiology with much greater temporal resolution than functional magnetic resonance imaging or the SSVEP. While ERP studies of endogenous attention have been widely reported, these experiments have a serious limitation in that the suddenly onsetting stimuli, used to elicit the ERP, inevitably have an exogenous, attention-grabbing effect. Recently we have shown that it is possible to derive separate event-related responses to concurrent, continuously presented stimuli using the VESPA (visual-evoked spread spectrum analysis) technique. In this study we employed an experimental paradigm based on this method, in which two pairs of diagonally opposite, non-contiguous disc-segment
stimuli were presented, one pair to be ignored and the other to be attended. VESPA responses derived for each pair showed a strong modulation at 90–100 ms (during the visual P1 component), demonstrating the utility of the method for isolating endogenous visuospatial attention effects
Geometric approach to Fletcher's ideal penalty function
Original article can be found at: www.springerlink.com Copyright Springer. [Originally produced as UH Technical Report 280, 1993]In this note, we derive a geometric formulation of an ideal penalty function for equality constrained problems. This differentiable penalty function requires no parameter estimation or adjustment, has numerical conditioning similar to that of the target function from which it is constructed, and also has the desirable property that the strict second-order constrained minima of the target function are precisely those strict second-order unconstrained minima of the penalty function which satisfy the constraints. Such a penalty function can be used to establish termination properties for algorithms which avoid ill-conditioned steps. Numerical values for the penalty function and its derivatives can be calculated efficiently using automatic differentiation techniques.Peer reviewe
Renormalization-group running of the cosmological constant and its implication for the Higgs boson mass in the Standard Model
The renormalization-group equation for the zero-point energies associated
with vacuum fluctuations of massive fields from the Standard Model is examined.
Our main observation is that at any scale the running is necessarily dominated
by the heaviest degrees of freedom, in clear contradistinction with the
Appelquist & Carazzone decoupling theorem. Such an enhanced running would
represent a disaster for cosmology, unless a fine-tuned relation among the
masses of heavy particles is imposed. In this way, we obtain for the Higgs mass, a value safely within the unitarity bound, but far
above the more stringent triviality bound for the case when the validity of the
Standard Model is pushed up to the grand unification (or Planck) scale.Comment: 11 pages, LaTex2
The Compositional Nature of Verb and Argument Representations in the Human Brain
How does the human brain represent simple compositions of objects, actors,and
actions? We had subjects view action sequence videos during neuroimaging (fMRI)
sessions and identified lexical descriptions of those videos by decoding (SVM)
the brain representations based only on their fMRI activation patterns. As a
precursor to this result, we had demonstrated that we could reliably and with
high probability decode action labels corresponding to one of six action videos
(dig, walk, etc.), again while subjects viewed the action sequence during
scanning (fMRI). This result was replicated at two different brain imaging
sites with common protocols but different subjects, showing common brain areas,
including areas known for episodic memory (PHG, MTL, high level visual
pathways, etc.,i.e. the 'what' and 'where' systems, and TPJ, i.e. 'theory of
mind'). Given these results, we were also able to successfully show a key
aspect of language compositionality based on simultaneous decoding of object
class and actor identity. Finally, combining these novel steps in 'brain
reading' allowed us to accurately estimate brain representations supporting
compositional decoding of a complex event composed of an actor, a verb, a
direction, and an object.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figure
The Compositional Nature of Event Representations in the Human Brain
How does the human brain represent simple compositions of constituents: actors, verbs, objects, directions, and locations? Subjects viewed videos during neuroimaging (fMRI) sessions from which sentential descriptions of those videos were identified by decoding the brain representations based only on their fMRI activation patterns. Constituents (e.g., fold and shirt) were independently decoded from a single presentation. Independent constituent classification was then compared to joint classification of aggregate concepts (e.g., fold-shirt); results were similar as measured by accuracy and correlation. The brain regions used for independent constituent classification are largely disjoint and largely cover those used
for joint classification. This allows recovery of sentential descriptions of stimulus videos by composing
the results of the independent constituent classifiers. Furthermore, classifiers trained on the words one
set of subjects think of when watching a video can recognise sentences a different subject thinks of when
watching a different video
Seeing is Worse than Believing: Reading People’s Minds Better than Computer-Vision Methods Recognize Actions
We had human subjects perform a one-out-of-six class action recognition task from video stimuli while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Support-vector machines (SVMs) were trained on the recovered brain scans to classify actions observed during imaging, yielding average classification accuracy of 69.73% when tested on scans from the same subject and of 34.80% when tested on scans from different subjects. An apples-to-apples comparison was performed with all publicly available software that implements state-of-the-art action recognition on the same video corpus with the same cross-validation regimen and same partitioning into training and test sets, yielding classification accuracies between 31.25% and 52.34%. This indicates that one can read people’s minds better than state-of-the-art computer-vision methods can perform action recognition.This work was supported, in part, by the Center for Brains, Minds and Machines (CBMM), funded by NSF STC award CCF - 1231216. AB, DPB, NS, and JMS were supported, in part, by Army Research Laboratory (ARL) Cooperative Agreement W911NF-10-2-0060, AB, in part, by the Center forBrains, Minds and Machines (CBMM), funded by NSF STC award CCF-1231216, WC, CX, and JJC, in part, by ARL Cooperative Agreement W911NF-10-2-0062 and NSF CAREER grant IIS-0845282, CDF, in part, by NSF grant CNS-0855157, CH and SJH, in part, by the McDonnell Foundation, and BAP, in part, by Science Foundation Ireland grant 09/IN.1/I2637
Illusory Percepts from Auditory Adaptation
Phenomena resembling tinnitus and Zwicker phantom tone are seen to result from an auditory gain adaptation mechanism that attempts to make full use of a fixed-capacity channel. In the case of tinnitus, the gain adaptation enhances internal noise of a frequency band otherwise silent
due to damage. This generates a percept of a phantom sound as a consequence of hearing loss. In the case of Zwicker tone, a frequency band is temporarily silent during the presentation of a notched broad-band sound, resulting in a percept of a tone at the notched frequency. The model suggests a link between tinnitus and the Zwicker tone percept, in that it predicts different results for normal and tinnitus subjects due to a loss of instantaneous nonlinear compression. Listening experiments on 44 subjects show that tinnitus subjects (11 of 44) are significantly more likely to hear the Zwicker tone. This psychoacoustic experiment establishes the first empirical link between the Zwicker tone percept and tinnitus. Together with the modeling results, this supports the hypothesis that the phantom percept is a consequence of a central adaptation mechanism confronted with a degraded sensory apparatus
- …