Distinct Scenes Research Articles

Spatiotemporal dynamics and transformation of the Parana State coastline: A 34-year analysis using RS, GIS, and machine learning

The coastal zone is a critical and vibrant area within coastal cities. Analyzing the changes in the coastal zone of Parana State helps determine the spatiotemporal evolution patterns and driving forces of this region, providing guidance for resource protection and utilization. This study employs remote sensing (RS), Geographic Information System (GIS), and Machine Learning techniques, using Landsat data sets with eight distinct scenes from 1990 to 2024, to extract and analyze the coastline. Specifically, methodologies such as Shoreline Extraction, the Coastline Diversity Index (CDI), and the Coastline Utilization Index (CUI) were applied to assess the coastline's characteristics. The spatiotemporal characteristics of the coastline development in Parana are meticulously examined to ensure accuracy. The findings reveal that: 1) Over the past 34 years, the coastline of Parana State has shown a consistent increasing trend. Natural coastlines have been declining by 45% annually, while artificial coastlines have been increasing by approximately 55% annually. 2) The nature of the shoreline is transitioning from natural to sea-reclamation, engineering-enhanced, and degraded forest. 3) The coastline changes have occurred in three phases: The Built-up Land phase, the Port Petrochemical phase, and the Reducing Coastal Erosion phase. Significant shoreline extension is observed near both biological and ecological coasts. 4) The primary factors influencing the coastline alterations in Parana State include natural forces, human activities, and regional policies. These insights into the spatiotemporal dynamics of the Parana coastline can inform better coastal management and conservation strategies.

Attention deployment in natural scenes: Higher-order scene statistics rather than semantics modulate the N2pc component.

Which properties of a natural scene affect visual search? We consider the alternative hypotheses that low-level statistics, higher-level statistics, semantics, or layout affect search difficulty in natural scenes. Across three experiments (n=20 each), we used four different backgrounds that preserve distinct scene properties: (a) natural scenes (all experiments); (b) 1/f noise (pink noise, which preserves only low-level statistics and was used in Experiments1 and 2); (c) textures that preserve low-level and higher-level statistics but not semantics or layout (Experiments2 and 3); and (d) inverted (upside-down) scenes that preserve statistics and semantics but not layout (Experiment2). We included "split scenes" that contained different backgrounds left and right of the midline (Experiment 1, natural/noise; Experiment 3, natural/texture). Participants searched for a Gabor patch that occurred at one of six locations (all experiments). Reaction times were faster for targets on noise and slower on inverted images, compared to natural scenes and textures. The N2pc component of the event-related potential, a marker of attentional selection, had a shorter latency and a higher amplitude for targets in noise than for all other backgrounds. The background contralateral to the target had an effect similar to that on the target side: noise led to faster reactions and shorter N2pc latencies than natural scenes, although we observed no difference in N2pc amplitude. There were no interactions between the target side and the non-target side. Together, this shows that-at least when searching simple targets without own semantic content-natural scenes are more effective distractors than noise and that this results from higher-order statistics rather than from semantics or layout.

Theta and alpha oscillations in human hippocampus and medial parietal cortex support the formation of location-based representations.

Our ability to navigate in a new environment depends on learning new locations. Mental representations of locations are quickly accessible during navigation and allow us to know where we are regardless of our current viewpoint. Recent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) research using pattern classification has shown that these location-based representations emerge in the retrosplenial cortex and parahippocampal gyrus, regions theorized to be critically involved in spatial navigation. However, little is currently known about the oscillatory dynamics that support the formation of location-based representations. We used magnetoencephalogram (MEG) recordings to investigate region-specific oscillatory activity in a task where participants could form location-based representations. Participants viewed videos showing that two perceptually distinct scenes (180° apart) belonged to the same location. This "overlap" video allowed participants to bind the two distinct scenes together into a more coherent location-based representation. Participants also viewed control "non-overlap" videos where two distinct scenes from two different locations were shown, where no location-based representation could be formed. In a post-video behavioral task, participants successfully matched the two viewpoints shown in the overlap videos, but not the non-overlap videos, indicating they successfully learned the locations in the overlap condition. Comparing oscillatory activity between the overlap and non-overlap videos, we found greater theta and alpha/beta power during the overlap relative to non-overlap videos, specifically at time-points when we expected scene integration to occur. These oscillations localized to regions in the medial parietal cortex (precuneus and retrosplenial cortex) and the medial temporal lobe, including the hippocampus. Therefore, we find that theta and alpha/beta oscillations in the hippocampus and medial parietal cortex are likely involved in the formation of location-based representations.

