Self-Supervised and Controlled Multi-Document Opinion Summarization

We address the problem of unsupervised abstractive summarization of collections of user generated reviews with self-supervision and control. We propose a self-supervised setup that considers an individual document as a target summary for a set of similar documents. This setting makes training simpler than previous approaches by relying only on standard log-likelihood loss. We address the problem of hallucinations through the use of control codes, to steer the generation towards more coherent and relevant summaries.Finally, we extend the Transformer architecture to allow for multiple reviews as input. Our benchmarks on two datasets against graph-based and recent neural abstractive unsupervised models show that our proposed method generates summaries with a superior quality and relevance.This is confirmed in our human evaluation which focuses explicitly on the faithfulness of generated summaries We also provide an ablation study, which shows the importance of the control setup in controlling hallucinations and achieve high sentiment and topic alignment of the summaries with the input reviews.Comment: 18 pages including 5 pages appendi

Micro-Electro-Mechanical-Systems (MEMS) and Fluid Flows

The micromachining technology that emerged in the late 1980s can provide micron-sized sensors and actuators. These micro transducers are able to be integrated with signal conditioning and processing circuitry to form micro-electro-mechanical-systems (MEMS) that can perform real-time distributed control. This capability opens up a new territory for flow control research. On the other hand, surface effects dominate the fluid flowing through these miniature mechanical devices because of the large surface-to-volume ratio in micron-scale configurations. We need to reexamine the surface forces in the momentum equation. Owing to their smallness, gas flows experience large Knudsen numbers, and therefore boundary conditions need to be modified. Besides being an enabling technology, MEMS also provide many challenges for fundamental flow-science research

State of the Art in the Optimisation of Wind Turbine Performance Using CFD

Wind energy has received increasing attention in recent years due to its sustainability and geographically wide availability. The efficiency of wind energy utilisation highly depends on the performance of wind turbines, which convert the kinetic energy in wind into electrical energy. In order to optimise wind turbine performance and reduce the cost of next-generation wind turbines, it is crucial to have a view of the state of the art in the key aspects on the performance optimisation of wind turbines using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), which has attracted enormous interest in the development of next-generation wind turbines in recent years. This paper presents a comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art progress on optimisation of wind turbine performance using CFD, reviewing the objective functions to judge the performance of wind turbine, CFD approaches applied in the simulation of wind turbines and optimisation algorithms for wind turbine performance. This paper has been written for both researchers new to this research area by summarising underlying theory whilst presenting a comprehensive review on the up-to-date studies, and experts in the field of study by collecting a comprehensive list of related references where the details of computational methods that have been employed lately can be obtained

Pretreatment Processes of Biomass for Biorefineries: Current Status and Prospects

Producción CientíficaThis article seeks to be a handy document for the academy and the industry to get quickly up to speed on the current status and prospects of biomass pretreatment for biorefineries. It is divided into two biomass sources: vegetal and animal. Vegetal biomass is the material produced by plants on land or in water (algae), consuming sunlight, CO2, water, and soil nutrients. This includes residues or main products from, for example, intensive grass crops, forestry, and industrial and agricultural activities. Animal biomass is the residual biomass generated from the production of food from animals (e.g., manure and whey). This review does not mean to include every technology in the area, but it does evaluate physical pretreatments, microwave-assisted extraction, and water treatments for vegetal biomass. A general review is given for animal biomass based in physical, chemical, and biological pretreatments

Fluid mechanics of waste water disposal in the ocean

Outfall pipes into the ocean are analogous to chimneys in the atmosphere: they are each intended for returning contaminated fluids to the environment in a way that promotes adequate transport and dispersion of the waste fluids. A waste-water treatment plant and an adjoining outfall constitute a system for environmental control; it is practically never feasible to provide such complete treatment that an outfall is not necessary, nor is it common to depend entirely on an outfall with no treatment. Although outfalls and chimneys are functionally similar, there are important differences in their relationships to the coastal waters and atmosphere respectively. Urban and industrial areas, generating waste water, are located along the shallow edge of the ocean, with often tens or even hundreds of kilometers of continental shelf between the shoreline and the deep ocean. The bottom slope on the shelf is typically less than one percent. Thus outfalls extending several kilometers offshore discharge into a body of water of large lateral extent compared to the depth, and are still remote from the main body of ocean water. In contrast, most atmospheric contaminants are introduced at the base of the atmosphere and circulate throughout the whole atmosphere much more readily. Vertical convection mixes the troposphere rapidly in most places and the wind systems circulate the air around the globe in a matter of weeks. Outfalls and chimneys are useful in reducing pollutant concentrations only locally. Far away from the sources, it makes little difference how the pollutants are discharged. The decay times of the pollutants are important in the choice of effective discharge strategies. For example, the problems of very persistent contaminants such as DDT cannot be alleviated by dispersion from an outfall; such pollutants must be intercepted at the source and prevented from entering the environment. On the other hand, degradable organic wastes, as in domestic sewage, may be effectively disposed of through a good ocean outfall. Since the decay time is only a few days, potential problems are only local, and not regional or global

Introduction- Twenty-Five Years of the Fordham International Law Journal

A review of the history of the Fordham ILJ. It is a partial reprint of an essay published in 20 FORDHAM INT\u27L L.J. 1 (1996). The essay attempts to briefly summarize the purpose of the ILJ and past volumes

Physiological Aspects of Genetics

The biological sciences appear to be in the midst of a period of unprecedented progress. An important salient in the advance is the general recognition of the significance of genes in the economy of the organism. The change is largely one in point of view. Many biologists have for a long time appreciated the basic nature of the gene and its role in development and function, but these relatively enlightened individuals have for the most part belonged to a small group of specialists that has tended to remain in isolation. The restraining fences are now being broken down with gratifying rapidity. Biochemists have begun to think in terms of genes because it has been demonstrated to them not only that the chemical reactions which make up living systems are under the fairly immediate supervision of these units of inheritance, but also that genetics provides a powerful tool with which a great deal can be learned about metabolic systems. In bacteriology, too, one sees the effects of an altered point of view toward genetics. Only a few years ago a bacteriologist who so much as raised the question of the existence of genes in bacteria was regarded as a renegade and heretic by his more orthodox fellowmen. It has now become acceptable to speak of bacterial genes; in fact, a recognized field of bacterial genetics has grown up almost over night (l)