LIA@CLEF 2018: Mining events opinion argumentation from raw unlabeled Twitter data using convolutional neural network

International audienceSocial networks on the Internet are becoming increasingly important in our society. In recent years, this type of media, through communication platforms such as Twitter, has brought new research issues due to the massive size of data exchanged and the important number of ever-increasing users. In this context, the CLEF 2018 Mining opinion argumentation task aims to retrieve, for a specific event (festival name or topic), the most diverse argumentative microblogs from a large collection of tweets about festivals in different languages. In this paper, we propose a four-step approach for extracting argumentative microblogs related to a specific query (or event) while no reference data is provided

Espace virtuel de construction collective

Le présent document présente un projet d'espace virtuel de construction collective sur internet. Débuté il y a maintenant six ans, le contexte social et technologique web qui a servi de base à la conception et la production de ce projet était alors très différent. La montée fulgurante des réseaux sociaux n'avait pas encore commencé et le web social en était encore à ses débuts. Ce projet tire donc ses racines des débuts de l'ascension des réseaux sociaux. S'appuyant sur les principes de cyberculture et de communautés virtuelles, cet espace virtuel cherchait à appuyer le développement d'une démarche artistique virtuelle et collective en permettant aux utilisateurs de construire ensemble des espaces tridimensionnels. Fournissant une interface interactive à l'intérieur d'une page internet, l'application projetée se voulait ouverte à tous et évolutive. C'était les utilisateurs qui en fournissaient le contenu. L'application ne fournissait que les outils de construction afin de bâtir les espaces : objets géométriques, lumières, matériaux, etc. Les utilisateurs travaillaient donc collectivement afin de créer les espaces selon des thématiques qu'ils définissaient eux-mêmes : thématique précise, portfolio, espaces artistiques divers, etc. D'un point de vue pratique, le projet était d'une ampleur démesurée par rapport aux ressources disponibles à la production. La complexité technique du projet ainsi que les limites de ressources ont grandement contribué à réduire l'étendue du projet, le limitant à un prototype fonctionnel. Ces derniers éléments ont également limité l'analyse du prototype dans un contexte d'interaction entre les différents utilisateurs. La phase de test a été effectuée principalement par ceux qui ont contribué à la création du projet, limitant de ce fait les données quant à l'efficacité du système dans la création d'une démarche artistique virtuelle et collective. Le projet se résume donc à un prototype fonctionnel ayant permis d'acquérir des connaissances considérables dans l'univers des réseaux sociaux.\ud ______________________________________________________________________________ \ud MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : communauté virtuelle, espace virtuel, construction collective, réseaux sociaux, internet

Optimization of preservation methods allows deeper insights into changes of raw milk microbiota

The temporal instability of raw milk microbiota drastically affects the reliability of microbiome studies. However, little is known about the microbial integrity in preserved samples. Raw cow milk samples were preserved with azidiol or bronopol and stored at 4 ◦C, or with dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) or a mixture of azidiol and DMSO and stored at −20 ◦C for up to 30 days. Aliquots of 5-, 10-, and 30-day post-storage were treated with propidium monoazide (PMA), then analyzed by sequencing the 16S rRNA gene V3-V4 and V6-V8 regions. The V6-V8 gave a higher richness and lower diversity than the V3-V4 region. After 5-day storage at 4 ◦C, the microbiota of unpreserved samples was characterized by a drastic decrease in diversity, and a significant shift in community structure. The treatment with azidiol and DMSO conferred the best community stabilization in preserved raw milk. Interestingly, the azidiol treatment performed as well for up to 10 days, thus appearing as a suitable alternative. However, neither azidiol nor bronopol could minimize fungal proliferation as revealed by PMA-qPCR assays. This study demonstrates the preservative ability of a mixture of azidiol and DMSO and provides deeper insights into the microbial changes occurring during the cold storage of preserved raw milk

Particle Size Distribution in a Godbert-Greenwald Furnace: Experiments and Modelling

