Specific Objectives Research Articles

Heterogeneity in category recognition across the visual field.

Visual information emerging from the extrafoveal locations is important for visual search, saccadic eye movement control, and spatial attention allocation. Our everyday sensory experience with visual object categories varies across different parts of the visual field which may result in location-contingent variations in visual object recognition. We used a body, animal body, and chair two-forced choice object category recognition task to investigate this possibility. Animal body and chair images with various levels of visual ambiguity were presented at the fovea and different extrafoveal locations across the vertical and horizontal meridians. We found heterogeneous body and chair category recognition across the visual field. Specifically, while the recognition performance of the body and chair presented at the fovea were similar, it varied across different extrafoveal locations. The largest difference was observed when the body and chair images were presented at the lower-left and upper-right visual fields, respectively. The lower/upper visual field bias of the body/chair recognition was particularly observed in low/high stimulus visual signals. Finally, when subjects' performances were adjusted for a potential location-contingent decision bias in category recognition by subtracting the category detection in full noise condition, location-dependent category recognition was observed only for the body category. These results suggest heterogeneous body recognition bias across the visual field potentially due to more frequent exposure of the lower visual field to body stimuli.Significance Statement Our study reveals that visual object recognition exhibits notable variations across different visual field regions, with a pronounced bias in recognizing body images in the lower visual field. This heterogeneity in recognition performance suggests that the frequent exposure of certain visual field areas to specific object categories, such as bodies, influences our visual processing abilities. These findings highlight the importance of considering spatial attention and saccadic eye movements in understanding visual object recognition and have potential implications for designing more effective visual information displays and interfaces.

Prompt-and-Transfer: Dynamic Class-aware Enhancement for Few-shot Segmentation.

For more efficient generalization to unseen domains (classes), most Few-shot Segmentation (FSS) would directly exploit pre-trained encoders and only fine-tune the decoder, especially in the current era of large models. However, such fixed feature encoders tend to be class-agnostic, inevitably activating objects that are irrelevant to the target class. In contrast, humans can effortlessly focus on specific objects in the line of sight. This paper mimics the visual perception pattern of human beings and proposes a novel and powerful prompt-driven scheme, called "Prompt and Transfer" (PAT), which constructs a dynamic class-aware prompting paradigm to tune the encoder for focusing on the interested object (target class) in the current task. Three key points are elaborated to enhance the prompting: 1) Cross-modal linguistic information is introduced to initialize prompts for each task. 2) Semantic Prompt Transfer (SPT) that precisely transfers the class-specific semantics within the images to prompts. 3) Part Mask Generator (PMG) that works in conjunction with SPT to adaptively generate different but complementary part prompts for different individuals. Surprisingly, PAT achieves competitive performance on 4 different tasks including standard FSS, Cross-domain FSS (e.g., CV, medical, and remote sensing domains), Weak-label FSS, and Zero-shot Segmentation, setting new state-of-the-arts on 11 benchmarks.

The cognitive critical brain: modulation of criticality in perception-related cortical regions

The constantly evolving world necessitates a brain that can swiftly adapt and respond to rapid changes. The brain, conceptualized as a system performing cognitive functions through collective neural activity, has been shown to maintain a resting state characterized by near-critical neural dynamics, positioning it to effectively respond to external stimuli. However, how near-criticality is dynamically modulated during task performance remains insufficiently understood. In this study, we utilized the prototypical Ising Hamiltonian model to investigate the modulation of near-criticality in neural activity at the cortical subsystem level during perceptual tasks. Specifically, we simulated 2D-Ising models in silico using structural MRI data and empirically estimated the system's state in vivo using functional MRI data. We first replicated previous findings that the resting state is typically near-critical as captured by the Ising model. Importantly, we observed heterogeneous changes in criticality across cortical subsystems during a naturalistic movie-watching task, with visual and auditory regions fine-tuned closer to criticality. A more fine-grained analysis of the ventral temporal cortex during an object recognition task further revealed that only regions selectively responsive to a specific object category were tuned closer to criticality when processing that object category. In conclusion, our study provides empirical evidence from the domain of perception supporting the cognitive critical brain hypothesis that modulating the criticality of subsystems within the brain's hierarchical and modular organization may be a fundamental mechanism for achieving diverse cognitive functions.

