Semantic Tagging with Deep Residual Networks

We propose a novel semantic tagging task, sem-tagging, tailored for the purpose of multilingual semantic parsing, and present the first tagger using deep residual networks (ResNets). Our tagger uses both word and character representations and includes a novel residual bypass architecture. We evaluate the tagset both intrinsically on the new task of semantic tagging, as well as on Part-of-Speech (POS) tagging. Our system, consisting of a ResNet and an auxiliary loss function predicting our semantic tags, significantly outperforms prior results on English Universal Dependencies POS tagging (95.71% accuracy on UD v1.2 and 95.67% accuracy on UD v1.3).Comment: COLING 2016, camera ready versio

When is multitask learning effective? Semantic sequence prediction under varying data conditions

Multitask learning has been applied successfully to a range of tasks, mostly morphosyntactic. However, little is known on when MTL works and whether there are data characteristics that help to determine its success. In this paper we evaluate a range of semantic sequence labeling tasks in a MTL setup. We examine different auxiliary tasks, amongst which a novel setup, and correlate their impact to data-dependent conditions. Our results show that MTL is not always effective, significant improvements are obtained only for 1 out of 5 tasks. When successful, auxiliary tasks with compact and more uniform label distributions are preferable.Comment: In EACL 201

Reproductive Health Coordination Gap, Services Ad hoc: Minimum Initial Service Package (MISP) Assessment in Kenya

The post-election violence in Kenya in the early months of 2008 displaced more than 500,000 people. In any humanitarian crisis, certain priority reproductive health (RH) services must be put in place from the earliest stages of an emergency. These essential activities are defined in the Minimum Initial Services Package (MISP) -- the established international standard for providing RH care in emergencies. They include activities to prevent sexual violence and treat survivors; protect against the transmission of HIV; ensure delivery supplies and emergency care for pregnant women and newborns; and lay the groundwork for comprehensive RH services once conditions allow. The Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children (Women's Commission) undertook a mission to Kenya in April 2008 to assess the progress the humanitarian community has made in the institutionalization of the MISP in emergency response operations. The assessment took place four months after the crisis erupted and included visits to camp settings in the Nairobi, Kisumu, Kitale, Eldoret and Nakuru regions.Key Findings1) Despite the ongoing and urgent needs of large numbers of displaced persons, the Women's Commission found that funding was clearly inadequate to meet the unaddressed health needs of the displaced. UN emergency appeals to address humanitarian needs related to the post-election violence remained significantly underfunded at the time of the assessment, and organizations that could have continued to respond were bringing their emergency response operations to a close.2) The most significant and overarching gap in the implementation of the MISP was the absence of RH coordination at all levels.3) Awareness of the MISP among humanitarian workers in Kenya was higher than awareness levels registered in two earlier MISP assessments conducted by the Women's Commission. However, the MISP was not guiding action in Kenya which meant there were still unacceptable gaps in protection and key RH services.4) Planning to prevent high levels of sexual violence, inlcuding sexual exploitation and abuse, were strong at the national level but still inadequate at the field level. Poor security measures were noted at all but one camp and the assessment team received numerous disturbing reports of sexual exploitation and abuse by humanitarian workers, police and others.5) Mechanisms to respond to sexual violence, inlcuding sexual exploitation and abuse, were also weak at the field level. Displaced persons and representatives of humanitarian organizations reported a general atmosphere of impunity toward perpetrators of sexual violence. Health workers also suggested that many of the displaced did not know the importance of seeking treatment for sexual assault or where it was offered. Many displaced women were only slowly seeking care months after the height of the violence.6) In terms of priority activities taken to protect against HIV transmission, the findings were mostly positive. It was encouraging that health care providers were concerned from the start of the crisis about the need to prevent the transmission of HIV and to ensure people living with AIDS had continuing access to antiretroviral medicines. By all accounts, there were sufficient supplies of male condoms; however, some displaced persons reported that they were still not freely available or easy to obtain.7) The Women's Commission found that referral systems to care for pregnancy-related emergencies were not uniformly in place, and transportation for women and girls suffering from complications of their pregnancy or delivery was highly problematic in some places. While clean delivery kits were available in some settings, they were not consistently distributed to visibly pregnant women and there were shortages in some settings. In addition, no displaced women we spoke with were aware of or had heard of clean delivery kits.8) Young people appeared to be the most severely affected, with many reporting idleness due to a lack of jobs and opportunities to attend secondary school and university. In addition, young people noted that the sudden movement from their busy lives in rural areas to overcrowded urban camps where they were now idle created more exposure to the opposite sex. A sudden increase in sexual activity enhanced their vulnerability to sexually transmitted infections, including HIV, and unwanted pregnancies.Although the Kenya crisis has disappeared from the headlines, daily life remains a crisis for people who are still displaced from their homes and communities. The Kenyan government and international aid agencies must take immediate and coordinated action to address the priority RH needs of the displaced populations. In particular, the needs of young people should be prioritized considering their vulnerability to sexual exploitation and abuse and heightened risk of unsafe sex as they remain displaced or return to their homes.More broadly, this assessment highlights the need for a deeper commitment on the part of donors and the humanitarian community to the institutionalization of the MISP in humanitarian crises, particularly to ensure RH coordination from the beginning of an emergency. Adequate funding for MISP activities must be provided at the onset of an emergency, and more humanitarian workers must be trained and skilled in MISP implementation.Key RecommendationsThe United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the Ministry of Health's Division of Reproductive Health should initiate reproductive health coordination, as people continue to be displaced in camps, transit camps and communities, and those returning can also benefit from such services.All agencies working to prevent sexual violence and provide care to survivors should enforce rules and procedures to prevent and manage sexual violence, address the issue of impunity, and inform communities of where and how to report incidents and the importance of seeking medical care.All agencies working in or funding the health sector should strengthen the health care system to provide care for pregnancy-related problems, especially as international agencies hand over their projects to the government and local organizations.All organizations should better engage young people in the recovery process, enhance their educational and job opportunities, and address their specific reproductive health needs

