End-to-end Neural Coreference Resolution

We introduce the first end-to-end coreference resolution model and show that it significantly outperforms all previous work without using a syntactic parser or hand-engineered mention detector. The key idea is to directly consider all spans in a document as potential mentions and learn distributions over possible antecedents for each. The model computes span embeddings that combine context-dependent boundary representations with a head-finding attention mechanism. It is trained to maximize the marginal likelihood of gold antecedent spans from coreference clusters and is factored to enable aggressive pruning of potential mentions. Experiments demonstrate state-of-the-art performance, with a gain of 1.5 F1 on the OntoNotes benchmark and by 3.1 F1 using a 5-model ensemble, despite the fact that this is the first approach to be successfully trained with no external resources.Comment: Accepted to EMNLP 201

All the colours of the rainbow.

Our perception of colour has always been a source of fascination, so it's little wonder that studies of the phenomenon date back hundreds of years. What, though, can modern scientists learn from medieval literature — and how do we go about it

Engineering spin squeezing in a 3D optical lattice with interacting spin-orbit-coupled fermions

One of the most important tasks in modern quantum science is to coherently control and entangle many-body systems, and to subsequently use these systems to realize powerful quantum technologies such as quantum-enhanced sensors. However, many-body entangled states are difficult to prepare and preserve since internal dynamics and external noise rapidly degrade any useful entanglement. Here, we introduce a protocol that counterintuitively exploits inhomogeneities, a typical source of dephasing in a many-body system, in combination with interactions to generate metrologically useful and robust many-body entangled states. Motivated by current limitations in state-of-the-art three-dimensional (3D) optical lattice clocks (OLCs) operating at quantum degeneracy, we use local interactions in a Hubbard model with spin-orbit coupling to achieve a spin-locking effect. In addition to prolonging inter-particle spin coherence, spin-locking transforms the dephasing effect of spin-orbit coupling into a collective spin-squeezing process that can be further enhanced by applying a modulated drive. Our protocol is fully compatible with state-of-the-art 3D OLC interrogation schemes and may be used to improve their sensitivity, which is currently limited by the intrinsic quantum noise of independent atoms. We demonstrate that even with realistic experimental imperfections, our protocol may generate $\sim10$--$14$ dB of spin squeezing in $\sim1$ second with $\sim10^2$--$10^4$ atoms. This capability allows OLCs to enter a new era of quantum enhanced sensing using correlated quantum states of driven non-equilibrium systems.Comment: 20 pages, 12 figure

Comparison of structured observation and pictorial 24 h recall of household activities to measure the prevalence of handwashing with soap in the community.

This study compared structured observation with a 24 h pictorial recall of household activities ('sticker diary') to measure the prevalence of handwashing with soap (HWWS) in the community. The study was done within a cluster-randomised trial evaluating a handwashing promotion programme in Bihar, India. HWWS at key occasions in mothers and school children was measured by structured observation in 299 households from 32 villages. Sticker diaries recalling common activities, including personal hygiene, were used to measure HWWS in 299 households from a further 20 villages. Sticker diary HWWS prevalence estimates were about 13% points higher than structured observation estimates, but the differences varied by the type of handwashing occasion. This study confirms structured observation as the method of choice for the study of handwashing behaviours. The sticker diary method may be useful in large-scale surveys. Sticker diaries may overestimate HWWS at important occasions, but probably less so than conventional questionnaire tools

Modelling the WMAP large-angle anomalies as an effect of a local density inhomogeneity

We investigate large-angle scale temperature anisotropy in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) with the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) data and model the large-angle anomalies as the effect of the CMB quadrupole anisotropies caused by the local density inhomogeneities. The quadrupole caused by the local density inhomogeneities is different from the special relativity kinematic quadrupole. If the observer inhabits a strong inhomogeneous region, the local quadrupole should not be neglected. We calculate such local quadrupole under the assumption that there is a huge density fluctuation field in direction $(284^{\circ},74^{\circ})$, where the density fluctuation is $10^{-3}$, and its center is $\sim 112h^{-1} \rm {Mpc}$ away from us. After removing such mock signals from WMAP data, the power in quadrupole, $C_2$, increases from the range $(200\sim260\mu \rm{K^2})$ to $\sim1000\mu \rm{K^2}$. The quantity S, which is used to estimate the alignment between the quadrupole and the octopole, decreases from $(0.7\sim0.74)$ to $(0.31\sim0.37)$, while the model predict that $C_2=1071.5\mu \rm{K^2}$, $S=0.412$. So our local density inhomogeneity model can, in part, explain the WMAP low-$\ell$ anomalies.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, accepted by RA

