Find a Reasonable Ending for Stories: Does Logic Relation Help the Story Cloze Test?

Natural language understanding is a challenging problem that covers a wide range of tasks. While previous methods generally train each task separately, we consider combining the cross-task features to enhance the task performance. In this paper, we incorporate the logic information with the help of the Natural Language Inference (NLI) task to the Story Cloze Test (SCT). Previous work on SCT considered various semantic information, such as sentiment and topic, but lack the logic information between sentences which is an essential element of stories. Thus we propose to extract the logic information during the course of the story to improve the understanding of the whole story. The logic information is modeled with the help of the NLI task. Experimental results prove the strength of the logic information.Comment: Student Abstract in AAAI-201

Incremental Semi-supervised Federated Learning for Health Inference via Mobile Sensing

Mobile sensing appears as a promising solution for health inference problem (e.g., influenza-like symptom recognition) by leveraging diverse smart sensors to capture fine-grained information about human behaviors and ambient contexts. Centralized training of machine learning models can place mobile users' sensitive information under privacy risks due to data breach and misexploitation. Federated Learning (FL) enables mobile devices to collaboratively learn global models without the exposure of local private data. However, there are challenges of on-device FL deployment using mobile sensing: 1) long-term and continuously collected mobile sensing data may exhibit domain shifts as sensing objects (e.g. humans) have varying behaviors as a result of internal and/or external stimulus; 2) model retraining using all available data may increase computation and memory burden; and 3) the sparsity of annotated crowd-sourced data causes supervised FL to lack robustness. In this work, we propose FedMobile, an incremental semi-supervised federated learning algorithm, to train models semi-supervisedly and incrementally in a decentralized online fashion. We evaluate FedMobile using a real-world mobile sensing dataset for influenza-like symptom recognition. Our empirical results show that FedMobile-trained models achieve the best results in comparison to the selected baseline methods

Substitution of manure for chemical fertilizer affects soil microbial community diversity, structure and function in greenhouse vegetable production systems

Soil microbial communities and enzyme activities together affect various ecosystem functions of soils. Fertilization, an important agricultural management practice, is known to modify soil microbial characteristics; however, inconsistent results have been reported. The aim of this research was to make a comparative study of the effects of different nitrogen (N) fertilizer rates and types (organic and inorganic) on soil physicochemical properties, enzyme activities and microbial attributes in a greenhouse vegetable production (GVP) system of Tianjin, China. Results showed that manure substitution of chemical fertilizer, especially at a higher substitution rate, improved soil physicochemical properties (higher soil organic C (SOC) and nutrient (available N and P) contents; lower bulk densities), promoted microbial growth (higher total phospholipid fatty acids and microbial biomass C contents) and activity (higher soil hydrolase activities). Manure application induced a higher fungi/bacteria ratio due to a lower response in bacterial than fungal growth. Also, manure application greatly increased bacterial stress indices, as well as microbial communities and functional diversity. The principal component analysis showed that the impact of manure on microbial communities and enzyme activities were more significant than those of chemical fertilizer. Furthermore, redundancy analysis indicated that SOC and total N strongly influenced the microbial composition, while SOC and ammonium-N strongly influenced the microbial activity. In conclusion, manure substitution of inorganic fertilizer, especially at a higher substitution rate, was more efficient for improving soil quality and biological functions.</p

DosR’s multifaceted role on Mycobacterium bovis BCG revealed through multi-omics

Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) is an intracellular bacterium that causes a highly contagious and potentially lethal tuberculosis (TB) in humans. It can maintain a dormant TB infection within the host. DosR (dormancy survival regulator) (Rv3133c) has been recognized as one of the key transcriptional proteins regulating bacterial dormancy and participating in various metabolic processes. In this study, we extensively investigate the still not well-comprehended role and mechanism of DosR in Mycobacterium bovis (M. bovis) Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) through a combined omics analysis. Our study finds that deleting DosR significantly affects the transcriptional levels of 104 genes and 179 proteins. Targeted metabolomics data for amino acids indicate that DosR knockout significantly upregulates L-Aspartic acid and serine synthesis, while downregulating seven other amino acids, including L-histidine and lysine. This suggests that DosR regulates amino acid synthesis and metabolism. Taken together, these findings provide molecular and metabolic bases for DosR effects, suggesting that DosR may be a novel regulatory target

Mature cystic extragonadal teratoma in Douglas’ pouch: Case report and literature review

