Showing papers on "Naturalness published in 2018"

Naturalness Preserved Image Enhancement Using a Priori Multi-Layer Lightness Statistics

Abstract: The enhancement of non-uniformly illuminated images often suffers from over-enhancement and produces unnatural results. This paper presents a naturalness preserved enhancement method for non-uniformly illuminated images, using a priori multi-layer lightness statistics acquired from high-quality images. This paper makes three important contributions: designing a novel multi-layer image enhancement model; deriving the multi-layer lightness statistics of high-quality outdoor images, which are incorporated into the multi-layer enhancement model; and showing that the overall quality rating of enhanced images is consistent with a combination of contrast enhancement and naturalness preservation. Two separate human observer evaluation studies were conducted on naturalness preservation and overall image quality. The results showed the proposed method outperformed four compared state-of-the-art enhancement methods.

Wellbeing in Urban Greenery: The Role of Naturalness and Place Identity.

Abstract: The aim was to investigate effects of urban greenery (high vs. low naturalness) on place identity and wellbeing, and the links between place identity and wellbeing. It was shown that participants (Gothenburg, Sweden, N = 1347) estimated a stronger attachment/closeness/belonging (emotional component of place-identity), and more remembrance and thinking about and mental travel (cognitive component of place-identity) in relation to high vs. low perceived naturalness. High naturalness was also reported to generate higher wellbeing in participants than low naturalness. Furthermore, place identity was shown to predict participants’ wellbeing in urban greenery, accounting for 35% of variance explained by the regression. However, there was a stronger relationship between the emotional vs. the cognitive component of place identity and wellbeing. Finally, a significant role of place identity in mediating the naturalness-wellbeing relationship was shown, indicating that the naturalness-wellbeing connection can be partly accounted for by the psychological mechanisms of people-place bonding.

Neutral naturalness from the brother-Higgs model

Abstract: We present a version of the twin Higgs mechanism with minimal symmetry structure and particle content. The model is built upon a composite Higgs theory with global SO(6)/SO(5) symmetry breaking. The leading contribution to the Higgs potential, from the top sector, is solely canceled via the introduction of a standard model neutral top partner. We show that the inherent Z2 breaking of this construction is under control and of the right size to achieve electroweak symmetry breaking, with a fine-tuning at the level of 5%–10%, compatibly with the observed Higgs mass. We briefly discuss the particular phenomenological features of this scenario.

Naturalness and animal welfare

Abstract: Naturalness is considered important for animals, and is one criterion for assessing how we care for them. However, it is a vague and ambiguous term, which needs definition and assessments suitable for scientific and ethical questions. This paper makes a start on that aim. This paper differentiates the term from other related concepts, such as species-typical behaviour and wellbeing. It identifies contingent ways in which naturalness might be used, as: (i) prompts for further welfare assessment; (ii) a plausible hypothesis for what safeguards wellbeing; (iii) a threshold for what is acceptable; (iv) constraints on what improvements are unacceptable; and (v) demarcating what is not morally wrong, because of a lack of human agency. It then suggests an approach to evaluating animals’ behaviour that is quantitative, is based on reality, and which assesses naturalness by degrees. It proposes classing unaffected wild populations as natural by definition. Where animals might have been affected by humans, they should be compared to the closest population(s) of unaffected animals. This approach could allow us both to assess naturalness scientifically, and to make practical decisions about the behaviour of domestic animals.

Screams for Explanation: Finetuning and Naturalness in the Foundations of Physics

Abstract: We critically analyze the rationale of arguments from finetuning and naturalness in particle physics and cosmology. Some other numerological coincidences are also discussed.

Colour preference, naturalness, vividness and colour quality metrics, Part 4: Experiments with still life arrangements at different correlated colour temperatures:

Abstract: Subjective colour preference, naturalness and vividness assessments of two different colourful still life arrangements viewed in a real room were analysed and modelled with the aid of the Rf colour...

