Beyond Triplet: Leveraging the Most Data for Multimodal Machine Translation

Multimodal machine translation (MMT) aims to improve translation quality by incorporating information from other modalities, such as vision. Previous MMT systems mainly focus on better access and use of visual information and tend to validate their methods on image-related datasets. These studies face two challenges. First, they can only utilize triple data (bilingual texts with images), which is scarce; second, current benchmarks are relatively restricted and do not correspond to realistic scenarios. Therefore, this paper correspondingly establishes new methods and new datasets for MMT. First, we propose a framework 2/3-Triplet with two new approaches to enhance MMT by utilizing large-scale non-triple data: monolingual image-text data and parallel text-only data. Second, we construct an English-Chinese {e}-commercial {m}ulti{m}odal {t}ranslation dataset (including training and testing), named EMMT, where its test set is carefully selected as some words are ambiguous and shall be translated mistakenly without the help of images. Experiments show that our method is more suitable for real-world scenarios and can significantly improve translation performance by using more non-triple data. In addition, our model also rivals various SOTA models in conventional multimodal translation benchmarks.Comment: 8 pages, ACL 2023 Findin

Finite-element analysis method to ensure the safety of invisible capping beams reinforced via the quick-replacement method

This paper presents a Finite-Element Analysis (FEA) method to solve the problem of reduced bridge safety due toinsufficient durability of invisible capping beams. To reinforce a C30 invisible capping beam effectively and reasonably, aquick-repair replacement concrete reinforcement method was utilized, and the strength necessary for the appropriate admixtureassessed. Specifically, the bearing capacity of the reinforced capping beam was studied via a single-point loading test, and theoptimal replacement thickness required to install the beam within two days and restore normal operation within three days wasdetermined using the non-linear software package MIDAS FEA. A finite-element model of equivalent size was employed usingMIDAS FEA to obtain the deflection, tensile stress, and pressure stress at the boundary. The results indicate that C40 earlystrength concrete with 0.1–0.2% sodium gluconate admixture has the appropriate properties to achieve the target. It can be usedto replace deteriorated concrete on the surface of invisible capping beams with a replacement rate of 30%. Further, to achievethe goal of resuming traffic within three days, the analysis results indicate that bilateral replacement with thickness 2 × 10 cm isoptimal and the maximum replacement thickness should not exceed 2 × 20 cm

BigVideo: A Large-scale Video Subtitle Translation Dataset for Multimodal Machine Translation

We present a large-scale video subtitle translation dataset, BigVideo, to facilitate the study of multi-modality machine translation. Compared with the widely used How2 and VaTeX datasets, BigVideo is more than 10 times larger, consisting of 4.5 million sentence pairs and 9,981 hours of videos. We also introduce two deliberately designed test sets to verify the necessity of visual information: Ambiguous with the presence of ambiguous words, and Unambiguous in which the text context is self-contained for translation. To better model the common semantics shared across texts and videos, we introduce a contrastive learning method in the cross-modal encoder. Extensive experiments on the BigVideo show that: a) Visual information consistently improves the NMT model in terms of BLEU, BLEURT, and COMET on both Ambiguous and Unambiguous test sets. b) Visual information helps disambiguation, compared to the strong text baseline on terminology-targeted scores and human evaluation. Dataset and our implementations are available at https://github.com/DeepLearnXMU/BigVideo-VMT.Comment: Accepted to ACL 2023 Finding

Heterologous expression of the Haynaldia villosa pattern-recognition receptor CERK1-V in wheat increases resistance to three fungal diseases

Wheat production is under continuous threat by various fungal pathogens. Identification of multiple-disease resistance genes may lead to effective disease control via the development of cultivars with broad-spectrum resistance. Plant Lysin-motif (LysM)-type pattern-recognition receptors, which elicit innate immunity by recognizing fungal pathogen associated molecular patterns such as chitin, are potential candidates for such resistance. In this study, we cloned a LysM receptor-like kinase gene, CERK1-V, from the diploid wheat relative Haynaldia villosa. CERK1-V expression was induced by chitin and Blumeria graminis f. sp. tritici, the causal agent of wheat powdery mildew. Heterologous overexpression of CERK1-V in wheat inhibited the development of three fungal pathogens, thereby increased resistance to powdery mildew, yellow rust, and Fusarium head blight. CERK1-V physically interacted with the wheat LysM protein TaCEBiPs. CERK1-V/TaCEBiPs interaction promoted chitin recognition and activated chitin signal transduction in wheat. Transgenic plants with excessively high CERK1-V expression showed high resistance but abnormal plant growth, whereas plants with moderate expression level showed adequate resistance level with no marked impairment of plant growth. In transgenic lines, RNA-seq showed that gene expression involved in plant innate immunity was activated. Expression of genes involved in photosynthesis, ER stress and multiple phytohormone pathways was also activated. Optimized expression of CERK1-V in wheat can confer disease resistance without compromising growth or defense fitness

