How glassy are neural networks?

In this paper we continue our investigation on the high storage regime of a neural network with Gaussian patterns. Through an exact mapping between its partition function and one of a bipartite spin glass (whose parties consist of Ising and Gaussian spins respectively), we give a complete control of the whole annealed region. The strategy explored is based on an interpolation between the bipartite system and two independent spin glasses built respectively by dichotomic and Gaussian spins: Critical line, behavior of the principal thermodynamic observables and their fluctuations as well as overlap fluctuations are obtained and discussed. Then, we move further, extending such an equivalence beyond the critical line, to explore the broken ergodicity phase under the assumption of replica symmetry and we show that the quenched free energy of this (analogical) Hopfield model can be described as a linear combination of the two quenched spin-glass free energies even in the replica symmetric framework

Inflated 3D ConvNet context analysis for violence detection

According to the Wall Street Journal, one billion surveillance cameras will be deployed around the world by 2021. This amount of information can be hardly managed by humans. Using a Inflated 3D ConvNet as backbone, this paper introduces a novel automatic violence detection approach that outperforms state-of-the-art existing proposals. Most of those proposals consider a pre-processing step to only focus on some regions of interest in the scene, i.e., those actually containing a human subject. In this regard, this paper also reports the results of an extensive analysis on whether and how the context can affect or not the adopted classifier performance. The experiments show that context-free footage yields substantial deterioration of the classifier performance (2% to 5%) on publicly available datasets. However, they also demonstrate that performance stabilizes in context-free settings, no matter the level of context restriction applied. Finally, a cross-dataset experiment investigates the generalizability of results obtained in a single-collection experiment (same dataset used for training and testing) to cross-collection settings (different datasets used for training and testing)

Variability of cranial morphometrical traits in Suffolk Down Sheep

The widespread use of measures and indices associated with the head for racial analysis suggests that such measures have a strong relationship with the underlying bone structure. Few studies analyse the variability of the bones of the head and the relationship with their external expression. The objective of this work was to identify and measure the magnitudes of the main skull parameters in Suffolk Down adult sheep. This study was carried out on sixteen adult Suffolk Down sheep skulls at INIA Butalcura. Their skeletons were obtained and digital morphometry was performed. Each skull was photographed from dorsal, ventral, lateral and nuchal views with a total of 28 parameters evaluated (10 dorsal, 5 ventral, 6 lateral and 6 nape). The results indicate that the externally observable variability in the cranial zone of a sheep cannot be extrapolated to the rest of the bony components of the cranial zone, either in length, width or height. It was observed that the variability of a cephalic dimension can be contrasted with the variability of individual bones that participate in a certain dimension as part of a plasticity adjustment mechanism independent of the genetic variability of each bone separately. The cranial dimensions are still useful in defining the productive potential of a sheep population; however, they should be taken cautiously for racial definitions, where the individual variability of the bones could be a better reflection of the genetic structure of the population and the dimensionality could be biased by adaptive plasticity

Disgust sensitivity is not associated with health in a rural Bangladeshi sample.

Disgust can be considered a psychological arm of the immune system that acts to prevent exposure to infectious agents. High disgust sensitivity is associated with greater behavioral avoidance of disease vectors and thus may reduce infection risk. A cross-sectional survey in rural Bangladesh provided no strong support for this hypothesis. In many species, the expression of pathogen- and predator-avoidance mechanisms is contingent on early life exposure to predators and pathogens. Using childhood health data collected in the 1990s, we examined if adults with more infectious diseases in childhood showed greater adult disgust sensitivity: no support for this association was found. Explanations for these null finding and possible directions for future research are discussed

A Taxonomy of Non-honesty in Public Health Communication

Copyright © The Author(s) 2023. This paper discusses the ethics of public health communication. We argue that a number of commonplace tools of public health communication risk qualifying as non-honest and question whether or not using such tools is ethically justified. First, we introduce the concept of honesty and suggest some reasons for thinking it is morally desirable. We then describe a number of common ways in which public health communication presents information about health-promoting interventions. These include the omission of information about the magnitude of benefits people can expect from health-promoting interventions, and failure to report uncertainty associated with the outcomes of interventions. Next we outline some forms of behaviour which are generally recognised by philosophers as being non-honest, including deception, manipulation, and so on. Finally, we suggest that many of the public health communicative practices identified earlier share features with the non-honest behaviours described and suggest this warrants reflection upon whether such non-honesty is justified by the goals of public health communication.The Honesty Project, Wake Forest University; John Templeton Foundation [Grant Number 61842 PI: Brown]. Wellcome Trust [Grant Number WT203132/Z/16/Z] and UKRI (AHRC) [Grant Number AH/W005077/1]

