A comparison of dropout and weight decay for regularizing deep neural networks

In recent years, deep neural networks have become the state-of-the art in many machine learning domains. Despite many advances, these networks are still extremely prone to overfit. In neural networks, a main cause of overfit is coadaptation of neurons which allows noise in the data to be interpreted as meaningful features. Dropout is a technique to mitigate coadaptation of neurons, and thus stymie overfit. In this paper, we present data that suggests dropout is not always universally applicable. In particular, we show that dropout is useful when the ratio of network complexity to training data is very high, otherwise traditional weight decay is more effective

Lament through a Windshield

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One Weekend in the Astral Plane

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Cosmic Displacement

In my work, I explore the concepts of humor, identity, and fiction. I have always had a desire to make others laugh and use humor to express broader concepts. I plant humor into my work through telling engaging stories. Being able to create fictional worlds and otherworldly experiences is something I have an interest in; and it’s something that I am continuing to pursue. Most importantly, I’m exploring issues of identity within my works. I am specifically focusing on the themes of ethnicity, race, sexuality, and self-acceptance in these current pieces. I am incorporating the unique elements of my identity into otherwise fictional settings in order to create more dynamic work, like that of my graphic novel, Interposed & Orbiting, for example. It is a collection of sci-fi novels that center around aliens and are a metaphor for my own struggle with my Mexican identity and my multicultural upbringing. Using aliens and outer space as metaphors allows me to create a more digestible story for my audience, while also allowing me to depict my experiences in a more comical way, which both pleases and frustrates me. I love that my multicultural experience will be able to be more easily understood by a wider audience, but it’s also frustrating to feel the need to simplify my experiences due to it being such a multifaceted subject. This is also expressed by other artists I am in dialogue with: Marjane Satrapi and Jose Posada. Marjane Satrapi creates art based upon her identity in reference to multiculturalism. Her work also touches upon the same feeling of frustration that I feel with my graphic novels, with her use of contrast and space. I am also in dialogue with Jose Posada and his use of line as value. Posada’s use of line was the inspiration behind the detailed shading within my graphic novels. This dialogue with Satrapi and Posada has allowed me to grow as an artist and be able to get out of my comfort zone when it comes to expressing my Mexican identity through my art. Being able to talk about my struggle with my ethnic identity has always been difficult for me, as I was often discouraged by my peers for doing so when I was growing up, so being able to express that experience through my art was the inspiration for creating this collection of works. I hope that when people view these pieces, they are able to empathize and relate to the struggle of feeling lost or trapped within one\u27s own identity and the perception of that identity. This collection is asking two different questions: Can you accept your identity, faults and all? Can society change its perceptions of how people of a certain race or ethnicity ‘should’ look? While these questions have a very real weight in our contemporary world, within my graphic novels I depicted an optimistic and hopeful narrative because it is my wish to see that reflected in both society and myself.https://digitalcommons.murraystate.edu/art498/1122/thumbnail.jp

Themes in Translation: Course Design in a New Modality

This article explores the design and implementation of an academic course that takes undecided students through an intentional exploration process to find their degree-granting major. With the framework of an existing face-to-face class, a need to create an online asynchronous offering, and a desire to dig deeper into the best pedagogy and use of technological tools, the authors (instructor and instructional designer) collaborated to wrestle through the key questions of teaching and learning to best achieve desired outcomes in new ways. An essential element of this story, then, is the dialogue between instructor and instructional designer to bring the course goals to fruition

Night Moves

Night Moves, the title of this collection of poetry, will most likely be familiar to readers as derived from the FM radio staple by Detroit songwriter Bob Seger. Seger’s song is an attempt to understand and navigate a past that is essentially lost to him, and I see each of these poems as “night moves” in that I am writing to a past that is lost to me and that I am fervently attempting to in some way record. That this title is born of the rock and roll ethos is also certainly intentional; I spent a great deal of the last decade or so as a traveling professional musician. The nighttime transience, the solitude and emptiness, the beauty of movement and travel that were the essence of such an existence is, in part, a theme that I wish to explore within the scope of these poems. Further, I found writing this collection an extension of that theme, one that revealed to me that all writing is a journey, and that in my own writing, I am taking part in a similar kind of “travel” I experienced as a musician. The empty road that lay before me is no different from the empty page, and both hold for me enormous promise

Neural population geometry and optimal coding of tasks with shared latent structure