Are mutants really natural?: a study on how "naturalness" helps mutant selection

Abstract: Background: Code is repetitive and predictable in a way that is similar to the natural language. This means that code is "natural" and this "naturalness" can be captured by natural language modelling techniques. Such models promise to capture the program semantics and identify source code parts that `smell', i.e., they are strange, badly written and are generally error-prone (likely to be defective). Aims: We investigate the use of natural language modelling techniques in mutation testing (a testing technique that uses artificial faults). We thus, seek to identify how well artificial faults simulate real ones and ultimately understand how natural the artificial faults can be. Our intuition is that natural mutants, i.e., mutants that are predictable (follow the implicit coding norms of developers), are semantically useful and generally valuable (to testers). We also expect that mutants located on unnatural code locations (which are generally linked with error-proneness) to be of higher value than those located on natural code locations. Method: Based on this idea, we propose mutant selection strategies that rank mutants according to a) their naturalness (naturalness of the mutated code), b) the naturalness of their locations (naturalness of the original program statements) and c) their impact on the naturalness of the code that they apply to (naturalness differences between original and mutated statements). We empirically evaluate these issues on a benchmark set of 5 open-source projects, involving more than 100k mutants and 230 real faults. Based on the fault set we estimate the utility (i.e. capability to reveal faults) of mutants selected on the basis of their naturalness, and compare it against the utility of randomly selected mutants. Results: Our analysis shows that there is no link between naturalness and the fault revelation utility of mutants. We also demonstrate that the naturalness-based mutant selection performs similar (slightly worse) to the random mutant selection. Conclusions: Our findings are negative but we consider them interesting as they confute a strong intuition, i.e., fault revelation is independent of the mutants' naturalness.

Data Selection for Improving Naturalness of TTS Voices Trained on Small Found Corpuses

Abstract: This work investigates techniques that select training data from small, found corpuses in order to improve the naturalness of synthesized text-to-speech voices. The approach outlined in this paper examines different metrics to detect and reject segments of training data that can degrade the performance of the system. We conducted experiments on two small datasets extracted from Mandarin Chinese audiobooks that have different characteristics in terms of recording conditions, narrator, and transcriptions. We show that using a even smaller, yet carefully selected, set of data can lead to a text-to-speech system able to generate more natural speech than a system trained on the complete dataset. Three metrics related to the narrator’s articulation proposed in the paper give significant improvements in naturalness.

Bayesian naturalness, simplicity, and testability applied to the $B−L$ MSSM GUT

Abstract: Recent years have seen increased use of Bayesian model comparison to quantify notions such as naturalness, simplicity, and testability, especially in the area of supersymmetric model building. After demonstrating that Bayesian model comparison can resolve a paradox that has been raised in the literature concerning the naturalness of the proton mass, we apply Bayesian model comparison to GUTs, an area to which it has not been applied before. We find that the GUTs are substantially favored over the non-unifying puzzle model. Of the GUTs we consider, the $B-L$ MSSM GUT is the most favored, but the MSSM GUT is almost equally favored.

Modulation: a translation method to obtain naturalness in target language texts

Abstract: One of the requirements in order to produce equivalent translation is that the translation must sound natural for target language (TL) readers both lexically and grammatically. This naturalness can be obtained through the use of both lexical items and grammar familiar to the TL readers. However, naturalness in translation is not always easy to achieve. One of the causes is the difference in the way the source language (SL) and TL readers express a certain message in their languages. According to Vinay and Darbelnet (1995) this difference can be overcome by applying a translation method called modulation. Modulation is a method in which translators try to maintain naturalness by using various form the message done by changing the point of view. This procedure is usually chosen when translators find that literal translation would result in awkward or unnatural translation. Keywords: modulation, naturalness, equivalence

