Boosting Factual Consistency and High Coverage in Unsupervised Abstractive Summarization

Abstractive summarization has gained attention because of the positive performance of large-scale, pretrained language models. However, models may generate a summary that contains information different from the original document. This phenomenon is particularly critical under the abstractive methods and is known as factual inconsistency. This study proposes an unsupervised abstractive method for improving factual consistency and coverage by adopting reinforcement learning. The proposed framework includes (1) a novel design to maintain factual consistency with an automatic question-answering process between the generated summary and original document, and (2) a novel method of ranking keywords based on word dependency, where keywords are used to examine the coverage of the key information preserved in the summary. The experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms the reinforcement learning baseline on both the evaluations for factual consistency and coverage

3D-PL: Domain Adaptive Depth Estimation with 3D-aware Pseudo-Labeling

For monocular depth estimation, acquiring ground truths for real data is not easy, and thus domain adaptation methods are commonly adopted using the supervised synthetic data. However, this may still incur a large domain gap due to the lack of supervision from the real data. In this paper, we develop a domain adaptation framework via generating reliable pseudo ground truths of depth from real data to provide direct supervisions. Specifically, we propose two mechanisms for pseudo-labeling: 1) 2D-based pseudo-labels via measuring the consistency of depth predictions when images are with the same content but different styles; 2) 3D-aware pseudo-labels via a point cloud completion network that learns to complete the depth values in the 3D space, thus providing more structural information in a scene to refine and generate more reliable pseudo-labels. In experiments, we show that our pseudo-labeling methods improve depth estimation in various settings, including the usage of stereo pairs during training. Furthermore, the proposed method performs favorably against several state-of-the-art unsupervised domain adaptation approaches in real-world datasets.Comment: Accepted in ECCV 2022. Project page: https://ccc870206.github.io/3D-PL

Cryopreservation of Orchid Genetic Resources by Desiccation: A Case Study of Bletilla formosana

Many native orchid populations declined yearly due to economic development and climate change. This resulted in some wild orchids being threatened. In order to maintain the orchid genetic resources, development of proper methods for the long‐term preservation is urgent. Low temperature or dry storage methods for the preservation of orchid genetic resources have been implemented but are not effective in maintaining high viability of certain orchids for long periods. Cryopreservation is one of the most acceptable methods for long‐term conservation of plant germplasm. Orchid seeds and pollens are ideal materials for long‐term preservation (seed banking) in liquid nitrogen (LN) as the seeds and pollens are minute, enabling the storage of many hundreds of thousands of seeds or pollens in a small vial, and as most species germinate readily, making the technique very economical. This article describes cryopreservation of orchid genetic resources by desiccation and a case study of Bletilla formosana. We hope to provide a more practical potential cryopreservation method for future research needs

A rare complication in a child undergoing chemotherapy for acute lymphoblastic leukemia: Superior sagittal sinus thrombosis

AbstractWe report the case of a 4-year-old boy with acute lymphoblastic leukemia in high-risk group who suffered from generalized tonic-colonic seizure evolving into status epilepticus, and subsequent left hemiparesis during his first reinduction chemotherapy, consisting of dexamethasone, vincristine, l-asparaginase, and epirubicin. Superior sagittal sinus and cerebral venous thrombosis, predominantly in right side, were proved by brain magnetic resonance imaging. After aggressive treatment with low-molecular weight heparin (LMWH), left hemiparesis improved in 1 week. And he was fully ambulatory 3 weeks later. The second cycle of reinduction chemotherapy was conducted smoothly with the concomitant use of LMWH. This case illustrates the strong correlation of the rare thrombotic complication, superior sagittal sinus thrombosis, and hypercoagulable status secondary to combination use of l-asparaginase and corticosteroid. Early and vigilant recognition of superior sagittal sinus thrombosis and prompt anticoagulation with LMWH may prevent further neurological damage

Expression and immunogenicity of secreted forms of bovine ephemeral fever virus glycoproteins applied to subunit vaccine development

This study was support by grants from the Taiwan Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST-106-2911-I-020-501; MOST-107-2313-B-020-011-MY3) and the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BB/P025080/1).Aims  Vaccines for bovine ephemeral fever virus (BEFV) are available but are difficult to produce, expensive, or suffer from genetic instability. Therefore, we designed constructs encoding C-terminally truncated forms (transmembrane anchoring region deleted) of glycoproteins G and GNS such that they were secreted from the cell into the media to achieve high-level antigen expression, correct glycosylation pattern, and enable further simple purification with the V5 epitope tag. Methods and Results  In this study, synthetic biology was employed to create membrane-bound and secreted forms of G and GNS glycoprotein. Mammalian cell culture was employed as an antigen expression platform, and the secreted forms of G and GNS protein were easily purified from media by using a highly effective, single-step method. The V5 epitope tag was genetically fused to the C-termini of the proteins, enabling detection of the antigen through immunoblotting and immunomicroscopy. Our data demonstrated that the C-terminally truncated form of the G glycoprotein was efficiently secreted from cells into the cell media. Moreover, the immunogenicity was confirmed in mice test. Conclusions  The immuno-dot blots showed that the truncated G glycoprotein was present in the total cell extract, and was clearly secreted into the media, consistent with the western blotting data and live-cell images. Our strategy presented the expression of secreted, epitope-tagged, forms of the BEFV glycoproteins such that appropriately glycosylated forms of BEFV G protein was secreted from the BHK-21 cells. This indicates that high-level expression of secreted G glycoprotein is a feasible strategy for large-scale production of vaccines and improving vaccine efficacy. Significance and Impact of the Study The antigen expression strategy designed in this study can produce high-quality recombinant protein and reduce the amount of antigen used in the vaccine.PostprintPeer reviewe