One Forward is Enough for Neural Network Training via Likelihood Ratio Method

While backpropagation (BP) is the mainstream approach for gradient computation in neural network training, its heavy reliance on the chain rule of differentiation constrains the designing flexibility of network architecture and training pipelines. We avoid the recursive computation in BP and develop a unified likelihood ratio (ULR) method for gradient estimation with just one forward propagation. Not only can ULR be extended to train a wide variety of neural network architectures, but the computation flow in BP can also be rearranged by ULR for better device adaptation. Moreover, we propose several variance reduction techniques to further accelerate the training process. Our experiments offer numerical results across diverse aspects, including various neural network training scenarios, computation flow rearrangement, and fine-tuning of pre-trained models. All findings demonstrate that ULR effectively enhances the flexibility of neural network training by permitting localized module training without compromising the global objective and significantly boosts the network robustness

Multi-Behavior Hypergraph-Enhanced Transformer for Sequential Recommendation

Learning dynamic user preference has become an increasingly important component for many online platforms (e.g., video-sharing sites, e-commerce systems) to make sequential recommendations. Previous works have made many efforts to model item-item transitions over user interaction sequences, based on various architectures, e.g., recurrent neural networks and self-attention mechanism. Recently emerged graph neural networks also serve as useful backbone models to capture item dependencies in sequential recommendation scenarios. Despite their effectiveness, existing methods have far focused on item sequence representation with singular type of interactions, and thus are limited to capture dynamic heterogeneous relational structures between users and items (e.g., page view, add-to-favorite, purchase). To tackle this challenge, we design a Multi-Behavior Hypergraph-enhanced Transformer framework (MBHT) to capture both short-term and long-term cross-type behavior dependencies. Specifically, a multi-scale Transformer is equipped with low-rank self-attention to jointly encode behavior-aware sequential patterns from fine-grained and coarse-grained levels. Additionally, we incorporate the global multi-behavior dependency into the hypergraph neural architecture to capture the hierarchical long-range item correlations in a customized manner. Experimental results demonstrate the superiority of our MBHT over various state-of-the-art recommendation solutions across different settings. Further ablation studies validate the effectiveness of our model design and benefits of the new MBHT framework. Our implementation code is released at: https://github.com/yuh-yang/MBHT-KDD22.Comment: Published as a KDD'22 full pape

Effect of multiple clinical factors on recurrent angina after percutaneous coronary intervention: A retrospective study from 398 ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction patients

Recurrent angina (RA) has an important influence on health status of patients after percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). This study aimed to retrospectively investigate the effect of multiple clinical factors on both short-term and long-term development of RA.A total of 398 ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) patients were studied for up to 12 months. The primary clinical outcome, RA, was assessed at 1-month and 12-month. In multivariate analyses, the effect of clinical factors, including baseline demographics, medical history, infarction-related arteries, procedural characteristics of PCI, and the use of medicines, was investigated in patients with and without RA.The Logistic regression analysis showed that the patients with treatment through radial approach PCI (odds ratio [OR]: 0.42, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.18-0.96, P < 0.05) were less likely to have RA during 1-month assessment. During 12 months after PCI, male patients (OR: 0.53, 95% CI: 0.29-0.96, P < 0.05), and/or those treated with radial approach PCI (OR: 0.45, 95% CI: 0.21-0.97, P < 0.05) were less likely to have RA, whereas the patients with infarction related artery (IRA) in left anterior descending (LAD) (OR: 2.41, 95% CI: 1.20-4.84, P < 0.01) were more likely to have RA at follow-up. The Cox regression analysis further revealed that the patients with infarction of the LAD artery (hazard ratio [HR]: 2.08, 95% CI: 1.10-3.92, P < 0.05), but not with treatment through radial artery during PCI (HR: 0.42, 95% CI: 0.18-0.96, P < 0.05) had higher potential of development of RA during 12 months after PCI.We studied the effects of multiple clinical factors on the development of RA after PCI. Our findings suggest that patients with infarction of the LAD artery, and/or treatment not through radial artery during PCI were associated with higher risk of RA and may require close follow-up

