Joint-Modal Label Denoising for Weakly-Supervised Audio-Visual Video Parsing

This paper focuses on the weakly-supervised audio-visual video parsing task, which aims to recognize all events belonging to each modality and localize their temporal boundaries. This task is challenging because only overall labels indicating the video events are provided for training. However, an event might be labeled but not appear in one of the modalities, which results in a modality-specific noisy label problem. In this work, we propose a training strategy to identify and remove modality-specific noisy labels dynamically. It is motivated by two key observations: 1) networks tend to learn clean samples first; and 2) a labeled event would appear in at least one modality. Specifically, we sort the losses of all instances within a mini-batch individually in each modality, and then select noisy samples according to the relationships between intra-modal and inter-modal losses. Besides, we also propose a simple but valid noise ratio estimation method by calculating the proportion of instances whose confidence is below a preset threshold. Our method makes large improvements over the previous state of the arts (e.g. from 60.0\% to 63.8\% in segment-level visual metric), which demonstrates the effectiveness of our approach. Code and trained models are publicly available at \url{https://github.com/MCG-NJU/JoMoLD}.Comment: Accepted by ECCV 202

Artificial Intelligence-Aided Mapping of the Structure-Composition-Conductivity Relationships of Glass-Ceramic Lithium Thiophosphate Electrolytes

Lithium thiophosphates (LPSs) with the composition (Li2S)x(P2S5)1-x are among the most promising prospective electrolyte materials for solid-state batteries (SSBs), owing to their superionic conductivity at room temperature (>10-3 S cm-1), soft mechanical properties, and low grain boundary resistance. Several glass-ceramic (gc) LPSs with different compositions and good Li conductivity have been previously reported, but the relationship among composition, atomic structure, stability, and Li conductivity remains unclear due to the challenges in characterizing noncrystalline phases in experiments or simulations. Here, we mapped the LPS phase diagram by combining first-principles and artificial intelligence (AI) methods, integrating density functional theory, artificial neural network potentials, genetic-algorithm sampling, and ab initio molecular dynamics simulations. By means of an unsupervised structure-similarity analysis, the glassy/ceramic phases were correlated with the local structural motifs in the known LPS crystal structures, showing that the energetically most favorable Li environment varies with the composition. Based on the discovered trends in the LPS phase diagram, we propose a candidate solid-state electrolyte composition, (Li2S)x(P2S5)1-x (x ∼0.725), that exhibits high ionic conductivity (>10-2 S cm-1) in our simulations, thereby demonstrating a general design strategy for amorphous or glassy/ceramic solid electrolytes with enhanced conductivity and stability

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data

Representing strangers in personal space triggers coding of defensive hand movement

Han

Faces distort eye movement trajectories, but the distortion is not stronger for your own face

It is currently unclear whether a person’s own face has greater capacity in absorbing his/her attention than faces of others. With two visual distractor tasks, the present study assessed the extent to which a person’s own face attracts his/her attention, by measuring face distractor elicited distortion of saccade trajectories. Experiment 1 showed that upright faces induced stronger distortion of saccade trajectories than inverted ones. This face inversion effect, however, was not stronger for the participant’s own face than for unfamiliar other’s faces. By manipulating fixation stimulus offset and using peripheral onset target, Experiment 2 further demonstrated that these observations were not contingent on saccade latency. Together, these findings suggest that a person’s own face is not more salient or attention-absorbing than unfamiliar other’s faces.12 page(s

Interpersonal Competition in Elderly Couples: A Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Hyperscanning Study

Elderly people tend not to compete with others, and if they do, the mechanism behind the competition is not clear. In this study, groups of elderly couples and matched cross-sex controls were recruited to perform a competitive button-pressing task, while their brain signals were simultaneously collected using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) hyperscanning. Several fundamental observations were made. First, controls showed attenuated interpersonal competition across task processes, but couples held the competition with each other. Second, couples demonstrated increased inter-brain synchronization (IBS) between the middle temporal cortex and the temporoparietal junction across task processes. Third, Granger causality analysis in couples revealed significant differences between the directions (i.e., from men to women, and from women to men) in the first half of the competitive task, whereas there was no significant difference in the second half. Finally, the groups of couples and controls could be successfully discriminated against based on IBS by using a machine-learning approach. In sum, these findings indicate that elderly couples can maintain interpersonal competition, and such maintenance might be associated with changes in the IBS of the mentalizing system. It suggests the possible positive impact of long-term spouse relationships on interpersonal interactions, both behaviorally and neurally, in terms of competition

Self association facilitates attentional inhibition inhuman visual search

PURPOSE: Previous research on attentional priority of self-associated stimuli mostly focused on the advantage in attentional attraction. The characteristics of self-associated stimuli in attentional inhibition remained unclear. The purpose of this research was to investigate whether self-associated information can facilitate inhibition compared with other information in human visual search. METHODS: Firstly participants completed an associative-learning task to associate&nbsp; color with label (e.g., green-self, blue-stranger). After that, they would finish a WM-guided visual search task. In this task, they were presented with several items to identify an unique target among the items. Participants were noted a specific color (e.g., red) in advance that need to be recalled and the items with the informed color could be excluded as distracters in the search display. This resulted in three conditions that the informed distracter color was either self-associated, stranger-associated, or neutral (no established association). RESULTS: The response times of the search task were significantly shorter when the informed distracter color was self-associated (i.e., green) compared with when the informed distracter color was stranger-associated (i.e., blue) or neutral (i.e., red).&nbsp; There was no significant difference in search time between stranger-associated color and neural color condition. The results suggested that when the distracters link to self, participants could inhibit the distracters rapidly and search faster. CONCLUSIONS: The present study provided an evidence that the active inhibition of a self-associated stimulus improves visual search performance. This study also furthered our understanding about attentional priority of self-associated stimuli and extended the self attention network (SAN) model.</p

Understanding the Onset of Surface Degradation in LiNiO2Cathodes

Nickel-based layered oxides offer an attractive platform for the development of energy-dense cobalt-free cathodes for lithium-ion batteries but suffer from degradation via oxygen gas release during electrochemical cycling. While such degradation has previously been characterized phenomenologically with experiments, an atomic-scale understanding of the reactions that take place at the cathode surface has been lacking. Here, we develop a first-principles methodology for the prediction of the surface reconstructions of intercalation electrode particles as a function of the temperature and state of charge. We report the surface phase diagrams of the LiNiO2 (001) and (104) surfaces and identify surface structures that are likely visited during the first charge and discharge. Our calculations indicate that both surfaces experience oxygen loss during the first charge, resulting in irreversible changes to the surface structures. At the end of charge, the surface Ni atoms migrate into tetrahedral sites, from which they further migrate into Li vacancies during discharge, leading to Li/Ni mixed discharged surface phases. Further, the impact of the temperature and voltage range during cycling on the charge/discharge mechanism is discussed. The present study thus provides insight into the initial stages of cathode surface degradation and lays the foundation for the computational design of cathode materials that are stable against oxygen release