What is the Role of Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) in an Image Caption Generator?

In neural image captioning systems, a recurrent neural network (RNN) is typically viewed as the primary `generation' component. This view suggests that the image features should be `injected' into the RNN. This is in fact the dominant view in the literature. Alternatively, the RNN can instead be viewed as only encoding the previously generated words. This view suggests that the RNN should only be used to encode linguistic features and that only the final representation should be `merged' with the image features at a later stage. This paper compares these two architectures. We find that, in general, late merging outperforms injection, suggesting that RNNs are better viewed as encoders, rather than generators.Comment: Appears in: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Natural Language Generation (INLG'17

Infertility in fertile couples

A paper read at the Annual Conference of the Society for the Study of Fertility, at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 11th July, 1968. In selecting this title for my brief contribution I felt that a little time of this Conference could deservedly be devoted to the plight of those married couples whom we know to be fertile who yet remain childless. It is in this sense that I speak of infertility in those cases where the husband's semen is normal, the wife ovulates regularly, and indeed fertilization occurs repeatedly, but where yet the pitiful couple continue to yearn for a viable child. Too many childless couples actually owe their plight to recurrent abortion. This is particularly tragic because here the deficiency is not one of ovulation or fertilization. At a time when abortion is so readily treated with depot progesterone, it is important to realize that three causes of habitual abortion are: Congenital malformation of the uterus, cervical incompetence and intra-uterine adhesions. Heterography is indicated routinely after two spontaneous abortions.peer-reviewe

Prospects for the childless

The sorry plight of infertile couples has attracted the interest of the author for several years. His experience suggests that their silent suffering deserves to be shared and relieved. In private practice between 1969 and 1975 his records show that 332 couples sought advice about their infertility, an average of 47 per year. Yet so many of them seemed to become readily disheartened, in some cases because they expected "miracle" pills or injections, in others because the husband would not countenance the idea that he should be investigated, and in many cases for no clear reason at all. In this paper a study of perseverance in relation to childless couples is presented and discussed, emphasizing that with determination the success rate can reach satisfying proportions and that the prospects are becoming brighter.peer-reviewe

On-screen point-of-regard estimation under natural head movement for a computer with integrated webcam

Recent developments in the field of eye-gaze tracking by vidoeoculography indicate a growing interest towards unobtrusive tracking in real-life scenarios, a new paradigm referred to as pervasive eye-gaze tracking. Among the challenges associated with this paradigm, the capability of a tracking platform to integrate well into devices with in-built imaging hardware and to permit natural head movement during tracking is of importance in less constrained scenarios. The work presented in this paper builds on our earlier work, which addressed the problem of estimating on-screen point-of-regard from iris center movements captured by an integrated camera inside a notebook computer, by proposing a method to approximate the head movements in conjunction with the iris movements in order to alleviate the requirement for a stationary head pose. Following iris localization by an appearance-based method, linear mapping functions for the iris and head movement are computed during a brief calibration procedure permitting the image information to be mapped to a point-of-regard on the monitor screen. Following the calculation of the point-of-regard as a function of the iris and head movement, separate Kalman filters improve upon the noisy point-of-regard estimates to smoothen the trajectory of the mouse cursor on the monitor screen. Quantitative and qualitative results obtained from two validation procedures reveal an improvement in the estimation accuracy under natural head movement, over our previous results achieved from earlier work.peer-reviewe

Cysts of the jaws

The clinical behaviour of cysts of the jaws has been under close scrutiny over the last few years as it has been found that there is in some types a distinct risk of recurrence. This recurrence may occur even after as long as 20 years, so that long term follow-up is essential. The clinical and histological features may be important clues in determining the prognosis and the risk of recurrence of the various jaw cysts. The data of jaw cysts seen at the Dental Department, St. Luke's Hospital, Malta during the decade 1960 – 1969 is collected in order to establish a base line for future comparative studies. There were 49 patients with cysts of the jaws and histological examination was made in 31 cases. The preponderance of periodontal cysts (30.6%) agrees with most large surveys reported, as does the percentage incidence (16.3%) of dentigerous cysts.peer-reviewe

Where to put the image in an image caption generator

When a neural language model is used for caption generation, the image information can be fed to the neural network either by directly in- corporating it in a recurrent neural network { conditioning the language model by injecting image features { or in a layer following the recurrent neural network { conditioning the language model by merging the image features. While merging implies that visual features are bound at the end of the caption generation process, injecting can bind the visual features at a variety stages. In this paper we empirically show that late binding is superior to early binding in terms of di erent evaluation metrics. This suggests that the di erent modalities (visual and linguistic) for caption generation should not be jointly encoded by the RNN; rather, the multi- modal integration should be delayed to a subsequent stage. Furthermore, this suggests that recurrent neural networks should not be viewed as actu- ally generating text, but only as encoding it for prediction in a subsequent layer.peer-reviewe

The nonlinear electromigration of analytes into confined spaces

We consider the problem of electromigration of a sample ion (analyte) within a uniform background electrolyte when the confining channel undergoes a sudden contraction. One example of such a situation arises in microfluidics in the electrokinetic injection of the analyte into a micro-capillary from a reservoir of much larger size. Here the sample concentration propagates as a wave driven by the electric field. The dynamics is governed by the Nerst-Planck-Poisson system of equations for ionic transport.A reduced one dimensional nonlinear equation describing the evolution of the sample concentration is derived.We integrate this equation numerically to obtain the evolution of the wave shape and determine how the the injected mass depends on the sample concentration in the reservoir.It is shown that due to the nonlinear coupling of the ionic concentrations and the electric field, the concentration of the injected sample could be substantially less than the concentration of the sample in the reservoir.Comment: 14 pages, 5 Figures, 1 Appendi

Parametric Modelling of EEG Data for the Identification of Mental Tasks

Electroencephalographic (EEG) data is widely used as a biosignal for the identification of different mental states in the human brain. EEG signals can be captured by relatively inexpensive equipment and acquisition procedures are non-invasive and not overly complicated. On the negative side, EEG signals are characterized by low signal-to-noise ratio and non-stationary characteristics, which makes the processing of such signals for the extraction of useful information a challenging task.peer-reviewe