Pupil-linked arousal correlates with neural activity prior to sensorimotor decisions

Objective. Sensorimotor decisions require the brain to process external information and combine it with relevant knowledge prior to actions. In this study, we explore the neural predictors of motor actions in a novel, realistic driving task designed to study decisions while driving. Approach. Through a spatiospectral assessment of functional connectivity during the premotor period, we identified the organization of visual cortex regions of interest into a distinct scene processing network. Additionally, we identified a motor action selection network characterized by coherence between the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). Main results. We show that steering behavior can be predicted from oscillatory power in the visual cortex, DLPFC, and ACC. Power during the premotor periods (specific to the theta and beta bands) correlates with pupil-linked arousal and saccade duration. Significance. We interpret our findings in the context of network-level correlations with saccade-related behavior and show that the DLPFC is a key node in arousal circuitry and in sensorimotor decisions.

Mapping urban scenescapes of ethnicity: a study of Tibetan cultural scenes in downtown Chengdu, China

ABSTRACT Urban scenescapes are significantly influenced by cultural groups representing different ethnicities. In order to foster a cohesive and inclusive urban environment, it is crucial to comprehend the scale, type, and distribution of scenes associated with ethnicity. With the aim of exploring Tibetan cultural scenescapes in Chinese cities, this study employed the theory of scenes to develop a socio-spatial research method. By focusing on the five downtown districts of Chengdu as the study area, the study evaluated the effectiveness of urban facilities in expressing Tibetan culture and delineated the scenescapes related to Tibetan ethnicity in the designated region. This study’s findings indicate the following: 1) different urban facilities exhibited notable variation in their cultural performance; 2) currently, seven distinct scene clusters showcase Tibetan culture in downtown Chengdu; 3) these scene clusters can be categorised into three types. Based on the findings, this study has proposed strategies for planning scene clusters and designing facilities, with the overarching objective of fostering an inclusive and multicultural urban environment.

Bag of World Anchors for Instant Large-Scale Localization.

In this work, we present a novel scene description to perform large-scale localization using only geometric constraints. Our work extends compact world anchors with a search data structure to efficiently perform localization and pose estimation of mobile augmented reality devices across multiple platforms (eg., hololens, ipad). The algorithm uses a bag-of-words approach to characterize distinct scenes (eg., rooms). Since the individual scene representations rely on compact geometric (rather than appearance-based) features, the resulting search structure is very lightweight and fast, lending itself to deployment on mobile devices. We present a set of experiments demonstrating the accuracy, performance and scalability of our novel localization method. In addition, we describe several use cases demonstrating how efficient cross-platform localization facilitates sharing of augmented reality experiences.

A virtual reality paradigm with dynamic scene stimuli for use in memory research.

Episodic memory may essentially be memory for one's place within a temporally unfolding scene from a first-person perspective. Given this, pervasively used static stimuli may only capture one small part of episodic memory. A promising approach for advancing the study of episodic memory is immersing participants within varying scenes from a first-person perspective. We present a pool of distinct scene stimuli for use in virtual environments and a paradigm that is implementable across varying levels of immersion on multiple virtual reality (VR) platforms and adaptable to studying various aspects of scene and episodic memory. In our task, participants are placed within a series of virtual environments from a first-person perspective and guided through a virtual tour of scenes during a study phase and a test phase. In the test phase, some scenes share a spatial layout with studied scenes; others are completely novel. In three experiments with varying degrees of immersion, we measure scene recall, scene familiarity-detection during recall failure, the subjective experience of déjà vu, the ability to predict the next turn on a tour, the subjective sense of being able to predict the next turn on a tour, and the factors that influence memory search and the inclination to generate candidate recollective information. The level of first-person immersion mattered to multiple facets of episodic memory. The paradigm presents a useful means of advancing mechanistic understanding of how memory operates in realistic dynamic scene environments, including in combination with cognitive neuroscience methods such as functional magnetic resonance imaging and electrophysiology.

An End-to-End Localizer for Long-Term Topological Localization in Large-Scale Changing Environments

Long-term localization is an essential task for unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), however, it suffers from scene changes due to various environmental conditions (e.g., lighting conditions, seasonal shifts, viewpoint changes or occlusions). In this paper, we propose a novel end-to-end localizer for robust long-term localization in changing environments. Firstly, a lightweight two-head place classification network is proposed, in which a place is regarded as a category. Considering seasonal changes lead to severe variants of local structures, large-sized filters in the first layer and a large-scale average pooling strategy are designed to focus regional context features of scenes. Motivated by the reward and punishment mechanisms in reinforcement learning, an incremental learning strategy is proposed to distinguish distinctive scenes for robust topological localization. Extensive experiments tested on three datasets whose collecting periods are over a year are utilized to validate the feasibility and performance of our method.

