Oldest and Highest Rated Papers
The Principles of Diffusion Models
Chieh-Hsin Lai, Yang Song, Dongjun Kim, Yuki Mitsufuji, Stefano Ermon
arXiv·2025
This monograph presents the core principles that have guided the development of diffusion models, tracing their origins and showing how diverse formulations arise from shared mathematical ideas. Diffusion modeling starts by defining a forward process that gradually corrupts data into noise, linking the data distribution to a simple prior through a continuum of intermediate distributions. The goal is to learn a reverse process that transforms noise back into data while recovering the same intermediates. We describe three complementary views. The variational view, inspired by variational autoencoders, sees diffusion as learning to remove noise step by step. The score-based view, rooted in energy-based modeling, learns the gradient of the evolving data distribution, indicating how to nudge samples toward more likely regions. The flow-based view, related to normalizing flows, treats generation as following a smooth path that moves samples from noise to data under a learned velocity field. These perspectives share a common backbone: a time-dependent velocity field whose flow transports a simple prior to the data. Sampling then amounts to solving a differential equation that evolves noise into data along a continuous trajectory. On this foundation, the monograph discusses guidance for controllable generation, efficient numerical solvers, and diffusion-motivated flow-map models that learn direct mappings between arbitrary times. It provides a conceptual and mathematically grounded understanding of diffusion models for readers with basic deep-learning knowledge.
★ 4.0 (1)
View paper →Slow Deep Breathing Exercise Improves Pulmonary Function in Hypertensive Patients
Susiana Candrawati, Alya Pristika, Indah Rahmawati
Asian Journal of Sports Medicine·2025
<jats:p>Background: Hypertension is a non-communicable disease with a high prevalence and increasing incidence annually. Slow deep breathing exercises (SDBE) is a complementary therapy that can be used as an alternative to address the ineffectiveness of antihypertensive treatment in controlling blood pressure and its complications, including decreased lung function. Objectives: The present study aimed to determine the profile of lung function and analyze the effect of SDBE on pulmonary function test values (FEV1, FVC, and FEV1/FVC) in the hypertensive population. Methods: This was a quasi-experimental study with a one-group pretest-posttest approach. The study subjects were patients with hypertension aged ≥ 45 years in Banyumas Regency, Central Java Province, Indonesia. A total of 26 subjects were obtained with eligibility criteria including not having hearing impairment, not smoking, not having respiratory system disorders, and willingness to participate in the study by signing informed consent. Subjects were given a slow deep breathing Pranayama intervention with a duration of 5 cycles (25 minutes) with a frequency of 3 times per week for 6 weeks. A pulmonary function test with spirometry was used to determine the values of FEV1, FVC, and FEV1/FVC measured before and after the intervention. Bivariate analysis was performed using a paired t-test on FEV1 and FVC variables and the Wilcoxon test for FEV1/FVC variables. Results: The pulmonary function of hypertensive patients in this study was primarily normal (61.54%), followed by restrictive lung disorder (23.08%), obstructive lung disorder (7.69%), and mixed restriction-obstruction (7.69%). There was a significant mean difference in FEV1 (P = 0.016) and FVC (P = 0.009) before and after the SDBE intervention, with a positive difference. However, there was no significant mean difference in the FEV1/FVC variables (P = 0.989). Conclusions: The SDBE improves forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1) and forced vital capacity (FVC) values in the hypertensive population.</jats:p>
★ 4.0 (1)
View paper →Rheumatic Disorders and Athletic Achievement: Can Chronic Illness Stop Olympic Dreams?
Maryam Noury, Farzin Halabchi, Vahid Ziaee
Asian Journal of Sports Medicine·2024
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★ 4.0 (1)
View paper →How do transgender people remember their earlier selves?
Caleb Schlaupitz
Psyche·2025
Research with transgender people sheds light on the memory processes that allow any of us to navigate periods of change
★ 4.0 (1)
View paper →Is porn addiction real? | Dazed
Eli Cugini
Dazed·2024
An anti-porn addiction movement is on the rise in the US, but filled with pseudoscience, reactionary rhetoric and shame – raising questions over the way we classify addiction in the first place
★ 4.0 (1)
View paper →How to be disgustingly educated (pt.2)
Thee Book Club
Substack·2025
Another chaotic guide to becoming the most interesting person in the room.
★ 4.0 (1)
View paper →Slow Read Issue 2: On Control, Collapse, and Choosing What Matters
Ning Collective
Substack·2025
Life rarely goes according to plan, and that's okay.
