Video Fill In the Blank using LR/RL LSTMs with Spatial-Temporal Attentions

Given a video and a description sentence with one missing word (we call it the "source sentence"), Video-Fill-In-the-Blank (VFIB) problem is to find the missing word automatically. The contextual information of the sentence, as well as visual cues from the video, are important to infer the missing word accurately. Since the source sentence is broken into two fragments: the sentence's left fragment (before the blank) and the sentence's right fragment (after the blank), traditional Recurrent Neural Networks cannot encode this structure accurately because of many possible variations of the missing word in terms of the location and type of the word in the source sentence. For example, a missing word can be the first word or be in the middle of the sentence and it can be a verb or an adjective. In this paper, we propose a framework to tackle the textual encoding: Two separate LSTMs (the LR and RL LSTMs) are employed to encode the left and right sentence fragments and a novel structure is introduced to combine each fragment with an "external memory" corresponding the opposite fragments. For the visual encoding, end-to-end spatial and temporal attention models are employed to select discriminative visual representations to find the missing word. In the experiments, we demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed method on challenging VFIB problem. Furthermore, we introduce an extended and more generalized version of VFIB, which is not limited to a single blank. Our experiments indicate the generalization capability of our method in dealing with such more realistic scenarios

Video Content Understanding Using Text

The rise of the social media and video streaming industry provided us a plethora of videos and their corresponding descriptive information in the form of concepts (words) and textual video captions. Due to the mass amount of available videos and the textual data, today is the best time ever to study the Computer Vision and Machine Learning problems related to videos and text. In this dissertation, we tackle multiple problems associated with the joint understanding of videos and text. We first address the task of multi-concept video retrieval, where the input is a set of words as concepts, and the output is a ranked list of full-length videos. This approach deals with multi-concept input and prolonged length of videos by incorporating multi-latent variables to tie the information within each shot (short clip of a full-video) and across shots. Secondly, we address the problem of video question answering, in which, the task is to answer a question, in the form of Fill-In-the-Blank (FIB), given a video. Answering a question is a task of retrieving a word from a dictionary (all possible words suitable for an answer) based on the input question and video. Following the FIB problem, we introduce a new problem, called Visual Text Correction (VTC), i.e., detecting and replacing an inaccurate word in the textual description of a video. We propose a deep network that can simultaneously detect an inaccuracy in a sentence while benefiting 1D-CNNs/LSTMs to encode short/long term dependencies, and fix it by replacing the inaccurate word(s). Finally, as the last part of the dissertation, we propose to tackle the problem of video generation using user input natural language sentences. Our proposed video generation method constructs two distributions out of the input text, corresponding to the first and last frames latent representations. We generate high-fidelity videos by interpolating latent representations and a sequence of CNN based up-pooling blocks

Anthropological Recognition of Customs and Traditions of Mate Selection in Sirjan, Iran

Marriage is an action which happens based on mutually beneficial sexual relations between two opposite couples. Marriage is a complete action; it means that it is an economic, social, cultural and physical relation. Marriage has different traditions in every part of Iran. But it has roots is in religion, faith and culture of that nation. It took a long time that these traditions change in previous centuries but in recent decades they had lot of changes. In this study all old and modern traditions that are happening subsequently in marriage celebration have been mentioned. Sirjan is one of Kerman’s cities which located in a distance about 180 km away from Tehran in direction to Bandar Abbas, Fars, and Kerman to Tehran.  Reviewing different cultural, social and economic traditions and customs aspects of marriage in this city are the main purposes of this research. In this study we have used “intensive method” which is for anthropological and limited scopes of studies. For reviewing mate selection styles and customs and traditions in mentioned city the issues such as “formal proposal, approval, please, betrothal party, bath taking, slinky bath, espousing, formal espousing, touching hands, secret(silent) wedding, loud wedding, handsel gift and the day after wedding(Seyyomoon)will be studied. Since in Iranian culture, literature and science were exclusive to noblesse and court, in historical books hardly can find signs of people’s vulgar culture conditions in a special region of Iran. It is supposed that public’s life details, especially in far regions, are hidden behind the historical and social realties innocently. Therefore, for finding the roots of public culture that marriage is one of its important branches and its spiritual recording and recognition of cultural identity of this region and its effect on other structures, relations and family behaviors which are population evolutions, modernism effects scientific developments, mutual cultural effects, help us in management construction and solving problems of such communities

