Are Face and Object Recognition Independent? A Neurocomputational Modeling Exploration

Are face and object recognition abilities independent? Although it is commonly believed that they are, Gauthier et al.(2014) recently showed that these abilities become more correlated as experience with nonface categories increases. They argued that there is a single underlying visual ability, v, that is expressed in performance with both face and nonface categories as experience grows. Using the Cambridge Face Memory Test and the Vanderbilt Expertise Test, they showed that the shared variance between Cambridge Face Memory Test and Vanderbilt Expertise Test performance increases monotonically as experience increases. Here, we address why a shared resource across different visual domains does not lead to competition and to an inverse correlation in abilities? We explain this conundrum using our neurocomputational model of face and object processing (The Model, TM). Our results show that, as in the behavioral data, the correlation between subordinate level face and object recognition accuracy increases as experience grows. We suggest that different domains do not compete for resources because the relevant features are shared between faces and objects. The essential power of experience is to generate a "spreading transform" for faces that generalizes to objects that must be individuated. Interestingly, when the task of the network is basic level categorization, no increase in the correlation between domains is observed. Hence, our model predicts that it is the type of experience that matters and that the source of the correlation is in the fusiform face area, rather than in cortical areas that subserve basic level categorization. This result is consistent with our previous modeling elucidating why the FFA is recruited for novel domains of expertise (Tong et al., 2008)

Detection of multi-tomato leaf diseases (late blight, target and bacterial spots) in different stages by using a spectral-based sensor.

Several diseases have threatened tomato production in Florida, resulting in large losses, especially in fresh markets. In this study, a high-resolution portable spectral sensor was used to investigate the feasibility of detecting multi-diseased tomato leaves in different stages, including early or asymptomatic stages. One healthy leaf and three diseased tomato leaves (late blight, target and bacterial spots) were defined into four stages (healthy, asymptomatic, early stage and late stage) and collected from a field. Fifty-seven spectral vegetation indices (SVIs) were calculated in accordance with methods published in previous studies and established in this study. Principal component analysis was conducted to evaluate SVIs. Results revealed six principal components (PCs) whose eigenvalues were greater than 1. SVIs with weight coefficients ranking from 1 to 30 in each selected PC were applied to a K-nearest neighbour for classification. Amongst the examined leaves, the healthy ones had the highest accuracy (100%) and the lowest error rate (0) because of their uniform tissues. Late stage leaves could be distinguished more easily than the two other disease categories caused by similar symptoms on the multi-diseased leaves. Further work may incorporate the proposed technique into an image system that can be operated to monitor multi-diseased tomato plants in fields

Relational platform entrepreneurs: live commerce and the 818 Jiazu

This paper explores the emerging platform entrepreneurship through an observational case study of one of the most prominent Kuaishou influencers, Xin Youzhi, and his 818 jiazu. Jiazus are influencer communities on Kuaishou, a Chinese livestreaming and e-commerce platform. Examining platform entrepreneurs through a relational lens, we illustrate the organisation and operation of the 818 jiazu and its interaction with the followers, the Kuaishou platform and the Chinese state. Identifying relations of mutuality, autonomy and domination, we find that 818 kiazu’s rise and fall manifest the relationality and contingency of entrepreneurial labours in the Chinese platform economy. We argue that Kuaishou jiazu can be understood as relational entrepreneurs who need new sociotechnical skills to navigate various relationships with the platform, users and state regulations. Our study contributes to understanding the organisation and practices of livestreamers by foregrounding the entrepreneurial agency of the influencer community

Separating the Wheat from the Chaff with BREAD: An open-source benchmark and metrics to detect redundancy in text

Data quality is a problem that perpetually resurfaces throughout the field of NLP, regardless of task, domain, or architecture, and remains especially severe for lower-resource languages. A typical and insidious issue, affecting both training data and model output, is data that is repetitive and dominated by linguistically uninteresting boilerplate, such as price catalogs or computer-generated log files. Though this problem permeates many web-scraped corpora, there has yet to be a benchmark to test against, or a systematic study to find simple metrics that generalize across languages and agree with human judgements of data quality. In the present work, we create and release BREAD, a human-labeled benchmark on repetitive boilerplate vs. plausible linguistic content, spanning 360 languages. We release several baseline CRED (Character REDundancy) scores along with it, and evaluate their effectiveness on BREAD. We hope that the community will use this resource to develop better filtering methods, and that our reference implementations of CRED scores can become standard corpus evaluation tools, driving the development of cleaner language modeling corpora, especially in low-resource languages.Comment: Accepted to GEM workshop 2023; 6 page