★ 4.0 (1)
View paper →Toxic language in online incel communities
Björn Pelzer, Lisa Kaati, Katie Cohen, Johan Fernquist
SN Social Sciences·2021·45 citations
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>The internet-based<jats:italic>incel</jats:italic>subculture has evolved over the past decade on a number of different platforms. The subculture is known to be toxic and has become associated with several high-profile cases of lethal violence. In this paper, we study the level of toxic language and its targets on three large incel forums:<jats:italic>incels.co</jats:italic>,<jats:italic>lookism.net</jats:italic>and<jats:italic>looksmax.me</jats:italic>. These three forums are the most well-known and active online platforms where incels meet and discuss. Our results show that even though usage of toxic language is pervasive on all three forums, they exhibit significant differences in the composition of their toxicity. These differences correspond to different groups or philosophies within the incel communites.</jats:p>
★ 4.0 (1)
View paper →Umeshisms
Scott Aaronson
Shtetl-Optimized·2005
If you've never missed a flight, you're spending too much time in airports. When I was a grad student at Berkeley, my advisor, Umesh Vazirani, liked to repeat this nugget of wisdom to students, friends, and colleagues. In a single sentence, Umesh was communicating an entire philosophy of life: concentrate on the high-order bits. The…
★ 4.0 (2)
View paper →Turning the knots in your stomach into bows: Reappraising arousal improves performance on the GRE.
Jeremy P Jamieson, Wendy Berry Mendes, Erin Blackstock, Toni Schmader
Journal of experimental social psychology·2010
This research examined the benefits of interpreting physiological arousal as a challenge response on practice and actual Graduate Record Examination (GRE) scores. Participants who were preparing to take the GRE reported to the laboratory for a practice GRE study. Participants assigned to a reappraisal condition were told arousal improves performance, whereas control participants were not given this information. We collected saliva samples at baseline and after the appraisal manipulation, which were then assayed for salivary alpha amylase (sAA), a measure of sympathetic nervous system activation. Reappraisal participants exhibited a significant increase in sAA and outperformed controls on the GRE-math section. One to three months later, participants returned to the lab and provided their score reports from their actual GRE. Again, reappraisal participants scored higher than controls on the GRE-math section. These findings illuminate the powerful influence appraisal has on physiology and performance both in and out of the laboratory.
★ 4.0 (1)
View paper →Future thought and behaviour change
Gabriele Oettingen
European Review of Social Psychology·2012·358 citations
While there is a growing body of research on free thoughts such as fantasies and daydreams, the question of whether and how fantasies lead to effortful action and successful performance has hardly been investigated. The present article will show that, counter to what the popular self-help literature proposes, positive thinking can be detrimental to effort and success if it comes in the form of fantasies (free thoughts and images about the desired future) rather than beliefs (expectations). The article will then discuss fantasy realisation theory (FRT), which specifies how fantasies can be used to wisely self-regulate goal pursuit. The theory argues that the strategy of mental contrasting future and reality will produce both active goal pursuit and active goal disengagement, depending on a person’s high versus low expectations of success, respectively. Research supporting these ideas across life domains points to non-conscious cognitive and motivational processes responsible for the effects of mental contrasting, and it depicts context variables (e.g., sad mood) that influence the rise and usage of mental contrasting. Intervention studies attest to mental contrasting as a content-free, time- and cost-effective metacognitive strategy that people can use to regulate their own goal pursuits in an autonomous way, thus helping people to become masters of their everyday life and long-term development.
★ 4.0 (1)
View paper →Seeing Future Success: Does Imagery Perspective Influence Achievement Motivation?
Noelia A. Vasquez, Roger Buehler
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin·2007·112 citations
Imagining future success can sometimes enhance people's motivation to achieve it. This article examines a phenomenological aspect of positive mental imagery— the visual perspective adopted—that may moderate its motivational impact. The authors hypothesize that people feel more motivated to succeed on a future task when they visualize its successful completion from a third-person rather than a first-person perspective. Actions viewed from the third-person perspective are generally construed at a relatively high level of abstraction—in a manner that highlights their larger meaning and significance—which should heighten their motivational impact. Three studies in the domain of academic motivation support this reasoning. Students experience a greater increase in achievement motivation when they imagine their successful task completion from a third-rather than a first-person perspective. Moreover, mediational analyses reveal that third-person imagery boosts motivation by prompting students to construe their success abstractly and to perceive it as important.
★ 4.0 (1)
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