Evorus: A Crowd-powered Conversational Assistant Built to Automate Itself Over Time

Crowd-powered conversational assistants have been shown to be more robust than automated systems, but do so at the cost of higher response latency and monetary costs. A promising direction is to combine the two approaches for high quality, low latency, and low cost solutions. In this paper, we introduce Evorus, a crowd-powered conversational assistant built to automate itself over time by (i) allowing new chatbots to be easily integrated to automate more scenarios, (ii) reusing prior crowd answers, and (iii) learning to automatically approve response candidates. Our 5-month-long deployment with 80 participants and 281 conversations shows that Evorus can automate itself without compromising conversation quality. Crowd-AI architectures have long been proposed as a way to reduce cost and latency for crowd-powered systems; Evorus demonstrates how automation can be introduced successfully in a deployed system. Its architecture allows future researchers to make further innovation on the underlying automated components in the context of a deployed open domain dialog system.Comment: 10 pages. To appear in the Proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2018 (CHI'18

dbPTM: an information repository of protein post-translational modification

dbPTM is a database that compiles information on protein post-translational modifications (PTMs), such as the catalytic sites, solvent accessibility of amino acid residues, protein secondary and tertiary structures, protein domains and protein variations. The database includes all of the experimentally validated PTM sites from Swiss-Prot, PhosphoELM and O-GLYCBASE. Only a small fraction of Swiss-Prot proteins are annotated with experimentally verified PTM. Although the Swiss-Prot provides rich information about the PTM, other structural properties and functional information of proteins are also essential for elucidating protein mechanisms. The dbPTM systematically identifies three major types of protein PTM (phosphorylation, glycosylation and sulfation) sites against Swiss-Prot proteins by refining our previously developed prediction tool, KinasePhos (). Solvent accessibility and secondary structure of residues are also computationally predicted and are mapped to the PTM sites. The resource is now freely available at

Quasi-Hermitian extended SSH models

We consider the quasi Hermitian limit of a non-Hermitian extended Su Schrieffer Heeger model, in which the hopping amplitudes obey a specific relation so that the system may be mapped to a corresponding Hermitian one and its energy spectrum is completely real. Analogous to the Hermitian case, one may use the modified winding number to determine the total number of edge states on the boundaries to achieve a modified bulk-boundary correspondence. Due to the skin effect in nonHermitian systems, the spectral winding numbers must be used to classify such systems further. It dictates how the edge states would be distributed over the left and right boundaries. We then naively extend the criteria to the cases that the quasi Hermitian condition is violated. For all the cases that we consider, no inconsistency has been found.Comment: 21 pages, 10 figure

RNAMST: efficient and flexible approach for identifying RNA structural homologs

RNA molecules fold into characteristic secondary structures for their diverse functional activities such as post-translational regulation of gene expression. Searching homologs of a pre-defined RNA structural motif, which may be a known functional element or a putative RNA structural motif, can provide useful information for deciphering RNA regulatory mechanisms. Since searching for the RNA structural homologs among the numerous RNA sequences is extremely time-consuming, this work develops a data preprocessing strategy to enhance the search efficiency and presents RNAMST, which is an efficient and flexible web server for rapidly identifying homologs of a pre-defined RNA structural motif among numerous RNA sequences. Intuitive user interface are provided on the web server to facilitate the predictive analysis. By comparing the proposed web server to other tools developed previously, RNAMST performs remarkably more efficiently and provides more effective and flexible functions. RNAMST is now available on the web at

Synthesis and Annealing Study of Silicon- and Fluorine-containing Low Bandgap Conjugated Polymers for Solar Cell Applications