Anthropological Recognition of Customs and Traditions of Mate Selection in Sirjan, Iran

Marriage is an action which happens based on mutually beneficial sexual relations between two opposite couples. Marriage is a complete action; it means that it is an economic, social, cultural and physical relation. Marriage has different traditions in every part of Iran. But it has roots is in religion, faith and culture of that nation. It took a long time that these traditions change in previous centuries but in recent decades they had lot of changes. In this study all old and modern traditions that are happening subsequently in marriage celebration have been mentioned. Sirjan is one of Kerman’s cities which located in a distance about 180 km away from Tehran in direction to Bandar Abbas, Fars, and Kerman to Tehran.  Reviewing different cultural, social and economic traditions and customs aspects of marriage in this city are the main purposes of this research. In this study we have used “intensive method” which is for anthropological and limited scopes of studies. For reviewing mate selection styles and customs and traditions in mentioned city the issues such as “formal proposal, approval, please, betrothal party, bath taking, slinky bath, espousing, formal espousing, touching hands, secret(silent) wedding, loud wedding, handsel gift and the day after wedding(Seyyomoon)will be studied. Since in Iranian culture, literature and science were exclusive to noblesse and court, in historical books hardly can find signs of people’s vulgar culture conditions in a special region of Iran. It is supposed that public’s life details, especially in far regions, are hidden behind the historical and social realties innocently. Therefore, for finding the roots of public culture that marriage is one of its important branches and its spiritual recording and recognition of cultural identity of this region and its effect on other structures, relations and family behaviors which are population evolutions, modernism effects scientific developments, mutual cultural effects, help us in management construction and solving problems of such communities

A Study Regarding Confronting the Pain of Existential Loneliness in Irvin Yalom’s Ideas and the Mystical Pain of Separation in Molavi’s View

Irvin Yalom believes that loneliness is an existential boundary and pain which is inseparable from a human being. He comes into this world alone, leaves it alone and he alone is responsible for creating his own character; not only does he have no helper in this world, but there is no refuge for him either and he has been thrown into this world involuntarily. Jalal al-Din Muhammad Balkhi (Molavi) also discusses the pain of loneliness, but it is not Yalomi’s type of bitter loneliness; rather, it is in the form of loneliness from one’s origin; his anguish is not from not having a refuge, rather it is the separation from God and estrangement in the world that has brought him anguish and pain. In Yalom’s view, the pain of loneliness has no solution; it is an existential issue that man must accept and he can only soothe it. But Molavi considers being with God as elimination of the pain of separation and loneliness. By presenting this research, the writes hopes to decrease the weight of loneliness through a meaningful approach. For this purpose, the article will first point out the aspects of the pain of loneliness and ultimately, will present solutions for release from this pain

Health-Related Quality of Life in Adults With Classical Infratentorial Superficial Siderosis: A Cross-sectional Study

