Embodied theories of language postulate that language meaning is stored in modality-specific brain areas generally involved in perception and action in the real world. However, the temporal dynamics of the interaction between modality-specific information and lexical-semantic processing remain unclear. We investigated the relative timing at which two types of modality-specific information (action-based and visual-form information) contribute to lexical-semantic comprehension. To this end, we applied a behavioral priming paradigm in which prime and target words were related with respect to (1) action (...) features, (2) visual features, or (3) semantically associative information. Using a Go/No-Go lexical decision task, priming effects were measured across four different inter-stimulus intervals (ISI = 100, 250, 400, and 1000 ms) to determine the relative time course of the different features. Notably, action priming effects were found in ISIs of 100, 250, and 1000 ms whereas a visual priming effect was seen only in the ISI of 1000 ms. Importantly, our data suggest that features follow different time courses of activation during word recognition. In this regard, feature activation is dynamic, measurable in specific time windows but not in others. Thus the current study (1) demonstrates how multiple ISIs can be used within an experiment to help chart the time course of feature activation and (2) provides new evidence for embodied theories of language. (shrink)

This article presents an analytical overview of the critical modernisation features of Socialism with Chinese characteristics doctrine in the new era, which was proposed at the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. The authors reconstructed and systematically represented the central philosophical and political principles of the doctrine of Socialism with Chinese characteristics in the context of the fundamental principles of Chinese Marxism. The authors also analysed and presented in a systematic form the essence and basic theoretical principles (...) of the concept of Socialism with Chinese characteristics following Xi Jinping's works and reports. The study includes a comparative analysis that concludes with the critical features of the modern concept of socialism with Chinese characteristics. These features embrace the need for constant modernisation of the very doctrine of socialism with Chinese characteristics, the state management system, as well as social and cultural practices, which are possible through the implementation of innovations and the integration of modern philosophical thought with traditional Chinese philosophy and culture. The article concludes that the main feature of the modernisation of Socialism with Chinese characteristics at the current stage reveals in the development and implementation of a system of creative practices at the level of everyday culture, high-tech sectors of social production and the practice of intercultural communication within the framework of China's Belt and Road Initiative. In the discussion, the authors argue that implementing creative practices and creative industries could become an effective tool for developing China's Belt and Road Initiative in European countries and improving mutual understanding in the intercultural communication practices between China, European countries, and Ukraine. (shrink)

Tetris provides a difficult, dynamic task environment within which some people are novices and others, after years of work and practice, become extreme experts. Here we study two core skills; namely, choosing the goal or objective function that will maximize performance and a feature-based analysis of the current game board to determine where to place the currently falling zoid so as to maximize the goal. In Study 1, we build cross-entropy reinforcement learning models to determine whether different goals (...) result in different feature weights. Two of these optimization strategies quickly rise to performance plateaus, whereas two others continue toward higher but more jagged heights. In Study 2, we compare the zoid placement decisions made by our best CERL models with those made by 67 human players. Across 370,131 human game episodes, two CERL models picked the same zoid placements as our lowest scoring human for 43% of the placements and as our three best scoring experts for 65% of the placements. Our findings suggest that people focus on maximizing points, not number of lines cleared or number of levels reached. They also show that goal choice influences the choice of zoid placements for CERLs and suggest that the same is true of humans. Tetris has a repetitive task structure that makes Tetris more tractable and more like a traditional experimental psychology paradigm than many more complex games or tasks. Hence, although complex, Tetris is not overwhelmingly complex and presents a right-sized challenge to cognitive theories, especially those of integrated cognitive systems. (shrink)

Previous research has investigated ways to quantify visual information of a scene in terms of a visual processing hierarchy, i. e. making sense of visual environment by segmentation and integration of elementary sensory input. Guided by this research, studies have developed categories for low-level visual features (e.g., edges, colors), high-level visual features (scene-level entities that convey semantic information such as objects), and how models of those features predict aesthetic preference and naturalness. For example, in Kardan et al. (2015), 52 participants (...) provided aesthetic preference and naturalness ratings, which are used in the current study, for 307 images of mixed natural and urban content. Kardan et al. (2015) then developed a model using low-level features to predict aesthetic preference and naturalness and could do so with high accuracy. What has yet to be explored is the ability of higher-level visual features (e.g., horizon line position relative to viewer, geometry of building distribution relative to visual access) to predict aesthetic preference and naturalness of scenes, and whether higher-level features mediate some of the association between the low-level features and aesthetic preference or naturalness. In this study we investigated these relationships and found that low- and high- level features explain 68.4% of the variance in aesthetic preference ratings and 88.7% of the variance in naturalness ratings. Additionally, several high-level features mediated the relationship between the low-level visual features and aesthetic preference. In a multiple mediation analysis, the high-level feature mediators accounted for over 50% of the variance in predicting aesthetic preference. These results show that high-level visual features play a prominent role predicting aesthetic preference, but do not completely eliminate the predictive power of the low-level visual features. These strong predictors provide powerful insights for future research relating to landscape and urban design with the aim of maximizing subjective well-being, which could lead to improved health outcomes on a larger scale. (shrink)

The article deals with theoretical aspects of human capital, features of human capital, problems and prospects of human capital in modern conditions. Problems and challenges of ontology and functioning of human capital in postmodern society are outlined. The current state of investment in the reproduction of human capital and its development was assessed. One of the ways to increase human capital is to invest in people, their health and education. The article substantiates the role and importance of investments in (...) human capital at the family level. The sharp increase in interest in the creative abilities of a person and in the ways of their formation and development confirm the obtained results. The international significance of the article lies in the objectification of the problems of human capital in developing countries, taking into account the global industrial, cultural and social context. In order to optimize human capital management on the verge of the postmodern and post-post era, these research results can help in the development of scientific, public and government programs and activities. (shrink)

