One model, two languages: training bilingual parsers with harmonized treebanks

We introduce an approach to train lexicalized parsers using bilingual corpora obtained by merging harmonized treebanks of different languages, producing parsers that can analyze sentences in either of the learned languages, or even sentences that mix both. We test the approach on the Universal Dependency Treebanks, training with MaltParser and MaltOptimizer. The results show that these bilingual parsers are more than competitive, as most combinations not only preserve accuracy, but some even achieve significant improvements over the corresponding monolingual parsers. Preliminary experiments also show the approach to be promising on texts with code-switching and when more languages are added.Comment: 7 pages, 4 tables, 1 figur

Impact Distribution of the Beam Losses at the LHC Collimators in Case of Magnet Failures

During LHC operation, magnet failures may affect the beam optics leading to proton losses in the collimators. These losses, with about 360MJ of stored energy per beam at nominal collision operation, are potentially dangerous for the accelerator equipment. The LHC Machine Protection Systems ensure that the beam is extracted safely before these losses can produce any damage. As a magnet failure develops, so does the distribution of the lost particles, longitudinally along the ring as well as transversally at each collimator. The transversal impact distributions of lost particles at the most affected collimators and their evolution with time have been studied for representative magnet failures in the LHC. It has been found that the impact distribution at a given collimator can be approximated by an exponential function with time-dependent parameters. The average impact parameter ranges from about 7 to $620 \mu$m for the cases studied

An Expert Systems for Homeopatic Glaucoma Treatment (SEHO)

In this article, an Expert System for Homeopathic Glaucoma Treatment (SEHO) is presented, the task of which is to assist ophthalmologists in selecting the most appropriate therapy for a patient diagnosed as having glaucoma. It is based on techniques proper to homeopathic medicine, a trend that is gaining more and more supporters all over the world, but in which real experts are few and far between. After a brief overview of the state of the art, the authors describe in detail on the development of the system, for which the IDEAL methodology, designed for knowledge-based system development, was used

Enantioselective Synthesis of Succinimides by Michael Addition of 1,3-Dicarbonyl Compounds to Maleimides Catalyzed by a Chiral Bis(2-aminobenzimidazole) Organocatalyst

A wide variety of chiral succinimides have been prepared in high yields and enantioselectivities by asymmetric conjugate addition of 1,3-dicarbonyl compounds to maleimides under very mild reaction conditions using a bifunctional benzimidazole-derived organocatalyst. Computational and NMR studies support the hydrogen-bonding activation role of the catalyst and the origin of the stereoselectivity of the process.Financial support from the Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (MEC) (project numbers CTQ2007-62771/BQU, CTQ2010-20387), from Consolider INGENIO 2010 (grant number CSD2007-00006), from the Generalitat Valenciana (PROMETEO/2009/038), from Fondos Europeos para el Desarrollo Regional (FEDER), from the University of Alicante, and from the European Union (EU) (ORCA Action CM0905) is acknowledged

Graphene Oxide-Supported Oxime Palladacycles as Efficient Catalysts for the Suzuki–Miyaura Cross-Coupling Reaction of Aryl Bromides at Room Temperature under Aqueous Conditions

Palladacycles are highly efficient precatalysts in cross-coupling reactions whose immobilization on carbonaceous materials has been hardly studied. Herein, we report a detailed study on the synthesis and characterization of new oxime palladacycle-graphene oxide non-covalent materials along with their catalytic activity in the Suzuki–Miyaura reaction. Catalyst 1-GO, which has been fully characterized by ICP, XPS, TGA, and UV-Vis analyses has been demonstrated to be an efficient catalyst for the Suzuki–Miyaura coupling between aryl bromides and arylboronic acids using very low catalyst loadings (0.002 mol % of Pd) at room temperature under aqueous conditions.Financial support from the University of Alicante (UAUSTI16-03, UAUSTI16-10, VIGROB-173), the Spanish Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (CTQ2015-66624-P) is acknowledged

Creación de un treebank de dependencias universales mediante recursos existentes para lenguas próximas: el caso del gallego