Tools for planning large-scale measurement surveys for the assessment of indoor environmental pollutants: the case of radon

Risks from indoor pollutants require the implementation of effective policies to prevent and reduce exposure. To take decisions and actions, competent authorities need relevant information. In the case of indoor radon exposure, surveys are carried out by installing detectors in buildings (homes, workplaces) that measure radon concentration in rooms. Conducting national or large-scale surveys in buildings requires addressing both technical complexities of implementation and economic costs. In order to support the implementation of large-scale radon surveys, procedure and tools are described for defining the sample size of buildings to be measured according to available resources, for planning the sampling of buildings in relation to the specific objectives of the survey, and for obtaining a tool for management and control of sample recruitment and installation of radon detectors in buildings, reducing sources of bias. A particular application is shown for the case of the EU radon regulation.

Research on the Causes, Risks, and Countermeasures of Local Debt Problems

This study aims to explore the causes, risks, and corresponding risk response strategies of local government debt problems. In the case analysis, the scale of local debt in Ningbo is taken as the specific research object. Although local governments use debt financing for infrastructure construction to promote economic growth in the short term, it also brings potential debt risks. By analyzing the scale of local debt and governance policies in Ningbo, this paper finds that Ningbo is relatively reasonable in debt management and its debt risks are generally controllable. Ningbo has successfully promoted municipal construction and economic development by establishing financing platforms and issuing government bonds. Meanwhile, the Ningbo Municipal Government has strengthened debt information disclosure and external rating management and improved the transparency of debt management. The research results provide a reference for other local governments, emphasizing the importance of rationally planning debt structure and controlling debt risks to achieve sustainable development of the regional economy.

Supervaluationism about Vague Names Cannot Account for Statements about Those Names

Vague names, like “Everest” and “Belle Epoque” seem to refer to objects without clear boundaries. Supervaluationism claims that this vagueness is a feature of language, not of the objects referred to; vagueness in names is just ambiguity between many possible referents. This general idea admits of two more specific versions. Both give similar treatments of standard uses of vague names, but have very different results for other cases, such as reference achieved by descriptions including mentioned names. Considering two examples, I show neither variant of supervaluationism can account for the truth of all types of sentences about those names themselves. If I am right that these types exhaust supervaluationism, the theory is shown to be false. This problem closely resembles others in the super-valuationist literature about disquotation failure for truth. Treatments of vague truth and vague reference come apart though, and I show that the two problems are different enough that none of the popular solutions will succeed for reference. I consider—and reject—several specific objections, and two more general ways to recover supervaluationism following my arguments. I conclude that supervaluationism is at best a useful formalism for some kinds of vagueness reference, but fails as a general account.

A “Pipeline”-Based Approach for Automated Construction of Geoscience Knowledge Graphs

With the development of technology, Earth Science has entered a new era. Continuous research has generated a large amount of Earth Science data, including a significant amount of semi-structured and unstructured data, which contain information about locations, geographical concepts, geological characteristics of mineral deposits, and relationships. Efficient management of these Earth Science data is crucial for the development of digital earth systems, rational planning of resource industries, and resource security. By representing entities, relationships, and attributes through graph structures, knowledge graphs capture and present concepts and facts about the real world, facilitating efficient data management. However, due to the highly specialized and complex nature of Earth Science data and disciplinary differences, the methods used to construct general-purpose knowledge graphs cannot be directly applied to building knowledge graphs in the field of geological science. Therefore, this paper summarizes a “pipeline” approach to constructing an Earth Science knowledge graph in order to clarify the complete construction process and reduce barriers between data and technology. This approach divides the construction of the Earth Science knowledge graph into two parts and designs functional modules under each part to specify the construction process of the knowledge graph. In addition to proposing this approach, a knowledge graph of iron ore deposits is automatically constructed by integrating geographic and geological data related to iron ore deposits using deep learning techniques. The systematic approach presented in this paper reduces the threshold for constructing geological science knowledge graphs, provides methodological support for specific disciplines or research objects in Earth Science, and also lays the foundation for the construction of large-scale Earth Science knowledge graphs that combine crowdsourcing and expert decision-making, as well as the development of intelligent question-answering systems and intelligent decision-making systems covering the entire field of Earth Science.