In the article are highlighted features of the receptions of marxism in chinese philosophy. Currently, the study of reception is one of the productive directions of the modern history of philosophy, because it allows you to gain knowledge about the philosophical culture and philosophical tradition of China, as well as to find out when the birth of marxism in chinese philosophy took place. The main goals the article is reconstruction a way of describing the emergence of marxism in chinese philosophical (...) thought, reproduction of the theoretical model of the main stages of its development; to explanation the keys problems, to which the attention of chinese philosophers was directed, from the standpoint of soviet and modern researchers; a description of the main figures who laid the foundations for the birth of marxism in chinese philosophy. In the result of investigation, on the basis of theoretical and methodological guidelines and requirements of scientific analysis and theoretical reconstruction, the main post-soviet narratives of the genesis of marxist-leninist philosophy in china were systematized, as well as an assessment of their theoretical, methodological and ideological attributes. (shrink)

Smart homes based on the Internet of Things have been rapidly developed. To improve the safety, comfort, and convenience of residents’ lives with minimal cost, daily activity recognition aims to know resident’s daily activity in non-invasive manner. The performance of daily activity recognition heavily depends on solving strategy of activity feature. However, the current common employed solving strategy based on statistical information of individual activity does not support well the activity recognition. To improve the common employed solving strategy, (...) an activity feature solving strategy based on TF-IDF is proposed in this paper. The proposed strategy exploits statistical information related to both individual activity and the whole of activities. Two distinct datasets have been commissioned, to mitigate against any possible effect of coupling between dataset and sensor configuration. Finally, a number of machine learning techniques and deep learning technique have been evaluated to assess their performance for residents activity recognition. (shrink)

first-order HMM, the current tag t0 is predicted based on the previous tag t−1 (and the current word).1 The back- We present a new part-of-speech tagger that ward interaction between t0 and the next tag t+1 shows demonstrates the following ideas: (i) explicit up implicitly later, when t+1 is generated in turn. While unidirectional models are therefore able to capture both use of both preceding and following tag con-.

The current chapter addresses links-designate that the reader can discover as having arisen from associating with each other formal-material, at times ‘poetic’, features of the text. These connections do not indicate directly any text-world features. They may arise from word choices, morpheme meanings, layouts, rhymes and limitless other formal or material facets of the text. The reader may encounter them in reflection on the basis of passive synthesis. A protocol of my reading of certain lines in Eliot’s ‘Little Gidding’ (...) documents the process of a reader discovering that they have lived through such formal-material relationships. The chapter explores the encounter with ‘metaphorical’ meanings through related categories. (shrink)

How speech sounds are represented in the brain is not fully understood. The mismatch negativity (MMN) has proven to be a powerful tool in this regard. The MMN event-related potential is elicited by a deviant stimulus embedded within a series of repeating standard stimuli. Listeners construct auditory memory representations of these standards despite acoustic variability. In most designs that test speech sounds, however, this variation is typically intra-category: All standards belong to the same phonetic category. In the current paper, (...) inter-category variation is presented in the standards. These standards vary in manner of articulation but share a common phonetic feature. In the standard retroflex experimental block, Mandarin Chinese speaking participants are presented with a series of “standard” consonants that share the feature [retroflex], interrupted by infrequent non-retroflex deviants. In the non-retroflex standard experimental block, non-retroflex standards are interrupted by infrequent retroflex deviants. The within-block MMN was calculated, as was the identity MMN (iMMN) to account for intrinsic differences in responses to the stimuli. We only observed a within-block MMN to the non-retroflex deviant embedded in the standard retroflex block. This suggests that listeners extract [retroflex] despite significant inter-category variation. In the non-retroflex standard block, because there is little on which to base a coherent auditory memory representation, no within-block MMN was observed. The iMMN to the retroflex was observed in a late time-window at centro-parieto-occipital electrode sites instead of fronto-central electrodes, where the MMN is typically observed, potentially reflecting the increased difficulty posed by the added variation in the standards. In short, participants can construct auditory memory representations despite significant acoustic and inter-category phonological variation so long as a shared phonetic feature binds them together. (shrink)

The current situation in the manufacture and positioning of clay toys in Russia — a country with rich traditions of the existence of large and small crafts of this kind — is ambiguous, but has positive dynamics. The appeal to the activities of individual toy makers, both amateur and professional artists, provides the basis for understanding the current state of the craft. Of interest is the analysis of the search by craftsmen from different parts of the country for (...) new artistic solutions both in terms of the shape of products and their decoration, in conditions of following the principles of craftsmen of the past. Currently, there is a surge of interest in clay toys in the works of modern masters from Russian researchers. However, a comprehensive study of its existence in various villages and cities of Russia has not been conducted. This determines the need to establish "hotbeds" of craft development, identify the most prominent representatives, establish links between modern creative activity and the traditions of the past, as well as identify new things that artists offer in their activities. The study also includes those crafts that have emerged recently and are not the result of continuity, but have a rather distinctive form and use elements of the artistic language of other crafts. (shrink)

Past research demonstrates that emotion recognition is influenced by social category cues present on faces. However, little research has investigated whether holistic processing is required to observe these influences of social category information on emotion perception, and no studies have investigated whether different visual sampling strategies (i.e. differences in the allocation of attention to different regions of the face) contribute to the interaction between social cues and emotional expressions. The current study aimed to address this. Participants categorised happy and (...) angry expressions on own- and other-race faces, and male and female faces. In Experiments 1 and 2, holistic processing was disrupted by presenting inverted faces (Experiment 1) or part faces (Experiment 2). In Experiments 3 and 4 participants’ eye-gaze to eye and mouth regions was also tracked. Disrupting holistic processing did not alter the moderating influence of sex and race cues on emotion recognition (Experiments 1, 2, 4). Gaze patterns differed as a function of emotional expression, and social category cues, however, eye-gaze patterns did not reflect response time patterns (Experiments 3 and 4). Results indicate that the interaction between social category cues and emotion does not require holistic processing and is not driven by differences in visual sampling. (shrink)

