Query and Output: Generating Words by Querying Distributed Word Representations for Paraphrase Generation

Most recent approaches use the sequence-to-sequence model for paraphrase generation. The existing sequence-to-sequence model tends to memorize the words and the patterns in the training dataset instead of learning the meaning of the words. Therefore, the generated sentences are often grammatically correct but semantically improper. In this work, we introduce a novel model based on the encoder-decoder framework, called Word Embedding Attention Network (WEAN). Our proposed model generates the words by querying distributed word representations (i.e. neural word embeddings), hoping to capturing the meaning of the according words. Following previous work, we evaluate our model on two paraphrase-oriented tasks, namely text simplification and short text abstractive summarization. Experimental results show that our model outperforms the sequence-to-sequence baseline by the BLEU score of 6.3 and 5.5 on two English text simplification datasets, and the ROUGE-2 F1 score of 5.7 on a Chinese summarization dataset. Moreover, our model achieves state-of-the-art performances on these three benchmark datasets.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1710.0231

Moisture and Temperature Changes of Wood during Adsorption and Desorption Processes

Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis Carr.) specimens, 10 mm along the grain and 20 mm in radial and tangential directions, were exposed to three different RH conditions of 22, 47, and 75% for adsorption and desorption at 30°C controlled by a self-designed temperature conditioning chamber. Specimen weight was measured and thermal images were taken at certain time intervals during the processes to investigate their moisture and temperature changes. Results showed that at the beginning of the sorption process, moisture content of the specimens changed significantly and their average temperature increased about 2-7°C for adsorption and decreased about 1-6°C for desorption. During adsorption, the temperature for the center section along the longitudinal direction of the specimens was lower than that for the surface section, whereas the opposite was true for specimens under desorption. Along with the adsorption and desorption processes, moisture content and average temperature of the specimens were gradually approaching equilibrium state

Studies on ??-Nucleophiles for Efficient Protein Labeling

Department of ChemistrySpecific and efficient incorporation of covalent tags into a protein is of great significance in chemical biology. One common strategy involves targeting electrophilic functional groups in proteins with specific nucleophiles harboring fluorophores or affinity tags. We designed some novel nucleophiles with neighboring groups for intramolecular catalytic effects for more efficient bioconjugation under mild conditions in aqueous buffers. Our nucleophiles are based on hydrazine and aminooxy groups, which are known for their enhanced nucleophilicity. Chapter 1 describes our investigation on these nucleophiles for reactions with acyl phosphates. Phosphoaspartate (pAsp), an acyl phosphate, is a key element in two-component systems (TCSs), which are crucial in bacterial virulence, survival, and pathogenicity. Fast and specific labeling of pAsp-containing proteins will enable facile detection, isolation, and identification of these modified proteins from cell lysates, and it will lay the foundation for the further studies on TCSs, as well as the development of novel antibacterial strategies. We tested a number of nucleophiles on various conditions using a model acyl phosphate and the results are described herein. Chapter 2 discusses our progress on the utilization of novel alpha-nucleophiles for bioconjugation to aldehydes/ketones and thioesters. Aldehyde and ketone handles are commonly used for bioconjugation via the formation of hydrazones and oximes, but their slow kinetics with nucleophiles in neutral conditions hampered their widespread applications. Recently, it was found that aniline catalyst can accelerate these reactions, but very high concentration (>100 mM) of these catalysts are required for practically useful reaction rates. To address this issue, we aimed at the development of novel nucleophiles for fast bioconjugation without the need of catalysts. Moreover, our nucleophiles can yield cyclic stable products with aldehydes. So further studies on our nucleophiles can lead to superior nucleophiles for aldehyde/ketone bioconjugation. Thioesters are another group of electrophiles utilized for protein bioconjugation. Hydrazinylation and aminoxylation of thioesters have been reported to site-specifically label proteins. However, these reactions are very slow in neutral conditions and large excess (>100 mM) of nucleophiles are typically used. We tested our nucleophiles to thioesters, and our novel alpha-nucleophiles might turn out be a solution to this issue.ope

New uniqueness results for boundary value problem of fractional differential equation