During a dust dispersion, the particle size distribution (PSD) depends on several factors such as the turbulence, the initial particle size and shape as well as the dust concentration. As a consequence, when determining safety parameters using standard procedures, its potential evolution should be considered. Different powders were chosen: glucose, starch, ascorbic acid, glass beads and cellulose. A Godbert-Greenwald furnace was used to disperse the powders and determine their minimum ignition temperature (MIT) according to ISO/IEC 80079-20-2:2016 standard. The PSD of each powder was determined in-situ at different locations using a laser diffraction sensor. Some powders showed clear signs of breakage, as for glucose whose mean diameter decreases from 166 to 76 µm during its dispersion. On the contrary, many samples tended to agglomerate, e.g. starch and cellulose. For instance, the d90 of starch can even be quadrupled under certain conditions. Agglomeration occurs especially for fine dusts due to strong inter-particles forces (e.g. starch) or for elongated fibres due to entanglement phenomenon (e.g. cellulose). During a powder dispersion in the Godbert-Greenwald furnace, the PSD evolves not only as a function of time but also along with its location. The impact of the glass elbow on PSD variation has notably been highlighted by placing the G-G furnace horizontally. For powders showing strong tendency to agglomeration or breakage, the influence of the dispersion pressure has also been studied. The role of such PSD modification on the MIT has been measured and, depending on the dispersion procedure, temperature differences of more than 50°C have been observed. The agglomerate strength was assessed using three models (from Rumpf, Weiler and Kendall works) and compare to the deagglomeration stress exerted on the powders. In the case of cohesive powders, fibres or brittle dusts, attention should be paid to the PSD evolution during MIT determination

AdaWCT: Adaptive Whitening and Coloring Style Injection

Adaptive instance normalization (AdaIN) has become the standard method for style injection: by re-normalizing features through scale-and-shift operations, it has found widespread use in style transfer, image generation, and image-to-image translation. In this work, we present a generalization of AdaIN which relies on the whitening and coloring transformation (WCT) which we dub AdaWCT, that we apply for style injection in large GANs. We show, through experiments on the StarGANv2 architecture, that this generalization, albeit conceptually simple, results in significant improvements in the quality of the generated images.Comment: 4 pages + ref

Automatic Text Simplification of News Articles in the Context of Public Broadcasting

This report summarizes the work carried out by the authors during the Twelfth Montreal Industrial Problem Solving Workshop, held at Universit\'e de Montr\'eal in August 2022. The team tackled a problem submitted by CBC/Radio-Canada on the theme of Automatic Text Simplification (ATS)

Exciton-Phonon Interactions Govern Charge-Transfer-State Dynamics in CdSe/CdTe Two-Dimensional Colloidal Heterostructures.

CdSe/CdTe core-crown type-II nanoplatelet heterostructures are two-dimensional semiconductors that have attracted interest for use in light-emitting technologies due to their ease of fabrication, outstanding emission yields, and tunable properties. Despite this, the exciton dynamics of these complex materials, and in particular how they are influenced by phonons, is not yet well understood. Here, we use a combination of femtosecond vibrational spectroscopy, temperature-resolved photoluminescence (PL), and temperature-dependent structural measurements to investigate CdSe/CdTe nanoplatelets with a thickness of four monolayers. We show that charge-transfer (CT) excitons across the CdSe/CdTe interface are formed on two distinct time scales: initially from an ultrafast (∼70 fs) electron transfer and then on longer time scales (∼5 ps) from the diffusion of domain excitons to the interface. We find that the CT excitons are influenced by an interfacial phonon mode at ∼120 cm-1, which localizes them to the interface. Using low-temperature PL spectroscopy we reveal that this same phonon mode is the dominant mechanism in broadening the CT PL. On cooling to 4 K, the total PL quantum yield reaches close to unity, with an ∼85% contribution from CT emission and the remainder from an emissive sub-band-gap state. At room temperature, incomplete diffusion of domain excitons to the interface and scattering between CT excitons and phonons limit the PL quantum yield to ∼50%. Our results provide a detailed picture of the nature of exciton-phonon interactions at the interfaces of 2D heterostructures and explain both the broad shape of the CT PL spectrum and the origin of PL quantum yield losses. Furthermore, they suggest that to maximize the PL quantum yield both improved engineering of the interfacial crystal structure and diffusion of domain excitons to the interface, e.g., by altering the relative core/crown size, are required.We acknowledge financial support from the EPSRC [EP/M005143/1] and Winton Program for the Physics of Sustainability. The work of SI is supported by the program ANR JCJC NannoDoSe