Comparative Reproductive Biology of a Rare Endemic Orchid and its Sympatric Congeners in Southwestern China

Comparative studies on endangered species and their more common congeners can shed light on the mechanism of species rarity, and enable conservationists to formulate effective management strategies. I compared the breeding and pollination systems of the endangered Geodorum eulophioides and its two more common sympatric congeners in subtropical China. Geodorum eulophioides and G. recurvum were self-compatible, both depending on Ceratina cognata for fruit production, while G. densiflorum can autonomously self. Although the floral visitation frequency of G. eulophioides was the highest among the three, its natural fruit set was similar to that of G. recurvum, but both lower than that of G. densiflorum. These results partially explain the difference in species abundance. Coupled with severe habitat loss and degradation, the extremely low pollinator visitation and natural fruit set of G. eulophioides calls for rapid establishment of ex-situ collection, in conjunction with improving in-situ habitat. Natural hybridization tendencies were also studied among species

Active Multi-Field Learning for Spam Filtering

Ubiquitous spam messages cause a serious waste of time and resources. This paper addresses the practical spam filtering problem, and proposes a universal approach to fight with various spam messages. The proposed active multi-field learning approach is based on: 1) It is cost-sensitive to obtain a label for a real-world spam filter, which suggests an active learning idea; and 2) Different messages often have a similar multi-field text structure, which suggests a multi-field learning idea. The multi-field learning framework combines multiple results predicted from field classifiers by a novel compound weight, and each field classifier calculates the arithmetical average of multiple conditional probabilities predicted from feature strings according to a data structure of string-frequency index. Comparing the current variance of field classifying results with the historical variance, the active learner evaluates the classifying confidence and regards the more uncertain message as the more informative sample for which to request a label. The experimental results show that the proposed approach can achieve the state-of-the-art performance at greatly reduced label requirements both in email spam filtering and short text spam filtering. Our active multi-field learning performance, the standard (1-ROCA) % measurement, even exceeds the full feedback performance of some advanced individual classifying algorithm

Cynaroside ameliorates methotrexate-induced enteritis in rats through inhibiting NLRP3 inflammasome activation

IntroductionCynaroside exhibits various biological properties, including anti-inflammatory, antiviral, antitumor, and cardioprotective effects. However, its involvement in methotrexate (MTX)-induced intestinal inflammation remains inadequately understood. Thus, we investigated the impact of cynaroside on MTX-induced intestinal inflammation and its potential mechanisms.MethodsTo assess the protective potential of cynaroside against intestinal inflammation, Sprague-Dawley rats were subjected to a regimen of 7 mg/kg MTX for 3 days, followed by treatment with cynaroside at varying doses (10, 20, or 40 mg/kg). Histopathological evaluations were conducted alongside measurements of inflammatory mediators to elucidate the involvement of the NLRP3 inflammasome in alleviating intestinal inflammation.ResultsAdministration of 7 mg/kg MTX resulted in decreased daily food intake, increased weight loss, and elevated disease activity index in rats. Conversely, treatment with cynaroside at 20 or 40 mg/kg ameliorated the reductions in body weight and daily food intake and suppressed the MTX-induced elevation in the disease activity index. Notably, cynaroside administration at 20 or 40 mg/kg attenuated inflammatory cell infiltration, augmented goblet cell numbers and lowered serum levels of tumor necrosis factor-α, interleukin (IL)-1β, and IL-18, as well as the CD68-positive cell rate in the intestines of MTX-induced rats. Furthermore, cynaroside downregulated the expression levels of NLRP3, cleaved caspase 1, and cleaved IL-1β in MTX-induced rats.DiscussionCollectively, our findings indicated that cymaroside alleviates intestinal inflammatory injury by inhibiting the activation of NLRP3 inflammasome in MTX-induced rats

Simple-Random-Sampling-Based Multiclass Text Classification Algorithm

Multiclass text classification (MTC) is a challenging issue and the corresponding MTC algorithms can be used in many applications. The space-time overhead of the algorithms must be concerned about the era of big data. Through the investigation of the token frequency distribution in a Chinese web document collection, this paper reexamines the power law and proposes a simple-random-sampling-based MTC (SRSMTC) algorithm. Supported by a token level memory to store labeled documents, the SRSMTC algorithm uses a text retrieval approach to solve text classification problems. The experimental results on the TanCorp data set show that SRSMTC algorithm can achieve the state-of-the-art performance at greatly reduced space-time requirements