In this paper, uniqueness results for boundary value problem of fractional differential equation are obtained. Both the Banach's contraction mapping principle and the theory of linear operator are used, and a comparison between the obtained results is provided

Mass transfer and boson cloud depletion in a binary black hole system

Ultralight boson is one of the potential candidates for dark matter. If exists, it can be generated by a rapidly rotating black hole via superradiance, extracting the energy and angular momentum of the black hole and forming a boson cloud. The boson cloud can be affected by the presence of a companion star, generating fruitful dynamical effects and producing characteristic gravitational wave signals. We study the dynamics of the boson cloud in a binary black hole system, in particular, we develop a framework to study the mass transfer between two black holes. It is found that bosons occupying the growing modes of the central black hole can jump to the decaying modes of the companion black hole, resulting in cloud depletion. This mechanism of cloud depletion is different from that induced by the resonant perturbation from the companion

What Happened 3 Seconds Ago? Inferring the Past with Thermal Imaging

Inferring past human motion from RGB images is challenging due to the inherent uncertainty of the prediction problem. Thermal images, on the other hand, encode traces of past human-object interactions left in the environment via thermal radiation measurement. Based on this observation, we collect the first RGB-Thermal dataset for human motion analysis, dubbed Thermal-IM. Then we develop a three-stage neural network model for accurate past human pose estimation. Comprehensive experiments show that thermal cues significantly reduce the ambiguities of this task, and the proposed model achieves remarkable performance. The dataset is available at https://github.com/ZitianTang/Thermal-IM

Na+-leak channel, non-selective (NALCN) regulates myometrial excitability and facilitates successful parturition

Background/Aims: Uterine contractility is controlled by electrical signals generated by myometrial smooth muscle cells. Because aberrant electrical signaling may cause inefficient uterine contractions and poor reproductive outcomes, there is great interest in defining the ion channels that regulate uterine excitability. In human myometrium, the Na+ leak channel, non-selective (NALCN) contributes to a gadolinium-sensitive, Na+-dependent leak current. The aim of this study was to determine the role of NALCN in regulating uterine excitability and examine its involvement in parturition. Methods: Wildtype C57BL/6J mice underwent timed-mating and NALCN uterine expression was measured at several time points across pregnancy including pregnancy days 7, 10, 14, 18 and 19. Sharp electrode current clamp was used to measure uterine excitability at these same time points. To determine NALCN’s contribution to myometrial excitability and pregnancy outcomes, we created smooth-muscle-specific NALCN knockout mice by crossing NALCNfx/fx mice with myosin heavy chain Cre (MHCCreeGFP) mice. Parturition outcomes were assessed by observation via surveillance video recording cre control, flox control, smNALCN+/-, and smNALCN-/- mice. Myometrial excitability was compared between pregnancy day 19 flox controls and smNALCN-/- mice. Results: We found that in the mouse uterus, NALCN protein levels were high early in pregnancy, decreased in mid and late pregnancy, and then increased in labor and postpartum. Sharp electrode current clamp recordings of mouse longitudinal myometrial samples from pregnancy days 7, 10, 14, 18, and 19 revealed day-dependent increases in burst duration and interval and decreases in spike density. NALCN smooth muscle knockout mice had reduced myometrial excitability exemplified by shortened action potential bursts, and an increased rate of abnormal labor, including prolonged and dysfunctional labor. Conclusions: Together, our findings demonstrate that the Na+ conducting channel NALCN contributes to the myometrial action potential waveform and is important for successful labor outcomes

Four lignans from Portulaca oleracea L. and its antioxidant activities

International audienceA new lignan, named oleralignan (1) and three known compounds (+)-syringaresinol (2), (+)-lirioresinol A (3) and monomethyl 3,30,4,40-tetrahydroxy-δ-truxinate (4) were isolated from the P. oleracea for the first time. The compound (1) were identified by 1D, 2D NMR spectroscopic methods and high resolution electrospray ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry. In addition, it was found that the four lignans presented the scavenging activities in 1,1-diphenyl-2-picryl-hydrazyl (DPPH) radical quenching assay more than that of hydroxyl anisole (BHA)