Repair: A New History

It’s now twenty-five years since Eve Sedgwick put into question suspicion’s monopoly over the critical landscape with the first version of her essay, ‘Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading, or, You’re So Paranoid You Probably Think This Essay Is About You’.1 Against the 1970s and 1980s ‘critical habits’ of paranoia and suspicion, Sedgwick proposed repair: an orientation and a tendency that involved pursuing not just relations between an abstracted subject and object, but also the modes of knowledge, and emotional experiences, of the particular subject involved in the critical relation: the ‘seeker, knower, or teller’.2 Reparative reading has had its critics, many of them writing in the vein of Lauren Berlant’s warning, in Cruel Optimism, against the ‘overvaluation of reparative thought’ as part of a ‘larger overvaluation of a certain mode of virtuously intentional, self-reflective personhood’.3 Nonetheless, Patricia Stuelke’s The Ruse of Repair is written from a present-day context in which debates over repair’s value take as given that it has usurped suspicion as the dominant mode of US literary scholarship. Against what appears to be this naturalisation of repair, one of Stuelke’s central aims is to return us to the critical and political events of the 1970s and 1980s – the historical moment in which Sedgwick was developing her critique of paranoia – in order to understand the sea-change. The book’s five chapters attend to distinct scenes in which the critical tendency to repair coalesced with tendencies in activism, indicating the imbrication of each with the action and rhetoric of the state. These are: the US feminist sex wars; the black feminist imaginary of the Caribbean; Central American solidarity movements; the rise of Master of Fine Arts (MFA) programmes; and the audio-sphere of the US invasion of Panama. From such concentrated moments of discourse, Stuelke sets out to illustrate that the reparative turn should be understood as responsive to and produced by the ideological landscape of neoliberalism and its affective episteme: its casting of ‘knowledge, self, and world in the language of emotion and feeling’.4

Older adults can use memory for distinctive objects, but not distinctive scenes, to rescue associative memory deficits

ABSTRACT Associative memory deficits in aging are frequently characterized by false recognition of novel stimulus associations, particularly when stimuli are similar. Introducing distinctive stimuli, therefore, can help guide item differentiation in memory and can further our understanding of how age-related brain changes impact behavior. How older adults use different types of distinctive information to distinguish overlapping events in memory and to avoid false associative recognition is still unknown. To test this, we manipulated the distinctiveness of items from two stimulus categories, scenes and objects, across three conditions: (1) distinct scenes paired with similar objects, (2) similar scenes paired with distinct objects, and (3) similar scenes paired with similar objects. Young and older adults studied scene-object pairs and then made both remember/know judgments toward single items as well as associative memory judgments to old and novel scene-object pairs (“Were these paired together?”). Older adults showed intact single item recognition of scenes and objects, regardless of whether those objects and scenes were similar or distinct. In contrast, relative to younger adults, older adults showed elevated false recognition for scene-object pairs, even when the scenes were distinct. These age-related associative memory deficits, however, disappeared if the pair contained an object that was visually distinct. In line with neural evidence that hippocampal functioning and scene processing decline with age, these results suggest that older adults can rely on memory for distinct objects, but not for distinct scenes, to distinguish between memories with overlapping features.

Detecting Object-Level Scene Changes in Images with Viewpoint Differences Using Graph Matching

We developed a robust object-level change detection method that could capture distinct scene changes in an image pair with viewpoint differences. To achieve this, we designed a network that could detect object-level changes in an image pair. In contrast to previous studies, we considered the change detection task as a graph matching problem for two object graphs that were extracted from each image. By virtue of this, the proposed network more robustly detected object-level changes with viewpoint differences than existing pixel-level approaches. In addition, the network did not require pixel-level change annotations, which have been required in previous studies. Specifically, the proposed network extracted the objects in each image using an object detection module and then constructed correspondences between the objects using an object matching module. Finally, the network detected objects that appeared or disappeared in a scene using the correspondences that were obtained between the objects. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed network, we created a synthetic dataset of images that contained object-level changes. In experiments on the created dataset, the proposed method improved the F1 score of conventional methods by more than 40%. Our synthetic dataset will be available publicly online.

