BLSP: Bootstrapping Language-Speech Pre-training via Behavior Alignment of Continuation Writing

The emergence of large language models (LLMs) has sparked significant interest in extending their remarkable language capabilities to speech. However, modality alignment between speech and text still remains an open problem. Current solutions can be categorized into two strategies. One is a cascaded approach where outputs (tokens or states) of a separately trained speech recognition system are used as inputs for LLMs, which limits their potential in modeling alignment between speech and text. The other is an end-to-end approach that relies on speech instruction data, which is very difficult to collect in large quantities. In this paper, we address these issues and propose the BLSP approach that Bootstraps Language-Speech Pre-training via behavior alignment of continuation writing. We achieve this by learning a lightweight modality adapter between a frozen speech encoder and an LLM, ensuring that the LLM exhibits the same generation behavior regardless of the modality of input: a speech segment or its transcript. The training process can be divided into two steps. The first step prompts an LLM to generate texts with speech transcripts as prefixes, obtaining text continuations. In the second step, these continuations are used as supervised signals to train the modality adapter in an end-to-end manner. We demonstrate that this straightforward process can extend the capabilities of LLMs to speech, enabling speech recognition, speech translation, spoken language understanding, and speech conversation, even in zero-shot cross-lingual scenarios

Description of immature stages and biological notes of Cassidispa relicta Medvedev, 1957, a newly recorded species from China (Coleoptera, Chrysomelidae, Cassidinae, Hispini)

The first instar and mature larva and pupa of Cassidispa relicta Medvedev, 1957, a newly recorded species from China, are described and figured. The chaetotaxy of the head, mouthparts, legs, and dorsal and ventral surfaces of the body is described. This is the first detailed description of immatures in the genus Cassidispa. Diagnostic characters of this species are compared with other described immatures of some Hispini genera. Biological notes on C. relicta, such as host plants, feeding patterns of adults, structure of larval mines and life history, are also presented

FIGURE 1 in A new leaf-mining moth, Caloptilia aesculi, sp. nov. (Lepidoptera: Gracillariidae: Gracillariinae) feeding on Aesculus chinensis Bunge (Hippocastanaceae) from China

FIGURE 1. Caloptilia aesculi, sp. nov. A: Male adult (Qinling, Shaanxi), holotype, scale bar 2 mm. B: Female adult (Badagongshan, Hunan), paratype. C: Wings venation, scale bar 1mm.Published as part of <i>Liao, Chengqing, Ohshima, Issei & Huang, Guohua, 2019, A new leaf-mining moth, Caloptilia aesculi, sp. nov. (Lepidoptera: Gracillariidae: Gracillariinae) feeding on Aesculus chinensis Bunge (Hippocastanaceae) from China, pp. 586-600 in Zootaxa 4586 (3)</i> on page 588, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4586.3.13, <a href="http://zenodo.org/record/2647174">http://zenodo.org/record/2647174</a&gt

FIGURE 4 in A new leaf-mining moth, Caloptilia aesculi, sp. nov. (Lepidoptera: Gracillariidae: Gracillariinae) feeding on Aesculus chinensis Bunge (Hippocastanaceae) from China

FIGURE 4. Biology of Caloptilia aesculi, sp. nov. A: Habitat and host plant Aesculus chinensis in Huameiguan. B: Mine of first instar larvae. C: Mine of third instar larvae. D: The same mine of C with transmitted light. E-F: The lateral margin (E) or the apical part (F) of a leaflet folded downward by later instar larva inside. G. Leaf shelter (stacking two leaflets) of later instars larva indicated by white row. H: Inside of the leaflet shelter as shown in G. I: Transparent cocoon along the midrib on the underside of leaflet. J: Larva spinning cocoon. Scale bar 1 cm, except 0.5 cm in J.Published as part of Liao, Chengqing, Ohshima, Issei & Huang, Guohua, 2019, A new leaf-mining moth, Caloptilia aesculi, sp. nov. (Lepidoptera: Gracillariidae: Gracillariinae) feeding on Aesculus chinensis Bunge (Hippocastanaceae) from China, pp. 586-600 in Zootaxa 4586 (3) on page 592, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4586.3.13, http://zenodo.org/record/264717