What is natural in writing?: Prolegomena to a Natural Grapholinguistics

Abstract: Naturalness Theory (NT) is founded on the notion of naturalness and claims that when a linguistic phenomenon can be processed by humans with little effort, both sensomotorically and cognitively, it is deemed more natural compared to other, more complex phenomena. Drawing on evidence such as language change, language acquisition, and language disorders, various parameters of naturalness (e.g., biuniqueness, constructional iconicity) have been postulated, which focus on the phonological and morphological subsystems of language. This paper offers an outline of how naturalness can be adapted to grapholinguistic phenomena. Comparative graphematics (cf. Weingarten 2011), extended to comparative grapholinguistics, is assessed as a method that can be used to reveal naturalness parameters which apply to both material (graphetic) and linguistic (graphematic) aspects of writing. The reduction of extrinsic symmetry across various scripts will be discussed as an example. By integrating these preliminary theoretical ideas into the framework of NT, it is demonstrated that so-called Natural Grapholinguistics could offer promising new insights as well as a tertium comparationis method for future comparative analyses of scripts and writing systems.

Naturalness, Wilsonian Renormalization, and "Fundamental Parameters" in Quantum Field Theory

Abstract: The Higgs naturalness principle served as the basis for the so far failed prediction that signatures of physics beyond the Standard Model (SM) would be discovered at the LHC. One influential formulation of the principle, which prohibits fine tuning of bare Standard Model (SM) parameters, rests on the assumption that a particular set of values for these parameters constitute the "fundamental parameters" of the theory, and serve to mathematically define the theory. On the other hand, an old argument by Wetterich suggests that fine tuning of bare parameters merely reflects an arbitrary, inconvenient choice of expansion parameters and that the choice of parameters in an EFT is therefore arbitrary. We argue that these two interpretations of Higgs fine tuning reflect distinct ways of formulating and interpreting effective field theories (EFTs) within the Wilsonian framework: the first takes an EFT to be defined by a single set of physical, fundamental bare parameters, while the second takes a Wilsonian EFT to be defined instead by a whole Wilsonian renormalization group (RG) trajectory, associated with a one-parameter class of physically equivalent parametrizations. From this latter perspective, no single parametrization constitutes the physically correct, fundamental parametrization of the theory, and the delicate cancellation between bare Higgs mass and quantum corrections appears as an eliminable artifact of the arbitrary, unphysical reference scale with respect to which the physical amplitudes of the theory are parametrized. While the notion of fundamental parameters is well motivated in the context of condensed matter field theory, we explain why it may be superfluous in the context of high energy physics.

Naturalness as a safe haven: parental consumption practices and the management of risk

Abstract: Purpose This paper aims to present an analysis of the various dimensions of naturalness that shape the consumption practices of parents with young children Design/methodology/approach The study builds on semi-structured interviews with 17 mothers and fathers focusing on parental decision-making in everyday consumption from pregnancy to the first years of the child’s life Findings Naturalness is a tool allowing parents to navigate in a world of risks and part of an everyday consumption practice that constructs and maintains children as vulnerable and parents as responsible Parents perceive naturalness as something with three dimensions: familiarity, purity and culture These three dimensions lead to different parental practices around consumption Originality/value The analysis contributes to the authors’ understanding of parenting, childhood, risk, safety and consumption by showing how and why parents of young children construct naturalness as a three-dimensional ideal in their consumption practices

Two Notions of Naturalness

Abstract: My aim in this paper is twofold: (i) to distinguish two notions of naturalness employed in BSM physics and (ii) to argue that recognizing this distinction has methodological consequences. One notion of naturalness is an "autonomy of scales" requirement: it prohibits sensitive dependence of an effective field theory's low-energy observables on precise specification of the theory's description of cutoff-scale physics. I will argue that considerations from the general structure of effective field theory provide justification for the role this notion of naturalness has played in BSM model construction. A second, distinct notion construes naturalness as a statistical principle requiring that the values of the parameters in an effective field theory be "likely" given some appropriately chosen measure on some appropriately circumscribed space of models. I argue that these two notions are historically and conceptually related but are motivated by distinct theoretical considerations and admit of distinct kinds of solution.

