Adversarial Multi-task Learning for Text Classification

Neural network models have shown their promising opportunities for multi-task learning, which focus on learning the shared layers to extract the common and task-invariant features. However, in most existing approaches, the extracted shared features are prone to be contaminated by task-specific features or the noise brought by other tasks. In this paper, we propose an adversarial multi-task learning framework, alleviating the shared and private latent feature spaces from interfering with each other. We conduct extensive experiments on 16 different text classification tasks, which demonstrates the benefits of our approach. Besides, we show that the shared knowledge learned by our proposed model can be regarded as off-the-shelf knowledge and easily transferred to new tasks. The datasets of all 16 tasks are publicly available at \url{http://nlp.fudan.edu.cn/data/}Comment: Accepted by ACL201

Dynamic Compositional Neural Networks over Tree Structure

Tree-structured neural networks have proven to be effective in learning semantic representations by exploiting syntactic information. In spite of their success, most existing models suffer from the underfitting problem: they recursively use the same shared compositional function throughout the whole compositional process and lack expressive power due to inability to capture the richness of compositionality. In this paper, we address this issue by introducing the dynamic compositional neural networks over tree structure (DC-TreeNN), in which the compositional function is dynamically generated by a meta network. The role of meta-network is to capture the metaknowledge across the different compositional rules and formulate them. Experimental results on two typical tasks show the effectiveness of the proposed models.Comment: Accepted by IJCAI 201

Microbial invasions in living soils:Mechanisms, consequences, and roles in ecosystem functions and services

Microbial invasion triggered by microorganism dispersal represents an ever-present phenomenon that has attained unprecedented levels, primarily as a result of human activities and global climate changes within soil ecosystems. On a large geographic scale, microbial invasion in the soil can significantly change the resident community composition and functionality. On a smaller scale, microbial invasion can frequently occur in soil agroecosystems, where microbial inoculants/consortia are deliberately introduced into the soil to achieve more efficient bioremediation, biocontrol, and bio-fertilization. Despite the importance, our understanding of the role of microbial invasions in soil ecosystems and the underlying mechanisms has gaps. Here, we employed article syntheses to conceptually gain insights and build the framework, performed meta-analysis to grab empirical evidence broadly, and utilized invasion models in soil microcosms to obtain experimental observations precisely. First, this thesis argues conceptually and empirically for integrating microbial invasion with community assembly and ecological succession. It proposes a corresponding theoretical framework to guide microbial invasion studies. Second, this thesis investigates the mechanisms and impacts of microbial invasion in soils, completes an essential piece of the blueprint for microbial invasion - community coalescence - and proposes a mechanistic model that can unify different invasion scenarios. Third, this thesis demonstrates the critical role of microbial invasion in soil (agro)ecosystems and the implications for human management of soil ecosystems. These studies provide advanced insights into microbial invasions

Microbial invasions in living soils:Mechanisms, consequences, and roles in ecosystem functions and services

Microbial invasion triggered by microorganism dispersal represents an ever-present phenomenon that has attained unprecedented levels, primarily as a result of human activities and global climate changes within soil ecosystems. On a large geographic scale, microbial invasion in the soil can significantly change the resident community composition and functionality. On a smaller scale, microbial invasion can frequently occur in soil agroecosystems, where microbial inoculants/consortia are deliberately introduced into the soil to achieve more efficient bioremediation, biocontrol, and bio-fertilization. Despite the importance, our understanding of the role of microbial invasions in soil ecosystems and the underlying mechanisms has gaps. Here, we employed article syntheses to conceptually gain insights and build the framework, performed meta-analysis to grab empirical evidence broadly, and utilized invasion models in soil microcosms to obtain experimental observations precisely. First, this thesis argues conceptually and empirically for integrating microbial invasion with community assembly and ecological succession. It proposes a corresponding theoretical framework to guide microbial invasion studies. Second, this thesis investigates the mechanisms and impacts of microbial invasion in soils, completes an essential piece of the blueprint for microbial invasion - community coalescence - and proposes a mechanistic model that can unify different invasion scenarios. Third, this thesis demonstrates the critical role of microbial invasion in soil (agro)ecosystems and the implications for human management of soil ecosystems. These studies provide advanced insights into microbial invasions

Microbial invasions in living soils:Mechanisms, consequences, and roles in ecosystem functions and services

Microbial invasion triggered by microorganism dispersal represents an ever-present phenomenon that has attained unprecedented levels, primarily as a result of human activities and global climate changes within soil ecosystems. On a large geographic scale, microbial invasion in the soil can significantly change the resident community composition and functionality. On a smaller scale, microbial invasion can frequently occur in soil agroecosystems, where microbial inoculants/consortia are deliberately introduced into the soil to achieve more efficient bioremediation, biocontrol, and bio-fertilization. Despite the importance, our understanding of the role of microbial invasions in soil ecosystems and the underlying mechanisms has gaps. Here, we employed article syntheses to conceptually gain insights and build the framework, performed meta-analysis to grab empirical evidence broadly, and utilized invasion models in soil microcosms to obtain experimental observations precisely. First, this thesis argues conceptually and empirically for integrating microbial invasion with community assembly and ecological succession. It proposes a corresponding theoretical framework to guide microbial invasion studies. Second, this thesis investigates the mechanisms and impacts of microbial invasion in soils, completes an essential piece of the blueprint for microbial invasion - community coalescence - and proposes a mechanistic model that can unify different invasion scenarios. Third, this thesis demonstrates the critical role of microbial invasion in soil (agro)ecosystems and the implications for human management of soil ecosystems. These studies provide advanced insights into microbial invasions

Microbial invasions in living soils:Mechanisms, consequences, and roles in ecosystem functions and services

Microbial invasion triggered by microorganism dispersal represents an ever-present phenomenon that has attained unprecedented levels, primarily as a result of human activities and global climate changes within soil ecosystems. On a large geographic scale, microbial invasion in the soil can significantly change the resident community composition and functionality. On a smaller scale, microbial invasion can frequently occur in soil agroecosystems, where microbial inoculants/consortia are deliberately introduced into the soil to achieve more efficient bioremediation, biocontrol, and bio-fertilization. Despite the importance, our understanding of the role of microbial invasions in soil ecosystems and the underlying mechanisms has gaps. Here, we employed article syntheses to conceptually gain insights and build the framework, performed meta-analysis to grab empirical evidence broadly, and utilized invasion models in soil microcosms to obtain experimental observations precisely. First, this thesis argues conceptually and empirically for integrating microbial invasion with community assembly and ecological succession. It proposes a corresponding theoretical framework to guide microbial invasion studies. Second, this thesis investigates the mechanisms and impacts of microbial invasion in soils, completes an essential piece of the blueprint for microbial invasion - community coalescence - and proposes a mechanistic model that can unify different invasion scenarios. Third, this thesis demonstrates the critical role of microbial invasion in soil (agro)ecosystems and the implications for human management of soil ecosystems. These studies provide advanced insights into microbial invasions