A Causal View of Entity Bias in (Large) Language Models

Entity bias widely affects pretrained (large) language models, causing them to rely on (biased) parametric knowledge to make unfaithful predictions. Although causality-inspired methods have shown great potential to mitigate entity bias, it is hard to precisely estimate the parameters of underlying causal models in practice. The rise of black-box LLMs also makes the situation even worse, because of their inaccessible parameters and uncalibrated logits. To address these problems, we propose a specific structured causal model (SCM) whose parameters are comparatively easier to estimate. Building upon this SCM, we propose causal intervention techniques to mitigate entity bias for both white-box and black-box settings. The proposed causal intervention perturbs the original entity with neighboring entities. This intervention reduces specific biasing information pertaining to the original entity while still preserving sufficient semantic information from similar entities. Under the white-box setting, our training-time intervention improves OOD performance of PLMs on relation extraction (RE) and machine reading comprehension (MRC) by 5.7 points and by 9.1 points, respectively. Under the black-box setting, our in-context intervention effectively reduces the entity-based knowledge conflicts of GPT-3.5, achieving up to 20.5 points of improvement of exact match accuracy on MRC and up to 17.6 points of reduction in memorization ratio on RE. Our code is available at https://github.com/luka-group/Causal-View-of-Entity-Bias.Comment: Findings of EMNLP 202

Combined amino acids modulation with H2O2 stress for glutathione overproduction in Candida utilis

Strategies of amino acids addition coupled with H2O2 stresses were developed for glutathione (GSH) overproduction in high cell density (HCD) cultivation of Candida utilis. Based on the fact that glycine shows two functions of promoting cells growth as well as GSH production, precursor amino acids modulations of feeding glycine at 4 mmol/l/h at exponential phase and adding precursor amino acids (glutamic acid 42 mmol/l, glycine 40 mmol/l, and cysteine 36 mmol/) at stationary phase were conducted. As a result, cell density reached 114.8 g/l at 45 h and glutathione yield of 2136 mg/l was achieved at 60 h, which was 12.5 and 90.2% higher than the control, respectively. Furthermore, the novel strategies of amino acids modulation combined with H2O2 additions (24 mmol/l at 21 h, 26 mmol/l at 29 h, 28 mmol/l at 37 h and 30 mmol/l at 45 h) were adopted to maximize glutathione production. Final glutathione yield reached 2448 mg/l after 60 h cultivation, suggesting the strategies developed as being feasible for GSH overproduction. Keywords: Amino acids, glutathione (GSH), high cell density (HCD) cultivation, Candida utilis, H2O2 stressesAfrican Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 9(33), pp. 5399-5406, 16 August, 201

Cloning and expression of pineapple sucrosephosphate synthase gene during fruit development

A 1132-base pairs (bp) polymerase-chain-reaction product of sucrose-phosphate synthase (SPS) (EC 2.3.1.14) from pineapple (Ananas comosus cv. Comte de paris) fruit was cloned and nominated as Ac- SPS1. The sequence encodes a putative 377 amino acids protein containing two serine conserved features that had been found in other plant SPS genes: the presence of a 14-3-3 protein special binding domain and an activated site of osmosis stress, which can been activated by phosphorylation and dephosphorylation. The Neighbour-joining tree revealed that Ac-SPS1 belonged to the first kind of sucrose phosphate synthase gene. The results indicated that, the Ac-SPS1 expression was low in the earlier period of fruit growth, then, increasing from 20 days after anthesis and gradually a falling on 40 days, reached the peak with the highest value around 70 days. The SPS activity and sucrose content reached their maximum 80 days after anthesis. It proved that the  accumulation of sucrose was correlated with SPS activity and mRNA content and it maximally occurred at 10 d after SPS mRNA and activity had reached its maxima. These results indicated that Ac-SPS1 gene played a key role in sucrose accumulation during the pineapple fruit development and transcriptional activation with increase in Ac- SPS1 expression might be important regulatory events of sugar during pineapple fruit maturation.Key words: Pineapple fruit, sucrose phosphate synthase, gene cloning, expression

Sodium butyrate ameliorates gut dysfunction and motor deficits in a mouse model of Parkinson’s disease by regulating gut microbiota