Signalling need for care: A neglected functional role of medical treatment

Lay summary: People are more inclined to provide care to people with ambiguous symptoms when they undergo medical treatment, particularly if this treatment is aversive. In addition, patients whose illness is delegitimized may be more inclined to accept treatments. Patients may seek treatment to demonstrate the legitimacy of their illness.Supplementary data are available online at https://academic.oup.com/emph/advance-article/doi/10.1093/emph/eoad024/7242224?login=true#supplementary-data .Copyright © The Author(s) 2023. While the primary goals of medical treatment are typically to shorten illness or relieve symptoms, we explore the idea that an important additional goal for some patients is to communicate need. Drawing on signalling theory, we argue that undergoing treatments can help patients legitimize their illness and thereby enable access to crucial support during convalescence. Four pre-registered within-subjects experiments (n = 874) show that participants are more inclined to provide care to people who undergo treatment, especially when that treatment is painful. Results show this incentivizes the use of antibiotic treatments for viral infections as well as drug treatments for mental illness. A cross-sectional study of 194 chronic pain patients shows that those who experience stigma and doubt over the legitimacy of their illness are more likely to accept aversive treatments. Furthermore, two experiments (n = 653) indicate that subtle manipulations to one’s sense of social support may increase willingness to accept treatment. These results indicate that people make decisions to provide care in part based on the presence or absence of treatment and furthermore that patients’ treatment decision making is informed by the social consequences of their choices. Signalling theory may help explain the surprising longevity of some ineffective and costly medical procedures

Broad Medical Uncertainty and the Ethical Obligation for Openness

Copyright © The Author(s) 2022. This paper argues that there exists a collective epistemic state of ‘Broad Medical Uncertainty’ (BMU) regarding the effectiveness of many medical interventions. We outline the features of BMU, and describe some of the main contributing factors. These include flaws in medical research methodologies, bias in publication practices, financial and other conflicts of interest, and features of how evidence is translated into practice. These result in a significant degree of uncertainty regarding the effectiveness of many medical treatments and unduly optimistic beliefs about the benefit / harm profiles of such treatments. We argue for an ethical presumption in favour of openness regarding BMU as part of a ‘Corrective Response’. We then consider some objections to this position (the ‘Anti-Corrective Response’), including concerns that public honesty about flaws in medical research could undermine trust in healthcare institutions. We suggest that, as it stands, the Anti-Corrective Response is unconvincing.This research was funded in part by the Wellcome Trust [Grant number WT203132/Z/16/Z]. This project/publication was made possible through the support of a grant from The Honesty Project at Wake Forest University and the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Honesty Project, Wake Forest University, or the John Templeton Foundation [Grant number 61842 PI: Brown]

Cross-Cultural Differences in Emotional Selection on Transmission of Information

Research on cultural transmission among Americans has established a bias for transmitting stories that have disgusting elements (such as exposure to rats and maggots). Conceived of as a cultural evolutionary force, this phenomenon is one type of emotional selection. In a series of online studies with Americans and Indians we investigate whether there are cultural differences in emotional selection, such that the transmission process favours different kinds of content in different countries. The first study found a bias for disgusting content (rats and maggots) among Americans but not among Indians. Four subsequent studies focused on how country interacts with kind of emotional content (disgusting vs. happy surprises and good news) in reactions to transmission of stories or information. Whereas Indian participants, compared to Americans, tended to be less interested in, and excited by, transmission of stories and news involving common disgust-elicitors (like rats), the opposite pattern held for transmission of happy surprises and good news (e.g., the opening of a new public facility). We discuss various possible explanations and implications

On composite systems of dilute and dense couplings

Composite systems, where couplings are of two types, a combination of strong dilute and weak dense couplings of Ising spins, are examined through the replica method. The dilute and dense parts are considered to have independent canonical disordered or uniform bond distributions; mixing the models by variation of a parameter $\gamma$ alongside inverse temperature $\beta$ we analyse the respective thermodynamic solutions. We describe the variation in high temperature transitions as mixing occurs; in the vicinity of these transitions we exactly analyse the competing effects of the dense and sparse models. By using the replica symmetric ansatz and population dynamics we described the low temperature behaviour of mixed systems.Comment: 35 pages, 9 figures, submitted to JPhys