Deep knowledge transfer powered ultrasonic guided wave damage monitoring under incomplete database scenarios: Theories, applications and challenges

Abstract Ultrasonic guided waves can travel long distances within the detected structures, which is of great significance for monitoring large complex engineering systems. However, the multimodal and dispersive properties of the specific research object making this promising whole structure monitoring difficult to interpret the signal mathematically and physically. With the development and maturity of deep learning and big data mining technologies, many scholars have noticed artificial intelligence algorithms such as deep learning can provide a new tool in ultrasonic guided wave signal processing, avoiding the mechanism analysis difficulties in the application of ultrasonic guided wave. But the integrity of structural state data sets has become a new pain point in engineering applications under this new approach, and how to apply the knowledge obtained from the existing data set to different but related fields through knowledge transfer in such cases begin to attract the attention of scholars and engineers. Although several systematic and valuable review articles on data-driven ultrasonic guided wave monitoring methods have been published, they only summarized relevant studies from the perspective of data-driven algorithms, ignoring the knowledge transfer process in practical application scenarios, and the intelligent ultrasonic guided wave monitoring methods based on knowledge transfer of incomplete sets are still lacking a comprehensive review. This paper focuses on the ultrasonic guided wave transfer monitoring technology when the training sample is missing, explores the feature correlation between samples in different domains, improves the transfer ability of the structural monitoring model under different conditions, and analyzes the ultrasonic guided wave intelligent monitoring methods for structural state under different sample missing conditions from three aspects: semi-supervised monitoring, multi-task transfer and cross-structure transfer. It is also expected to provide a new method and approach to solve the condition monitoring problems in other complex scenarios.

Relieving Overexposure in Information Diffusion Through a Budget Multi-stage Allocation

When information dissemination campaigns on Online Social Networking platforms are too aggressive, this can easily cause information overexposure. Overexposure can break through the psychological and physiological limits that the audience can tolerate, making it difficult for the audience to obtain reasonable cognitive concepts. For example, the overexposure of information referring to an object in a promotional campaign can lead to inflated expectations in individuals. Building on this, we introduce two indicators for individuals’ expectations and actual utility of the object and design a multi-stage triggered mechanism for seed individuals to explore the relieving overexposure problem in information diffusion. We build a multi-stage information diffusion model and characterize the evolution of individual expectations. We verify the hardness result of the relieving overexposure problem by budget multi-stage allocation, and the non-submodularity and non-monotonicity of the objective function. Addressing the non-monotonic and non-submodular set function, we provide a direct influence-oriented algorithm with a greedy approach. Extensive experiments are performed on four real networks to explore how model parameters and network properties affect the effects of multi-stage triggered strategies for seed individuals. Using the experiments, we found that the seed individual multi-stage incremental triggered strategy of dissemination campaign of information referring to an object shows better performance, and the lower the actual utility of the specific object, the more accurate the promotion strategy needs to be developed.

Development of an algorithm for constructing a model of light pollution at a location using high-resolution visible satellite images

Abstract. This article proposes a mathematical model for determining the relative level of light pollution in the night sky at a selected point in the area and the influence of a specific urban infrastructure object on it based on visible high-resolution satellite images. Statistical characteristics of the relative influence on light pollution of specific local objects were determined at an experimental local site. This model allows us to assess the degree of light pollution and its impact on various ecosystems, as well as develop strategies to reduce the negative impact of artificial lighting on nature.

