Picasso: A Modular Framework for Visualizing the Learning Process of Neural Network Image Classifiers

Picasso is a free open-source (Eclipse Public License) web application written in Python for rendering standard visualizations useful for analyzing convolutional neural networks. Picasso ships with occlusion maps and saliency maps, two visualizations which help reveal issues that evaluation metrics like loss and accuracy might hide: for example, learning a proxy classification task. Picasso works with the Tensorflow deep learning framework, and Keras (when the model can be loaded into the Tensorflow backend). Picasso can be used with minimal configuration by deep learning researchers and engineers alike across various neural network architectures. Adding new visualizations is simple: the user can specify their visualization code and HTML template separately from the application code.Comment: 9 pages, submission to the Journal of Open Research Software, github.com/merantix/picass

Engaging Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder in Physical Activity to Improve Health and Educational Outcomes

This starred paper will attempt to describe how physical activity can have lifelong and short-term benefits for youth and adolescents with ASD. Emphasizing positive behavioral impacts that PA may have on other aspects of a student’s learning experience. It will explore some of the barriers these students face in getting enough PA and more importantly the practices that should be utilized to overcome these obstacles. Simply finding ways for positive engagement is a strong predictor of success. With that in mind, there will also be a focus on unique strategies or types of activities that students may not typically receive in a standard physical education class. The literature review in the following chapter will examine the most current studies and analysis on the topic

College Athletics and The Money Behind It

College athletic departments desire the positive attention that is garnered through playoff appearances and championships. Programs believe that if they spend more, they will win more, and gain footing on the national stage. This theory is supported by the tens of millions of dollars currently being spent in college sport. However, this theory is largely untested. Tens of millions of dollars are being spent by college athletic programs to put their teams atop of the national standings. With so much money being spent, programs expect to see results, whether that is playoff appearances or championships, schools want positive attention. This is an unknown by programs who want to gain footing, there is theory that if a program spends more will win more. This research looked at schools in the Power 5 conferences and their athletic budgets to determine if spending all that money equated to wins based on the Capital One Cup standings. The data indicated that men’s spendings did not mean more wins than teams that spent less, however women’s programs who spent more had more success on the playing surface. Schools should pay more attention to this when they think spending more means winning more

Crossflow Transition At Mach 6 On A Cone At Low Angles Of Attack

Experiments on a sharp 7-degree cone at low angles of attack were conducted at Mach 6 to understand the stationary and traveling modes of crossflow disturbances, the interaction between them, and the development of other instabilities that can lead to transition. Using the Boeing/AFOSR Mach-6 Quiet Tunnel (BAM6QT), pressure and temperature measurements were collected to better describe crossflow characteristics. Noisy and quiet flow conditions were compared to understand crossflow development. Temperature Sensitive Paint (TSP) was used to measure the global surface temperatures on the model. Schmidt-Boelter (SB) gauges were used to convert the surface temperatures to heat transfer. The global heat transfer then allowed the stationary crossflow to be visualized and quantified in terms of heat flux. Integrating heat fluxes azimuthally, the amplitudes of the stationary crossflow vortices were compared against the amplitudes of the traveling waves. PCB 132A31 and Kulite XCQ-062-15A transducers were used to measure pressure fluctuations over a broad range of frequencies. The traveling crossflow instability, the second-mode instability, and possibly the secondary-instability of the stationary crossflow mode were found at certain tunnel conditions. A grouping of Kulites was used to determine traveling wave speed and direction. Roughness elements were added to the model to excite discrete stationary vortices. The roughness elements provided a method to alter the strength of the stationary vortices. This technique allowed traveling-mode amplitudes to be compared to varying stationary-mode amplitude

Graduate teaching assistants use different criteria when grading introductory physics vs. quantum mechanics problems

Physics graduate teaching assistants (TAs) are often responsible for grading. Physics education research suggests that grading practices that place the burden of proof for explicating the problem solving process on students can help them develop problem solving skills and learn physics. However, TAs may not have developed effective grading practices and may grade student solutions in introductory and advanced courses differently. In the context of a TA professional development course, we asked TAs to grade student solutions to introductory physics and quantum mechanics problems and explain why their grading approaches were different or similar in the two contexts. TAs expected and rewarded reasoning more frequently in the QM context. Our findings suggest that these differences may at least partly be due to the TAs not realizing that grading can serve as a formative assessment tool and also not thinking about the difficulty of an introductory physics problem from an introductory physics student's perspective

