scholarly journals THINGS: A database of 1,854 object concepts and more than 26,000 naturalistic object images

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin N. Hebart ◽  
Adam H. Dickter ◽  
Alexis Kidder ◽  
Wan Y. Kwok ◽  
Anna Corriveau ◽  
...  

AbstractIn recent years, the use of a large number of object concepts and naturalistic object images has been growing enormously in cognitive neuroscience research. Classical databases of object concepts are based mostly on a manually-curated set of concepts. Further, databases of naturalistic object images typically consist of single images of objects cropped from their background, or a large number of uncontrolled naturalistic images of varying quality, requiring elaborate manual image curation. Here we provide a set of 1,854 diverse object concepts sampled systematically from concrete picturable and nameable nouns in the American English language. Using these object concepts, we conducted a large-scale web image search to compile a database of 26,107 high-quality naturalistic images of those objects, with 12 or more object images per concept and all images cropped to square size. Using crowdsourcing, we provide higher-level category membership for the 27 most common categories and validate them by relating them to representations in a semantic embedding derived from large text corpora. Finally, by feeding images through a deep convolutional neural network, we demonstrate that they exhibit high selectivity for different object concepts, while at the same time preserving variability of different object images within each concept. Together, the THINGS database provides a rich resource of object concepts and object images and offers a tool for both systematic and large-scale naturalistic research in the fields of psychology, neuroscience, and computer science.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dima Ayyash ◽  
Saima Malik-Moraleda ◽  
Jeanne Gallee ◽  
Josef Affourtit ◽  
Malte Hoffman ◽  
...  

To understand the architecture of human language, it is critical to examine diverse languages; yet most cognitive neuroscience research has focused on a handful of primarily Indo-European languages. Here, we report a large-scale investigation of the fronto-temporal language network across 45 languages and establish the cross-linguistic generality of its key functional properties, including general topography, left-lateralization, strong functional integration among its brain regions, and functional selectivity for language processing. 


Litera ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 29-44
Author(s):  
Anna Olegovna Shubina

The subject of this research is the polysemous noun “game” in the Russian language and the nouns “play”, “game”, “acting”,” performance” in the English language that correspond to different spheres of activity, denoted by the word “game”. The goal of this article consists in determination of most frequent universal collocations with game component in the Russian discourse and their translation equivalents with play, game, acting, and performance component in the English-American discourse. The collocations with game component formed by the scheme adjective + noun and noun + noun, acquired from the dictionaries, as well as Russian and English-American text corpora, served as the material for this research. The article employs the following methods: definitional analysis, contrastive analysis, and etymological analysis. The application of contrastive analysis allowed determining the linear and vector correspondences between the schemes of the indicated lexemes play, game, acting, and performance, as well as revealing the ethno-cultural lacunae. Examination of collocations with game component was conducted on the basis of the Russian National Corpus, Corpus of Historically American English, and Corpus of Contemporary American English; various dictionaries in the timespan (1810-1900) and (2000-2018). It was established that majority of the ten most frequent collocations according to the aforementioned schemes from the Russian National Corpus are present in the Corpus of Historically American English and Corpus of Contemporary American English in the same contexts, but different frequency. The article provides the examples of ethnocultural collocations with game components in the Russian and English-American discourse. It is demonstrated that collocation with the parametric adjectival “big game” has both universal and ethno-cultural characteristics in the English-American language. The relevance of the work is substantiated by recent interest in the development of collocation competence in learning a foreign language.


Corpora ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 327-349
Author(s):  
Craig Frayne

This study uses the two largest available American English language corpora, Google Books and the Corpus of Historical American English (coha), to investigate relations between ecology and language. The paper introduces ecolinguistics as a promising theme for corpus research. While some previous ecolinguistic research has used corpus approaches, there is a case to be made for quantitative methods that draw on larger datasets. Building on other corpus studies that have made connections between language use and environmental change, this paper investigates whether linguistic references to other species have changed in the past two centuries and, if so, how. The methodology consists of two main parts: an examination of the frequency of common names of species followed by aspect-level sentiment analysis of concordance lines. Results point to both opportunities and challenges associated with applying corpus methods to ecolinguistc research.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Xiao Chang ◽  
Qiyong Gong ◽  
Chunbo Li ◽  
Weihua Yue ◽  
Xin Yu ◽  
...  