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Infratentorial superficial siderosis (iSS) is a rare but disabling neurological condition characterised by progressive hearing loss, balance and mobility problems. The functional decline in these neurological domains with iSS progression is likely to adversely impact health-related quality of life (HRQoL). We studied HRQoL of adults with iSS using two common generic HRQoL measures (Health Utilities Index Mark III (HUI3) and EuroQoL EQ5D (5 Level) to determine the most impacted domains and evaluate the association between HRQoL scores and disease duration. METHODS: This observational study was an anonymous online survey. Following institutional Research Ethics Committee approval, we contacted dedicated international organisations, charities and patient-groups identified through online searches, social media and collaborative networks, to distribute the study information and study link, inviting their members diagnosed with iSS to participate. Participation required access to a digital device connected to the internet, confirmation of eligibility (aged ≥18 years and previously diagnosed with iSS) and informed consent to participate in the survey, which included study-specific questions (demographics, iSS, hearing) and HRQoL questionnaires. Survey responses were captured by the Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap) survey software and analysed using the SPSS statistical package. Linear regression analysis was performed to investigate the association between HRQoL scores and disease duration. RESULTS: Of fifty participants,60% were male; the median (interquartile range, IQR) age was 60 (15) years. The median (IQR) multi-attribute scores for HUI3 and EQ5D were 0.36 (0.53) and 0.64 (0.33), respectively. The most frequently affected domains (moderate or worse category) were hearing (64%), and pain (48%) for HUI3, and mobility (54%) and pain (50%) for EQ5D. There was a weak association between disease duration and multi-attribute scores for HUI3 (R=0.353; adjusted R2=0.096; b=-0.008; p=0.047) but not EQ5D. DISCUSSION: Our findings demonstrate low HRQoL scores which capture low functional status in several domains typically affected in iSS, suggesting that iSS has a major adverse impact on quality of life in multiple functional domains. Measures of HRQoL in iSS should be included in clinical and research settings, including treatment trials

Understanding User Intent Modeling for Conversational Recommender Systems: A Systematic Literature Review

Context: User intent modeling is a crucial process in Natural Language Processing that aims to identify the underlying purpose behind a user's request, enabling personalized responses. With a vast array of approaches introduced in the literature (over 13,000 papers in the last decade), understanding the related concepts and commonly used models in AI-based systems is essential. Method: We conducted a systematic literature review to gather data on models typically employed in designing conversational recommender systems. From the collected data, we developed a decision model to assist researchers in selecting the most suitable models for their systems. Additionally, we performed two case studies to evaluate the effectiveness of our proposed decision model. Results: Our study analyzed 59 distinct models and identified 74 commonly used features. We provided insights into potential model combinations, trends in model selection, quality concerns, evaluation measures, and frequently used datasets for training and evaluating these models. Contribution: Our study contributes practical insights and a comprehensive understanding of user intent modeling, empowering the development of more effective and personalized conversational recommender systems. With the Conversational Recommender System, researchers can perform a more systematic and efficient assessment of fitting intent modeling frameworks

Effects of resveratrol, exercises and their combination on Farnesoid X receptor, Liver X receptor and Sirtuin 1 gene expression and apoptosis in the liver of elderly rats with nonalcoholic fatty liver

Background Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the most common chronic liver disorder. This study aims to consider effects of resveratrol, exercise and their combination on Farnesoid X receptor (Fxr), the liver X receptor (Lxr) and Sirtuin 1 (Sirt 1) genes expression in the liver of elderly rats with NAFLD. Methods Rats with NAFLD were randomly divided into seven groups including patient, saline, resveratrol (RSV), interval exercise, continuous exercise, interval exercise + RSV and continuous exercise + RSV. Levels of alanine aminotransferase (ALT), aspartate aminotransferase (AST) and alkaline phosphatase (ALP) in the liver tissue were measured using specific ELISA kits. A TUNEL assay kit was used for the assessment of hepatic cells apoptosis. Lipid profiles were considered by measuring the serum triglyceride, cholesterol, LDL, and HDL. Expression of Sirt1, Lxr and Fxr genes was considered using RT-PCR. Results Resveratrol administration alone or combined with exercise training significantly improved the expression of Sirt1, Lxr and Fxr genes (p < 0.05) in the hepatic tissue of rats with NAFLD, while levels of AST, ALT, ALP enzymes, as well as apoptotic cells were significantly decreased (p < 0.05). Discussion Although resveratrol alone improves the expression of Sirt1, Lxr and Fxr, as well as liver function, combined therapy with exercise training is more effective to improve NAFLD