Automatically Extracting Information in Medical Dialogue: Expert System And Attention for Labelling

Medical dialogue information extraction is becoming an increasingly significant problem in modern medical care. It is difficult to extract key information from electronic medical records (EMRs) due to their large numbers. Previously, researchers proposed attention-based models for retrieving features from EMRs, but their limitations were reflected in their inability to recognize different categories in medical dialogues. In this paper, we propose a novel model, Expert System and Attention for Labelling (ESAL). We use mixture of experts and pre-trained BERT to retrieve the semantics of different categories, enabling the model to fuse the differences between them. In our experiment, ESAL was applied to a public dataset and the experimental results indicated that ESAL significantly improved the performance of Medical Information Classification

A Retail Outlet Classification Model Based on AdaBoost

This paper proposes a framework to get a stable classification rule under unsupervised learning, and the term ‘‘stable’’ means that the rule remains unchanged when the sample set increases. This framework initially makes use of clustering analysis and then use the result of clustering analysis as a referencestudying sample. Secondly, AdaBoost integrated several classification methods is used to classify the samples and get a stable classification rule. To prove the method feasible, this paper shows an empirical study of classifying retail outlets of a tobacco market in a city of China. In this practice, k-means is used to make clustering analysis, and AdaBoost integrated RBF neural network, CART, and SVM is used in classification. In the empirical study, this method successfully divides retail outlets into different classes based on the sales ability.This work has been partially supported by the National University Student Innovation Program of China and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 61272003)

Orca: A Few-shot Benchmark for Chinese Conversational Machine Reading Comprehension

The conversational machine reading comprehension (CMRC) task aims to answer questions in conversations, which has been a hot research topic in recent years because of its wide applications. However, existing CMRC benchmarks in which each conversation is assigned a static passage are inconsistent with real scenarios. Thus, model's comprehension ability towards real scenarios are hard to evaluate reasonably. To this end, we propose the first Chinese CMRC benchmark Orca and further provide zero-shot/few-shot settings to evaluate model's generalization ability towards diverse domains. We collect 831 hot-topic driven conversations with 4,742 turns in total. Each turn of a conversation is assigned with a response-related passage, aiming to evaluate model's comprehension ability more reasonably. The topics of conversations are collected from social media platform and cover 33 domains, trying to be consistent with real scenarios. Importantly, answers in Orca are all well-annotated natural responses rather than the specific spans or short phrase in previous datasets. Besides, we implement three strong baselines to tackle the challenge in Orca. The results indicate the great challenge of our CMRC benchmark. Our datatset and checkpoints are available at https://github.com/nuochenpku/Orca.Comment: 14 page

Biomass production and carbon sequestration of a short-rotation forest with different poplar clones in northwest China

Short Rotation Forestry (SRF) is of interest as producers of biomass for bio-energy, but also as carbdn (C) sinks to mitigate CO2 emission. To investigate biomass production and C sequestration of SRF, ecosystem C stock (including C stored in tree biomass, litter and soil), NPP (net primary productivity), heterotrophic respiration (Rh) and NEP (net ecosystem productivity) of three poplar clone plantations were estitnated by repeated field sampling in northwest China. Ecosystem C stock (105.62 Mg C ha(-1)) was significantly lower in PB (P. balsamiferd) stand than in PD (P. deltoids) and PE (P. x euramericana) stands (P< 0.01). Biomass C stock was greatly affected by clone type (P < 0.01), while significant difference in soil C stock was not detected. Averaged NPP was 8.80 Mg C ha(-1) yr(-1) across all clone stands, but the most productive clone of PD yielded up to 10.72 Mg C ha(-1) yr(-1). NEP was found to be significantly different among the clone stands, increasing from 0.21 Mg C ha(-1) yr(-1) in PB to 6.77 Mg C ha(-1) yr(-1) in PD stand. With soil C outputs (Rh) being smaller than C sequestrations, the plantations all acted as C sinks, averagely absorbing 3.45 Mg C ha(-1) during a year. Our results suggest that clone type is a main factor influencing C sequestration capacity of a plantation, along with determining the amount of biomass yield. The success of poplar plantations as a bio-energy resource largely depends on the selection of Hybrid varieties. (C) 2017 Published by Elsevier B.V

Chronic Intermittent Hypoxia Induces the Long-Term Facilitation of Genioglossus Corticomotor Activity

