Depth CNNs for RGB-D scene recognition: learning from scratch better than transferring from RGB-CNNs

Scene recognition with RGB images has been extensively studied and has reached very remarkable recognition levels, thanks to convolutional neural networks (CNN) and large scene datasets. In contrast, current RGB-D scene data is much more limited, so often leverages RGB large datasets, by transferring pretrained RGB CNN models and fine-tuning with the target RGB-D dataset. However, we show that this approach has the limitation of hardly reaching bottom layers, which is key to learn modality-specific features. In contrast, we focus on the bottom layers, and propose an alternative strategy to learn depth features combining local weakly supervised training from patches followed by global fine tuning with images. This strategy is capable of learning very discriminative depth-specific features with limited depth images, without resorting to Places-CNN. In addition we propose a modified CNN architecture to further match the complexity of the model and the amount of data available. For RGB-D scene recognition, depth and RGB features are combined by projecting them in a common space and further leaning a multilayer classifier, which is jointly optimized in an end-to-end network. Our framework achieves state-of-the-art accuracy on NYU2 and SUN RGB-D in both depth only and combined RGB-D data.Comment: AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence 201

Influencia de la psicología milliana en la teoría económica: problemática asociada al caso particular del comportamiento altruista

El altruismo es una experiencia y un tipo de comportamiento universales que han sido estudiados por los economistas. Sin embargo, los supuestos normalmente admitidos sobre los fundamentos psicológicos de la naturaleza humana por las doctrinas utilitaristas, como es el caso de la Economía, han causado diversos problemas que dificultan la formulación de una teoría general del altruismo. Esto se debe principalmente a que el altruismo utilitarista no es realmente altruismo. Explicamos la teoría psicológica que une las doctrinas utilitarias de James y John Stuart Mill, y mostramos cómo sus principales contenidos, y problemas teóricos en relación con el altruismo, aparecen nuevamente replicados en los modernos modelos neoclásicos, como el de Gary S. Becker, que explican el altruismo con un análisis formal más desarrollado. Proponemos la necesidad de actualizar la tradición utilitarista sobre el altruismo, considerando los actuales descubrimientos de la neurociencia cognitiva. Curiosamente, estos hallazgos conectan el funcionamiento del cerebro con los supuestos teóricos considerados por Adam Smith, y la tradición de la psicología de la simpatía

Influencia de la psicología milliana en la teoría económica: problemática asociada al caso particular del comportamiento altruista

Altruism is an universal experience and kind of behavior that has been studied by economists. However, the assump-tions frequently accepted about psychological foundations of human nature in utilitarian doctrines, as it’s the case of Economics, have caused several problems that make difficult to formulate a general theory of altruism. That is main-ly because utilitarian altruism is not really altruism. We explain the psychological theory that link James & John S. Mill utilitarian doctrines, and show how it’s principal contents, and theoretical problems dealed with altruism, appear again replicated in modern neoclassical models, as Gary S. Becker’s, that explain altruism by means of more devel-oped formal analysis. We propose the need for updating utilitarian tradition on altruism, taking into account the cur-rent findings in cognitive neuroscience. Curiously, these findings connect brain running with the theoretical assump-tions considered by Adam Smith, and the psychology of sympathy tradition.El altruismo es una experiencia y un tipo de comportamiento universales que han sido estudiados por los economis-tas. Sin embargo, los supuestos normalmente admitidos sobre los fundamentos psicológicos de la naturaleza humana por las doctrinas utilitaristas, como es el caso de la Economía, han causado diversos problemas que dificultan la formulación de una teoría general del altruismo. Esto se debe principalmente a que el altruismo utilitarista no es realmente altruismo. Explicamos la teoría psicológica que une las doctrinas utilitarias de James y John Stuart Mill, y mostramos cómo sus principales contenidos, y problemas teóricos en relación con el altruismo, aparecen nuevamente replicados en los modernos modelos neoclásicos, como el de Gary S. Becker, que explican el altruismo con un análi-sis formal más desarrollado. Proponemos la necesidad de actualizar la tradición utilitarista sobre el altruismo, consi-derando los actuales descubrimientos de la neurociencia cognitiva. Curiosamente, estos hallazgos conectan el funcio-namiento del cerebro con los supuestos teóricos considerados por Adam Smith, y la tradición de la psicología de la simpatía

Going beyond Quietness: Determining the Emotionally Restorative Effect of Acoustic Environments in Urban Open Public Spaces

The capacity of natural settings to promote psychological restoration has attracted increasing research attention, especially with regards to the visual dimension. However, there is a need to extend these studies to urban settings, such as squares, parks or gardens, due to the global trend towards urbanisation, and to integrate the dimension of sound into landscape. Such was the main aim of this study, in which 53 participants assessed four public spaces in Vitoria-Gasteiz (Spain) as part of the CITI-SENSE Project (137 observations were used for analysis). A smartphone application was used to simultaneously collect objective and subjective data. The results show that at the end of the urban environmental experience, there was a statistically significant reduction in negative emotions and perceived stress, and a slight increase in positive emotions. Emotional restoration was mainly associated with prior emotional states, but also with global environmental comfort and acoustic comfort. The soundscape characteristics that contributed to greater emotional restoration and a reduction in perceived stress were pleasantness, calm, fun and naturalness. Therefore, in agreement with previous research, the findings of the present study indicate that besides contributing to the quietness of the urban environment, the urban soundscape can promote psychological restoration in users of these spaces.This research formed part of the CITI-SENSE project funded under the European Union Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration, grant agreement no 308524