This book makes a fundamental contribution to phonology, linguistic typology, and the nature of the human language faculty. Distinctive features in phonology distinguish one meaningful sound from another. Since the mid-twentieth century they have been seen as a set characterizing all possible phonological distinctions and as an integral part of Universal Grammar, the innate language faculty underlying successive versions of Chomskyan generative theory. The usefulness of distinctive features in phonological analysis is uncontroversial, but the supposition that features are innate and (...) universal rather than learned and language-specific has never, until now, been systematically tested. In his pioneering account Jeff Mielke presents the results of a crosslinguistic survey of natural classes of distinctive features covering almost six hundred of the world's languages drawn from a variety of different families. He shows that no theory is able to characterize more than 71 per cent of classes, and further that current theories, deployed either singly or collectively, do not predict the range of classes that occur and recur. He reveals the existence of apparently unnatural classes in many languages. Even without these findings, he argues, there are reasons to doubt whether distinctive features are innate: for example, distinctive features used in signed languages are different from those in spoken languages, even though deafness is generally not hereditary. The author explains the grouping of sounds into classes and concludes by offering a unified account of what previously have been considered to be natural and unnatural classes. The data on which the analysis is based are freely available in a program downloadable from the publisher's web site. (shrink)

Certain speech sounds are consistently associated with visual properties such as shape and size, a phenomenon known as crossmodal correspondences. Well‐established examples demonstrate that the vowel /u/ is often linked to rounder and larger objects, while /i/ is associated with more angular and smaller ones. However, most previous research utilized English pseudowords, leaving a gap in our understanding of how these correspondences manifest in tonal languages. The current study extends the investigation to Mandarin Chinese, a tonal language, to examine (...) the roles of vowels, consonants, and lexical tones in sound–shape and sound–size correspondences. Participants heard consonant‐vowel‐tone syllables and rated each on a 5‐point scale with rounder/more angular shapes or larger/smaller icons at opposite ends. The results confirmed the established vowel effect: /u/ was associated with rounder and larger patterns than /i/. Results for consonants demonstrated that the voiced–unvoiced contrast predicted sound–shape judgments, while the aspirated–unaspirated contrast, which is less prominent in English, influenced sound–size judgments. Lexical tones also revealed systematic effects, with Tone 1 (flat), Tone 2 (rising), Tone 3 (falling–rising), and Tone 4 (falling) progressively matched from rounder to more angular shapes, while Tones 1 and 2 were linked to larger sizes than Tones 3 and 4. These phonemic features reliably predicted crossmodal correspondences even when controlling for acoustic properties, suggesting robust mappings between phonemic and visual representations. This study highlights the common vowel effects across Mandarin and English while revealing unique influences of consonants and lexical tones, underscoring the role of language experience in shaping crossmodal correspondences. (shrink)

Under the conditions of quarantine, distance learning turned out to be the only acceptable form of education, which corresponds to the current world norms of today's postmodern world space, because this type of organization of the educational process is included in the list of institutional forms along with full-time, part-time, network, and the like. Each institution of higher education, within the granted autonomy, has developed and implemented a system of measures for the technological and technical aspects of the implementation (...) of the educational process under quarantine conditions. Along with the variety of forms of production of distance education, there are common problems and challenges for higher education institutions: the workload of both teachers and students has significantly increased; revealed the need for intensive training in the use of distance forms in the educational process; work intensified and it turned out to be obvious that specialized distance learning centers were functioning on the basis of higher educational institutions; Students with special educational needs require significant attention, both in terms of socio-psychological support and support in distance learning. The recommendations of the world community on the course of the educational process in the conditions of quarantine are considered. Most international organizations have implemented the statements and issued a set of recommendations for education systems that countries can use in making policy decisions and implementing specific action plans. (shrink)

What makes a human voice agreeable is a matter of scientific discussion. Whereas prosody was shown to play a role regarding “male-female” attraction, the impact of frequency modulations in “non-sexual”, notably commercial, contexts has attracted little attention. Another point unaddressed in the literature is auditory sensitivity to short-term frequency modulations as current studies focus more on sentence. Thirty French female operators were recorded over the phone. All “bonjour” greeting words were classified in terms of frequency modulation linearity and orientation (...) at the syllable and word levels. Then, the different voices were played back to students and seniors who had to rate each voice according to their degree of agreeableness. Listeners preferred non-monotonous voices. Differences between age-classes were greater than between sex-classes. Results suggest that short-term frequency changes are important for auditory evaluation of voice agreeableness. This study opens new research perspectives concerning the importance of prosody during consumer-seller interactions. (shrink)

The development of each Church is denoted by one or another landmark, most of which are well-known to all, although there are also few known or those whose influence on the evolution of the Church is not evident. The Second Vatican Council is an event that, without exaggeration, can be a determinant of the time "before" and "after", not only for the Catholic Church, where it took place. Since this Cathedral was a significant stage of qualitative development, or not the (...) oldest continuously existing institution, the consequences of its decisions, including the consequences of the remote, are interesting to study, in particular, from the point of view of their influence on further institutionalization processes in the Church. This is an interesting field of research for many religious scholars, but in this exploration we are currently focusing on the specifics of the course of institutionalization processes in the modern Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church as a special part of the post-assembly Catholic Church, as one that inherited the advantages and problems of the Christian East, and the Christian West. (shrink)

Economic change, globalisation and harmonisation of European Law have brought new challenges to contract law. The contributions in this Volume by prominent legal scholars deal with current trends and perspectives in European and International Contract Law and their impact on the various domestic legal systems. The Compendium provides an analysis of new developments in formation of contract, performance and remedies, consumer contract law and the particularly controversial area of anti-discrimination law. Experts in their field examine the underlying legal principles (...) and problems arising in legal practice in Common Law and Civil Law. The essays written in English, German and French are the product of a series of lectures held in 2006 at the Centre for European Private Law at the University of Münster, Germany. The contributing authors are: John Adams, Hugh Beale, Giuditta Cordero-Moss, Barbara Dauner-Lieb, Michele Graziadei, Thomas Gutmann, Geraint Howells, Simon James, Paul Lagarde, Matthias Lehmann, Peter Møgelvang-Hansen, Salvatore Patti, Thomas Pfeiffer, John C. Reitz, Judith Rochfeld, Martin Schmidt-Kessel, Jürgen Schmidt-Räntsch, Alessandro Somma, Stefano Troiano, Christian Twigg-Flesner, Antoni Vaquer Aloy and Fryderyk Zoll. (shrink)

