GuessWhat?! Visual object discovery through multi-modal dialogue

We introduce GuessWhat?!, a two-player guessing game as a testbed for research on the interplay of computer vision and dialogue systems. The goal of the game is to locate an unknown object in a rich image scene by asking a sequence of questions. Higher-level image understanding, like spatial reasoning and language grounding, is required to solve the proposed task. Our key contribution is the collection of a large-scale dataset consisting of 150K human-played games with a total of 800K visual question-answer pairs on 66K images. We explain our design decisions in collecting the dataset and introduce the oracle and questioner tasks that are associated with the two players of the game. We prototyped deep learning models to establish initial baselines of the introduced tasks.Comment: 23 pages; CVPR 2017 submission; see https://guesswhat.a

Die Grundlinien der Mutationstheorie

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Mutations in heredity

A lecture delivered at the inauguration of the Rice Institute, by Professor Hugo de Vries, Director of the Hortus Botanicus and Professor of the Anatomy and Physiology of Plants in the University of Amsterda

Blocked Goals, Persistent Action: Implementation Intentions Engender Tenacious Goal Striving

Research on goal attainment has demonstrated that people are more likely to reach their goals when they form implementation intentions. Three experiments tested whether implementation intentions lead to tenacious goal striving following blockage of an initial attempt to reach the goal. In all three experiments some participants were instructed to form an implementation intention and other participants were not. Subsequently, the initial goal-directed attempt of all participants was unexpectedly blocked. Experiment 1 found that implementation intentions resulted in more attempts to realize one’s goal. Experiment 2 showed that when participants formed an implementation intention their repeated attempt was acted out as intensely as their first, blocked attempt. Experiment 3 found that implementation intentions still allow people to seize an alternative, more onerous means to realize their intention. These results imply that implementation intention conserve self-regulatory strength. After goal blockage, the remaining strength can be used to continue goal-directed action

A trifunctional linker for palmitoylation and peptide and protein localization in biological membranes

Attachment of lipophilic groups is an important post-translational modification of proteins, which involves the coupling of one or more anchors such as fatty acids, isoprenoids, phospholipids, or glycosylphosphatidyl inositols. To study its impact on the membrane partitioning of hydrophobic peptides or proteins, we designed a tyrosine-based trifunctional linker. The linker allows the facile incorporation of two different functionalities at a cysteine residue in a single step. We determined the effect of the lipid modification on the membrane partitioning of the synthetic α-helical model peptide WALP with or without here and in all cases below; palmitoyl groups in giant unilamellar vesicles that contain a liquid-ordered (Lo) and liquid-disordered (Ld) phase. Introduction of two palmitoyl groups did not alter the localization of the membrane peptides, nor did the membrane thickness or lipid composition. In all cases, the peptide was retained in the Ld phase. These data demonstrate that the Lo domain in model membranes is highly unfavorable for a single membrane-spanning peptide

The patients' experience of neuroimaging of primary brain tumors: a cross-sectional survey study

PURPOSE: To gain insight into how patients with primary brain tumors experience MRI, follow-up protocols, and gadolinium-based contrast agent (GBCA) use. METHODS: Primary brain tumor patients answered a survey after their MRI exam. Questions were analyzed to determine trends in patients' experience regarding the scan itself, follow-up frequency, and the use of GBCAs. Subgroup analysis was performed on sex, lesion grade, age, and the number of scans. Subgroup comparison was made using the Pearson chi-square test and the Mann-Whitney U-test for categorical and ordinal questions, respectively. RESULTS: Of the 100 patients, 93 had a histopathologically confirmed diagnosis, and seven were considered to have a slow-growing low-grade tumor after multidisciplinary assessment and follow-up. 61/100 patients were male, with a mean age ± standard deviation of 44 ± 14 years and 46 ± 13 years for the females. Fifty-nine patients had low-grade tumors. Patients consistently underestimated the number of their previous scans. 92% of primary brain tumor patients did not experience the MRI as bothering and 78% would not change the number of follow-up MRIs. 63% of the patients would prefer GBCA-free MRI scans if diagnostically equally accurate. Women found the MRI and receiving intravenous cannulas significantly more uncomfortable than men (p = 0.003). Age, diagnosis, and the number of previous scans had no relevant impact on the patient experience. CONCLUSION: Patients with primary brain tumors experienced current neuro-oncological MRI practice as positive. Especially women would, however, prefer GBCA-free imaging if diagnostically equally accurate. Patient knowledge of GBCAs was limited, indicating improvable patient information