GLEU: Automatic Evaluation of Sentence-Level Fluency

In evaluating the output of language technology applications—MT, natural language generation, summarisation—automatic evaluation techniques generally conflate measurement of faithfulness to source content with fluency of the resulting text. In this paper we develop an automatic evaluation metric to estimate fluency alone, by examining the use of parser outputs as metrics, and show that they correlate with human judgements of generated text fluency. We then develop a machine learner based on these, and show that this performs better than the individual parser metrics, approaching a lower bound on human performance. We finally look at different language models for generating sentences, and show that while individual parser metrics can be ‘fooled ’ depending on generation method, the machine learner provides a consistent estimator of fluency.

Amorphism and Thermal Decomposition of Salicylsalicylic Acid - A Cautionary Tale

Salicylsalicylic acid (“Salsalate”) is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug with anti-rheumatic properties, whose amorphous form offers the potential for enhanced dissolution rates and improved bioavailability compared with its crystalline counterpart. It has been reported to form a stable glassy phase on heating and rapid quenching. A number of the existing studies of the solid-state structure of salsalate and of its thermal decomposition contain information that is difficult to reconcile. In this article, we review much of the existing literature in light of our own recent studies using solution-state nuclear magnetic resonance, mass spectrometry, and solid-state infrared spectroscopy, and conclude that much of the literature data relating to melting and the glassy state is questionable due to failure to take into account the effects of thermal decomposition

Poly(ethylene glycol)-Containing Hydrogel Surfaces for Antifouling Applications in Marine and Freshwater Environments

This work describes the fabrication, characterization, and biological evaluation of a thin protein-resistant poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG)-based hydrogel coating for antifouling applications. The coating was fabricated by free-radical polymerization on silanized glass and silicon and on polystyrene-covered silicon and gold. The physicochemical properties of the coating were characterized by infrared spectroscopy, ellipsometry, and contact angle measurements. In particular, the chemical stability of the coating in artificial seawater was evaluated over a six-month period. These measurements indicated that the degradation process was slow under the test conditions chosen, with the coating thickness and composition changing only marginally over the period. The settlement behavior of a broad and diverse group of marine and freshwater fouling organisms was evaluated. The tested organisms were barnacle larvae (Balanus amphitrite), algal zoospores (Ulva linza), diatoms (Navicula perminuta), and three bacteria species (Cobetia marina, Marinobacter hydrocarbonoclasticus, and Pseudomonas fluorescens). The biological results showed that the hydrogel coating exhibited excellent antifouling properties with respect to settlement and removal. © 2008 American Chemical Society