Finding Function in Form: Compositional Character Models for Open Vocabulary Word Representation

We introduce a model for constructing vector representations of words by composing characters using bidirectional LSTMs. Relative to traditional word representation models that have independent vectors for each word type, our model requires only a single vector per character type and a fixed set of parameters for the compositional model. Despite the compactness of this model and, more importantly, the arbitrary nature of the form-function relationship in language, our "composed" word representations yield state-of-the-art results in language modeling and part-of-speech tagging. Benefits over traditional baselines are particularly pronounced in morphologically rich languages (e.g., Turkish)

Tangle analysis of difference topology experiments: applications to a Mu protein-DNA complex

We develop topological methods for analyzing difference topology experiments involving 3-string tangles. Difference topology is a novel technique used to unveil the structure of stable protein-DNA complexes involving two or more DNA segments. We analyze such experiments for the Mu protein-DNA complex. We characterize the solutions to the corresponding tangle equations by certain knotted graphs. By investigating planarity conditions on these graphs we show that there is a unique biologically relevant solution. That is, we show there is a unique rational tangle solution, which is also the unique solution with small crossing number.Comment: 60 pages, 74 figure

Feminine Identities

The first four essays in this volume all focus on issues of gender in the works of different English authors and thinkers. Shorter versions of each of these essays were formerly presented as papers in an autonomous section of the Research and Educational Programme on Studies of Identity at the XXth Meeting of the Portuguese Association of Anglo-American Studies (Póvoa de Varzim, 1999) and published in the proceedings of the conference. The second cluster of essays in this volume — two of which (Jennie Wang’s and Teresa Cid’s) were first presented, in shorter versions, at the joint ASA/CAAS Conference (Montréal, 1999) — addresses the work of American women variously engaged in contexts of cultural diversity and grappling with the ideas of what it means to be an American and a woman, particularly in the twentieth century. These essays approach, from different angles, the definitional quandaries and semantic difficulties encountered when speaking about the self and the United States and provide, in one way or another, a sort of feminine rewriting of American myths and history.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologi

Application of post-consumer recycled high-impact polystyrene in the preparation of phase-inversion membranes for low-pressure membrane processes

[EN] In this study, recycled plastic waste was successfully used in preparing low-pressure membranes by phase-inversion method. These membranes are considered as an alternative solution for economical and environmental concerns, namely: water reclamation as well as polymer recycling and reuse. Post-consumer recycled high-impact polystyrene and virgin commercial high-impact polystyrene were separately used to prepare membranes, which were thereafter compared in terms of their respective characteristics and performance. N,N-dimethylacetamide and deionised water were used as a solvent and coagulant, respectively. Membranes were characterised by microscopic observations, contact angle measurements, thermogravimetric analysis, and filtration experiments. The recycled polymeric membranes presented similar thermal properties as the membranes made from commercial high-impact polystyrene, which were used as control membranes. They also obtained similar asymmetric membrane structures, however with slightly higher porosity (from 47.54 ± 5.53% for control membranes to 52.31 ± 4.33% for recycled polymeric membranes). The presence of additives in the recycled polymeric structure was confirmed by EDX results. Such additives made the membranes to become more hydrophilic, reducing the water contact angle value from 81.78 ± 3.42° obtained for control membranes to 79.19 ± 4.15°. Moreover, irreversible fouling was satisfactorily minimised and humic acid rejection was very slightly enhanced (from 95.5 ± 0.2 to 96 ± 0.1%). This indicates that the more hydrophilic the membrane is, the better antifouling properties it possesses. Thus, the results of the post-consumer recycled high-impact polystyrene suggest that they can provide a sustainable and environmental alternative when implemented in low-pressure membrane processes.García-Ivars, J.; Wang-Xu, X.; Iborra Clar, MI. (2017). Application of post-consumer recycled high-impact polystyrene in the preparation of phase-inversion membranes for low-pressure membrane processes. Separation and Purification Technology. 175:340-351. doi:10.1016/j.seppur.2016.11.061S34035117