Use of LLMs for Illicit Purposes: Threats, Prevention Measures, and Vulnerabilities

Spurred by the recent rapid increase in the development and distribution of large language models (LLMs) across industry and academia, much recent work has drawn attention to safety- and security-related threats and vulnerabilities of LLMs, including in the context of potentially criminal activities. Specifically, it has been shown that LLMs can be misused for fraud, impersonation, and the generation of malware; while other authors have considered the more general problem of AI alignment. It is important that developers and practitioners alike are aware of security-related problems with such models. In this paper, we provide an overview of existing - predominantly scientific - efforts on identifying and mitigating threats and vulnerabilities arising from LLMs. We present a taxonomy describing the relationship between threats caused by the generative capabilities of LLMs, prevention measures intended to address such threats, and vulnerabilities arising from imperfect prevention measures. With our work, we hope to raise awareness of the limitations of LLMs in light of such security concerns, among both experienced developers and novel users of such technologies.Comment: Pre-prin

Observational constraints on an interacting dark energy model

We use observations of cosmic microwave background anisotropies, supernova luminosities and the baryon acoustic oscillation signal in the galaxy distribution to constrain the cosmological parameters in a simple interacting dark energy model with a time-varying equation of state. Using a Monte Carlo Markov Chain technique we determine the posterior likelihoods. Constraints from the individual data sets are weak, but the combination of the three data sets confines the interaction constant $\Gamma$ to be less than 23% of the expansion rate of the Universe $H_0$; at 95% CL $-0.23 < \Gamma/H_0 < +0.15$. The CMB acoustic peaks can be well fitted even if the interaction rate is much larger, but this requires a larger or smaller (depending on the sign of interaction) matter density today than in the non-interacting model. Due to this degeneracy between the matter density and the interaction rate, the only observable effect on the CMB is a larger or smaller integrated Sachs-Wolfe (ISW) effect. While SN or BAO data alone do not set any direct constraints on the interaction, they exclude the models with very large matter density, and hence indirectly constrain the interaction rate when jointly analysed with the CMB data. To enable the analysis described in this paper, we present in a companion paper [arXiv:0907.4981] a new systematic analysis of the early radiation era solution to find the adiabatic initial conditions for the Boltzmann integration.Comment: 16 pages, 10 figures. V2: Improved typography (2-column format); References and a motivation of CPL parametrization added; Accepted by MNRA

Search for radiative pumping lines of OH masers: I. The 34.6um absorption line towards 1612 MHz OH maser sources

The 1612 MHz hydroxyl maser in circumstellar envelopes has long been thought to be pumped by 34.6um photons. Only recently, the Infrared Space Observatory has made possible spectroscopic observations which enable the direct confirmation of this pumping mechanism in a few cases. To look for the presence of this pumping line, we have searched the Infrared Space Observatory Data Archive and found 178 spectra with data around 34.6um for 87 galactic 1612MHz masers. The analysis performed showed that the noise level and the spectral resolution of the spectra are the most important factors affecting the detection of the 34.6um absorption line. Only 5 objects from the sample (3 red supergiants and 2 galactic center sources) are found to show clear 34.6um absorption (all of them already known) while two additional objects only tentatively show this line. The 3 supergiants show similar pump rates and their masers might be purely radiatively pumped. The pump rates of OH masers in late type stars are found to be about 0.05, only 1/5 of the theoretical value of 0.25 derived by Elitzur (1992). We have also found 16 maser sources which, according to the analysis assuming Elitzur's pump rate, should show the 34.6 $\mu$m absorption line but do not. These non-detections can be tentatively explained by far-infrared photon pumping, clumpy nature of the OH masing region or a limb-filling emission effect in the OH shell.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures, 3 table