International weapons trafficking from the United States of America: a crime script analysis of the means of transportation

ABSTRACT Using a crime script analysis, this research aims to document how smugglers operate when they traffic arms from the US to foreign countries. Our study is based on an analysis of 66 cases that have been judged by US courts (2008–2017). The criminal activities involved are detailed in a series of distinct scenes, according to Cornish’s theory. Five scripts have been developed, based on the means of transport used by the traffickers: road transport, commercial airlines, postal services, freight transport and crossing the border on foot. Results suggest that most criminals prefer to operate according to an established modus operandi. This commonality suggests that the potential exists for the professionalisation of this criminal activity. Indeed, offenders are likely to maintain it to reduce effort and risk. Complementary sources of information would help to enrich the approach proposed in this study and to address the challenges posed by complex cases.

Bebês, materialidade e objetos técnicos na primeira infância no brasil e na frança

The main objective of this work is to discuss the materiality of relationships and experiences of infants in early childhood education, based on a dialogue with the Brazilian curriculum guidelines for Early Childhood Education in 3 municipalities in the state of São Paulo, and with the concepts of technical objects and individuation developed by Simondon. This is a qualitative research that uses bibliographic and documentary research as a methodology and the production of cartographies of scenes in which relationships between babies and objects are observed. The cartography used here is inspired by the records developed by Fernand Deligny (2015) and its appropriation for research with babies, as proposed by Julia Oliveira (2016). Research was carried out on this topic in the field of education, going through scientific articles and guiding documents for early childhood education. The authors mapped the paths and affections of babies and their relationships with objects in two distinct scenes that were collected within the scope of a collective project. It is a work that contributes to early childhood education in general and, specifically, to baby studies (Infantology, Babyhood studies).

Inscribing Bodily Narratives

There is no question that the COVID-19 pandemic has turned our very conceptions of privacy and publicity upside down. Not surprisingly, this inversion is most crystallized in spaces of leisure that are domesticized more and more as our only available access points to city life in pandemic times. Authors discuss how public parks have always been domestic spaces by focusing on the Feast of Spring and Flowers that took place at Gülhane Park, Istanbul between 1950-60. Accordingly, the Feast exemplifies how forms of mass entertainment can turn into means of biopower that requires and legitimizes the detailed narrativization, governance and supervision of daily life and therefore becomes a public stage, disseminating behavioral norms and bodily dispositions as idealized by the state. In light of articles, news items, and visuals collected from period newspapers and periodical archives, the four-fold biopolitical structure that operated through the Feast is revealed by means of four distinct scenes: 1) image of accessibility, taste, health, and pleasure constructed in public imagination and inscribed into the collective memory of the park; 2) unspoken scenarios of everyday life around how the park should be appropriated; 3) idealization of bodily repertories that centralized bodily health and proper identification with specific gender performances; and 4) construction of idealized forms of agency for women, children, and families. In addition to these regulatory practices dominating over the collective body of the public, authors also account for some instantaneous acts of defiance performed by various members of the populace, which highlight the possibility of subverting the general functioning of the Feast, at the same time articulating the possibility of an inquiry into ‘the right to the city’.

Highly similar and competing visual scenes lead to diminished object but not spatial detail in memory drawings

ABSTRACT Drawings of scenes made from memory can be highly detailed and spatially accurate, with little information not found in the observed stimuli. While prior work has focused on studying memory for distinct scenes, less is known about the specific detail recalled when episodes are highly similar and competing. Here, participants (N = 30) were asked to study and recall eight complex scene images using a drawing task. Importantly, four of these images were exemplars of different scene categories, while the other four images were from the same scene category. The resulting 213 drawings were judged by 1764 online scorers for a comprehensive set of measures, including scene and object diagnosticity, spatial information, and fixation and pen movement behaviour. We observed that competition in memory resulted in diminished object detail, with drawings and objects that were less diagnostic of their original image. However, repeated exemplars of a category did not result in differences in spatial memory accuracy, and there were no differences in fixations during study or pen movements during recall. These results reveal that while drawings for distinct categories of scenes can be highly detailed and accurate, drawings for scenes from repeated categories, creating competition in memory, show reduced object detail.

The Great Gatsby: A Graphic Novel AdaptationNick: A NovelEl gran GatsbyStepping Out with Scott and Zelda: Touring the Fitzgeralds’ Montgomery

The Great Gatsby: A Graphic Novel AdaptationNick: A NovelEl gran GatsbyStepping Out with Scott and Zelda: Touring the Fitzgeralds’ Montgomery

Courtier and Seeing-Man: Differences in Europeans’ Roles in East Asian and Central American Societies as Reflected through Maps

ABSTRACT This paper analyses the maps of East Asia and Central America drawn by Europeans between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, and illustrates the distinctions in the roles of Europeans in these two civilizations through the investigation of cartographic differences. In the initial stage of Europeans’ entry into East Asia and Central America, the local maps have both the characteristics and techniques of the outsiders and the insiders, reflecting the distinct scene of the encounter of civilizations. In the process of localization, the map system of East Asia deconstructed European cartography, the original purpose of early Europeans entering China was digested by Chinese society, and their role changed from missionary to royal courtier. European cartography deconstructed and colonized the traditional cartography of Central America, which corresponds to the history that Europeans gradually became the rulers of indigenous people in real life.

