Image Representations and New Domains in Neural Image Captioning

We examine the possibility that recent promising results in automatic caption generation are due primarily to language models. By varying image representation quality produced by a convolutional neural network, we find that a state-of-the-art neural captioning algorithm is able to produce quality captions even when provided with surprisingly poor image representations. We replicate this result in a new, fine-grained, transfer learned captioning domain, consisting of 66K recipe image/title pairs. We also provide some experiments regarding the appropriateness of datasets for automatic captioning, and find that having multiple captions per image is beneficial, but not an absolute requirement.Comment: 11 Pages, 5 Images, To appear at EMNLP 2015's Vision + Learning worksho

Low temperature plasma-catalytic NOx synthesis in a packed DBD reactor: effect of support materials and supported active metal oxides

The direct synthesis of NOx from N2 and O2 by non-thermal plasma at an atmospheric pressure and low temperature is presented, which is considered to be an attractive option for replacement of the Haber-Bosch process. In this study, the direct synthesis of NOx was studied by packing different catalyst support materials in a dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) reactor. The support materials and their particle sizes both had a significant effect on the concentration of NOx. This is attributed to different surface areas, relative dielectric constants and particles shapes. The nitrogen could be fixed at substantially lowered temperatures by employing non-thermal plasma-catalytic DBD reactor, which can be used as an alternative technology for low temperature synthesis. The γ-Al2O3 with smallest particles size of 250–160 μm, gave the highest concentration of NOx and the lowest specific energy consumption of all the tested materials and particle sizes. The NOx concentration of 5700 ppm was reached at the highest residence time of 0.4 s and an N2/O2 feed ratio of 1 was found to be the most optimum for NOx production. In order to intensify the NOx production in plasma, a series of metal oxide catalysts supported on γ-Al2O3 were tested in a packed DBD reactor. A 5% WO3/γ-Al2O3 catalyst increased the NOx concentration further by about 10% compared to γ-Al2O3, while oxidation catalysts such as Co3O4 and PbO provided a minor (∼5%) improvement. These data suggest that oxygen activation plays a minor role in plasma catalytic nitrogen fixation under the studied conditions with the main role ascribed to the generation of microdischarges on sharp edges of large-surface area plasma catalysts. However, when the loading of active metal oxides was increased to 10%, NO selectivity decreased, suggesting possibility of thermal oxidation of NO to NO2 through reaction with surface oxygen species

Why metallic surfaces with grooves a few nanometers deep and wide may strongly absorb visible light

It is theoretically shown that nanometric silver lamellar gratings present very strong visible light absorption inside the grooves, leading to electric field intensities by several orders of magnitude larger than that of the impinging light. This effect, due to the excitation of long wave vector surface plasmon polaritons with particular small penetration depth in the metal, may explain the abnormal optical absorption observed a long time ago on almost flat Ag films. Surface enhanced Raman scattering in rough metallic films could also be due to the excitation of such plasmon polaritons in the grain boundaries or notches of the films.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure, submitted to Phys. Rev. Let

Exploiting flow dynamics for super-resolution in contrast-enhanced ultrasound

Ultrasound localization microscopy offers new radiation-free diagnostic tools for vascular imaging deep within the tissue. Sequential localization of echoes returned from inert microbubbles with low-concentration within the bloodstream reveal the vasculature with capillary resolution. Despite its high spatial resolution, low microbubble concentrations dictate the acquisition of tens of thousands of images, over the course of several seconds to tens of seconds, to produce a single super-resolved image. %since each echo is required to be well separated from adjacent microbubbles. Such long acquisition times and stringent constraints on microbubble concentration are undesirable in many clinical scenarios. To address these restrictions, sparsity-based approaches have recently been developed. These methods reduce the total acquisition time dramatically, while maintaining good spatial resolution in settings with considerable microbubble overlap. %Yet, non of the reported methods exploit the fact that microbubbles actually flow within the bloodstream. % to improve recovery. Here, we further improve sparsity-based super-resolution ultrasound imaging by exploiting the inherent flow of microbubbles and utilize their motion kinematics. While doing so, we also provide quantitative measurements of microbubble velocities. Our method relies on simultaneous tracking and super-localization of individual microbubbles in a frame-by-frame manner, and as such, may be suitable for real-time implementation. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach on both simulations and {\it in-vivo} contrast enhanced human prostate scans, acquired with a clinically approved scanner.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figure