Genesis and functions of the Late Bronze Age ash heaps in the Southern Trans-Urals in the context of new interdisciplinary research

In this article, we discuss the results of the study of ash heaps typical for the steppe belt of the Urals, Ka-zakhstan and Siberia. These are specific objects adjacent to settlements of the Middle and Late Bronze Age, their cultural layer contains archaeological finds and consists of loose soil similar in appearance to ash. However, de-bates about their nature and purpose use mainly archaeological arguments and very rarely involve interdiscipli-nary data. The study is focused on two ash heaps at the Bronze Age settlements in the Southern Trans-Urals — Streletskoye-1 and Chernorechye 2 (Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia). Both are located on the bank cliff, between the dwelling pits and the river; the time of their existence mainly belongs to the Alakul archaeological culture (18th–16th centuries BC). The stratigraphy and granulometric composition of soil samples, composition of ar-chaeobotanical remains, palynological, microbiomorphic, and soil-microbiological analyses, and assessment of biomarkers content have been carried out. It has been concluded that, according to a number of characteristics, ash heaps have a non-uniform nature of formation and differ both between themselves and in comparison with the previously studied ash heap at the fortified settlement of Stepnoye. The lower part of the ash heap of Streletskoye-1 is the soil accumulated during digging of semi-dwellings. The main volume of ash heaps layers was the result of plant biomass decomposition, but there are also markers of animal origin — keratin, cholesterol. No signs of ma-nure were found in the samples. The use of ash and combustion products has not been confirmed at these newly examined sites, as well as at the ash heap of Stepnoye. Both ash heaps were formed in more hydromorphic con-ditions than the Stepnoye. Taking into account the archaeological context of the ash heaps, it has been sug-gested that in ancient times these structures near settlements were mainly used to store hay for livestock, and occasionally as a place for butchering animal carcasses and processing bones for bone-carving. The wintering of livestock, some of which were kept in settlements, created the need for fodder to keep the animals alive. Despite many supplementary functions of ash heaps, which were used as working or dumping areas, this is perhaps the first time in the archaeological record that evidence has been found for haymaking and hay storage in the vicinity of pastoral settlements. Interdisciplinary research on the properties of ash heaps is a relatively new field, but it has already yielded interesting results that allow reasoned assumptions to be made about the construction and function of these sites.

A Reconstruction of Arguments on the Relationship Between Dreaming and Awakening in the Interpretations of Zhuangzi

In the interpretations of Zhuangzi, there are four levels to the relationship between dreaming and awakening: awakening is more realistic than dreaming, dreaming is more realistic than awakening, dreaming and awakening are equal, and there is no distinction between dreaming and awakening. From the view of the Chongxuan (重玄) School, 1. insisting that awakening is more realistic and cherishing life is attached to substantiality as a psychological intention to seek out a specific object; 2. insisting that dreaming is more realistic is attached to nihility as a cynical intention of desirelessness; 3. non-attachment to the distinction between dreaming and awakening as a false objectification of the mid-way (madhyamā-pratipad) is a first-order non-attachment and a new kind of self-deception to form a hidden meta-desire to transcend the two kinds of desires above; and 4. Chongxuan, as a second-order non-attachment of non-attachment, allows people to forget the distinction between dreaming and awakening. This topic has also been reflected upon or reinterpreted by ancient and modern philosophers and has a continuous impact on social reform in modern China.

Mechanical Design and Testing of Mobile Monitoring Units for Security Systems

Mobile monitoring systems are currently used in many applications related to environmental applications or the monitoring of health status. However, security monitoring systems are usually chosen for a specific object, area or perimeter. The main goal of our article is to present the mechanical design of mobile monitoring units. These units create the basis of a developed mobile monitoring security system, which can be applied to monitor any area of interest, even in demanding weather conditions, involving, for example, windiness or wide operational temperature ranges. Therefore, this article is focused on the mechanical design of mobile monitoring units, which are constructed not only so that they can withstand challenging environmental conditions, but also with regard to their simple transportation, manufacturing process and, if necessary, possible repairs. During the design, emphasis was also placed on the vibrations of the mobile monitoring units and their temperature dependence, because vibrations can significantly affect the correct functioning of the mobile monitoring security system and cause false alarm situations. To confirm the correctness of the simulation models, experiments were performed on the mobile monitoring unit prototypes.