The paper deals with the topical issue of studying cyclic patterns in the economy and their practical application for the forecasts on the development of financial markets. The work aims to establish the features of the seasonal-cyclic patterns "The January barometer" and "The first five days of January" in the international financial markets in current conditions and to develop recommendations for the practical application of these patterns in the investment activities. The US stock market as an integral part of (...) the World financial market was chosen as a basis for research. The research was conducted by statistical processing of data on the values of the broad market index Standard & Poor's-500 for the period from 1950 to 2019. The study showed that the formation of forecasts about the annual growth or decline of the stock market index using the seasonal-cyclic patterns "The January barometer" and "The first five days of January" can show a high result in cases where the growth of the Standard & Poor's-500 index by the results of both the first five days of January and the results of the entire month of January of this year is a positive value. Otherwise, forecasting based on these instruments is not advisable. The best results (the forecast efficiency was 93.3%) were achieved with the joint application of both cyclic patterns. The practical application of the research results makes it possible to improve the efficiency of investment activities in international financial markets. (shrink)

The swarm intelligence algorithm simulates the behavior of animal populations in nature and is a new type of intelligent solution that is different from traditional artificial intelligence. Feature selection is a very common data dimensionality reduction method, which requires us to select the feature subset with the best evaluation criteria from the original feature set. Feature selection, as an effective data processing method, has become a hot research topic in the fields of machine learning, pattern recognition, (...) and data mining and has received extensive attention and attention. In order to verify the improvement effect of the feature selection algorithm based on the swarm intelligence algorithm on the data, this paper conducts experiments on six classes in the city’s first middle school with similar conditions. First, count the current situation of the students in the class, then divide them into classes, use different algorithms to teach them, and count the changes of the students after a period of teaching. The experiment found that the performance of students under the feature selection algorithm is about 30% higher than other teaching methods, and the awareness of cooperation between students reaches 0.8. It solves the contradiction between popularization and improvement and solves the problems of polarization and transformation of underachievers. The individuality of the algorithm has been fully utilized and developed. The test results show that the improved algorithm has faster convergence speed and higher solution accuracy, and the feature selection algorithm based on swarm intelligence algorithm can effectively improve the efficiency of the algorithm. (shrink)

While many autistic children have high levels of internalizing or externalizing behaviours, research seldom examines whether these behaviours are differentially associated with key features of autism. The current study used a transdiagnostic approach to characterize the inter-relationship between restricted and repetitive behaviours (RRBs) and social communication autistic features, and internalizing and externalizing behaviours. Method: The study included 136 6-7 year-olds with school-identified emotional and behavioural difficulties. Parents reported on their child’s current repetitive behaviour using The Repetitive Behaviour Questionnaire-2 (...) (Leekam et al., 2007) and their difficulties with pragmatic language social communication using the Revised Children’s Communication Checklist (Wellnitz et al., 2021). Internalizing and externalizing were measured using The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (Goodman et al., 1997). Regression analyses examined differential and relative contributions made by RRBs and pragmatic language to internalizing and externalizing behaviours. Results: RRBs, and particularly the insistence on sameness subdomain, made a stronger contribution than pragmatic language in the regression model for internalizing behaviours. For externalizing behaviours, the opposite was true; pragmatic language made a stronger contribution than RRBs. RRBs – specifically repetitive sensory and motor behaviours subdomain – only made a significant contribution to externalizing when entered before pragmatic language. Discussion: By characterising the inter-relationship between autistic features and internalising and externalizing behaviours beyond traditional, categorically defined diagnostic boundaries, these results clarify potential target areas for supporting children with emotional and behavioural difficulties. For example, externalising behaviours might benefit from support for pragmatic language while difficulty with change in routine might benefit from emotion-related support. (shrink)

One of the biggest challenges in understanding perception is to understand how the nervous system manages to integrate the multiple codes it uses to represent features in multiple sensory modalities. From different cortical areas, which might separately register the sight of something red and the touch of something smooth, one effortlessly generates the perception of one thing that is both red and smooth. This process has been variously called "feature integration", "binding", or "synthesis". Citing some current models and (...) some historical precursors, this paper makes some simple observations about the logic of feature integration. I suggest that "feature conjunction" is not strictly speaking conjunction at all, but rather joint predication; and that the critical task in "binding" is not simply grouping scattered representations together, or providing them a common label, but rather identifying those that have a common subject matter-those that are. (shrink)

Ongoing electroencephalography signals are recorded as a mixture of stimulus-elicited EEG, spontaneous EEG and noises, which poses a huge challenge to current data analyzing techniques, especially when different groups of participants are expected to have common or highly correlated brain activities and some individual dynamics. In this study, we proposed a data-driven shared and unshared feature extraction framework based on nonnegative and coupled tensor factorization, which aims to conduct group-level analysis for the EEG signals from major depression disorder (...) patients and healthy controls when freely listening to music. Constrained tensor factorization not only preserves the multilinear structure of the data, but also considers the common and individual components between the data. The proposed framework, combined with music information retrieval, correlation analysis, and hierarchical clustering, facilitated the simultaneous extraction of shared and unshared spatio-temporal-spectral feature patterns between/in MDD and HC groups. Finally, we obtained two shared feature patterns between MDD and HC groups, and obtained totally three individual feature patterns from HC and MDD groups. The results showed that the MDD and HC groups triggered similar brain dynamics when listening to music, but at the same time, MDD patients also brought some changes in brain oscillatory network characteristics along with music perception. These changes may provide some basis for the clinical diagnosis and the treatment of MDD patients. (shrink)