Two donor-acceptor alternating conjugated copolymers were synthesized as the donor materials of the active layer in polymer solar cells via Stille coupling reaction. Both copolymers consisted of dithienosilole as the donor unit and nonfluorinated 2,1,3-benzooxadiazole or fluorinated 2,1,3-benzooxadiazole as the acceptor unit. The nonfluorinated polymer and fluorinated polymer were designated as P1 and P2, respectively. The structures of copolymers were confirmed by FT-IR, 1H NMR, and 13C NMR. Optoelectronic properties of the polymer were investigated and observed by UV-vis spectrum, photoluminescence spectrum, and cyclic voltammetry. Both polymers exhibited a panchromatic absorption ranging from 300 nm to 1100 nm and displayed low band gaps of 1.46 eV and 1.42 eV, respectively. Both of the synthesized materials were used as the donor material in the bulk heterojunction (BHJ) solar cells and then power conversion efficiency (PCE) measurements were conducted in different weight ratios of the polymer:PC61BM blends. Compared to the nonfluorinated one, the fluorinated polymer exhibited a higher PCE of 2.67% at room temperature under the illumination of AM 1.5 (100 mW/cm2). Study of the effect of annealing on the performance of the P1/PC61BM devices using a 1:2 blend ratio of P1:PC61BM exhibited the highest short-circuit current density of 5.88 mA/cm2 and a power conversion efficiency of 2.76% at annealing temperature of 125℃. The bulk heterojunction polymer solar cell employing P2 and PC61BM at a blend ratio of 1:2 exhibited the highest short-circuit current density of 6.44 mA/cm2 and a power conversion efficiency of 3.54% at annealing temperature of 150℃

Application of Highly Purified Electrolyzed Chlorine Dioxide for Tilapia Fillet Disinfection

This research aimed to develop an electrolysis method to generate high-concentration chlorine dioxide (ClO2) for tilapia fillet disinfection. The designed generator produced up to 3500 ppm of ClO2 at up to 99% purity. Tilapia fillets were soaked in a 400 ppm ClO2 solution for 5, 10, and 25 min. Results show that total plate counts of tilapia, respectively, decreased by 5.72 to 3.23, 2.10, and 1.09 log CFU/g. In addition, a 200 ppm ClO2 solution eliminated coliform bacteria and Escherichia coli in 5 min with shaking treatment. Furthermore, ClO2 and trihalomethanes (THMs) residuals on tilapia fillets were analyzed by GC/MS and were nondetectable (GC-MS detection limit was 0.12 ppb). The results conform to Taiwan’s environmental protection regulations and act governing food sanitation

Rhodiola crenulata extract for prevention of acute mountain sickness: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover trial

BACKGROUND: Rhodiola crenulata (R. crenulata) is widely used to prevent acute mountain sickness in the Himalayan areas and in Tibet, but no scientific studies have previously examined its effectiveness. We conducted a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover study to investigate its efficacy in acute mountain sickness prevention. METHODS: Healthy adult volunteers were randomized to 2 treatment sequences, receiving either 800 mg R. crenulata extract or placebo daily for 7 days before ascent and 2 days during mountaineering, before crossing over to the alternate treatment after a 3-month wash-out period. Participants ascended rapidly from 250 m to 3421 m on two separate occasions: December 2010 and April 2011. The primary outcome measure was the incidence of acute mountain sickness, as defined by a Lake Louise score ≥ 3, with headache and at least one of the symptoms of nausea or vomiting, fatigue, dizziness, or difficulty sleeping. RESULTS: One hundred and two participants completed the trial. There were no demographic differences between individuals taking Rhodiola-placebo and those taking placebo-Rhodiola. No significant differences in the incidence of acute mountain sickness were found between R. crenulata extract and placebo groups (all 60.8%; adjusted odds ratio (AOR) = 1.02, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.69–1.52). The incidence of severe acute mountain sickness in Rhodiola extract vs. placebo groups was 35.3% vs. 29.4% (AOR = 1.42, 95% CI = 0.90–2.25). CONCLUSIONS: R. crenulata extract was not effective in reducing the incidence or severity of acute mountain sickness as compared to placebo. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01536288