The Siamese Neural Network (SNN) is a neural network architecture capable of learning similarity knowledge between cases in a case base by receiving pairs of cases and analysing the di erences between their features to map them to a multi-dimensional feature space. This paper demonstrates the development of a Convolutional Siamese Network (CSN) for the purpose of case similarity knowledge gener...

Within the species Astyanax mexicanus, there are several inter-fertile populations of river-dwelling sighted fish and cave-dwelling blind fish which have evolved morphological and behavioral adaptations. We have recently reported a developmental and neurophysiological basis for the loss of aggressive behavior in the blind cavefish morph of Astyanax. Using an appropriate behavioral assay, we hav...

Sperm collected from male fighting fish Betta splendens were activated in control water, water containing the ion-channel blocker gadolinium (a putative positive control), or water containing the isoflavone phytoestrogen genistein to determine the effects of acute genistein exposure on male reproductive function. Computer-assisted sperm analysis was used to quantify the proportion of sperm that...

The function of fish sounds in territorial defence, in particular its influence on the intruder's behaviour during territorial invasions, is poorly known. Breeding Lusitanian toadfish males (Halobatrachus didactylus) use sounds (boatwhistles) to defend nests from intruders. Results from a previous study suggest that boatwhistles function as a 'keep-out signal' during territorial defence. To tes...

A genetic mutation in Siamese cats causes retinogeniculate fibers representing roughly the first 20 degrees of ipsilateral visual field in each eye to cross aberrantly in the optic chiasm and terminate in the wrong lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN). Previous investigations have shown that in the visual cortex this extra representation of ipsilateral visual field can be organized into one pattern...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy has become an important technique for tissue studies. Since tissues are in semisolid-state, their high-resolution (HR) spectra cannot be obtained by conventional NMR spectroscopy. Because of this restriction, extraction and high-resolution magic angle spinning (HR MAS) are widely applied for HR NMR spectra of tissues. However,...

J effrey sachs is an economist, not an evangelist. But give the man 10 minutes behind a microphone, and a scholarly symposium starts to feel like a revival meeting. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he tells a hushed hall after describing how AIDS sufferers die in Malawi for want of $1-a-day drugs, “this plague is exploding. Its consequences will make the world quake. Rich countries could stop the devast...

Abstract In this paper, we present a majorized semismooth Newton-CG augmented Lagrangian method, called SDPNAL+, for semidefinite programming (SDP) with partial or full nonnegative constraints on the matrix variable. SDPNAL+ is a much enhanced version of SDPNAL introduced by Zhao et al. (SIAM J Optim 20:1737–1765, 2010) for solving generic SDPs. SDPNAL works very efficiently for nondegenerate S...

Life experiences can alter cognitive abilities and subsequent behavior. Here we asked whether differences in experience could affect social status. In hierarchical animal societies, high-ranking males that typically win aggressive encounters gain territories and hence access to mates. To understand the relative contributions of social experience and physical environment on status, we used a hig...

This paper is devoted to finger spelling recognition on the basis of images acquired by a single color camera. The recognition is realized on the basis of learned low-dimensional embeddings. The embeddings are calculated both by single as well as multiple siamese-based convolutional neural networks. We train classifiers operating on such features as well as convolutional neural networks operati...