Turn-on\u27s and edible friends: an imaginal menagerie

Turn-on’s and Edible Friends explores alternative sexual behavior. Societal standards have an overwhelming interest in imposing judgment upon sexual identity. The imagery is influenced by taboo and peculiar sexual fetishes. Animal personifications of the fetish are used as satire to detach the viewer from the action, and also as a metaphor for the reins with which the general public takes control over our private relationships. Thus the work becomes confrontational with the viewer and forces them to question their perceptions and comforts about sexual identity

Identification of Volunteer Screening Practices for Selected Ohio Youth Organizations

This qualitative study identified volunteer screening practices for selected Ohio youth organizations. Programs were selected based on current volunteer screening in place and involvement of adult volunteers giving leadership to youth-focused programs. Eight volunteer coordinators were interviewed using an interview schedule focused on program screening procedures, liability issues, and volunteer responsibilities. Use of selected screening devices, specific volunteer screening policies, and potential volunteer non-acceptance and liability issues were identified as overall patterns from the data. The researcher concluded that screening procedures are being implemented but that additional focus on consistent policies, implementation of advanced screening devices, and strengthening of current practices should be addressed

Determining the Impact of Increased Physical Activity on Improving Sleep Quality in Young Adults

Determining the Impact of Increased Physical Activity on Improving Sleep Quality in Young Adults Disturbed sleep, defined as any alteration to normal sleep patterns, has been linked to poor cardiovascular health and an increase in cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk. These negative sleep patterns are highly prevalent with 35% to 41% of individuals in the United States reported some form of disturbed sleep. Although high amounts of physical activity (PA) are often associated with high sleep quality, little is known about PA’s effectiveness to improve different aspects of sleep (e.g. duration vs quality) and the mechanisms to which it can improve sleep quality. Purpose: The study sought to determine the ability of increased PA to improve sleep efficiency in healthy young adults. Methods: Nineteen young adults (25±4 yrs) were recruited for this study. Subjects wore an accelerometer (Actigraph GT3x-BT) for a total of three weeks to record daily physical activity (step count; low, moderate, and vigorous physical activity) and sleep variables (efficiency, wake after sleep onset, number of nightly awakenings, time per awakening, and total sleep time). Subjects maintained normal physical activity levels for the first week (BL), then increased their step count by an average of 5,000 steps/day across the next two weeks (W1 and W2). Heart rate variability (HRV) and venous blood draws were collected weekly to assess sympathetic activity and inflammation, respectively. Results: The physical activity intervention resulted in significant increases (p \u3c 0.001) in step-count for both W1 (13163 ± 3184) and W2 (12168 ± 3619) when compared to BL (8648 ± 2615 steps/day). No significant differences from BL were observed when examining sleep efficiency (BL: 83.8 ± 6.4; W1: 85.5 ± 4.0; W2: 84.2 ± 6.1 %), sympathetic-vagal balance, and inflammatory marker concentrations in W1 and W2. A significant correlation was revealed when assessing the change in sleep efficiency from BL to W1 (r = 0.81, p \u3c 0.001) and BL to W2 (r = 0.52, p = 0.02) when compared to initial sleep efficiency values. Conclusion: This study revealed that although young healthy individuals appear to lack improvements in sleep efficiency with an increase in physical activity, those who reported the lowest sleep quality had the greatest improvements in sleep efficiency following an increase in physical activity. Therefore, the findings of the study suggest that although increasing physical activity can improve sleep quality, a potential “ceiling effect” may occur, as when sleep quality is adequate, augmenting physical activity no longer has a substantial effect.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/gradposters/1058/thumbnail.jp

Ethical Challenges in Data-Driven Dialogue Systems

The use of dialogue systems as a medium for human-machine interaction is an increasingly prevalent paradigm. A growing number of dialogue systems use conversation strategies that are learned from large datasets. There are well documented instances where interactions with these system have resulted in biased or even offensive conversations due to the data-driven training process. Here, we highlight potential ethical issues that arise in dialogue systems research, including: implicit biases in data-driven systems, the rise of adversarial examples, potential sources of privacy violations, safety concerns, special considerations for reinforcement learning systems, and reproducibility concerns. We also suggest areas stemming from these issues that deserve further investigation. Through this initial survey, we hope to spur research leading to robust, safe, and ethically sound dialogue systems.Comment: In Submission to the AAAI/ACM conference on Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, and Societ