CNNs found to jump around more skillfully than RNNs: Compositional generalization in seq2seq convolutional networks

Lake and Baroni (2018) introduced the SCAN dataset probing the ability of seq2seq models to capture compositional generalizations, such as inferring the meaning of "jump around" 0-shot from the component words. Recurrent networks (RNNs) were found to completely fail the most challenging generalization cases. We test here a convolutional network (CNN) on these tasks, reporting hugely improved performance with respect to RNNs. Despite the big improvement, the CNN has however not induced systematic rules, suggesting that the difference between compositional and non-compositional behaviour is not clear-cut.Comment: accepted as a short paper at ACL 201

Fine-tuning on Clean Data for End-to-End Speech Translation: FBK @ IWSLT 2018

This paper describes FBK's submission to the end-to-end English-German speech translation task at IWSLT 2018. Our system relies on a state-of-the-art model based on LSTMs and CNNs, where the CNNs are used to reduce the temporal dimension of the audio input, which is in general much higher than machine translation input. Our model was trained only on the audio-to-text parallel data released for the task, and fine-tuned on cleaned subsets of the original training corpus. The addition of weight normalization and label smoothing improved the baseline system by 1.0 BLEU point on our validation set. The final submission also featured checkpoint averaging within a training run and ensemble decoding of models trained during multiple runs. On test data, our best single model obtained a BLEU score of 9.7, while the ensemble obtained a BLEU score of 10.24.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, system description at the 15th International Workshop on Spoken Language Translation (IWSLT) 201

Structure-based drug design e sintesi di nuovi bioisosteri eterociclici della funzione beta-diketoacida come inibitori dell'enzima HIV-1 integrasi

In questo lavoro, seguendo l’approccio della bioisosteria non classica, la porzione β-diketonica I è stata incorporata nei nuclei ossazolico III e pirazolico IV e sono stati disegnati gli acidi indolil-3-ossazolici 4ac e indolil-3-pirazolici 5a-c. Inoltre la funzione β-diketoacida II, sostituita con un nucleo 3-idrossi-pirrolo-2,5-dionico V, contemplato in letteratura come bioisostero di tale struttura, ha portato ai derivati 6a-c. Le molecole progettate sono state sottoposte ad uno studio di docking al fine di di valutare preliminarmente l’attività inibitoria tramite la costante di inibizione Ki in accordo con il razionale Structure-based drug design

Referential communication in heterogeneous communities of pre-trained visual deep networks

As large pre-trained image-processing neural networks are being embedded in autonomous agents such as self-driving cars or robots, the question arises of how such systems can communicate with each other about the surrounding world, despite their different architectures and training regimes. As a first step in this direction, we systematically explore the task of \textit{referential communication} in a community of heterogeneous state-of-the-art pre-trained visual networks, showing that they can develop, in a self-supervised way, a shared protocol to refer to a target object among a set of candidates. This shared protocol can also be used, to some extent, to communicate about previously unseen object categories of different granularity. Moreover, a visual network that was not initially part of an existing community can learn the community's protocol with remarkable ease. Finally, we study, both qualitatively and quantitatively, the properties of the emergent protocol, providing some evidence that it is capturing high-level semantic features of objects

Synthesis and study of polyhydroxylated phenol derivatives with potential cosmetic and phytoiatric applications

Tyrosinase (polyphenol oxidase, E.C. 1.14.18.1) and laccase (phenol oxidase, E.C. 1.10.3.2) are multifunctional copper-containing enzymes, that are keys in melanin biosynthesis, melanisation in animals and browning in plants. Our study is aimed to prepare new monomer and dimer phenol derivatives as potential inhibitors of melanin production starting from natural hydroxylated aromatic units

Searching for novel carbonic anhydrase inhibitors: from virtual screening to the lab bench

Carbonic Anhydrases (CAs) are zinc metalloenzymes that catalyze the reversible hydration of carbon dioxide to bicarbonate both in prokaryotes and eukaryotes. In this context, Computer Aided Drug Design strategies have emerged as powerful tools in the modern drug discovery paradigm. In particular, using ligand- and pharmacophore-based virtual screening approaches, we identified novel chemical entities with original chemotypes, that showed an interesting and selective inhibitory activity in nanomolar/low micromolar range toward CA I and CAII, isoforms. Herein, we present the hit-to-lead optimization process for these prototypes

Design, synthesis, molecular modeling and anti-HIV 1 integrase activity of a series of photoactivable diketo acid-containing inhibitors as affinity probes

Photoaffinity Labelling (PL) is a powerful method in the chemical proteomic approach of protein functions. This method is especially useful for the identification of ligand-binding sites of target proteins and for the investigation of ligand–receptor interactions. The use of affinity-labeled inhibitors to covalently modify the site of interaction and subsequent analysis of the protein have been very effective in providing useful informations about inhibitor binding for a multitude of therapeutic target proteins. Therefore, it could reasonably be applied in drug discovery and development processes. For example, such approach can be used to obtain structural information detailing the association between the enzyme HIV-1 integrase (IN) and inhibitors under development

Natural phenolic inhibitors of trichothecene biosynthesis by the wheat fungal pathogen <i>Fusarium culmorum</i>: a computational insight into the structure-activity relationship

A model of the trichodiene synthase (TRI5) of the wheat fungal pathogen and type-B trichothecene producer Fusarium culmorum was developed based on homology modelling with the crystallized protein of F. sporotrichioides. Eight phenolic molecules, namely ferulic acid 1, apocynin 2, propyl gallate 3, eugenol 4, Me-dehydrozingerone 5, eugenol dimer 6, magnolol 7, and ellagic acid 8, were selected for their ability to inhibit trichothecene production and/or fungal vegetative growth in F. culmorum. The chemical structures of phenols were constructed and partially optimised based on Molecular Mechanics (MM) studies and energy minimisation by Density Functional Theory (DFT). Docking analysis of the phenolic molecules was run on the 3D model of F. culmorum TRI5. Experimental biological activity, molecular descriptors and interacting-structures obtained from computational analysis were compared. Besides the catalytic domain, three privileged sites in the interaction with the inhibitory molecules were identified on the protein surface. The TRI5-ligand interactions highlighted in this study represent a powerful tool to the identification of new Fusarium-targeted molecules with potential as trichothecene inhibitors

Design and synthesis of bis-amide and hydrazide-containing derivatives of malonic acid as potential HIV-1 integrase inhibitors

HIV-1 integrase (IN) is an attractive and validated target for the development of novel therapeutics against AIDS. In the search for new IN inhibitors, we designed and synthesized three series of bis-amide and hydrazide-containing derivatives of malonic acid. We performed a docking study to investigate the potential interactions of the title compounds with essential amino acids on the IN active site