Competing Ordered Phases in URu2Si2: Hydrostatic Pressure and Re-substitution

A persistent kink in the pressure dependence of the \hidden order" (HO) transition temperature of URu2-xRexSi2 is observed at a critical pressure Pc=15 kbar for 0 < x < 0.08. In URu2Si2, the kink at Pc is accompanied by the destruction of superconductivity; a change in the magnitude of a spin excitation gap, determined from electrical resistivity measurements; and a complete gapping of a portion of the Fermi surface (FS), inferred from a change in scattering and the competition between the HO state and superconductivity for FS fraction

Downregulation of Fzd6 and Cthrc1 and upregulation of olfactory receptors and protocadherins by dietary beta-carotene in lungs of Bcmo1-/- mice.

An ongoing controversy exists on beneficial versus harmful effects of high beta-carotene (BC) intake, especially for the lung. To elucidate potential mechanisms, we studied effects of BC on lung gene expression. We used a beta-carotene 15,15'-monooxygenase 1 (Bcmo1) knockout mouse (Bcmo1-/-) model, unable to convert BC to retinoids, and wild-type mice (Bcmo1+/+) mice to dissect the effects of intact BC from effects of BC metabolites. As expected, BC supplementation resulted in a higher BC accumulation in lungs of Bcmo1-/- mice than in lungs of Bcmo1+/+ mice. Whole mouse genome transcriptome analysis on lung tissue revealed that more genes were regulated in Bcmo1-/- mice than Bcmo1+/+ mice upon BC supplementation. Frizzled homolog 6 (Fzd6) and collagen triple helix repeat containing 1 (Cthrc1) were significantly downregulated (fold changes -2.99 and -2.60, respectively, false discovery rate <0.05) by BC in Bcmo1-/-. Moreover, many olfactory receptors and many members of the protocadherin family were upregulated. Since both olfactory receptors and protocadherins have an important function in sensory nerves and Fzd6 and Cthrc1 are important in stem cell development, we hypothesize that BC might have an effect on the highly innervated pulmonary neuroendocrine cell (PNEC) cluster. PNECs are highly associated with sensory nerves and are important cells in the control of stem cells. A role for BC in the innervated PNEC cluster might be of particular importance in smoke-induced carcinogenesis since PNEC-derived lung cancer is highly associated with tobacco smoke

Downregulation of Fzd6 and Cthrc1 and upregulation of olfactory receptors and protocadherins by dietary beta-carotene in lungs of Bcmo1-/- mice.

An ongoing controversy exists on beneficial versus harmful effects of high beta-carotene (BC) intake, especially for the lung. To elucidate potential mechanisms, we studied effects of BC on lung gene expression. We used a beta-carotene 15,15'-monooxygenase 1 (Bcmo1) knockout mouse (Bcmo1-/-) model, unable to convert BC to retinoids, and wild-type mice (Bcmo1+/+) mice to dissect the effects of intact BC from effects of BC metabolites. As expected, BC supplementation resulted in a higher BC accumulation in lungs of Bcmo1-/- mice than in lungs of Bcmo1+/+ mice. Whole mouse genome transcriptome analysis on lung tissue revealed that more genes were regulated in Bcmo1-/- mice than Bcmo1+/+ mice upon BC supplementation. Frizzled homolog 6 (Fzd6) and collagen triple helix repeat containing 1 (Cthrc1) were significantly downregulated (fold changes -2.99 and -2.60, respectively, false discovery rate <0.05) by BC in Bcmo1-/-. Moreover, many olfactory receptors and many members of the protocadherin family were upregulated. Since both olfactory receptors and protocadherins have an important function in sensory nerves and Fzd6 and Cthrc1 are important in stem cell development, we hypothesize that BC might have an effect on the highly innervated pulmonary neuroendocrine cell (PNEC) cluster. PNECs are highly associated with sensory nerves and are important cells in the control of stem cells. A role for BC in the innervated PNEC cluster might be of particular importance in smoke-induced carcinogenesis since PNEC-derived lung cancer is highly associated with tobacco smoke