Sim-GPT: Text Similarity via GPT Annotated Data

Due to the lack of a large collection of high-quality labeled sentence pairs with textual similarity scores, existing approaches for Semantic Textual Similarity (STS) mostly rely on unsupervised techniques or training signals that are only partially correlated with textual similarity, e.g., NLI-based datasets. To tackle this issue, in this paper, we propose the strategy of measuring text similarity via GPT annotated data (Sim-GPT for short). The core idea of Sim-GPT is to generate data with STS labels using GPT-4, based on which an STS model is trained. Sim-GPT framework utilizes LLMs to provide a substantial amount of reliable annotated data filling the gap of the lack of training signals for STS. Sim-GPT is trained on a one-time generated dataset using BERT or RoBERTa as the backbone, which offers long-term savings in cost and speed compared to repeatedly invoking LLMs for each sentence pair. Trained on the examples from GPT-4 (371K), Sim-GPT yields SOTA performances on the widely-used seven STS benchmarks: +0.99 over supervised-SimCSE, and +0.42 over the current SOTA PromCSE model. To encourage further advancements of the field, we release both models and the 371K annotated examples from GPT-4. Code, models and annotated data are available at: https://github.com/ShuheWang1998/Sim-GPT

China's trade-off between economic benefits and sulfur dioxide emissions in changing global trade

China has been suffering from air quality degradation since its ascension into the World Trade Organization in 2001. The unequal exchange that occurs with international trade—that is, developed countries obtaining larger shares of trade‐related value added relative to the shares of trade‐related air pollution incurred locally—may obstruct the greening of global supply chains. In this study, we conduct a multi‐regional input‐output analysis to examine the change in the distribution of economic benefits and sulfur dioxide emissions underlying China's international trade from 2002 to 2015. The results show that both net trade‐related economic benefits and SO2 emissions in China rapidly increased from 2002 to 2007 and then decelerated after 2007 due to changes in China's green development strategy. In the past 13 years, China has suffered from economic‐environmental inequality due to trade with most developed countries, for example, the United States, the European Union, East Asia, and Canada. East Asia, particularly Japan and South Korea, became both an economic and environmental winner while trading with China in 2015. China has also outsourced emissions to less developed regions, such as Sub‐Saharan Africa. We propose policy implications to further reduce the economic‐environmental inequality underlying China's international trade

Musical audio stream separation

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Speaker Adaptation on Articulation and Acoustics for Articulation-to-Speech Synthesis

Silent speech interfaces (SSIs) convert non-audio bio-signals, such as articulatory movement, to speech. This technology has the potential to recover the speech ability of individuals who have lost their voice but can still articulate (e.g., laryngectomees). Articulation-to-speech (ATS) synthesis is an algorithm design of SSI that has the advantages of easy-implementation and low-latency, and therefore is becoming more popular. Current ATS studies focus on speaker-dependent (SD) models to avoid large variations of articulatory patterns and acoustic features across speakers. However, these designs are limited by the small data size from individual speakers. Speaker adaptation designs that include multiple speakers’ data have the potential to address the issue of limited data size from single speakers; however, few prior studies have investigated their performance in ATS. In this paper, we investigated speaker adaptation on both the input articulation and the output acoustic signals (with or without direct inclusion of data from test speakers) using the publicly available electromagnetic articulatory (EMA) dataset. We used Procrustes matching and voice conversion for articulation and voice adaptation, respectively. The performance of the ATS models was measured objectively by the mel-cepstral distortions (MCDs). The synthetic speech samples were generated and are provided in the supplementary material. The results demonstrated the improvement brought by both Procrustes matching and voice conversion on speaker-independent ATS. With the direct inclusion of target speaker data in the training process, the speaker-adaptive ATS achieved a comparable performance to speaker-dependent ATS. To our knowledge, this is the first study that has demonstrated that speaker-adaptive ATS can achieve a non-statistically different performance to speaker-dependent ATS

Structural Insights into the Phosphorylation-Enhanced Deubiquitinating Activity of UCHL3 and Ubiquitin Chain Cleavage Preference Analysis