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is characterized by the repetitive collapse of the upper airway and chronic intermittent hypoxia (CIH) during sleep. It has been reported that CIH can increase the EMG activity of genioglossus in rats, which may be related to the neuromuscular compensation of OSA patients. This study aimed to explore whether CIH could induce the long-term facilitation (LTF) of genioglossus corticomotor activity. 16 rats were divided into the air group (n=8) and the CIH group (n=8). The CIH group was exposed to hypoxia for 4 weeks; the air group was subjected to air under identical experimental conditions in parallel. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was applied every ten minutes and lasted for 1 h/day on the 1st, 3rd, 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th days of air/CIH exposure. Genioglossus EMG was also recorded at the same time. Compared with the air group, the CIH group showed decreased TMS latency from 10 to 60 minutes on the 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th days. The increased TMS amplitude lasting for 60 minutes was only observed on the 21st day. Genioglossus EMG activity increased only on the 28th day of CIH. We concluded that CIH could induce LTF of genioglossus corticomotor activity in rats

Effects of TiO2 and ZrO2 on optical properties of organic-inorganic hybrid polymers and thin films

TiO 2- and ZrO 2-doped hybrid polymers were prepared by an anhydrous sol-gel process, and their optical properties were studied. Incorporation of TiO 2 and ZrO 2 was found useful in promoting sol-gel condensation reactions and reducing the OH absorption and optical losses of the hybrid polymers. The thermo-optic properties of the TiO 2- and ZrO 2-doped hybrid polymer thin films were measured, and linear functions were observed for the changes in film thickness and refractive index during thermal scanning tests. The photosensitivity of the hybrid materials upon UV irradiation was observed to increase with the increase of the content of TiO 2 and ZrO 2, and the mechanisms for TiO 2 and ZrO 2enhancing the photosensitivity of the hybrid polymers are discussed

Demand and Development of New Generation of Migrant Workers in Hebei Province

A field investigation was conducted on the new generation of migrant workers in Hebei Province to understand their present situation and characteristics, based on which countermeasures and suggestions were put forward to improve the survival and development of the new generation of migrant workers

LC-ESI-MS/MS Analysis and Pharmacokinetics of Plantainoside D Isolated from Chirita longgangensis var. hongyao, a Potential Anti-Hypertensive Active Component in Rats

Plantainoside D (PD) is a potential anti-hypertensive active ingredient newly isolated from the dried plants of Chirita longgangensis var. hongyao. A sensitive and specific LC-ESI-MS/MS method was first developed and validated for the analysis of PD in rat plasma using genistein as the internal standard (IS). The plasma samples were pretreated with methanol-acetonitrile (50:50, v/v) to precipitate protein, and then chromatographed on a reverse-phase Agilent Zorbax XDB C18 column (50 mm × 2.1 mm, 3.5 μm). Gradient elution was utilized, with a mobile phase consisting of water and acetonitrile both containing 0.1% formic acid, and the flow rate was set at 0.50 mL/min. The analytes were monitored by tandem-mass spectrometry with negative electrospray ionization. The precursor/product transitions (m/z) in the negative ion mode were 639.2 → 160.9 Thomson (Th) and 268.9 → 158.9 Thomson (Th) for PD and IS, respectively. Linearity was achieved in the 0.10–200 ng/mL range, with a lower limit of quantification of 0.10 ng/mL. The precision and accuracy for both intra- and inter-day determination of the analyte were all within ±15%. The present method has been applied for pharmacokinetic study of PD after oral and intravenous administration in rats. The oral absolute bioavailability (F) of PD in rats was estimated to be 1.12% ± 0.46% with an elimination half-life (t1/2) value of 1.63 ± 0.19 h, suggesting its poor absorption and/or strong metabolism in vivo

Analysis of the Influencing Factors of Changes in Foxtail Millet Planting Area in Hebei Province

Since reform and open to the outside world, foxtail millet planting area in Hebei Province has constantly reduced, and its planting region has changed from the whole province into some regions, with obvious changes. In this paper, by using qualitative and quantitative approaches like chart analysis, summarizing, Delphi method and osculating value model, the influencing factors of changes in millet growing region in Hebei Province were studied. The results showed that the changes of millet planting area were closely related to many factors, such as little investment in scientific research, weak policy support, a single consumer product demand, the rapid development of other staple crops, labor migration, relatively low comparative effectiveness and physiological characteristics of the millet itself. Then some suggestions were put forward, such as increasing research support, strengthening scientific research strength, researching and developing deeply processed products, expanding consumer groups, improving millet policy support, providing subsidies for planting the improved varieties, researching and developing various types of machinery, and increasing millet production technology training