On the Nature of Nostalgia: A Psychological Perspective

We raise issues about the philosophical claims made in this article regarding the nature of nostalgia. Drawing on psychological research, we contend that nostalgia is rooted in memory rather than time, is directed toward specific objects rather than being object-free, is predominantly positive rather than a form of mourning, and is focused on the past rather than the present or future.

БЕЛЕЖКИ ВЪВ ВЪЗРОЖДЕНСКИТЕ СТАРОПЕЧАТНИ КНИГИ НА РЕГИОНАЛНА БИБЛИОТЕКА „СТИЛИЯН ЧИЛИНГИРОВ“ – ШУМЕН

The publication draws attention to one of the features of the old printed book - the marginal texts that are found on its empty fields and which make each copy unique. A specific object of research are the notes in the Renaissance National Revival old print collection of the Regional Library “Stiliyan Chilingirov” – Shumen. The most common elements are presented – personal names of owner, buyer or seller; household-related information; calculations; the price of the book or other items and services; donation information. The author draws attention to particular some more specific cases and development trends are considered. A suggestion has been made about the possible National Revival Renaissance personalities who could be behind the names written in the notes. In conclusion, is noted the significance of the old printed book and the marginal texts in it for the local and national history are outlined.

Exploring Graduates’ Attitudes on the Learning Environment and Institutional Development: A Case Study Based on Mixed Method

In the field of psychology, an attitude is commonly understood as a set of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses directed toward a specific object or situation. Guided by the fundamental principles of functional theory, this study aimed to explore graduates’ perceptions of their institution’s learning environment (LE) and institutional development (ID). The primary objective of this study was to assess graduates’ views on these two aspects. To achieve the objective, the study employed an exploratory and descriptive research design. A case study approach was utilized for qualitative data collection and subsequently analyzed thematically. For the quantitative aspect, statistical techniques such as cross-tabulations and chi-square tests were applied. The research was conducted using a convergent parallel model, combining both qualitative and quantitative methods. The findings revealed that graduates held generally unfavorable attitudes toward certain aspects of the learning environment, including library services, internship and placement opportunities, and teaching pedagogies. Notably, graduates from the BA program expressed more negative attitudes compared to those from other programs. Based on their feedback, graduates recommended that institutions should implement ICT-based teaching and learning activities, reduce external interference in educational processes, and invest in the capacity development of faculty members. Additionally, they suggested that the institution should provide ICT equipment to foster a technology-friendly environment, enhance library services by acquiring more books, and offer training in banking, insurance, and cooperative sectors to benefit students. The study’s conclusions provide valuable insights into graduates’ attitudes toward the learning environment and institutional development, providing clearer guidance for the management committee and administration of the CJMC. Furthermore, the findings offer important context for understanding the graduates’ suggestions and willingness to support institutional improvements.

RESMatch: Referring expression segmentation in a semi-supervised manner

Referring Expression segmentation (RES), a task that involves localizing specific instance-level objects on the basis of free-form linguistic descriptions, has emerged as a crucial frontier in human–AI interactions. It demands an intricate understanding of both the visual and textual contexts, and often requires extensive training data. This paper introduces RESMatch, the first semi-supervised learning (SSL) approach for RES aimed at reducing reliance on exhaustive data annotation. Moreover, our proposed RESMatch can leverage the abundance of image–text paired data available in the current era of training large models, resulting in an improved RES task performance without the need for costly semantic annotation, as evidenced by our experimental results. Moreover, although existing SSL techniques are effective in image segmentation, we find that they fall short in RES. Facing challenges such as the comprehension of free-form linguistic descriptions and the variability in object attributes, RESMatch introduces a trifecta of adaptations: revised strong perturbation, text augmentation, and adjustments for pseudolabel quality and strong–weak supervision. RESMatch has demonstrated its effectiveness by achieving state-of-the-art (SOTA) results in various experimental settings. This pioneering work lays the groundwork for future research in semi-supervised learning for referring expression segmentation.

