Learning Pose Grammar to Encode Human Body Configuration for 3D Pose Estimation

In this paper, we propose a pose grammar to tackle the problem of 3D human pose estimation. Our model directly takes 2D pose as input and learns a generalized 2D-3D mapping function. The proposed model consists of a base network which efficiently captures pose-aligned features and a hierarchy of Bi-directional RNNs (BRNN) on the top to explicitly incorporate a set of knowledge regarding human body configuration (i.e., kinematics, symmetry, motor coordination). The proposed model thus enforces high-level constraints over human poses. In learning, we develop a pose sample simulator to augment training samples in virtual camera views, which further improves our model generalizability. We validate our method on public 3D human pose benchmarks and propose a new evaluation protocol working on cross-view setting to verify the generalization capability of different methods. We empirically observe that most state-of-the-art methods encounter difficulty under such setting while our method can well handle such challenges.Comment: Accepted by AAAI 201

Metagenomic analysis of microbial consortia enriched from compost: new insights into the role of Actinobacteria in lignocellulose decomposition

Additional file 11: Table S7. Summary of de novo assembly results (37 k)

Oxidation of HMGB1 Causes Attenuation of Its Pro-Inflammatory Activity and Occurs during Liver Ischemia and Reperfusion

High mobility group box 1 (HMGB1) is a nuclear transcription factor. Once HMGB1 is released by damaged cells or activated immune cells, it acts as danger molecule and triggers the inflammatory signaling cascade. Currently, evidence is accumulating that posttranslational modifications such as oxidation may modulate the pro-inflammatory potential of danger signals. We hypothesized that oxidation of HMGB1 may reduce its pro-inflammatory potential and could take place during prolonged ischemia and upon reperfusion

Cross-linguistic categorization of throwing events: A behavioral approach

Research on cross-linguistic categorization reveals that there were universal principles constraining the categorization of motion events across languages, and variations only distributed in a limited range. However, this finding has not been widely verified across languages and semantic domains. In this paper, we will address whether the universal constraints exist in the cross-linguistic categorization of throwing events, with the data collected with a behavioral approach. We asked 79 adult native speakers of English(12 male, 17 female), Chinese(15 male, 15 female), and German(18 male, 12 female) to perform actions denoted by near-synonymous ‘throw’ verbs in their native languages. Then we coded the features of their actions and compared them across individuals and languages. The results support the finding of previous studies that event categorization is constrained across languages. In addition, the top-down approach we adopted in this study allowed us to capture the focal and extensional semantic range of each verb involved, which advanced our knowledge of event categories and different semantic representations of a class of near-synonyms.MOE (Min. of Education, S’pore)Accepted versio

新加坡英汉双语者手部动作动词习得研究 = The acquisition of hand action verbs by English-Chinese bilinguals in Singapore

本研究是一项聚焦于具体语义场的、面向英汉双语者的词汇发展研究。在词汇量发展的层面，我们首先以手部动作动词为例，自行设计了一套面向三至五岁新加坡英汉双语儿童的词汇发展测量工具，而后基于五百名儿童的测量结果及其背景资料，建立了适用于语言背景不同的儿童的词汇发展常模，并据此评估了他们的双语词汇量发展。在词汇语义习得的层面，我们通过动作演示和视觉观察相结合的实验方法对比追踪英汉单、双语儿童、青少年及成人对“扔抛类”近义动词的语义习得轨迹。在充分考虑新加坡双语者特殊性的前提下，我们综合讨论了语言学因素（如：双语输入、语言变体、词汇语义构成等）和非语言学因素（如：家庭SES水平、认知及身体发展水平等）对其词汇量发展和词汇语义习得的影响。研究双语者对手部动作动词的习得，不仅要分析他们的动词使用及理解，还需要充分讨论各种影响因素之间的交互作用，唯有如此，我们才可能正确认识并解释双语者的词汇发展轨迹。 This is a study of domain-specific lexical development in English-Chinese bilinguals. Taking Hand Action Verbs as the sampling vocabulary, we firstly measured the English and Chinese vocabulary sizes of 500 bilingual Singaporean children with our self-designed parental report. Based on the measurement results, we established developmental norms for children from different backgrounds and obtained preliminary evaluations of their bilingual vocabulary development. By analyzing the data collected from a series of behavioral and perceptual experiments, we carefully described and compared the acquisition trajectories of near-synonymous Throwing Verbs by monolingual and bilingual children, adolescents, and adults. With a full consideration of the uniqueness of Singaporean bilinguals, we discussed both linguistic (e.g., language input, language varieties, lexical semantics, etc.) and non-linguistic factors (e.g., family SES, cognitive development, physical capability, etc.) that showed influences on their vocabulary development and acquisition of verbs semantics. The overall findings show that to understand the lexical development of hand action verbs in bilinguals we need to focus not only on the acquisition and production of the verbs but also on how other influencing factors interact with each other to shape the developmental trajectory.DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (HSS

The Delineation of ‘Throw’ Verbs in Mandarin Chinese: Behavioural and Perceptual Approaches

Within a semantic domain, terms that can be used in a similar way to describe a similar event are members of the same class of words, or near-synonyms. They are common in a language but difficult to distinguish from one and another. Physical action verbs such as ‘throw’ verbs are a typical example of this. In this study we attempted to distinguish six Chinese ‘throw’ verbs (rēng, diū, pāo, tóu, shuāi, shuǎi) from each other within the framework of cognitive semantics. Two experiments were conducted with two groups of native Chinese speakers (60 participants in total) to examine their behavioural and perceptual responses to the throwing actions that can be typically described by each of the six verbs. The results show that the verbs the participants enacted revealed differences in terms of dimensional features. Further, visual input about the verb enacted, successfully elicited the participants’ responses corresponding to the semantics of each individual verb. Typical actions and differences between five dimensions were used as discriminative features of the verbs. The validity of action performance as a paradigm for verb meaning specification was verified.MOE (Min. of Education, S’pore)Published versio