Treat the system like a human student: Automatic naturalness evaluation of generated text without reference texts

Abstract: The current most popular method for automatic Natural Language Generation (NLG) evaluation is comparing generated text with human-written reference sentences using a metrics system, which has drawbacks around reliability and scalability. We draw inspiration from second language (L2) assessment and extract a set of linguistic features to predict human judgments of sentence naturalness. Our experiment using a small dataset showed that the feature-based approach yields promising results, with the added potential of providing interpretability into the source of the problems.

MOS Naturalness and the Quest for Human-Like Speech

Abstract: This paper reconsiders the use of MOS naturalness as an instrument for measuring the quality (vs. intelligibility) of speech. We reconsider an earlier proposed alternative, the paired comparison or “AB” test, and present new empirical evidence that this is indeed a better method for evaluating TTS quality. Using this, we evaluate three older TTS systems along with a recent deep-learning approach against native North-American and Indian speech and show that, in fact, TTS had already crossed the threshold of human-like speech synthesis some time ago. This suggests that a systematic reappraisal of the concept of abstract “naturalness” of speech is in order.

Naturalness and Dark Matter in a Realistic Intersecting D6-Brane Model

Abstract: We revisit a three-family Pati-Salam model with a realistic phenomenology from intersecting D6-branes in Type IIA string theory compactified on a T6/(ℤ2 × ℤ2) orientifold, and study its naturalness in view of the current LHC and dark matter searches. We discuss spectrum and phenomenological features of this scenario demanding fine tuning better than 1%. This requirement restricts the lightest neutralino to have mass less than about 600 GeV. We observe that the viable parameter space is tightly constrained by the requirements of naturalness and consistency with the observed dark matter relic density, so that it is fully testable at current and future dark matter searches, unless a non-thermal production mechanism of dark matter is at work. We find that Z-resonance, h-resonance, A-funnel and light stau/stop-neutralino coannihilation solutions are consistent with current LHC and dark matter constraints while the “well-tempered” neutralino scenario is ruled out in our model. Moreover, we observe that only Bino, Higgsinos, right-handed staus and stops can have mass below 1 TeV.

Erratum: Off-Shell Higgs Probe of Naturalness [Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 111801 (2018)].

Abstract: This corrects the article DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.111801.

The Hierarchion, a Relaxion Addressing the Standard Model's Hierarchies

Abstract: We present a mechanism that addresses the electroweak, the strong CP, and the flavor hierarchies of the Standard Model (including neutrino masses) in a unified way. The naturalness of the electroweak scale is solved together with the strong CP problem by the Nelson-Barr relaxion: the relaxion field is identified with the pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson of an abelian symmetry with no QCD anomaly. The Nelson-Barr sector generates the "rolling" potential and the relaxion vacuum expectation value at the stopping point is mapped to the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa phase. An abelian symmetry accounts for the Standard Model's mass hierarchies and flavor textures through the Froggatt-Nielsen mechanism. We show how the "backreaction" potential of the relaxion can be induced by a sterile neutrino sector, without any extra state with electroweak quantum numbers. The same construction successfully explains neutrino masses and mixings. The only light field in our construction is the relaxion, which we call the hierarchion because it is essentially linked to our construct that accounts for all the Standard Model hierarchies. Given its interplay with flavor symmetries, the hierarchion can be probed in flavor-violating decays of the Standard Model fermions, motivating a further experimental effort in looking for new physics in rare decays of leptons and mesons.

Of Naturalness and Complexity.

Abstract: It is argued that the occurrence of disproportionately ("un-natural") large (or small) numbers, as well as deep cancellations, are comparatively natural traits of the way Nature is geared to operate in most complex systems. The idea is illustrated by means of two outstanding and over-resilient problems in theoretical physics: fluid turbulence and the computation of ground-states of quantum many-body fermion systems. Potential connections with the issue of Naturalness, or lack thereof, in high-energy physics are sketched out.