Anti-HIV-1 Activity of a New Scorpion Venom Peptide Derivative Kn2-7

For over 30 years, HIV/AIDS has wreaked havoc in the world. In the absence of an effective vaccine for HIV, development of new anti-HIV agents is urgently needed. We previously identified the antiviral activities of the scorpion-venom-peptide-derived mucroporin-M1 for three RNA viruses (measles viruses, SARS-CoV, and H5N1). In this investigation, a panel of scorpion venom peptides and their derivatives were designed and chosen for assessment of their anti-HIV activities. A new scorpion venom peptide derivative Kn2-7 was identified as the most potent anti-HIV-1 peptide by screening assays with an EC50 value of 2.76 µg/ml (1.65 µM) and showed low cytotoxicity to host cells with a selective index (SI) of 13.93. Kn2-7 could inhibit all members of a standard reference panel of HIV-1 subtype B pseudotyped virus (PV) with CCR5-tropic and CXCR4-tropic NL4-3 PV strain. Furthermore, it also inhibited a CXCR4-tropic replication-competent strain of HIV-1 subtype B virus. Binding assay of Kn2-7 to HIV-1 PV by Octet Red system suggested the anti-HIV-1 activity was correlated with a direct interaction between Kn2-7 and HIV-1 envelope. These results demonstrated that peptide Kn2-7 could inhibit HIV-1 by direct interaction with viral particle and may become a promising candidate compound for further development of microbicide against HIV-1

Global genetic diversity, introgression, and evolutionary adaptation of indicine cattle revealed by whole genome sequencing

Indicine cattle, also referred to as zebu (Bos taurus indicus), play a central role in pastoral communities across a wide range of agro-ecosystems, from extremely hot semiarid regions to hot humid tropical regions. However, their adaptive genetic changes following their dispersal into East Asia from the Indian subcontinent have remained poorly documented. Here, we characterize their global genetic diversity using high-quality whole-genome sequencing data from 354 indicine cattle of 57 breeds/populations, including major indicine phylogeographic groups worldwide. We reveal their probable migration into East Asia was along a coastal route rather than inland routes and we detected introgression from other bovine species. Genomic regions carrying morphology-, immune-, and heat-tolerance-related genes underwent divergent selection according to Asian agro-ecologies. We identify distinct sets of loci that contain promising candidate variants for adaptation to hot semi-arid and hot humid tropical ecosystems. Our results indicate that the rapid and successful adaptation of East Asian indicine cattle to hot humid environments was promoted by localized introgression from banteng and/or gaur. Our findings provide insights into the history and environmental adaptation of indicine cattle

Inverse methods in cochlear mechanics

Cochlear modelling is used to provide insight into the physical mechanics of the cochlea. The complicated, three dimensional geometry of the fluid chambers in the cochlea is often represented in models of its mechanics by a box with a uniform area along its length. The first part of this thesis is concerned with the development of a tapered box model of the cochlea, in which the geometry of the cochlea is assumed to vary in a linear way along its length. Previous measurements of the variation in area of the two fluid chambers along the length of the cochlea in various mammals has been used to calculate a linear fit to the variation in the "effective area" that determines the 1D fluid coupling. The width of the basilar membrane is also assumed to vary linearly along the length of the model. The analytic form of the 1D fluid pressure distribution due to elemental BM motion is derived for this tapered box model, together with the added mass due to near field acoustic coupling. The coupled response in the 1D and 3D, uniform and tapered box model of passive cochlea can then be readily calculated. Although the form of the fluid coupling are very different in the uniform and tapered box models, the distribution of the basilar membrane vibration in the coupled models are very similar.The second part of the thesis is concerned with deriving the parameters of cochlear models from measured data using inverse methods. Previous inverse methods are first reviewed before a novel direct method is introduced, based on modelling the poles and zeros of the micromechanical response. This is compared with other inverse methods, using previously measured data on basilar membrane vibration in the cochlea, and relatively simple models are shown to provide a good fit to the data

Chromatin Architectural Changes during Cellular Senescence and Aging

Chromatin 3D structure is highly dynamic and associated with many biological processes, such as cell cycle progression, cellular differentiation, cell fate reprogramming, cancer development, cellular senescence, and aging. Recently, by using chromosome conformation capture technologies, tremendous findings have been reported about the dynamics of genome architecture, their associated proteins, and the underlying mechanisms involved in regulating chromatin spatial organization and gene expression. Cellular senescence and aging, which involve multiple cellular and molecular functional declines, also undergo significant chromatin structural changes, including alternations of heterochromatin and disruption of higher-order chromatin structure. In this review, we summarize recent findings related to genome architecture, factors regulating chromatin spatial organization, and how they change during cellular senescence and aging