DecodingTrust: A Comprehensive Assessment of Trustworthiness in GPT Models

Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) models have exhibited exciting progress in capabilities, capturing the interest of practitioners and the public alike. Yet, while the literature on the trustworthiness of GPT models remains limited, practitioners have proposed employing capable GPT models for sensitive applications to healthcare and finance - where mistakes can be costly. To this end, this work proposes a comprehensive trustworthiness evaluation for large language models with a focus on GPT-4 and GPT-3.5, considering diverse perspectives - including toxicity, stereotype bias, adversarial robustness, out-of-distribution robustness, robustness on adversarial demonstrations, privacy, machine ethics, and fairness. Based on our evaluations, we discover previously unpublished vulnerabilities to trustworthiness threats. For instance, we find that GPT models can be easily misled to generate toxic and biased outputs and leak private information in both training data and conversation history. We also find that although GPT-4 is usually more trustworthy than GPT-3.5 on standard benchmarks, GPT-4 is more vulnerable given jailbreaking system or user prompts, potentially due to the reason that GPT-4 follows the (misleading) instructions more precisely. Our work illustrates a comprehensive trustworthiness evaluation of GPT models and sheds light on the trustworthiness gaps. Our benchmark is publicly available at https://decodingtrust.github.io/

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data

Research on Expressway Travel Time Prediction Based on Exclusive Disjunctive Soft Set

In order to study the prediction problem of expressway travel time, due to the ambiguity and uncertainty in the road traffic system, the travel time prediction model is established based on the exclusive disjunctive soft set theory. Through the parameter reduction theory of soft set, the main influence factors are extracted, and the mapping relationship between the influence factors and the travel time is obtained through the exclusive disjunctive soft set decision system. The travel time model is established based on the soft set theory, and the travel time is calculated through the mapping relationship. The experimental results show that, compared with the BPR function model, the travel time model based on the exclusive disjunctive soft set theory reduces the prediction error and effectively improves the calculation accuracy of the travel time

Heat transfer study in the exploitation of argillaceous‐silt natural gas hydrate reservoirs

Abstract The paper investigates the heat transfer in the exploitation of offshore argillaceous‐silt natural gas hydrate reservoirs considering sand control. The temperature prediction model is established in this investigation. The coupled pressure‐temperature model of the flowing fluid inside the wellbore is also presented. The sand control for argillaceous‐silt natural gas hydrate reservoirs mainly brings two effects into the temperature and pressure profiles simulation, including the moderate sand control and the Joule–Thompson effect. The moderate sand control is reflected by the volume and particle size of produced sand into the wellbore in the mathematical derivation. The Joule–Thompson is considered in the model due to the small diameter of sand control screens. The experiment is designed to measure the pressure drop caused by various mesh diameters of sand control screens. Subsequently, the regression relationship between the pressure drop and the mesh diameter is concluded to calculate the temperature change at the sand control screen. The simulation of heat transfer helps to analyze secondary hydrate formation risk in the wellbore. The proposed model identifies the high‐risk location of the secondary hydrate formation. The sand control effect and well geometry effect are discussed quantitatively. The strict sand control in the argillaceous‐silt natural gas hydrate (NGH) sediment exploitation reduces the risk of secondary hydrate formation significantly; however, it also has a negative effect on natural gas production. To balance the sand control and the prevention of secondary hydrate formation risk, it is suggested to install the heating electrode in the high‐risk location to ensure flow safety with acceptable sand control precision. The heat provided by heat electrodes is calculated by the model presented in this paper. The model can be used to determine the proper arrangement of heat electrodes. The paper also describes the secondary hydrate formation by adjusting the well geometry. The formation depth of the NGH reservoir and the sea interval should be considered in the risk analysis of the secondary hydrate formation. Additionally, the effects of wall thickness and wall thermal properties are evaluated and discussed. It is recommended to optimize the riser thickness with a small thermal conductivity value to minimize the secondary hydrate formation risk, which is more efficient compared to adjusting the cement sheath

Function of <i>FT</i> in Flowering Induction in Two <i>Camellia</i> Species

FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT), belonging to the FT/TFL1 gene family, is an important gene regulating the flowering transition and inflorescence architecture during plant development. Given its importance to plant adaptation and crop improvement, FT has been extensively studied in related plant research; however, the specific role and underlying molecular mechanisms of FT in the continuous flowering of perennial plants remains elusive. Here, we isolated and characterized homologous FT genes from two Camellia species with different flowering-period phenotypes: CaFT was isolated from Camellia azalea, a precious species blooming in summer and flowering throughout the year, and CjFT was isolated from C. japonica, which blooms in winter and spring. The major difference in the genes between the two species was an additional five-amino acid repeat sequence in C. japonica. FT showed high expression levels in the leaves in both species from January to August, especially in April for C. japonica and in May for C. azalea. CaFT was expressed throughout the year in C. azalea, whereas CjFT was not expressed from September to December in C. japonica. The expression levels of FT in the floral buds were generally higher than those in the leaves. Overexpression of CaFT and CjFT in Arabidopsis indicated that both genes can activate downstream genes to promote flowering. Transgenic callus tissue was obtained by introducing the two genes into C. azalea through Agrobacterium-mediated transformation. Transcriptome and quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction analyses indicated that both florigen FT genes promoted the expression of downstream genes such as AP1, FUL, and SEP3, and slightly up-regulated the expression of upstream genes such as CO and GI. The above results indicated that CaFT and CjFT played a role in promoting flowering in both camellia species. The expression pattern of CaFT in leaves suggested that, compared to CjFT, CaFT may be related to the annual flowering of C. azalea