BackgroundA growing body of evidence showed that gut microbiota dysbiosis might be associated with the pathogenesis of Parkinson’s disease (PD). Microbiota-targeted interventions could play a protective role in PD by regulating the gut microbiota-gut-brain axis. Sodium butyrate (NaB) could improve gut microbiota dysbiosis in PD and other neuropsychiatric disorders. However, the potential mechanism associated with the complex interaction between NaB and gut microbiota-gut-brain communication in PD needs further investigation.MethodsC57BL/6 mice were subjected to a rotenone-induced PD model and were treated intragastrically with NaB for 4 weeks. The gut function and motor function were evaluated. The α-synuclein expression in colon and substantia nigra were detected by western blotting. Tyrosine hydroxylase (TH)-positive neurons in substantia nigra were measured by immunofluorescence. Moreover, gut microbiota composition was analyzed by 16S rRNA sequencing. Fecal short chain fatty acids (SCFAs) levels were determined by liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC–MS). The levels of glucagon like peptide-1 (GLP-1) in tissues and serum were evaluated using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA).ResultsNaB ameliorated gut dysfunction and motor deficits in rotenone-induced mice. Meanwhile, NaB protected against rotenone-induced α-synuclein expression in colon and substantia nigra, and prevented the loss of TH-positive neurons. In addition, NaB could remodel gut microbiota composition, and regulate gut SCFAs metabolism, and restore GLP-1 levels in colon, serum, and substantia nigra in PD mice.ConclusionNaB could ameliorate gut dysfunction and motor deficits in rotenone-induced PD mice, and the mechanism might be associated with the regulation of gut microbiota dysbiosis

The Establishment of a Financial Crisis Early Warning System for Domestic Listed Companies Based on Two Neural Network Models in the Context of COVID-19

In the context of COVID-19, many companies have been affected by the financial crisis. In order to carry out a comparative study on the accuracy of the company’s financial crisis early warning method, this study used RPROP artificial neural network and support vector machine, with 162 listed companies’ two-year panel financial indicator data as a model sample, and the test sample established a financial crisis early warning model. The theory of comprehensive evaluation combining two kinds of neural network methods is put forward innovatively. The predicted results can strengthen the supervision of the listed companies with risks by themselves and others and have important economic and social significance to ensure the stable operation of the listed companies, the securities market, and the national economy

The miR-27a-3p/FTO axis modifies hypoxia-induced malignant behaviors of glioma cells

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is one of the most malignant types of central nervous system (CNS) tumors. N6-methyladenine (m6A) RNA modification is a main type of RNA modification in eukaryotic cells. In this study, we find that the m6A RNA methylation eraser FTO is dramatically downregulated in glioma samples and cell lines, particularly in intermediate and core regions and hypoxia-challenged glioma cells. In vitro, FTO overexpression inhibits the hypoxia-induced capacities of glioma cells to proliferate, migrate and invade, and decreases the percentage of cells with m6A RNA methylation. In vivo, FTO overexpression inhibits tumor growth in the xenograft model and decreases the protein levels of migration markers, including Vimentin and Twist. miR-27a-3p is upregulated within glioma intermediate and core regions and hypoxia-challenged glioma cells. miR-27a-3p inhibits the expression of FTO via direct binding to FTO. miR-27a-3p overexpression promotes hypoxia-challenged glioma cell aggressiveness, whereas FTO overexpression partially diminishes the oncogenic effects of miR-27a-3p overexpression. FTO overexpression promotes the nuclear translocation of FOXO3a and upregulates the expression levels of the FOXO3a downstream targets BIM, BNIP3, BCL-6, and PUMA, possibly by interacting with FOXO3a. Conclusively, FTO serves as a tumor suppressor in glioma by suppressing hypoxia-induced malignant behaviors of glioma cells, possibly by promoting the nuclear translocation of FOXO3a and upregulating FOXO3a downstream targets. miR-27a-3p is a major contributor to FTO downregulation in glioma under hypoxia

Feasibility study on sustainable magnesium potassium phosphate cement paste for 3D printing

3D printing of cementitious materials is an innovative and promising approach in the construction sector, attracting much attention over the past few years. Use of waste cementitious materials in the production of 3D printable components increases the sustainability and cost-effectiveness of this process. This work proposes an environmentally friendly 3D printable cementitious material involving the use of magnesium potassium phosphate cement (MKPC) with various ratios of fly ash replacement ranging from 0 to 60 wt% to increase the working time of the binder. Silica fume was used at up to 10 wt% to adjust rheological and mechanical properties. The performance of the developed MKPC binders with different formulations in the context of 3D printing was assessed via a detailed investigation of the workability, extrudability, buildability, compressive strength, porosity and microstructural analysis. Amongst the mixtures studied, the optimum MKPC formulation involving 60 wt% fly ash and 10 wt% silica fume with a borax-to-magnesia ratio of 1:4 was selected for a small-scale printing demonstration in line with its rheological and mechanical properties. Finally, a 20-layer component with a height of 180 mm was printed in 5 min to demonstrate the feasibility of the adopted mixture in 3D printing