[Resumen] En este trabajo presentamos una nueva estrategia para crear treebanks de lenguas con pocos recursos para el análisis sintáctico. El método consiste en la adaptación y combinación de diferentes treebanks anotados con dependencias universales de variedades lingüísticas próximas, con el objetivo de entrenar un analizador sintáctico para la lengua elegida, en nuestro caso el gallego. Durante el proceso de selección y adaptación de los treebanks de origen, analizamos el impacto de propiedades de tres niveles diferentes: (i) la distancia entre las lenguas de origen y destino, (ii) la adaptación de características léxico-ortográficas, y (iii) las directrices de anotación entre los treebanks. Usando la estrategia propuesta, entrenamos un analizador sintáctico estadístico para etiquetar, con resultados prometedores y sin datos previos de gallego, un pequeño corpus de esta lengua. La corrección manual de este corpus, usado como gold-standard, nos permitió probar la eficacia del método propuesto.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad; FFI2014-51978-C2-1-RMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad; FJCI-2014-22853Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad; FFI2014-51978-C2-2-

New Treebank or Repurposed? On the Feasibility of Cross-Lingual Parsing of Romance Languages with Universal Dependencies

This is the final peer-reviewed manuscript that was accepted for publication in Natural Language Engineering. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document.[Abstract] This paper addresses the feasibility of cross-lingual parsing with Universal Dependencies (UD) between Romance languages, analyzing its performance when compared to the use of manually annotated resources of the target languages. Several experiments take into account factors such as the lexical distance between the source and target varieties, the impact of delexicalization, the combination of different source treebanks or the adaptation of resources to the target language, among others. The results of these evaluations show that the direct application of a parser from one Romance language to another reaches similar labeled attachment score (LAS) values to those obtained with a manual annotation of about 3,000 tokens in the target language, and unlabeled attachment score (UAS) results equivalent to the use of around 7,000 tokens, depending on the case. These numbers can noticeably increase by performing a focused selection of the source treebanks. Furthermore, the removal of the words in the training corpus (delexicalization) is not useful in most cases of cross-lingual parsing of Romance languages. The lessons learned with the performed experiments were used to build a new UD treebank for Galician, with 1,000 sentences manually corrected after an automatic cross-lingual annotation. Several evaluations in this new resource show that a cross-lingual parser built with the best combination and adaptation of the source treebanks performs better (77 percent LAS and 82 percent UAS) than using more than 16,000 (for LAS results) and more than 20,000 (UAS) manually labeled tokens of Galician.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad; FJCI-2014-22853Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad; FFI2014-51978-C2-1-RMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad; FFI2014-51978-C2-2-

Tratamiento sintáctico de la negación en análisis del sentimiento monolingüe y multilingüe

[Abstract] Dealing with negation in a proper way is a relevant factor in order to obtain high performance sentiment analysis systems. In this framework, we present a method for the treatment of negation in Spanish that exploits the syntactic information obtained from a dependency parser trained on the Ancora corpus, together with a set of specific rules. Next, we generalize this method to a multilingual environment in which the harmonized framework of annotation provided by the Universal Dependencies is exploited, along with a generic formalism to define language-independent rules that determine the scope of negation. The experimental results support the effectiveness of the method, both on monolingual and multilingual environments.[Resumen] Tratar adecuadamente la negación es importante para obtener sistemas de análisis del sentimiento de alto rendimiento. En este marco, presentamos un método de tratamiento de la negación en español que explota la información sintáctica obtenida a partir de un analizador de dependencias entrenado en el corpus Ancora junto con un conjunto de reglas específicas para el español. A continuación presentamos un sistema que generaliza este método a un entorno multilingüe en el que se explota el marco armonizado de anotación que proporcionan las Dependencias Universales, junto con un formalismo genérico para definir las reglas que determinan el alcance de la negación. Los resultados experimentales avalan la efectividad del método, tanto en entornos monolingües como multilingües.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad; FFI2014-51978-C2-2-R.Ministerio de Educacíon, Cultura y Deporte; FPU13/0118