Humans and animals can recognize latent structures in their environment and apply this information to efficiently navigate the world. However, it remains unclear what aspects of neural activity contribute to these computational capabilities. Here, we develop an analytical theory linking the geometry of a neural population's activity to the generalization performance of a linear readout on a set of tasks that depend on a common latent structure. We show that four geometric measures of the activity determine performance across tasks. Using this theory, we find that experimentally observed disentangled representations naturally emerge as an optimal solution to the multi-task learning problem. When data is scarce, these optimal neural codes compress less informative latent variables, and when data is abundant, they expand these variables in the state space. We validate our theory using macaque ventral stream recordings. Our results therefore tie population geometry to multi-task learning.Comment: 26 Pages and 7 figures in main text. 20 Pages and 7 figures in supplemental materia

Deep Frames, White Men's Discourse, and Black Female Bodies

In this qualitative study, I examine the persistent trend of black women as an excluded relationship partner for white men. Integral to understanding the exclusion of black women as relationship partners is the construction of black female bodies, by influential white men historically and contemporarily, as the abject opposite of hegemonic femininity, which holds "middle-class, heterosexual, [w]hite femininity" as the norm (Collins 2005:193). This construction essentially places black women outside the bounds of hegemonic femininity, beauty, sexuality, and womanhood. Using the theoretical concept deep frame, which is the "conceptual infrastructure of the mind" (Lakoff 2006a:12) and representative of one's commonsense world view, I argue that the ways in which influential white men have constructed black female bodies is a critical component of the raced, gendered, and classed deep frame of white men. This deep frame undergirds how many white men perceive, interpret, understand, emote, and engage in actions where black women are concerned. Hence in this study, I qualitatively examine, through analyzing and interpreting the in-depth online questionnaires of 134 white male respondents, how the deep frame of white men affects how they perceive black women and ultimately the relationships they seek with black women. The results of the study show that many white male respondents, despite most having very limited or no personal interactions with black women, viewed black women through the one-dimensional lens of the raced, gendered, and classed deep frame. Many respondents perceived black women as unattractive unless capable of a white normative standard, as possessing a negative "black" culture, and as possessing negative and "unfeminine" attributes that make them complicit in their own rejection. These findings show how the deep frame disciplines white men to view black women as "out of bounds" as legitimate relationship partners, and disciplines the types of relationships they seek with black women. The results of this study also reveal that the conceptual approach of deep frame rooted in an understanding of the power of influential white men to control and construct society provides a theoretical alternative to the outmoded interracial marriage theories of caste and exchange

COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy Among Black Women in the US

IMPORTANCE: COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among Black women is a critical public health concern, potentially exacerbating existing health disparities and impacting community-wide vaccination efforts. OBJECTIVE: To explore the factors associated with COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among Black women in the US and identify the specific concerns and experiences shaping hesitant attitudes toward vaccination. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: Qualitative study using in-depth, semistructured interviews conducted virtually between June and November 2021. Thematic analysis was used to identify key themes from the interview data. Participants were recruited through social media platforms and word-of-mouth referrals from various regions of the US. Interviews were conducted remotely via Zoom. Data were analyzed from June to October 2023. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES: Identification of key themes associated with COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy, identified through thematic analysis of interview data. RESULTS: Fifty-four Black women aged 21 to 66 years participated in the study. Most participants (41 [75.9%]) resided in the South. The sample was predominantly well-educated, with 41 (75.9%) holding a bachelor\u27s degree or higher. Income levels varied, with 16 (29.6%) earning between $40 000 and$59 999 annually. Regarding family structure, 32 participants (59.3%) reported having no children, while 22 (40.7%) had 1 or more children. Three primary themes emerged as being associated with vaccine hesitancy: (1) mistrust in health care and government, rooted in past medical exploitation; (2) concerns over vaccine safety and long-term effects, particularly regarding reproductive health; and (3) ineffective and coercive vaccine communication and promotion. Participants expressed deep-rooted skepticism about being treated as expendable in medical research, fears about the rapid vaccine development process, and frustration with coercive vaccine advertisements. Many women desired more comprehensive education about vaccine mechanisms and criticized the use of coercive financial incentives and celebrity endorsements in vaccine promotion. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: Addressing COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among Black women requires a multifaceted approach that acknowledges historical traumas, provides clear and transparent safety information, and avoids coercive vaccine promotion strategies. These findings emphasize the need for health care practitioners and public health officials to prioritize trust-building, engage community leaders, and tailor interventions to address the unique concerns of Black women to improve vaccine confidence and uptake

The philosophical beliefs of undergraduate and graduate physical education major students and the physical education faculty at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro

This investigation was concerned with the formulation of an opinionnaire which would identify certain philosophical- professional beliefs held by the undergraduate students, graduates, and faculty in the Physical Education Division of the Department of Health, Physical Education and Recreation at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. The study was based on a previous study done by Bair in which the philosophical-professional attitudes of professional leaders were found. A secondary purpose of this investigation was to compare the results from this study with those found by Bair