Adversarial Learning for Chinese NER from Crowd Annotations

To quickly obtain new labeled data, we can choose crowdsourcing as an alternative way at lower cost in a short time. But as an exchange, crowd annotations from non-experts may be of lower quality than those from experts. In this paper, we propose an approach to performing crowd annotation learning for Chinese Named Entity Recognition (NER) to make full use of the noisy sequence labels from multiple annotators. Inspired by adversarial learning, our approach uses a common Bi-LSTM and a private Bi-LSTM for representing annotator-generic and -specific information. The annotator-generic information is the common knowledge for entities easily mastered by the crowd. Finally, we build our Chinese NE tagger based on the LSTM-CRF model. In our experiments, we create two data sets for Chinese NER tasks from two domains. The experimental results show that our system achieves better scores than strong baseline systems.Comment: 8 pages, AAAI-201

Genetisk variation af rødder og rodhår mellem sorter af vårhvede

Rodsystemer er vigtige for planters optagelse af vand og næringsstoffer og dermed for vækst og ud-bytte, specielt under forhold med lav tilgæn- gelighed af jordens næringsstoffer. I det økologiske RDD projekt RoCo har vi undersøgt rodvækst, rodfordeling og roddybde samt rodhårs- karakteristika for forskellige sorter af vårhvede. Resultaterne af vores forsøg viser, at der er en stor variation i rod- og rodhårskarakteristika mellem forskellige vårhvedesorter, og disse er afgørende for, samt gene- tisk relateret til, afgrødens vækst og optagelse af næringsstoffer. Derfor er vital rodvækst og lange og tætte rodhår vigtige mål for selektion og fremtidig forædling af vårhvede til økologisk jordbrug

Influence of Volatile Peppermint (Mentha ×piperita L.) Compounds on Germination and Seedling of Radish (Raphanus sativus L. var. radicula Pers.) Growth

The research concerns the influence of volatile compounds contained in dry peppermint leaves (Mentha ×piperita L.) on germination and seedling characteristics of radish (Raphanus sativus L. var. radicula Pers. ‘Półdługa’). 1, 5 and 10 g of dried peppermint leaves were added respectively into containers, and then Petri dishes with radish seeds were placed in each of them. The control was performed without dried mint. Radish seeds treated with volatile mint compounds in the lowest 1g dose germinated similarly to the control sample. The other two doses, 5 and 10 g, inhibited the process of seeds germination. Allelophatins from M. ×piperita at 1 g of dose had also a stimulating effect on the growth of radish seedlings, especially its roots. The growth of underground organs was also observed at 5 and 10 g doses. For radishes grown in the lowest dose of allelopathic compounds, the values of fresh and dry masses and percentage water content were highest. As the dose of emitters increased, a slight decrease in the value of these parameters was observed, as compared to the control

Inhibition of highly pathogenic PRRSV replication in MARC-145 cells by artificial microRNAs

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Highly pathogenic porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (HP-PRRS) has caused large economic losses in swine industry in recent years. However, current antiviral strategy could not effectively prevent and control this disease. In this research, five artificial microRNAs (amiRNAs) respectively targeted towards ORF5 (amirGP5-243, -370) and ORF6 (amirM-82, -217,-263) were designed and incorporated into a miRNA-based vector that mimics the backbone of murine miR-155 and permits high expression of amiRNAs in a GFP fused form mediated by RNA Pol II promoter CMV.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>It was found that amirGP5-370 could effectively inhibit H-PRRSV replication. The amirM-263-M-263, which was a dual pre-amiRNA expression cassette where two amirM-263s were chained, showed stronger virus inhibitory effects than single amirM-263. H-PRRSV replication was inhibited up to 120 hours in the MARC-145 cells which were stably transduced by recombinant lentiviruses (Lenti-amirGP5-370, -amirM-263-M-263). Additionally, efficacious dose of amirGP5-370 and amirM-263 expression did not trigger the innate interferon response.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our study is the first attempt to suppress H-PRRSV replication in MARC-145 cells through vector-based and lentiviral mediated amiRNAs targeting GP5 or M proteins coding sequences of PRRSV, which indicated that artificial microRNAs and recombinant lentiviruses might be applied to be a new potent anti-PRRSV strategy.</p

The Influence of Aqueous Extracts from Stellaria media L. on the Growth of Zea mays L. Cultivars

Plants introduce chemicals into the environment that can be toxic, both for themselves and for other species. Weed infestation of crops is a competition for environmental resources, but at the same time is a source of chemical substances released into the soil, often reducing yield potential. The paper attempts to investigate the allelopathic interaction of aquatic extracts from dry shoots of chickweed Stellaria media L. on germination and development of maize Zea mays L. seedlings of ‘San’, ‘Kidemos’ and ‘DKC 3441’ cultivars. Along with the increase in the concentration of allelopathic substances, a decrease in the germination activity of all tested maize cultivars was observed. Germination percentage as like percentage of control was the highest for seeds germinating on substrates with 1% chickweed extracts and the lowest for seeds watered with 5% extracts. Biometric measurements of seedlings showed that the most sensitive cultivar of maize was ‘DKC 3441’, and the resistant cultivar ‘San’. The relative water content was the highest for seedlings grown on the 5% extracts. Significant differences in the amount of fresh and dry masses of maize seedlings were demonstrated at the highest concentrations of extracts compared to the control. A significant increase in electrolyte leakage compared to the control sample was found in the ‘Kidemos’ cultivar. The lowest differences in the destabilization of the ionic transport through cell membranes for the ‘DKC 3441’ cultivar were demonstrated

Inhibition of HSP90 attenuates porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus production in vitro

BACKGROUND: Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) infection leads to substantial economic losses to the swine industry worldwide. However, no effective countermeasures exist to combat this virus infection so far. The most common antiviral strategy relies on directly inhibiting viral proteins. However, this strategy invariably leads to the emergence of drug resistance due to the error-prone nature of viral ploymerase. Targeting cellular proteins required for viral infection for developing new generation of antivirals is gaining concern. Recently, heat shock protein 90 (HSP90) was found to be an important host factor for the replication of multiple viruses and the inhibition of HSP90 showed significant antiviral effects. It is thought that the inhibition of HSP90 could be a promising broad-range antiviral approach. However, the effects of HSP90 inhibition on PRRSV infection have not been evaluated. In the current research, we tried to inhibit HSP90 and test whether the inhibition affect PRRSV infection. METHODS: We inhibit the function of HSP90 with two inhibitors, geldanamycin (GA) and 17- allylamono-demethoxygeldanamycin (17-AAG), and down-regulated the expression of endogenous HSP90 with specific small-interfering RNAs (siRNAs). Cell viability was measured with alamarBlue. The protein level of viral N was determined by western blotting and indirect immunofluorescence (IFA). Besides, IFA was employed to examine the level of viral double-stranded RNA (dsRNA). The viral RNA copy number and the level of IFN-β mRNA were determined by quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR). RESULTS: Our results indicated that both HSP90 inhibitors showed strong anti-PRRSV activity. They could reduce viral production by preventing the viral RNA synthesis. These inhibitory effects were not due to the activation of innate interferon response. In addition, we observed that individual knockdown targeting HSP90α or HSP90β did not show dramatic inhibitory effect. Combined knockdown of these two isoforms was required to reduce viral infection. CONCLUSIONS: Our results shed light on the possibility of developing potential therapeutics targeting HSP90 against PRRSV infection