An Empirical Study of Mini-Batch Creation Strategies for Neural Machine Translation

Training of neural machine translation (NMT) models usually uses mini-batches for efficiency purposes. During the mini-batched training process, it is necessary to pad shorter sentences in a mini-batch to be equal in length to the longest sentence therein for efficient computation. Previous work has noted that sorting the corpus based on the sentence length before making mini-batches reduces the amount of padding and increases the processing speed. However, despite the fact that mini-batch creation is an essential step in NMT training, widely used NMT toolkits implement disparate strategies for doing so, which have not been empirically validated or compared. This work investigates mini-batch creation strategies with experiments over two different datasets. Our results suggest that the choice of a mini-batch creation strategy has a large effect on NMT training and some length-based sorting strategies do not always work well compared with simple shuffling.Comment: 8 pages, accepted to the First Workshop on Neural Machine Translatio

Development of Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma Associated with Intraductal Papillary Mucinous Neoplasia

We retrospectively investigated the incidence of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma among patients with intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasms of the pancreas. Based on imaging in 195 such patients, we chose surgery as initial treatment for 54, and periodic evaluation over 6 to 192 months (mean, 52) for 141. In 6 of the 141 patients observed for intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasm (4.2%), pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma developed. Further, careful monitoring for cancer occurrence in the remnant pancreas proved essential in the surgical resection group; 2 of 26 patients (7.7%) subsequently developed pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma in the remnant pancreas, at 41 months and 137 months after surgery. Serial observation of patients with intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasms by contrast-enhanced computed tomography or magnetic resonance cholangiopancreatography therefore is critical, whether or not surgical treatment initially was performed

Two Cases of Nivolumab Re-Administration after Pneumonitis as Immune-Related Adverse Events

Nivolumab is a recently approved medication for the treatment of unresectable malignant melanoma. Many immune-related adverse events (irAEs) associated with nivolumab have been reported, such as pneumonitis, hepatitis, dermatitis, and thyroiditis. Prednisolone can effectively treat irAEs. However, it is unclear how or if nivolumab should be administered to patients after they have experienced an irAE. Herein, we show 2 patients who underwent pneumonitis as irAE. Case 1 demonstrated a cryptogenic organizing pneumonia pattern in the CT scan and case 2 had a diffuse alveolar damage (DAD) pattern. Oral corticosteroids improved chest shadow of CT scan in both cases. However, when nivolumab was re-administrated, case 1 demonstrated no symptoms, but case 2 demonstrated pneumonia again. From our cases, it is difficult to re-administrate nivolumab for the patients with pneumonitis which shows a DAD pattern in CT, even if oral corticosteroids improve their symptoms

Roles of silica and lignin in horsetail (Equisetum hyemale), with special reference to mechanical properties

This research deals with detailed analyses of silica and lignin distribution in horsetail with special reference to mechanical strength. Scanning electron images of a cross-section of an internode showed silica deposited densely only around the outer epidermis. Detailed histochemical analyses of lignin showed no lignin deposition in the silica-rich outer internodes of horsetail, while a characteristic lignin deposition was noticed in the vascular bundle in inner side of internodes. To analyze the structure of horsetail from a mechanical viewpoint, we calculated the response of a model structure of horsetail to a mechanical force applied perpendicularly to the long axis by a finite element method. We found that silica distributed in the outer epidermis may play the major structural role, with lignin's role being limited ensuring that the vascular bundle keep waterproof. These results were in contrast to more modern tall trees like gymnosperms, for which lignin provides mechanical strength. Lignin has the advantage of sticking to cellulose, hemicellulose, and other materials. Such properties make it possible for plants containing lignin to branch. Branching of tree stems aids in competing for light and other atmospheric resources. This type of branching was impossible for ancient horsetails, which relied on the physical properties of silica. From the evolutional view points, over millennia in trees with high lignin content, true branching, and many chlorophyll-containing leaves developed. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3688253]ArticleJOURNAL OF APPLIED PHYSICS. 111(4):044703 (2012)journal articl