Abstract China accounts for 17% of the global disease burden attributable to mental, neurological and substance use disorders. As a country undergoing profound societal change, China faces growing challenges to reduce the disease burden caused by psychiatric disorders. In this review, we aim to present an overview of progress in neuroscience research and clinical services for psychiatric disorders in China during the past three decades, analysing contributing factors and potential challenges to the field development. We first review studies in the epidemiological, genetic and neuroimaging fields as examples to illustrate a growing contribution of studies from China to the neuroscience research. Next, we introduce large-scale, open-access imaging genetic cohorts and recently initiated brain banks in China as platforms to study healthy brain functions and brain disorders. Then, we show progress in clinical services, including an integration of hospital and community-based healthcare systems and early intervention schemes. We finally discuss opportunities and existing challenges: achievements in research and clinical services are indispensable to the growing funding investment and continued engagement in international collaborations. The unique aspect of traditional Chinese medicine may provide insights to develop a novel treatment for psychiatric disorders. Yet obstacles still remain to promote research quality and to provide ubiquitous clinical services to vulnerable populations. Taken together, we expect to see a sustained advancement in psychiatric research and healthcare system in China. These achievements will contribute to the global efforts to realize good physical, mental and social well-being for all individuals.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 1158
Author(s):  
Cecilia M. Onyango ◽  
Justine M. Nyaga ◽  
Johanna Wetterlind ◽  
Mats Söderström ◽  
Kristin Piikki

Opportunities exist for adoption of precision agriculture technologies in all parts of the world. The form of precision agriculture may vary from region to region depending on technologies available, knowledge levels and mindsets. The current review examined research articles in the English language on precision agriculture practices for increased productivity among smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa. A total of 7715 articles were retrieved and after screening 128 were reviewed. The results indicate that a number of precision agriculture technologies have been tested under SSA conditions and show promising results. The most promising precision agriculture technologies identified were the use of soil and plant sensors for nutrient and water management, as well as use of satellite imagery, GIS and crop-soil simulation models for site-specific management. These technologies have been shown to be crucial in attainment of appropriate management strategies in terms of efficiency and effectiveness of resource use in SSA. These technologies are important in supporting sustainable agricultural development. Most of these technologies are, however, at the experimental stage, with only South Africa having applied them mainly in large-scale commercial farms. It is concluded that increased precision in input and management practices among SSA smallholder farmers can significantly improve productivity even without extra use of inputs.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (5) ◽  
pp. 1-52
Author(s):  
Lorenzo De Stefani ◽  
Erisa Terolli ◽  
Eli Upfal

We introduce Tiered Sampling , a novel technique for estimating the count of sparse motifs in massive graphs whose edges are observed in a stream. Our technique requires only a single pass on the data and uses a memory of fixed size M , which can be magnitudes smaller than the number of edges. Our methods address the challenging task of counting sparse motifs—sub-graph patterns—that have a low probability of appearing in a sample of M edges in the graph, which is the maximum amount of data available to the algorithms in each step. To obtain an unbiased and low variance estimate of the count, we partition the available memory into tiers (layers) of reservoir samples. While the base layer is a standard reservoir sample of edges, other layers are reservoir samples of sub-structures of the desired motif. By storing more frequent sub-structures of the motif, we increase the probability of detecting an occurrence of the sparse motif we are counting, thus decreasing the variance and error of the estimate. While we focus on the designing and analysis of algorithms for counting 4-cliques, we present a method which allows generalizing Tiered Sampling to obtain high-quality estimates for the number of occurrence of any sub-graph of interest, while reducing the analysis effort due to specific properties of the pattern of interest. We present a complete analytical analysis and extensive experimental evaluation of our proposed method using both synthetic and real-world data. Our results demonstrate the advantage of our method in obtaining high-quality approximations for the number of 4 and 5-cliques for large graphs using a very limited amount of memory, significantly outperforming the single edge sample approach for counting sparse motifs in large scale graphs.


Geosciences ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 174
Author(s):  
Marco Emanuele Discenza ◽  
Carlo Esposito ◽  
Goro Komatsu ◽  
Enrico Miccadei

The availability of high-quality surface data acquired by recent Mars missions and the development of increasingly accurate methods for analysis have made it possible to identify, describe, and analyze many geological and geomorphological processes previously unknown or unstudied on Mars. Among these, the slow and large-scale slope deformational phenomena, generally known as Deep-Seated Gravitational Slope Deformations (DSGSDs), are of particular interest. Since the early 2000s, several studies were conducted in order to identify and analyze Martian large-scale gravitational processes. Similar to what happens on Earth, these phenomena apparently occur in diverse morpho-structural conditions on Mars. Nevertheless, the difficulty of directly studying geological, structural, and geomorphological characteristics of the planet makes the analysis of these phenomena particularly complex, leaving numerous questions to be answered. This paper reports a synthesis of all the known studies conducted on large-scale deformational processes on Mars to date, in order to provide a complete and exhaustive picture of the phenomena. After the synthesis of the literature studies, the specific characteristics of the phenomena are analyzed, and the remaining main open issued are described.


Lab on a Chip ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Simchi ◽  
Jason Riordon ◽  
Jae Bem You ◽  
Yihe Wang ◽  
Sa Xiao ◽  
...  

A 3D-structured sperm selection device is presented that achieves both high selectivity and high yield via thousands of parallel channels. The device significantly outperforms the best clinical practice by selecting ∼100 000 of higher-quality sperm.


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