Multi-Scenario Ranking with Adaptive Feature Learning

Recently, Multi-Scenario Learning (MSL) is widely used in recommendation and retrieval systems in the industry because it facilitates transfer learning from different scenarios, mitigating data sparsity and reducing maintenance cost. These efforts produce different MSL paradigms by searching more optimal network structure, such as Auxiliary Network, Expert Network, and Multi-Tower Network. It is intuitive that different scenarios could hold their specific characteristics, activating the user's intents quite differently. In other words, different kinds of auxiliary features would bear varying importance under different scenarios. With more discriminative feature representations refined in a scenario-aware manner, better ranking performance could be easily obtained without expensive search for the optimal network structure. Unfortunately, this simple idea is mainly overlooked but much desired in real-world systems.Further analysis also validates the rationality of adaptive feature learning under a multi-scenario scheme. Moreover, our A/B test results on the Alibaba search advertising platform also demonstrate that Maria is superior in production environments.Comment: 10 pages

Outbreak of OXA-232-producing carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae ST15 in a Chinese teaching hospital: a molecular epidemiological study

Background and AimsThe incidence of OXA-232-producing carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae (CRKP) has been on the rise in China over the past five years, potentially leading to nosocomial epidemics. This study investigates the first outbreak of CRKP in the Second Affiliated Hospital of Jiaxing University.MethodsBetween February 2021 and March 2022, 21 clinical isolates of OXA-232-producing CRKP were recovered from 16 patients in the Second Affiliated Hospital of Jiaxing University. We conducted antimicrobial susceptibility tests, whole genome sequencing, and bioinformatics to determine the drug resistance profile of these clinical isolates.ResultsWhole-genome sequencing revealed that all 21 OXA-232-producing CRKP strains belonged to the sequence type 15 (ST15) and shared similar resistance, virulence genes, and plasmid types, suggesting clonal transmission between the environment and patients. Integrated genomic and epidemiological analysis traced the outbreak to two clonal transmission clusters, cluster 1 and cluster 2, including 14 and 2 patients. It was speculated that the CRKP transmission mainly occurred in the ICU, followed by brain surgery, neurosurgery, and rehabilitation department. Phylogenetic analysis indicated that the earliest outbreak might have started at least a year before the admission of the index patient, and these strains were closely related to those previously isolated from two major adjacent cities, Shanghai and Hangzhou. Comparative genomics showed that the IncFII-type and IncHI1B-type plasmids of cluster 2 had homologous recombination at the insertion sequence sites compared with the same type of plasmids in cluster 1, resulting in the insertion of 4 new drug resistance genes, including TEM-1, APH(6)-Id, APH(3’’)-Ib and sul2.ConclusionsOur study observed the clonal spread of ST15 OXA-232-producing between patients and the hospital environment. The integration of genomic and epidemiological data offers valuable insights and facilitate the control of nosocomial transmission

The auxin response factor, OsARF19, controls rice leaf angles through positively regulating OsGH3-5 and OsBRI1

Auxin and brassinosteroid (BR) are important phytohormones for controlling lamina inclination implicated in plant architecture and grain yield. But the molecular mechanism of auxin and BR crosstalk for regulating lamina inclination remains unknown. Auxin response factors (ARFs) control various aspects of plant growth and development. We here report that OsARF19-overexpression rice lines show an enlarged lamina inclination due to increase of its adaxial cell division. OsARF19 is expressed in various organs including lamina joint and strongly induced by auxin and BR. Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) and yeast one-hybrid assays demonstrate that OsARF19 binds to the promoter of OsGH3-5 and brassinosteroid insensitive 1 (OsBRI1) directing their expression. OsGH3-5-overexpression lines show a similar phenotype as OsARF19-O1. Free auxin contents in the lamina joint of OsGH3-5-O1 or OsARF19-O1 are reduced. OsGH3-5 is localized at the endoplasmic retieulum (ER) matching reduction of the free auxin contents in OsGH3-5-O1. osarf19-TDNA and osgh3-5-Tos17 mutants without erected leaves show a function redundancy with other members of their gene family. OsARF19-overexpression lines are sensitive to exogenous BR treatment and alter the expressions of genes related to BR signalling. These findings provide novel insights into auxin and BR signalling, and might have significant implications for improving plant architecture of monocot crops

The auxin influx carrier, OsAUX3, regulates rice root development and responses to aluminium stress