Numerous experiments have examined whether moving stimuli capture spatial attention but none have sought to determine whether visual features of looming and receding objects are extracted in a capacity-free manner. The current experiment used the task-choice procedure originated by Besner and Care to examine this possibility. Stimuli were presented in 3D space by manipulating retinal disparity. Results indicate that features of an object are extracted in a capacity-free manner for both looming and receding objects for participants who consciously perceive (...) motion but not for participants who do not consciously perceive motion. These results suggest that the cognitive system is biased to process potentially animate objects, perhaps because of the evolutionary advantage this cognitive ability may provide. (shrink)

The target and background will change continuously in the long-term tracking process, which brings great challenges to the accurate prediction of targets. The correlation filter algorithm based on manual features is difficult to meet the actual needs due to its limited feature representation ability. Thus, to improve the tracking performance and robustness, an improved hierarchical convolutional features model is proposed into a correlation filter framework for visual object tracking. First, the objective function is designed by lasso regression modeling, and (...) a sparse, time-series low-rank filter is learned to increase the interpretability of the model. Second, the features of the last layer and the second pool layer of the convolutional neural network are extracted to realize the target position prediction from coarse to fine. In addition, using the filters learned from the first frame and the current frame to calculate the response maps, respectively, the target position is obtained by finding the maximum response value in the response map. The filter model is updated only when these two maximum responses meet the threshold condition. The proposed tracker is evaluated by simulation analysis on TC-128/OTB2015 benchmarks including more than 100 video sequences. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed tracker achieves competitive performance against state-of-the-art trackers. The distance precision rate and overlap success rate of the proposed algorithm on OTB2015 are 0.829 and 0.695, respectively. The proposed algorithm effectively solves the long-term object tracking problem in complex scenes. (shrink)

New types of artificial intelligence products are gradually transferring to voice interaction modes with the demand for intelligent products expanding from communication to recognizing users' emotions and instantaneous feedback. At present, affective acoustic models are constructed through deep learning and abstracted into a mathematical model, making computers learn from data and equipping them with prediction abilities. Although this method can result in accurate predictions, it has a limitation in that it lacks explanatory capability; there is an urgent need for an (...) empirical study of the connection between acoustic features and psychology as the theoretical basis for the adjustment of model parameters. Accordingly, this study focuses on exploring the differences between seven major “acoustic features” and their physical characteristics during voice interaction with the recognition and expression of “gender” and “emotional states of the pleasure-arousal-dominance (PAD) model.” In this study, 31 females and 31 males aged between 21 and 60 were invited using the stratified random sampling method for the audio recording of different emotions. Subsequently, parameter values of acoustic features were extracted using Praat voice software. Finally, parameter values were analyzed using a Two-way ANOVA, mixed-design analysis in SPSS software. Results show that gender and emotional states of the PAD model vary among seven major acoustic features. Moreover, their difference values and rankings also vary. The research conclusions lay a theoretical foundation for AI emotional voice interaction and solve deep learning's current dilemma in emotional recognition and parameter optimization of the emotional synthesis model due to the lack of explanatory power. (shrink)

Although more and more researches have shown that edge-based information is more important than surface-based information in object recognition, it remains unclear whether edge-based features play a more crucial role than surface-based features in category learning. To address this issue, a modified prototype distortion task was adopted in the present study, in which each category was defined by a rule or similarity about either the edge-based features (i.e., contours or shapes) or the corresponding surface-based features (i.e., color and textures). The (...) results of Experiments 1 and 2 showed that when the category was defined by a rule, the performance was significantly better in the edge-based condition than in the surface-based condition in the testing phase, and increasing defined dimensions enhanced rather than reduced performance in the edge-based condition but not in the surface-based condition. The results of Experiment 3 showed that when each category was defined by similarity, there was also a larger learning effect when the category was defined by edge-based dimensions than by surface-based dimensions in the testing phase. The current study is the first to provide convergent evidence that the edge-based information matters more than surface-based information in incidental category learning. (shrink)

Most current online distributed machine learning algorithms have been studied in a data-parallel architecture among agents in networks. We study online distributed machine learning from a different perspective, where the features about the same samples are observed by multiple agents that wish to collaborate but do not exchange the raw data with each other. We propose a distributed feature online gradient descent algorithm and prove that local solution converges to the global minimizer with a sublinear rate O 2 (...) T. Our algorithm does not require exchange of the primal data or even the model parameters between agents. Firstly, we design an auxiliary variable, which implies the information of the global features, and estimate at each agent by dynamic consensus method. Then, local parameters are updated by online gradient descent method based on local data stream. Simulations illustrate the performance of the proposed algorithm. (shrink)

separated from evaluating entailment. Current approaches to semantic inference in question answer-.

Abstract If we take for granted that introspection is indispensable for the study of conscious mental states, the question arises what criteria have to be met in order for introspective reports to qualify as scientific evidence. There have been some attempts to argue (implicitly or explicitly) that it is possible to provide a satisfactory answer to this question while remaining agnostic with respect to questions about the nature of consciousness. Focusing on the aim of using introspection in order to generate (...) phenomenological descriptions of conscious mental states, this paper argues that such an agnostic stance cannot be maintained, because the very meaning of ?introspection? remains fuzzy as long as we don't have a clear understanding of how the mind does it. I show that current debates revolve around some of the same issues that were already in the background of debates around 1900, and I argue that a satisfactory treatment of introspection as a method cannot be separated from the aim of providing a satisfactory treatment of introspection as a feature of consciousness. (shrink)