Improving the translation environment for professional translators

When using computer-aided translation systems in a typical, professional translation workflow, there are several stages at which there is room for improvement. The SCATE (Smart Computer-Aided Translation Environment) project investigated several of these aspects, both from a human-computer interaction point of view, as well as from a purely technological side. This paper describes the SCATE research with respect to improved fuzzy matching, parallel treebanks, the integration of translation memories with machine translation, quality estimation, terminology extraction from comparable texts, the use of speech recognition in the translation process, and human computer interaction and interface design for the professional translation environment. For each of these topics, we describe the experiments we performed and the conclusions drawn, providing an overview of the highlights of the entire SCATE project

Iron overload down-regulates the expression of the HIV-1 Rev cofactor eIF5A in infected T lymphocytes

Background Changes in iron metabolism frequently accompany HIV-1 infection. However, while many clinical and in vitro studies report iron overload exacerbates the development of infection, many others have found no correlation. Therefore, the multi-faceted role of iron in HIV-1 infection remains enigmatic. Methods RT-qPCR targeting the LTR region, gag, Tat and Rev were performed to measure the levels of viral RNAs in response to iron overload. Spike-in SILAC proteomics comparing i) iron-treated, ii) HIV-1-infected and iii) HIV-1-infected/iron treated T lymphocytes was performed to define modifications in the host cell proteome. Data from quantitative proteomics were integrated with the HIV-1 Human Interaction Database for assessing any viral cofactors modulated by iron overload in infected T lymphocytes. Results Here, we demonstrate that the iron overload down-regulates HIV-1 gene expression by decreasing the levels of viral RNAs. In addition, we found that iron overload modulates the expression of many viral cofactors. Among them, the downregulation of the REV cofactor eIF5A may correlate with the iron-induced inhibition of HIV-1 gene expression. Therefore, we demonstrated that eiF5A downregulation by shRNA resulted in a significant decrease of Nef levels, thus hampering HIV-1 replication. Conclusions Our study indicates that HIV-1 cofactors influenced by iron metabolism represent potential targets for antiretroviral therapy and suggests eIF5A as a selective target for drug development