Exploring human-nature interactions in national parks with social media photographs and computer vision.

Understanding the activities and preferences of visitors is crucial for managing protected areas and planning conservation strategies. Conservation culturomics promotes the use of user-generated online content in conservation science. Geotagged social media content is a unique source of in situ information on human presence and activities in nature. Photographs posted on social media platforms are a promising source of information, but analyzing large volumes of photographs manually remains laborious. We examined the application of state-of-the-art computer-vision methods to studying human-nature interactions. We used semantic clustering, scene classification, and object detection to automatically analyze photographs taken in Finnish national parks by domestic and international visitors. Our results showed that human-nature interactions can be extracted from user-generated photographs with computer vision. The different methods complemented each other by revealing broad visual themes related to level of the data set, landscape photogeneity, and human activities. Geotagged photographs revealed distinct regional profiles for national parks (e.g., preferences in landscapes and activities), which are potentially useful in park management. Photographic content differed between domestic and international visitors, which indicates differences in activities and preferences. Information extracted automatically from photographs can help identify preferences among diverse visitor groups, which can be used to create profiles of national parks for conservation marketing and to support conservation strategies that rely on public acceptance. The application of computer-vision methods to automatic content analysis of photographs should be explored further in conservation culturomics, particularly in combination with rich metadata available on social media platforms.

Tracking the Emergence of Location-based Spatial Representations in Human Scene-Selective Cortex.

Scene-selective regions of the human brain form allocentric representations of locations in our environment. These representations are independent of heading direction and allow us to know where we are regardless of our direction of travel. However, we know little about how these location-based representations are formed. Using fMRI representational similarity analysis and linear mixed models, we tracked the emergence of location-based representations in scene-selective brain regions. We estimated patterns of activity for two distinct scenes, taken before and after participants learnt they were from the same location. During a learning phase, we presented participants with two types of panoramic videos: (1) an overlap video condition displaying two distinct scenes (0° and 180°) from the same location and (2) a no-overlap video displaying two distinct scenes from different locations (which served as a control condition). In the parahippocampal cortex (PHC) and retrosplenial cortex (RSC), representations of scenes from the same location became more similar to each other only after they had been shown in the overlap condition, suggesting the emergence of viewpoint-independent location-based representations. Whereas these representations emerged in the PHC regardless of task performance, RSC representations only emerged for locations where participants could behaviorally identify the two scenes as belonging to the same location. The results suggest that we can track the emergence of location-based representations in the PHC and RSC in a single fMRI experiment. Further, they support computational models that propose the RSC plays a key role in transforming viewpoint-independent representations into behaviorally relevant representations of specific viewpoints.

Evaluating the Magnitude of VIIRS Out-of-Band Response for Varying Earth Spectra

Prior evaluations of Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) out-of-band (OOB) contribution to total signal revealed specification exceedance for multiple key solar reflective and infrared bands that are of interest to the passive remote-sensing community. These assessments are based on laboratory measurements, and although highly useful, do not necessarily translate to OOB contribution with consideration of true Earth-reflected or Earth-emitted spectra, especially given the significant spectral variation of Earth targets. That is, although the OOB contribution of VIIRS is well known, it is not a uniform quantity applicable across all scene types. As such, this article quantifies OOB contribution for multiple relative spectral response characterization versions across the S-NPP, NOAA-20, and JPSS-2 VIIRS sensors as a function of varied SCIAMACHY- and IASI-measured hyperspectral Earth-reflected and Earth-emitted scenes. For instance, this paper reveals measured radiance variations of nearly 2% for the S-NPP VIIRS M5 (~0.67 μm) band, and up to 5.7% for certain VIIRS M9 (~1.38 μm) and M13 (~4.06 μm) bands that are owed solely to the truncation of OOB response for a set of spectrally distinct Earth scenes. If unmitigated, e.g., by only considering the published extended bandpass, such variations may directly translate to scene-dependent scaling discrepancies or subtle errors in vegetative index determinations. Therefore, knowledge of OOB effects is especially important for inter-calibration or environmental retrieval efforts that rely on specific or multiple categories of Earth scene spectra, and also to researchers whose products rely on the impacted channels. Additionally, instrument teams may find this evaluation method useful for pre-launch characterization of OOB contribution with specific Earth targets in mind rather than relying on general models.