Evaluation of the epistemic state of the speaker/author

Abstract: Language users are sensitive to their language's grammatical requirements, the plausibility of the situation described and the information shared by speaker and listener. We propose that they are also sensitive to whether an author is likely to be in a state of knowledge that actually supports the assertion being made. Failure to be in such a state reduces the naturalness of the assertion. Consistent with this proposal, sentences with a disjoined noun phrase are judged to be less natural than their conjunctive counterparts, presumably because the author of a disjunctive sentence must know that an event took place but not know which of the two individuals was the agent. This unlikely state of knowledge reduces the naturalness of the sentence. The results of three experiments indicate that providing evidence that the speaker could be in an unlikely epistemic state reduces the disjunction penalty; a fourth extends the demonstration of the penalty from coordinated noun phrases to coordinated verb phrases. We also present one experiment that explores the possibility that disjunction penalty is due to the unexpectedness of a disjunction. These findings demonstrate that language users evaluate linguistic input in light of the epistemic state of its author.

TUNA: TUning Naturalness-Based Analysis

Abstract: Natural language processing techniques, in particular n-gram models, have been applied successfully to facilitate a number of software engineering tasks. However, in our related ICSME '18 paper, we have shown that the conclusions of a study can drastically change with respect to how the code is tokenized and how the used n-gram model is parameterized. These choices are thus of utmost importance, and one must carefully make them. To show this and allow the community to benefit from our work, we have developed TUNA (TUning Naturalness-based Analysis), a Java software artifact to perform naturalness-based analyses of source code. To the best of our knowledge, TUNA is the first open-source, end-to-end toolchain to carry out source code analyses based on naturalness.

Model Choice and Crucial Tests. On the Empirical Epistemology of the Higgs Discovery

Abstract: Our paper discusses the epistemic attitudes of particle physicists on the discovery of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It is based on questionnaires and interviews made shortly before and shortly after the discovery in 2012. We show, to begin with, that the discovery of a Standard Model (SM) Higgs boson was less expected than is sometimes assumed. Once the new particle was shown to have properties consistent with SM expectations - albeit with significant experimental uncertainties -, there was a broad agreement that 'a' Higgs boson had been found. Physicists adopted a twopronged strategy. On the one hand, they treated the particle as a SM Higgs boson and tried to establish its properties with higher precision; on the other hand, they searched for any hints of physics beyond the SM. This motivates our first philosophical thesis: the Higgs discovery, being of fundamental importance and establishing a new kind of particle, represented a crucial experiment if one interprets this notion in an appropriate sense. By embedding the LHC into thetradition of previous precision experiments and the experimental strategies thus established, Duhemian underdetermination is kept at bay. Second, our case study suggests that criteria of theory (or model) preference should be understood as epistemic and pragmatic values that have to be weighed in factual research practice. The Higgs discovery led to a shift from pragmatic to epistemic values as regards the mechanisms of electroweak symmetry breaking. Complex criteria, such as naturalness, combine epistemic and pragmatic values, but are coherently applied by the community.

HMM-based Thai Singing Voice Synthesis System

Abstract: Singing synthesis in each language has its unique characteristics and challenges aiming to improve its naturalness. One of the challenges that tonal language singing synthesis specifically faces is melisma, which is a syllable with more than two musical notes. This research offers a melisma-compatible singing voice synthesis system. To do so, we propose phoneme duplication methods. The results showed that the proposed phoneme duplication methods made the system compatible with melisma, where short vowels and final consonants constructed a favorable waveform closer to actual singing voice. It also provides higher naturalness as perceived through MOS evaluation. Finally, in order to improve naturalness in the synthesized singing voice, an experiment with HMM state numbers was conducted. The outcome demonstrated that the naturalness increased as the state numbers grew to a certain point.