Teratomas often occur in the gonads, while Extragonadal mature cystic teratomas are reported occasionally, with the most common site being the omentum. Teratoma in the Douglas sac is extremely rare. we report a rare case of mature cystic Teratoma in the Douglas sac in a 71-year-old woman who underwent laparoscopic surgery. A cyst with a diameter of approximately 6 cm from Douglas was found during surgery, and the mass was separated from both ovaries. Microscopically, the cyst was a mature cystic teratoma that did not originate from the ovary

C5aR1 shapes a non-inflammatory tumor microenvironment and mediates immune evasion in gastric cancer

C5a receptor 1 (C5aR1) is associated with various inflammatory processes, the pathogenesis of immune diseases, and tumor growth. However, its role in the tumor microenvironment of gastric cancer (GC) remains unclear. In this study, the expression of C5aR1 in GC and normal gastric mucosa tissues was compared using data retrieved from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) databases, and the results were validated by in vitro qRT-PCR and immunohistochemical analyses. The relationship between C5aR1 expression and the overall survival of patients with GC was analyzed using the Kaplan–Meier method. Subsequently, enrichment analysis was performed, and the signaling pathways were screened. C5aR1 expression was also correlated with genes related to the immune checkpoint and immune cell infiltration. The results revealed that C5aR1 expression was enhanced in GC tissues compared to normal gastric tissues, and that patients with high expression of C5aR1 had a worse 10-year overall survival compared to those showing low expression of C5aR1. Functional analysis revealed that C5aR1 is a gene related to theimmune system and may play a crucial role in inflammatory and tumor immune responses. Additionally, C5aR1 showed a positive correlation with most immune checkpoint-related genes and a negative correlation with natural killer cells, dendritic cells, and CD8+ T cells. Immune evasion risk was observed to be significantly greater in patients with higher expression of C5aR1 than in those with lower expression. The results of this study reveal that C5aR1 shapes a non-inflammatory tumor microenvironment in GC and mediates immune evasion

Overcoming Drug Resistance in Colon Cancer by Aptamer-Mediated Targeted Co-Delivery of Drug and siRNA Using Grapefruit-Derived Nanovectors

Background/Aims: Multidrug resistance (MDR) is the most common cause of chemotherapy failure. Upregulation of P-glycoprotein (P-gp) is one of the main mechanisms underlying MDR. Methods: In this study, we developed a targeted drug and small interfering (si)RNA co-delivery system based on specific aptamer-conjugated grapefruit-derived nanovectors (GNVs) that we tested in MDR LoVo colon cancer cells. The internalization of nanovectors in cancer cells was tested by fluorescence microscopy and flow cytometry. The anti-cancer activity in vitro was determined by colony formation and cell apoptosis assays. The biodistribution of nanovectors was analyzed by live imaging and the anti-cancer activity in vivo was observed. Results: GNVs loaded with aptamer increased doxorubicin (Dox) accumulation in MDR LoVo cells, an effect that was abolished by pretreatment with DNase. The LA1 aptamer effectively promoted nanovector internalization into cells at 4°C and increased the targeted delivery of Dox to tumors. Constructs harboring Dox, LA1, and P-gp siRNA more effectively inhibited proliferation and enhanced apoptosis in cultured MDR LoVo cells while exhibiting more potent anti-tumor activity in vivo than free Dox or GNVs loaded with Dox alone or in conjunction with LA1, an effect that was associated with downregulation of P-gp expression. Conclusion: This GNV-based system may be an effective strategy for overcoming MDR in clinical settings

The Involvement of the Cas9 Gene in Virulence of Campylobacter jejuni

Campylobacter jejuni is considered as the leading cause of gastroenteritis all over the world. This bacterium has the CRISPR–cas9 system, which is used as a gene editing technique in different organisms. However, its role in bacterial virulence has just been discovered; that discovery, however, is just the tip of the iceberg. The purpose of this study is to find out the relationship between cas9 and virulence both phenotypically and genotypically in C. jejuni NCTC11168. Understanding both aspects of this relationship allows for a much deeper understanding of the mechanism of bacterial pathogenesis. The present study determined virulence in wild and mutant strains by observing biofilm formation, motility, adhesion and invasion, intracellular survivability, and cytotoxin production, followed by the transcriptomic analysis of both strains. The comparative gene expression profile of wild and mutant strains was determined on the basis of De-Seq transcriptomic analysis, which showed that the cas9 gene is involved in enhancing virulence. Differential gene expression analysis revealed that multiple pathways were involved in virulence, regulated by the CRISPR-cas9 system. Our findings help in understanding the potential role of cas9 in regulating the other virulence associated genes in C. jejuni NCTC11168. The findings of this study provide critical information about cas9's potential involvement in enhancing the virulence of C. jejuni, which is a major public health threat