Assessing the effectiveness of a longitudinal knowledge dissemination intervention: Sharing research findings in rural South Africa

Knowledge dissemination interventions (KDIs) are integral to knowledge brokerage activities in research as part of the ethics of practice, but are seldom evaluated. In this case study, we critically reflect on an annual KDI as part of knowledge brokerage activities in the MRC/Wits-Agincourt Unit health and demographic surveillance system (HDSS) in rural South Africa from 2001 to 2015. The HDSS findings on births, deaths and migrations, as well as nested research project results, were shared with villagers, village leaders and service providers. The data used for this case study comprised secondary analysis of 13 reports and 762 evaluation forms of annual village-based meetings; records of requests for data from stakeholders; and qualitative analysis of 15 individual and five focus group interviews with local leaders and service providers involving 60 people. Over time, the KDI evolved from taking place over one week a year to being extended over six months, and to include briefings with service providers and local leaders. Attendance at village-level meetings remained low at an average of 3 per cent of the total adult population. Since 2011, the KDI village-based meetings have developed into an embedded community forum for discussion of topical village issues. There has been a decrease in requests for health-care and other services from the research unit, with a concurrent increase in research-related questions and requests for data from service providers, village leaders and political representatives. We conclude that, in this setting, the dissemination of research findings is not a linear exchange of information from the researchers to village residents and their leadership, but is increasingly multi-directional. KDIs are a key component of knowledge brokerage activities and involve, influence and are influenced by other aspects of knowledge brokerage, such as identifying, engaging and connecting with stakeholders and supporting sustainability

Intensity-based image registration using multiple distributed agents

Image registration is the process of geometrically aligning images taken from different sensors, viewpoints or instances in time. It plays a key role in the detection of defects or anomalies for automated visual inspection. A multiagent distributed blackboard system has been developed for intensity-based image registration. The images are divided into segments and allocated to agents on separate processors, allowing parallel computation of a similarity metric that measures the degree of likeness between reference and sensed images after the application of a transform. The need for a dedicated control module is removed by coordination of agents via the blackboard. Tests show that additional agents increase speed, provided the communication capacity of the blackboard is not saturated. The success of the approach in achieving registration, despite significant misalignment of the original images, is demonstrated in the detection of manufacturing defects on screen-printed plastic bottles and printed circuit boards

FOOD DEMAND IN URBAN CHINA: AN APPLICATION OF A MULTI-STAGE CENSORED DEMAND SYSTEM

Since its economic reform, China has changed significantly as it makes its transition from a centrally-planned to a consumer-oriented economy and thus has gradually increased household income and changed consumption patterns in urban China. This study attempts to provide an in-depth understanding of heterogeneous consumer patterns in urban China by developing a multi-stage censored demand system using household data. Specifically, this study develops an economic model considering heterogeneous consumption patterns across households and commodity groupings and estimates econometric models of a Quadratic Almost Ideal Demand System (QAIDS) using household data. Three methodologies are integrated including constructing a multi-stage demand system, incorporating demographic variables using the 'ordinary budget share scaling and translation' (OBSSAT), and employing a two-step estimator to deal with zero consumption problems. This study covers three provinces in China, Shandong, Jiangsu, and Guangdong, and uses household data from 1998 provided by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). Based on the Chinese food guide pyramid, a three-level utility tree is constructed dividing 18 food items into five subgroups. An empirical analysis is conducted by estimating econometric models to examine the impact of the potential factors, e.g., income and demographic variables, on food demand. The results show the uniqueness of this study in three dimensions. First, using the OBSSAT helps answer the question of "how to break down the heterogeneous consumption patterns in urban China?" In addition, our findings also show that China should be treated as several markets instead of one. Second, the QAIDS has not previously been applied to the study of food demand in urban China. Our results show that the QAIDS is superior to the AIDS; however, the degree of importance for the quadratic term decreases as demographic and censoring effects are considered in a demand system. Finally, 18 food items are broken down into five food subgroups and are estimated by a multi-stage censored QAIDS. Including this large food bundle in a demand system provides us detailed information of the relationship among food items.Demand and Price Analysis,