Syntactic Data Augmentation Increases Robustness to Inference Heuristics

Pretrained neural models such as BERT, when fine-tuned to perform natural language inference (NLI), often show high accuracy on standard datasets, but display a surprising lack of sensitivity to word order on controlled challenge sets. We hypothesize that this issue is not primarily caused by the pretrained model's limitations, but rather by the paucity of crowdsourced NLI examples that might convey the importance of syntactic structure at the fine-tuning stage. We explore several methods to augment standard training sets with syntactically informative examples, generated by applying syntactic transformations to sentences from the MNLI corpus. The best-performing augmentation method, subject/object inversion, improved BERT's accuracy on controlled examples that diagnose sensitivity to word order from 0.28 to 0.73, without affecting performance on the MNLI test set. This improvement generalized beyond the particular construction used for data augmentation, suggesting that augmentation causes BERT to recruit abstract syntactic representations.Comment: ACL 202

Parental bonding among individuals with recurrent depressive disorder, anxiety disorder and healthy controls

  Background: The relationship between parents and children in early life has a significant determining role in the development of various aspects of mental health in human beings. This study aimed to have a comparative assessment of the quality of parental bonding among individuals with Recurrent Depressive Disorder (RDD), anxiety disorder and healthy controls while controlling the factors such as age, sex, and education. Materials and Method: This study was conducted at the Out-patient Department of a referral mental health care facility in India. The samples consisted of 30 individuals with the diagnosis of RDD, 30 individuals with Anxiety Disorder as per ICD-10-DCR and 30 matched healthy controls. Age ranged between 18-50 years. Parental bonding instrument was used to assess the parental bonding in all three groups. Results: The two groups RDD and anxiety disorder differed significantly from the healthy control group on maternal protection (χ2=42.643, p<0.001), paternal care (χ2=8.063, p=0.018) and protection (χ2=43.468, p<0.001) but did not differ significantly in terms of maternal care (χ2=0.449, p=0.799). Conclusion: Findings highlight the role of parental bonding in the etiology of RDD and anxiety disorders, which reflects the need for strengthening the healthy bonding between parents and children in order to prevent such psychiatric conditions. Keywords:  Parental bonding, recurrent depressive disorder, anxiety disorde

First record of angry worm eel Skythrenchelys zabra (Anguilliformes: Ophichthidae) from the east coast of India

413-415Skythrenchelys zabra (Castle and McCosker, 1999) a species belonging to the family Ophichthidae is reported for the first time from the east coast of India on the basis of 11 specimens collected from various fishing harbours along the West Bengal, Odisha and Andhra Pradesh coasts. The species was first described from south-west coast of India in the Arabian Sea. The present report extends the range of distribution of the species to the Bay of Bengal along the east coast of India

Identification of LIMK2 as a therapeutic target in castration resistant prostate cancer

This study identified LIMK2 kinase as a disease-specific target in castration resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) pathogenesis, which is upregulated in response to androgen deprivation therapy, the current standard of treatment for prostate cancer. Surgical castration increases LIMK2 expression in mouse prostates due to increased hypoxia. Similarly, human clinical specimens showed highest LIMK2 levels in CRPC tissues compared to other stages, while minimal LIMK2 was observed in normal prostates. Most notably, inducible knockdown of LIMK2 fully reverses CRPC tumorigenesis in castrated mice, underscoring its potential as a clinical target for CRPC. We also identified TWIST1 as a direct substrate of LIMK2, which uncovered the molecular mechanism of LIMK2-induced malignancy. TWIST1 is strongly associated with CRPC initiation, progression and poor prognosis. LIMK2 increases TWIST1 mRNA levels upon hypoxia; and stabilizes TWIST1 by direct phosphorylation. TWIST1 also stabilizes LIMK2 by inhibiting its ubiquitylation. Phosphorylation-dead TWIST1 acts as dominant negative and fully prevents EMT and tumor formation in vivo, thereby highlighting the significance of LIMK2-TWIST1 signaling axis in CRPC. As LIMK2 null mice are viable, targeting LIMK2 should have minimal collateral toxicity, thereby improving the overall survival of CRPC patients

Hard core lattice gas with third next-nearest neighbor exclusion on triangular lattice : one or two phase transitions?

We obtain the phase diagram of the hard core lattice gas with third nearest neighbor exclusion on the triangular lattice using Monte Carlo simulations that are based on a rejection-free flat histogram algorithm. In a recent paper [J. Chem. Phys. 151, 104702 (2019)], it was claimed that the lattice gas with third nearest neighbor exclusion undergoes two phase transitions with increasing density, with the phase at intermediate densities exhibiting hexatic order with continuously varying exponents. Though a hexatic phase is expected when the exclusion range is large, it has not been seen earlier in hard core lattice gases with short range exclusion. In this paper, by numerically determining the entropies for all densities, we show unambiguously that there is only a single phase transition in the system between a low-density fluid phase and a high-density ordered sublattice phase, and that a hexatic phase is absent. The transition is shown to be first order in nature and the critical parameters are determined accurately

USE OF TISSUE DOPPLER IMAGING TO DETECT RIGHT VENTRICULAR MYOCARDIAL DYSFUNCTION IN PATIENTS WITH CHRONIC OBSTRUCTIVE PULMONARY DISEASE

Objective: To determine the utility of tissue Doppler imaging (TDI) in detecting early right ventricle (RV) myocardial dysfunction, given its prognostic implications in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).Methods:  A prospective case-control study was carried out involving 36 COPD patients in an acute exacerbated state as cases and 34 healthy subjects serving as controls. Each subject underwent a baseline echocardiography using various methods ranging from m-mode and 2-dimensional measures for analyzing RV geometry to strain and strain rate using Tissue Doppler Imaging to measure RV deformation. The cases underwent a subsequent echocardiogram 1month later once the respiratory symptoms subsided.Results: A significant difference was observed in RV tissue annular velocities ( E', A', S) between cases and the controls at baseline. However no significant increase was observed in tissue annular velocities among cases during remission states from baseline. Peak systolic strain in COPD group was significantly reduced in comparison to controls, but not significantly increased during remission when compared to baseline in cases. FEV1/VC did not bear any significant correlation with RV strain. Tei index had a negative linear correlation with peak systolic strain of RV, which was statistically significant.Conclusion: TDI parameters revealed that RV dysfunction remains unaltered even in remission state of COPD, despite pulmonary arterial pressure normalizing. In light of it bearing a negative prognosis in COPD, RV dysfunction merits assessment in COPD patients, both in acute exacerbations as well as in remission. Â