Towards Better Entity Linking with Multi-View Enhanced Distillation

Dense retrieval is widely used for entity linking to retrieve entities from large-scale knowledge bases. Mainstream techniques are based on a dual-encoder framework, which encodes mentions and entities independently and calculates their relevances via rough interaction metrics, resulting in difficulty in explicitly modeling multiple mention-relevant parts within entities to match divergent mentions. Aiming at learning entity representations that can match divergent mentions, this paper proposes a Multi-View Enhanced Distillation (MVD) framework, which can effectively transfer knowledge of multiple fine-grained and mention-relevant parts within entities from cross-encoders to dual-encoders. Each entity is split into multiple views to avoid irrelevant information being over-squashed into the mention-relevant view. We further design cross-alignment and self-alignment mechanisms for this framework to facilitate fine-grained knowledge distillation from the teacher model to the student model. Meanwhile, we reserve a global-view that embeds the entity as a whole to prevent dispersal of uniform information. Experiments show our method achieves state-of-the-art performance on several entity linking benchmarks.Comment: Accepted by ACL 2023 Main Conferenc

Large Virtual Transboundary Hazardous Waste Flows: The Case of China

The Basel Convention and prior studies mainly focused on the physical transboundary movements of hazardous waste (transporting waste from one region to another for cheaper disposal). Here, we take China, the world's largest waste producer, as an example and reveal the virtual hazardous waste flows in trade (outsourcing waste by importing waste-intensive products) by developing a multiregional input-output model. Our model characterizes the impact of international trade between China and 140 economies and China's interprovincial trade on hazardous waste generated by 161,599 Chinese enterprises. We find that, in 2015, virtual hazardous waste flows in China's trade reached 26.6 million tons (67% of the national total), of which 31% were generated during the production of goods that were ultimately consumed abroad. Trade-related production is much dirtier than locally consumed production, generating 26% more hazardous waste per unit of GDP. Under the impact of virtual flows, 40% of the waste-intensive production and relevant disposal duty is unequally concentrated in three Chinese provinces (including two least-developed ones, Qinghai and Xinjiang). Our findings imply the importance of expanding the scope of transboundary waste regulations and provide a quantitative basis for introducing consumer responsibilities. This may help relieve waste management burdens in less-developed "waste havens"

Large Virtual Transboundary Hazardous Waste Flows:The Case of China

The Basel Convention and prior studies mainly focused on the physical transboundary movements of hazardous waste (transporting waste from one region to another for cheaper disposal). Here, we take China, the world’s largest waste producer, as an example and reveal the virtual hazardous waste flows in trade (outsourcing waste by importing waste-intensive products) by developing a multiregional input–output model. Our model characterizes the impact of international trade between China and 140 economies and China’s interprovincial trade on hazardous waste generated by 161,599 Chinese enterprises. We find that, in 2015, virtual hazardous waste flows in China’s trade reached 26.6 million tons (67% of the national total), of which 31% were generated during the production of goods that were ultimately consumed abroad. Trade-related production is much dirtier than locally consumed production, generating 26% more hazardous waste per unit of GDP. Under the impact of virtual flows, 40% of the waste-intensive production and relevant disposal duty is unequally concentrated in three Chinese provinces (including two least-developed ones, Qinghai and Xinjiang). Our findings imply the importance of expanding the scope of transboundary waste regulations and provide a quantitative basis for introducing consumer responsibilities. This may help relieve waste management burdens in less-developed “waste havens”

Implementation of a visual modeling tool for defining instance aspect in workflow

The instance-aspect oriented workflow management system is to vertically combine multiple workflow activity instances and submit them for execution as a whole according to some batch or combination logics. It is inspired by the idea of aspect-oriented programming methodology and aims at improving the execution efficiency of business processes. Traditional workflow systems do not support workflow model with instance aspects. In our previous work, we have studied workflow instance modeling technology. This paper makes a research on the principles, methods and implementation of a workflow visual GUI tool for modeling instance aspects in workflow. It is based on an open source GUI tool, Together Workflow Editor, and makes some expansion in instance aspect functionality

Synthesis and mesomorphic properties of four-ring fluorinated liquid crystals with trifluoromethyl group

<p>The discovery of nematic phase in 3-fluoro-4-trifluoromethyl-4ʹ-(4ʹ-alkyl [<i>trans</i>, <i>trans</i>-1,1ʹ-bicyclohexyl]-4-yl) 1,1ʹ-biphenyls (<i>n</i> = 2, 3, 4, 5) is an accidental affair. A convenient method was used for the synthesis of these target compounds. After the preparation of the intermediate with trifluomethyl group, the target compounds were synthesised by Suzuki cross-coupling reaction. Then, these phase transition temperatures were measured by polarising textural observation, which confirmed the existence of single nematic phase. These temperatures were also measured by differential scanning calorimetry, which showed that the clearing point of compound (<i>n</i> = 3) is 267℃. The possible mechanism of occurrence of unique nematic phase was discussed on the basis of the principles of fluorine chemistry.</p