Real-Time Environmental Contour Construction Using 3D LiDAR and Image Recognition with Object Removal

In recent years, due to the significant advancements in hardware sensors and software technologies, 3D environmental point cloud modeling has gradually been applied in the automation industry, autonomous vehicles, and construction engineering. With the high-precision measurements of 3D LiDAR, its point clouds can clearly reflect the geometric structure and features of the environment, thus enabling the creation of high-density 3D environmental point cloud models. However, due to the enormous quantity of high-density 3D point clouds, storing and processing these 3D data requires a considerable amount of memory and computing time. In light of this, this paper proposes a real-time 3D point cloud environmental contour modeling technique. The study uses the point cloud distribution from the 3D LiDAR body frame point cloud to establish structured edge features, thereby creating a 3D environmental contour point cloud map. Additionally, unstable objects such as vehicles will appear during the mapping process; these specific objects will be regarded as not part of the stable environmental model in this study. To address this issue, the study will further remove these objects from the 3D point cloud through image recognition and LiDAR heterogeneous matching, resulting in a higher quality 3D environmental contour point cloud map. This 3D environmental contour point cloud not only retains the recognizability of the environmental structure but also solves the problems of massive data storage and processing. Moreover, the method proposed in this study can achieve real-time realization without requiring the 3D point cloud to be organized in a structured order, making it applicable to unorganized 3D point cloud LiDAR sensors. Finally, the feasibility of the proposed method in practical applications is also verified through actual experimental data.

Image quality safety model for the safety of the intended functionality in highly automated agricultural machines

Achieving safe and reliable environmental perception is crucial for the success of highly automated or even autonomous agricultural machinery. However, developing such a system is challenging due to the inherent limitations of perception sensors. In certain conditions, these sensors may fail to capture accurate data, leading to erroneous perceptions of the environment and potentially compromising safety. Monitoring the functional insufficiencies of the measurement data is crucial for ensuring the safety and reliability of perception systems.This article introduces ISO standards, which provide guidelines for ensuring functional safety in highly automated mobile machines and vehicles. It also proposes an Image Quality Safety Model (IQSM) for monitoring the safety of the intended functionality in perception systems. The IQSM estimates the confidence level with which a camera can safely perform a specific object detection task. If the confidence level falls below a predefined threshold, the IQSM can trigger actions, alert operators, and prevent potential safety hazards. The IQSM exhibits remarkable performance, achieving a validation accuracy of about 90%, demonstrating its ability to effectively distinguish the safety of the intended functionality under a variety of image quality conditions.

Travelers and travels – historical-cultural and spiritual forces

Ever since his appearance, man has been driven by various needs to move beyond his comfort zone, his actions and activities often requiring him to travel around. Thus, he becomes a traveler in search of food, living space, conquest of new territories, curiosity, pilgrimages, pleasure, relaxation, and entertainment. If the testimonies from Antiquity about journeys and travelers are quite brief and sporadic, over time they have multiplied and become valuable historical sources, especially through travel diaries or descriptions of events, such as armed confrontations and their movement around different areas of the world. Thus, people have obtained information about spaces other than their homelands, about cultures, traditions, customs, rites and rituals, religions, monuments and works of art, etc. of Others, compared to their own. The individual is excited to travel, to make direct contact with other peoples and communities, with their famous monuments, which he assimilates in a subjective way, psychologizes them and reinvests them with new values, thus bringing his own contribution to the process of heritagization of some special objects, outstanding products of human creativity.