Sellars’ Paradox and Language Games

In “Some Reflections on Language Games,” Wilfrid Sellars contemplates whether there is a genuine paradox in learning a first language. It seems that we must know a metalanguage in order to learn a first language, and a meta-metalanguage in order to learn a metalanguage, and so on, because we cannot learn the linguistic expression of a thing without grasping its matching concept. The idea of language as a language game paves the way to a solution to this paradox by presenting an account of pre-conceptual base-level language acquisition

FEAFA: A Well-Annotated Dataset for Facial Expression Analysis and 3D Facial Animation

Facial expression analysis based on machine learning requires large number of well-annotated data to reflect different changes in facial motion. Publicly available datasets truly help to accelerate research in this area by providing a benchmark resource, but all of these datasets, to the best of our knowledge, are limited to rough annotations for action units, including only their absence, presence, or a five-level intensity according to the Facial Action Coding System. To meet the need for videos labeled in great detail, we present a well-annotated dataset named FEAFA for Facial Expression Analysis and 3D Facial Animation. One hundred and twenty-two participants, including children, young adults and elderly people, were recorded in real-world conditions. In addition, 99,356 frames were manually labeled using Expression Quantitative Tool developed by us to quantify 9 symmetrical FACS action units, 10 asymmetrical (unilateral) FACS action units, 2 symmetrical FACS action descriptors and 2 asymmetrical FACS action descriptors, and each action unit or action descriptor is well-annotated with a floating point number between 0 and 1. To provide a baseline for use in future research, a benchmark for the regression of action unit values based on Convolutional Neural Networks are presented. We also demonstrate the potential of our FEAFA dataset for 3D facial animation. Almost all state-of-the-art algorithms for facial animation are achieved based on 3D face reconstruction. We hence propose a novel method that drives virtual characters only based on action unit value regression of the 2D video frames of source actors.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figure

ı\imathquantum groups of split type via derived Hall algebras

A quantum symmetric pair consists of a quantum group $\mathbf U$ and its coideal subalgebra ${\mathbf U}^{\imath}_{{\boldsymbol{\varsigma}}}$ (called an $\imath$quantum group) with parameters ${\boldsymbol{\varsigma}}$. In this note, we use the derived Hall algebras of 1-periodic complexes to realize the $\imath$quantum groups ${\mathbf U}^{\imath}_{{\boldsymbol{\varsigma}}}$ of split type.Comment: 14 pages. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2110.0257

Syntactic satiation is driven by speaker-specific adaptation

Listeners adapt to variability in language use by updating their expectations over variants, often in speaker-specific ways. We propose that adaptation of this sort contributes to satiation, the phenomenon whereby the acceptability of unacceptable sentences increases after repeated exposure. We provide support for an adaptation account of satiation by showing that the satiation of purportedly unacceptable island-violating constructions demonstrates speaker-specificity, a key property of adaptation

Effectiveness of simvastatin/aspirin combination in the treatment of coronary heart disease in the elderly, and its effect on cardiac function and levels of inflammatory factors

Purpose: To investigate the efficacy of simvastatin plus aspirin in the treatment of coronary heart disease in the elderly, and its effect on cardiac function and inflammatory factor levels.Methods: Eighty-seven identified elderly patients with coronary heart disease who were admitted to Nantong First People's Hospital, Nantong, China between January 2020 and June 2021 were recruited and assigned at a ratio of 1:1 to receive either conventional treatment (group A) or simvastatin plus aspirin (group B). The clinical endpoint was treatment efficacy.Results: No significant differences were found between the two groups in respect of their baseline data (p > 0.05). Simvastatin plus aspirin was associated with a significantly higher treatment efficacy versus conventional treatment (p < 0.05). The patients, after joint therapy, had more cases of grade I cardiac function and fewer cases of grade III cardiac function, compared with conventional treatment group (p < 0.05). The application of simvastatin plus aspirin resulted in lower levels of triglycerides (TGs), total cholesterol (TC), fasting plasma glucose (FPG), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), and highdensity lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) than the conventional treatment (p < 0.05). Simvastatin plus aspirin was also associated with lower levels of interleukin (IL)-6 and hypersensitive-c-reactive-protein (hs-CRP) when compared with conventional treatment (p < 0.05). Furthermore, simvastatin plus aspirin produced a similar incidence of adverse events with conventional treatment (p > 0.05).Conclusion: Simvastatin/aspirin combination therapy is effective in the treatment of coronary heart disease in the elderly. It efficiently lowers glucose levels, lipid metabolism, and inflammatory factors, but enhances the cardiac function of patients

Experiments and simulations of hollow cylinders falling through quiescent liquids

Acknowledgment This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant numbers: 22078191, 21978165, 22081340412 and 92156020).Peer reviewe