Ubiquitin C-terminal hydrolase-L3 (UCHL3), an important member of the ubiquitin C-terminal hydrolase family, is involved in DNA repair and cancer development. UCHL3 can cleave only complexes of monoubiquitin and its conjugates, such as Ub-AMC, His, or small ubiquitin-like modifier, but not polyubiquitin chains. Phosphorylation of Ser75 promotes the cleavage activity of UCHL3 toward poly-ubiquitin chains in vivo, but biochemical evidence in vitro is still lacking. Here, we first analyzed the structure of simulated phosphorylated UCHL3S75E and the complex of UCHL3S75E with Ub-PA and preliminarily explained the structural mechanism of phosphorylation-enhanced UCHL3 deubiquitinating activity. Additionally, the cleavage activity of UCHL3 toward different types of synthesized poly-ubiquitin chains in vitro was tested. The results showed that purified UCHL3S75E enhanced the cleavage activity toward Ub-AMC compared to UCHL3WT. Meanwhile, UCHL3S75E and UCHL3WT did not show any cleavage activity for different types of di-ubiquitin and tri-ubiquitin chains. However, UCHL3 could hydrolyze the K48 tetra-ubiquitin chain, providing compelling in vitro evidence confirming previous in vivo results. Thus, this study shows that UCHL3 can hydrolyze and has a cleavage preference for polyubiquitin chains, which expands our understanding of the phosphorylation regulation of UCHL3 and lays a foundation for further elucidation of its physiological role

Correction to “Tension of Agricultural Land and Water Use in China’s Trade: Tele-Connections, Hidden Drivers and Potential Solutions”

The background color of Southwest in Figure 1f has been corrected. The numbers in Figure 5a [refer to net flows in 2012 (AWU)] have been corrected. The following numbers in the text that relate to the data in Figure 5a have also been corrected. (Figure Presented). Lines 1−3 of the right column of page 5371 should read as follows: The net virtual AWU export of Northeast, Northwest, and Central would increase by 72%, 172%, and 146%, respectively. Lines 5−8 of the right column of page 5371 should read as follows: The net virtual AWU export of the Northeast, Northwest, and Central would be reduced by 72%, 74%, and 61%, respectively, compared with those of 2012. Lines 10−12 of the right column of page 5371 should read as follows: The net virtual AWU export of Northeast, Northwest, and Central would be reduced by 55%, 24%, and 11%, respectively, when compared with SW3 of 2012. Lines 35−38 of the right column of page 5372 should read as follows: The increase of net virtual AWU export accounted for 8%, 26%, and 3% of the total water resources of Northeast, Northwest, and Central, respectively, in 2012 under possible economic growth scenarios until 2035. Lines 57−63 of the right column of page 5372 should read as follows: Upon combination of the possible economic development and reduction of water use intensity, the total virtual AWU flows would increase compared with SW2 (see SW3). The net virtual AWU export of Northeast, Northwest, and Central in SW3 would account for 5%, 11%, and 2%, respectively, of the total regional water resources in 2012.</p

Research On Technological Utilizing in an Automatic Device for Collecting Rain and Snow in Qinghai Province, China

Based on the climatic conditions in the northwest and the widely used water storage method in the northwest rural areas, we designed a rain and snow collection device, which is realized by an inductor and an “M” collection curtain, which uses the rotation of the motor and the supply of the heating film. Water purification and storage can be obtained through compound grit tanks, biochar adsorption systems, etc. The collected water resources can be integrated with water purification and storage through flood control and antifreeze devices. Real-time senses the changes of water level and water temperature. In this article, a calculation model for the optimal sedimentation effect is also established, which can calculate the minimum scale parameters of the sedimentation tank under different weather conditions, and provide guidance for the construction of the system. In addition, we tested the actual collection capacity of the system, and the results showed that the system has high practical value. At present, there is no a complete and systematic study integrated with it in the Northwest region. This system can alleviate the lack of water resources in some areas to a certain extent, play a positive role in the rural ecological environment and lessen floo

Gold-Catalyzed Cycloisomerization/1,5‑H Migration/Diels–Alder Reaction Cascade: Synthesis of Complex Nitrogen-Containing Heterocycles

An unprecedented gold-catalyzed cycloisomerization/1,5-H migration/Diels–Alder reaction cascade has been developed that enables the rapid construction of complex nitrogen polycyclic compounds. This one-pot, three-step cascade reaction offers good yields of the products and is promoted by a single gold catalyst under very mild conditions