Host relationships and biological notes of Cassidinae beetles (Coleoptera, Chrysomelidae) in Qiannan Prefecture, Guizhou, China

The faunal composition, host relationships and biological information of the subfamily Cassidinae (Coleoptera, Chrysomelidae) remain poorly known in many Chinese regions. Based on the seven-year field survey, faunal composition and host associations of Cassidinae beetles were systematically compiled for Qiannan Buyi and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, Guizhou Province. In particular, through direct field observations, detailed biological information, such as life history and behavioural features and host plants were first recorded for 56 species of Cassidinae beetles. We have tripled the number of Cassidinae species in Qiannan. Sixty-nine species of Cassidinae beetles belonging to 17 genera and eight tribes were identified, of which 38 species are newly recorded in Guizhou and 56 are newly recorded in Qiannan. The tribes Leptispini and Notosacanthini were newly recorded in Guizhou. The genera Thlaspidosoma Spaeth, Downesia Baly, Klitispa Uhmann, Platypria Guérin-Méneville, Leptispa Baly and Notosacantha Chevrolat were recorded in Guizhou for the first time. A total of 61 species, 37 genera and 17 families of host plants were collected. Lardizabalaceae and Araliaceae were new host plant families for Cassidinae worldwide. Quantitative food web analysis indicated that Cassidinae species in Qiannan mainly feed on Poaceae, Rosaceae, Convolvulaceae and Lamiaceae. Callispini and Leptispini only feed on monocots, Aspidimorphini, Basiprionotini, Cassidini and Notosacanthini only feed on dicots, while Hispini feed on both monocots and dicots. The feeding patterns and corresponding damage marks of Cassidinae were quite diverse. In addition, the pupal mine-making behaviour of Dactylispa excisa (Kraatz, 1879), D. similis Chen et T’an, 1985 and D. uhmanni Gressitt, 1950 are worth further study. Although preliminary, our field survey is an essential step in understanding Cassidinae behaviour and Cassidinae-plant interactions

Description of the last-instar larva and pupa of a leaf-mining hispine – Prionispa champaka Maulik, 1919 (Coleoptera, Chrysomelidae, Cassidinae, Oncocephalini)

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The Cassidinae beetles of Longnan County (Jiangxi, China): overview and community composition

There are few reports on the community composition and diversity pattern of the Cassidinae species of China. Compared to the neighbouring provinces of Guangdong, Fujian and Zhejiang, the Cassidinae richness in Jiangxi Province is under-reported. Longnan City, a biodiversity hotspot in Jiangxi Province, was chosen to obtain the first overview of the Cassidinae beetles. The sample coverage curves for the three sample sites reached an asymptote which indicated sampling was sufficient for data analysis. A total of eight tribes, 16 genera, 59 species and 1590 individuals of Cassidinae beetles were collected. Most belonged to the tribe Hispini (1121 individuals; 70.5%), followed by the tribe Cassidini (161 individuals; 10.13%) and the tribe Oncocephalini (159 individuals; 10.0%). The remainder (149 individuals) belonged to five tribes (Gonophorini, Basiprionotini, Callispini, Notosacanthini and Aspidimorphini). The tribes Notosacanthini, Aspidimorphini and Oncocephalini were newly recorded for Jiangxi Province. There were 14 families, 27 genera and 39 species of host plants of Cassidinae beetles in Longnan County. Cassidinae larvae mainly feed on the plant families Poaceae, Rosaceae, Lamiaceae and Rubiaceae. Most host-plant associations are new reords for the beetle species. This research, together with our planned future work in China, may help to explain the geographical distribution, diversity patterns and host plant associations of these beetles

Chosen-plaintext cryptanalysis of a clipped-neural-networkbased chaotic cipher

Abstract. In ISNN’04, a novel symmetric cipher was proposed, by combining a chaotic signal and a clipped neural network (CNN) for encryption. The present paper analyzes the security of this chaotic cipher against chosen-plaintext attacks, and points out that this cipher can be broken by a chosen-plaintext attack. Experimental analyses are given to support the feasibility of the proposed attack.