In rice, there are five members of the auxin carrier AUXIN1/LIKE AUX1 family; however, the biological functions of the other four members besides OsAUX1 remain unknown. Here, by using CRISPR/Cas9, we constructed two independent OsAUX3 knock‐down lines, osaux3‐1 and osaux3‐2, in wild‐type rice, Hwayoung (WT/HY) and Dongjin (WT/DJ). osaux3‐1 and osaux3‐2 have shorter primary roots (PRs), decreased lateral root (LR) density, and longer root hairs (RHs) compared with their WT. OsAUX3 expression in PRs, LRs, and RHs further supports that OsAUX3 plays a critical role in the regulation of root development. OsAUX3 locates at the plasma membrane and functions as an auxin influx carrier affecting acropetal auxin transport. OsAUX3 is up‐regulated in the root apex under aluminium (Al) stress, and osaux3‐2 is insensitive to Al treatments. Furthermore, 1‐naphthylacetic acid accented the sensitivity of WT/DJ and osaux3‐2 to respond to Al stress. Auxin concentrations, Al contents, and Al‐induced reactive oxygen species‐mediated damage in osaux3‐2 under Al stress are lower than in WT, indicating that OsAUX3 is involved in Al‐induced inhibition of root growth. This study uncovers a novel pathway alleviating Al‐induced oxidative damage by inhibition of acropetal auxin transport and provides a new option for engineering Al‐tolerant rice species

The auxin transporter, OsAUX1, is involved in primary root and root hair elongation and in Cd stress responses in rice (Oryza sativa L.)

Auxin and cadmium (Cd) stress play critical roles during root development. There are only a few reports on the mechanisms by which Cd stress influences auxin homeostasis and affects primary root (PR) and lateral root (LR) development, and almost nothing is known about how auxin and Cd interfere with root hair (RH) development. Here, we characterize rice osaux1 mutants that have a longer PR and shorter RHs in hydroponic culture, and that are more sensitive to Cd stress compared to wild-type (Dongjin). OsAUX1 expression in root hair cells is different from that of its paralogous gene, AtAUX1, which is expressed in non-hair cells. However, OsAUX1, like AtAUX1, localizes at the plasma membrane and appears to function as an auxin tranporter. Decreased auxin distribution and contents in the osaux1 mutant result in reduction of OsCyCB1;1 expression and shortened PRs, LRs and RHs under Cd stress, but may be rescued by treatment with the membrane-permeable auxin 1-naphthalene acetic acid. Treatment with the auxin transport inhibitors 1-naphthoxyacetic acid and N-1-naphthylphthalamic acid increased the Cd sensitivity of WT rice. Cd contents in the osaux1 mutant were not altered, but reactive oxygen species-mediated damage was enhanced, further increasing the sensitivity of the osaux1 mutant to Cd stress. Taken together, our results indicate that OsAUX1 plays an important role in root development and in responses to Cd stress

Evaluate Typhoon Disasters in 21st Century Maritime Silk Road by Super-Efficiency DEA

The Belt and Road Initiative involves many countries and areas. As the introducer, China plays a key role in the initiative. However, the coastal areas in China have frequently been hit by typhoons that lead to huge casualties and economic losses. In order to reduce damages caused by natural disasters, this paper selected the coastal regions of the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road as the study areas, specifically Shanghai, Zhejiang, Guangdong, Fujian, and Hainan, to estimate the vulnerability to typhoon disasters based on the historical data about typhoon disasters and the super-efficiency data envelopment analysis (DEA) evaluation model. Although Shanghai is a low-vulnerable region, it needs to pay close attention to the risk of typhoon disasters due to the outstanding economic influence. In addition, it was found that the vulnerability to typhoons in Zhejiang, Guangdong, and Hainan showed a dramatic fluctuation from 2011 to 2016, and Zhejiang&#8217;s vulnerability in 2013 was extremely high compared to other years. Meanwhile, Guangdong and Hainan are highly vulnerable areas, suffering from typhoon disasters heavily. Moreover, the vulnerability to typhoons for Fujian is relatively low

Warranty Decision Model and Remanufacturing Coordination Mechanism in Closed-Loop Supply Chain: View from a Consumer Behavior Perspective

The remanufacturing warranty strategy has become an effective mechanism for reducing consumer risk and stimulating market demand in closed-loop supply chain management. Based on the characteristics of consumers&#8217; behavior of purchase decisions, this paper studies the warranty decision model of remanufacturing closed-loop supply chain under the Stackelberg game model. The present study discussed and compared the decision variables, including remanufacturing product pricing, extended warranty service pricing, warranty period and supply chain system profit. The research shows that consumers&#8217; decision-making significantly affirms the dual marginalization effect of the supply chain system while significantly affecting the supply chain warranty decision; the improved revenue sharing contract and the two charge contracts respectively coordinates the manufacturer-led and retail-oriented closed-loop supply chain system, which effectively implements the Pareto improvement of the closed-loop supply chain system with warranty services. In the present study, the model is verified and analyzed by numerical simulation