Introduction. The paper considers a wide range of monetary policy rules: integral stabilization, NGDP targeting, price level targeting, raising the inflation target, introducing negative nominal interest rates etc. The author also considers discretionary policy used by central banks when the nominal rate is close to zero, such as dramatic preventive cut of the key interest rate and interventions in the open markets with the aim of cutting long-term interest rates. The relevance of this problem is supported by global long-term macroeconomic (...) and demographic factors, such as the dynamics of oil prices and the aging of the population. The aim of the paper is to identify the most effective monetary policy rules in order to reduce the risk of a nominal interest rate falling to zero. Methods. Analysis of the background and the results of general equilibrium models modeling monetary policy is carried out. Analysis of the role of current global trends (based on statistics) in aggravating the problem of declining interest rates. Scientific novelty of the research. The author systematizes the conclusions of modern macroeconomic theory, which offers a number of monetary rules making it possible to reduce the likelihood of falling into the zero bound of interest rate. Results. The effectiveness of monetary rules such as targeting nominal GDP and price levels in preventing the nominal interest rate from falling to zero is shown, primarily due to more efficient public expectations management which is a weak point of discretionary intervention. Conclusions. Under the current global factors for many developed countries and some oil-exporters, the downward trend in nominal rates persists. Combined with slowdown in economic growth, such threat may have negative consequences for the Russian economy. In this case, it seems reasonable to stick to the inflation target above 2% per year and in the future to consider switching to targeting the price level or nominal GDP. (shrink)

In the last decades, researchers have been considering some fundamental issues such as energy saving, global warming, greenhouse emissions, and non-renewable energy to make models of house environmental standards to achieve a suitable consumption pattern for saving energy. In architecture, using natural energy is one of the essential pillars of design because it was one of the criteria of designing, which was considered on climate and geography, and it has been a high performance of climate adaptation in the modeling of (...) traditional houses. In this research, Azerbaijan is selected to evaluate the practical features of traditional Iranian houses designed in the cold climate, and criteria for developing sensible solutions to achieve a suitable design model for energy saving are provided. The primary purpose of this paper is to evaluate and identify the features of climate design in traditional houses in a cold climate, which are suitable residential buildings for energy management, and to identify the components affecting energy saving. The data collection method is based on checklists, observation, considering the orientation, density, solar radiation angle in the region, documentary, analysis of maps, and adaptation of the architectural plan of the studied houses with the pattern of solar radiation in the area. This research discusses the design criteria for future structures and their adaptable measures based on the obtained results. Finally, it is declared that the traditional architectural design model follows the region’s climatic conditions, and considering the current climate and energies, traditional houses were designed; therefore, the best model for maximum use of available energy is climatic design. As a result, suggestions are made regarding residential architecture design to save energy. (shrink)

: This paper is concerned with the claim that epistemic terms and categories are historical entities. The starting point is the observation that recent attempts at historical studies of epistemic terms fail to bridge the gap between history and philosophy proper. I examine whether, and how, it is possible to forge a closer link between historical and philosophical aspects of conceptual analysis. The paper explores possible links by analyzing aspects of the concept of error. A "pragmatic" and a "mentalist" notion (...) of error are identified in current philosophical studies of error: according to the latter, errors can be ascribed only to mental operations, according to the former, errors can also be ascribed to things and processes. The paper then draws on historical accounts of optical instruments to highlight certain presuppositions and implications of these two uses of the term. Contextual features and trans-contextual structures of the notion of error are distinguished. In conclusion, I argue that an intimate link between history and philosophy of science can be forged by an analysis ofthe development of conceptual arrangements which allows for trans- contextual structural aspects while drawing attention to the contextual epistemological and scientific conditions of their re-arrangement. (shrink)

The article is aimed to identify the influence of style of leadership onto the characteristic features of the organizational culture of tourism enterprises. A detailed analysis of the scientific literature about leadership styles has been conducted, wherein some peculiarities of their implementation in the tourism enterprises of Ukraine has been disclosed. The integrated definition of leadership has been updated in view of the current socio-economic conditions. Role of style of leadership as a determinant for type of organizational culture has (...) been proven. Particular attention is paid to the devastating (neurotic) style and the style of non-intervention, which are still not covered by Ukrainian researchers, however, they are relevant for understanding peculiarities of formation and management of the organizational culture related to the tourism and hospitality enterprises. In course of the study the following methods of scientific research have been used: ideographic; formal; content analysis; analysis and synthesis; correlation analysis. The results obtained can be used by practicing managers for selection of a management style, suitable for the established or emerging organizational culture at the enterprise. (shrink)

There are complex posture changes in dance movements, which lead to the low accuracy of dance movement recognition. And none of the current motion recognition uses the dancer’s attributes. The attribute feature of dancer is the important high-level semantic information in the action recognition. Therefore, a dance movement recognition algorithm based on feature expression and attribute mining is designed to learn the complicated and changeable dancer movements. Firstly, the original image information is compressed by the time-domain fusion (...) module, and the information of action and attitude can be expressed completely. Then, a two-way feature extraction network is designed, which extracts the details of the actions along the way and takes the sequence image as the input of the network. Then, in order to enhance the expression ability of attribute features, a multibranch spatial channel attention integration module based on an attention mechanism is designed to extract the features of each attribute. Finally, using the semantic inference and information transfer function of the graph convolution network, the relationship between attribute features and dancer features can be mined and deduced, and more expressive action features can be obtained; thus, high-performance dance motion recognition is realized. The test and analysis results on the data set show that the algorithm can recognize the dance movement and improve the accuracy of the dance movement recognition effectively, thus realizing the movement correction function of the dancer. (shrink)

Face recognition is a computationally challenging classification task. Deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) are brain‐inspired algorithms that have recently reached human‐level performance in face and object recognition. However, it is not clear to what extent DCNNs generate a human‐like representation of face identity. We have recently revealed a subset of facial features that are used by humans for face recognition. This enables us now to ask whether DCNNs rely on the same facial information and whether this human‐like representation depends on (...) a system that is optimized for face identification. In the current study, we examined the representation of DCNNs of faces that differ in features that are critical or non‐critical for human face recognition. Our findings show that DCNNs optimized for face identification are tuned to the same facial features used by humans for face recognition. Sensitivity to these features was highly correlated with performance of the DCNN on a benchmark face recognition task. Moreover, sensitivity to these features and a view‐invariant face representation emerged at higher layers of a DCNN optimized for face recognition but not for object recognition. This finding parallels the division to a face and an object system in high‐level visual cortex. Taken together, these findings validate human perceptual models of face recognition, enable us to use DCNNs to test predictions about human face and object recognition as well as contribute to the interpretability of DCNNs. (shrink)

Electroencephalography and functional near-infrared spectroscopy have potentially complementary characteristics that reflect the electrical and hemodynamic characteristics of neural responses, so EEG-fNIRS-based hybrid brain-computer interface is the research hotspots in recent years. However, current studies lack a comprehensive systematic approach to properly fuse EEG and fNIRS data and exploit their complementary potential, which is critical for improving BCI performance. To address this issue, this study proposes a novel multimodal fusion framework based on multi-level progressive learning with multi-domain features. The framework (...) consists of a multi-domain feature extraction process for EEG and fNIRS, a feature selection process based on atomic search optimization, and a multi-domain feature fusion process based on multi-level progressive machine learning. The proposed method was validated on EEG-fNIRS-based motor imagery and mental arithmetic tasks involving 29 subjects, and the experimental results show that multi-domain features provide better classification performance than single-domain features, and multi-modality provides better classification performance than single-modality. Furthermore, the experimental results and comparison with other methods demonstrated the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed method in EEG and fNIRS information fusion, it can achieve an average classification accuracy of 96.74% in the MI task and 98.42% in the MA task. Our proposed method may provide a general framework for future fusion processing of multimodal brain signals based on EEG-fNIRS. (shrink)

Many recent discussions of psychopaths have centered on the question of whether they can express ill-will when they act, a capacity which is generally taken to be required for moral blameworthiness. However, the debate over ill-will currently stands at an impasse; the participants are in substantial agreement as to which attitudes psychopaths can express, but disagree as to which attitudes count as ill-will. I argue that this impasse reflects an underlying, implicit disagreement as to which features of actions are wrong-making. (...) By uncovering this implicit disagreement and addressing it head-on, we should be able to break the impasse. (shrink)

As one of the most widely used methods in deep learning technology, convolutional neural networks have powerful feature extraction capabilities and nonlinear data fitting capabilities. However, the convolutional neural network method still has disadvantages such as complex network model, too long training time and excessive consumption of computing resources, slow convergence speed, network overfitting, and classification accuracy that needs to be improved. Therefore, this article proposes a dense convolutional neural network classification algorithm based on texture features for images in (...) virtual reality videos. First, the texture feature of the image is introduced as a priori information to reflect the spatial relationship between pixels and the unique characteristics of different types of ground features. Second, the grey level cooccurrence matrix is used to extract the grey level correlation features of the image in space. Then, Gauss Markov Random Field is used to establish the statistical correlation characteristics between neighbouring pixels, and the extracted GLCM-GMRF texture feature and image intensity vector are combined. Finally, based on DenseNet, an improved shallow layer dense convolutional neural network is proposed, which can compress network parameters and improve the feature extraction ability of the network. The experimental results show that compared with the current classification method, this method can effectively suppress the influence of coherent speckle noise and obtain better classification results. (shrink)

Why and how do institutions endure? The most characteristic feature of institutions—their longevity—seems to be a neglected topic in current institutional analysis, which overwhelmingly is conducted as an analysis of institutional change. This article, in contrast, attempts to answer some basic questions about institutional endurance and reproduction, most notably how institutional reproduction can be distinguished from institutional endurance, how institutions manage to “bind” time and space, and which role structures “out of time and space” play in this. I (...) explore the processual nature of three theories institutionalist authors draw on (Berger and Luckmann’s theory of social construction, Giddens’s structuration theory, and Bourdieu’s theory of field and habitus) to identify elements and explanations of endurance. I then elaborate on these insights by introducing Roger Friedland’s notion of institutional substance and ideas from the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. (shrink)

This study examines the dynamics of cultural politics in reality television shows featuring North Korean resettlers in South Korea. As existing studies focus on the role of media representation reproducing a dominant ideology for the resettlers, this paper focuses on the specific media rituals of NKR2 programs, which can be seen as a product of the neoliberalist localization process of the global media industry. In doing so, this paper demonstrates how NKR2 programs interrupt the current dynamics of emotions in (...) regard to North Korean resettlers in South Korea. We argue that in shaping civic identity as an effect of the NKR2 show, cultural politics of citizenship in South Korea on North Korean resettlers serve the formation of relatively conservative and sexist civic identity. (shrink)

In order to solve the problem of the influence of feature word position in lyrics on music emotion classification, this paper designs a music classification and detection model in complex noise environment. Firstly, an intelligent detection algorithm for electronic music signals under complex noise scenes is proposed, which can solve the limitations existing in the current electronic music signal detection process. At the same time, denoising technology is introduced to eliminate the noise and extract the features from the (...) signal. Secondly, from the perspective of audio and lyrics of song sentiment analysis and the unique characteristics of lyrics text, a lyric sentiment analysis method based on text title and position weight is proposed. Finally, considering the influence of the weight of feature words in different positions on the classification of lyrics, the analytic hierarchy process is used to calculate the weight of feature words in different positions of text title and lyrics before, in, and after the text. The results show that in the complex noise environment, the accuracy of music classification and detection of the proposed model is more than 90%, which is far beyond the control range of the actual application of music processing. The effect of music classification and detection is better than that of the contrast model, which has a certain practical application value. (shrink)

This paper implements the continuous Hindi Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) system using the proposed integrated features vector with Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) based Language Modeling (LM). The proposed system also implements the speaker adaptation using Maximum-Likelihood Linear Regression (MLLR) and Constrained Maximum likelihood Linear Regression (C-MLLR). This system is discriminatively trained by Maximum Mutual Information (MMI) and Minimum Phone Error (MPE) techniques with 256 Gaussian mixture per Hidden Markov Model(HMM) state. The training of the baseline system has been done using (...) a phonetically rich Hindi dataset. The results show that discriminative training enhances the baseline system performance by up to 3%. Further improvement of ~7% has been recorded by applying RNN LM. The proposed Hindi ASR system shows significant performance improvement over other current state-of-the-art techniques. (shrink)

Forensic evidence often involves an evaluation of whether two impressions were made by the same source, such as whether a fingerprint from a crime scene has detail in agreement with an impression taken from a suspect. Human experts currently outperform computer-based comparison systems, but the strength of the evidence exemplified by the observed detail in agreement must be evaluated against the possibility that some other individual may have created the crime scene impression. Therefore, the strongest evidence comes from features in (...) agreement that are also not shared with other impressions from other individuals. We characterize the nature of human expertise by applying two extant metrics to the images used in a fingerprint recognition task and use eye gaze data from experts to both tune and validate the models. The Attention via Information Maximization model quantifies the rarity of regions in the fingerprints to determine diagnosticity for purposes of excluding alternative sources. The CoVar model captures relationships between low-level features, mimicking properties of the early visual system. Both models produced classification and generalization performance in the 75%–80% range when classifying where experts tend to look. A validation study using regions identified by the AIM model as diagnostic demonstrates that human experts perform better when given regions of high diagnosticity. The computational nature of the metrics may help guard against wrongful convictions, as well as provide a quantitative measure of the strength of evidence in casework. (shrink)

The prediction of the secondary structure of a protein from its amino acid sequence is an important step towards the prediction of its three-dimensional structure. However, the accuracy of ab initio secondary structure prediction from sequence is about 80 % currently, which is still far from satisfactory. In this study, we proposed a novel method that uses binomial distribution to optimize tetrapeptide structural words and increment of diversity with quadratic discriminant to perform prediction for protein three-state secondary structure. A benchmark (...) dataset including 2,640 proteins with sequence identity of less than 25 % was used to train and test the proposed method. The results indicate that overall accuracy of 87.8 % was achieved in secondary structure prediction by using ten-fold cross-validation. Moreover, the accuracy of predicted secondary structures ranges from 84 to 89 % at the level of residue. These results suggest that the feature selection technique can detect the optimized tetrapeptide structural words which affect the accuracy of predicted secondary structures. (shrink)

Humans often behave more prosocially when being observed in person and even in response to subtle eye cues, purportedly to manage their reputation. Previous research on this phenomenon has employed the “watching eyes paradigm,” in which adults displayed greater prosocial behavior in the presence of images of eyes versus inanimate objects. However, the robustness of the effect of eyes on prosocial behavior has recently been called into question. Therefore, the first goal of the present study was to attempt to replicate (...) this effect. Additionally, it remains unclear whether the watching-eyes effect is driven specifically by reputation management or whether any cues indexing human presence more generally also have a similar effect. To address these questions, the current study compared prosocial behavior in the presence of eyes versus inanimate objects as well as other human features. The study was conducted as a field experiment at a children’s museum. Each week, the donation signs were changed to show eyes, noses, mouths, or chairs. Total donation amount and number of patrons per week were recorded. Participants donated more when they were exposed to eyes than to inanimate objects. We thus replicated the previously reported watching-eyes effect. Moreover, more money was donated when individuals were exposed to eyes than to more general cues of human presence. The current findings suggest that eyes play a special role in promoting cooperation in humans, likely by serving as cues of monitoring and thus eliciting reputation management behavior. (shrink)

The ethical dative or dativus ethicus is a feature used with certain verbs in Biblical Hebrew, which, however, has continued to pose difficulties to grammarians as to its syntactic and semantic references. The feature is also present in other Semitic languages, namely, Syriac and other Aramaic dialects including Persian. Although quite a common feature, the ethical dative is seemingly difficult to translate into English, while its identification as an ethical dative is a widely accepted misnomer. This study (...) attempts to resolve the identification of the feature's grammatical role by seeking to relate it with a similar grammatical feature from Shona, a language from the Central and Southern African group of languages. Although there are some differences between the compared features, the similarities will go a long way to clarify the nature of the Semitic enigma that is currently known as the ethical dative in Hebrew and in other related Semitic languages. (shrink)

One of the interesting research questions in multi-attribute decision-making is what affects the consideration of shared information between two alternatives. Previous studies have suggested two approaches in finding what characteristics of common features affect their consideration. Two bottom-up factors were found, but no top-down factors were discovered. In the current study, we followed the top-down approach and investigated how subjective importance of a common feature affects its consideration. In two studies, we consistently found that, on both the general (...) and individual level, the level of consideration increased with the SI of the common feature. This result provided a new explanation for the effect of common feature consideration and its individual difference; it also provided insights in explaining the underlying process of multi-attribute decision making. (shrink)

I consider and reject four possible arguments directed against the preservation of natural aesthetic conditions. (1) Beauty is not out there in nature, but is “in the eye ofthe beholder.” I argue that since ingredients ofnature cause aesthetic experiences, we cannot justifiably disregard and exploit nature. Preservation of aesthetic conditions is compatible with both objective and nonobjective theories of aesthetic value. (2) Frequent aesthetic disagreements bring about irresolvable disputes concerning which segments of nature to preserve. I claim that these disputes (...) are not irresolvable. Not all disputes about nature’s aesthetic values are purely aesthetic disputes: ecological balance, community identity, historic continuity, and economics are relevant; aesthetic experts can help; and such disputes can be put to a vote. (3) Natural beauty is not important compared to nonaesthetic values of nature. I show that this is questionable. Current awareness of environmental problems includes a rapidly growing concern for natural aesthetics. Moreover, even if majority preference is for nonaesthetic uses of nature, this does not settle the question of whether we ought to preserve nature’s attractive features. (4) From neither a utilitarian nor a deontological viewpoint do we have an obligation to preserve natural aesthetic conditions for future generations. I argue that even if we do not have a strict obligation, it does not follow that it makes no moral difference whether we preserve. Not yet existing people may have no rights against us, but this does not mean that we do no wrong in polluting and destroying aesthetic conditions of the natural world in which future people will live. (shrink)