Target-oriented Sentiment Classification with Sequential Cross-modal Semantic Graph

Multi-modal aspect-based sentiment classification (MABSC) is task of classifying the sentiment of a target entity mentioned in a sentence and an image. However, previous methods failed to account for the fine-grained semantic association between the image and the text, which resulted in limited identification of fine-grained image aspects and opinions. To address these limitations, in this paper we propose a new approach called SeqCSG, which enhances the encoder-decoder sentiment classification framework using sequential cross-modal semantic graphs. SeqCSG utilizes image captions and scene graphs to extract both global and local fine-grained image information and considers them as elements of the cross-modal semantic graph along with tokens from tweets. The sequential cross-modal semantic graph is represented as a sequence with a multi-modal adjacency matrix indicating relationships between elements. Experimental results show that the approach outperforms existing methods and achieves state-of-the-art performance on two standard datasets. Further analysis has demonstrated that the model can implicitly learn the correlation between fine-grained information of the image and the text with the given target. Our code is available at https://github.com/zjukg/SeqCSG.Comment: ICANN 2023, https://github.com/zjukg/SeqCS

Fabrication and Investigation of Two-Component Film of 2,5-Diphenyloxazole and Octafluoronaphthalene Exhibiting Tunable Blue/Bluish Violet Fluorescence Based on Low Vacuum Physical Vapor Deposition Method

Organic luminescent materials play an important role in the fields of light-emitting diodes and fluorescent imaging. Moreover, new synthetic approaches towards π-conjugated molecular systems with high fluorescence quantum efficiency are highly desired. Herein, different 2,5-diphenyloxazole-octafluoronaphthalene (DPO-OFN) films with tunable fluorescence have been prepared by Low Vacuum Physical Vapor Deposition (LVPVD) method. DPO-OFN films showed some changed properties, such as molecular vibration and fluorescence. All films exhibited blue/bluish violet fluorescence and showed blue shift, in comparison with pristine DPO. This work introduced a new method to fabricate two-component molecular materials with tunable blue/bluish violet luminescence properties and provided a new perspective to prepare organic luminescent film materials, layer film materials, cocrystal materials, and cocrystal film materials. Importantly, these materials have potential applications in the fields of next generation of photofunctional materials

DUET: Cross-modal Semantic Grounding for Contrastive Zero-shot Learning

Zero-shot learning (ZSL) aims to predict unseen classes whose samples have never appeared during training. One of the most effective and widely used semantic information for zero-shot image classification are attributes which are annotations for class-level visual characteristics. However, the current methods often fail to discriminate those subtle visual distinctions between images due to not only the shortage of fine-grained annotations, but also the attribute imbalance and co-occurrence. In this paper, we present a transformer-based end-to-end ZSL method named DUET, which integrates latent semantic knowledge from the pre-trained language models (PLMs) via a self-supervised multi-modal learning paradigm. Specifically, we (1) developed a cross-modal semantic grounding network to investigate the model's capability of disentangling semantic attributes from the images; (2) applied an attribute-level contrastive learning strategy to further enhance the model's discrimination on fine-grained visual characteristics against the attribute co-occurrence and imbalance; (3) proposed a multi-task learning policy for considering multi-model objectives. We find that our DUET can achieve state-of-the-art performance on three standard ZSL benchmarks and a knowledge graph equipped ZSL benchmark. Its components are effective and its predictions are interpretable.Comment: AAAI 2023 (Oral). Repository: https://github.com/zjukg/DUE

Monocarboxylate transporter upregulation in induced regulatory T cells promotes resistance to anti-PD-1 therapy in hepatocellular carcinoma patients

BackgroundProgrammed cell death-1 (PD-1) immune checkpoint inhibitors are not effective in treating all patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), and regulatory T cells (Tregs) may determine the resistance to anti-PD-1 therapy.MethodsPatients were divided into two groups based on the clinical efficacy of anti-PD-1 therapy. Flow cytometry was used to determine the phenotype of CD4+, CD8+, and Tregs in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs). CD4+CD45RA+T cells were sorted to analyze Treg differentiation and function.ResultsNo significant differences were found between resistant and sensitive patients in the percentage of CD4+ T cells and Tregs in PBMCs or the differentiation and function of induced Tregs (iTregs). However, iTregs from resistant patients presented higher monocarboxylate transporter (MCT) expression. Lactate induced more iTregs and improved OXPHOS levels in the resistant group. MCT1 and MCT2 were highly expressed in tumor-infiltrating Tregs, and patients with higher MCT1 expression had worse clinical outcomes. Combinatorial therapy with MCT antibody and anti-PD-1 therapy effectively inhibited tumor growth.ConclusionMCT and its downstream lactate signal in Tregs can confer anti-PD-1 resistance and may be a marker of poor prognosis in HCC

Fabrication and Investigation of Two-Component Film of 2,5-Diphenyloxazole and Octafluoronaphthalene Exhibiting Tunable Blue/Bluish Violet Fluorescence Based on Low Vacuum Physical Vapor Deposition Method

Organic luminescent materials play an important role in the fields of light-emitting diodes and fluorescent imaging. Moreover, new synthetic approaches towards -conjugated molecular systems with high fluorescence quantum efficiency are highly desired. Herein, different 2,5-diphenyloxazole-octafluoronaphthalene (DPO-OFN) films with tunable fluorescence have been prepared by Low Vacuum Physical Vapor Deposition (LVPVD) method. DPO-OFN films showed some changed properties, such as molecular vibration and fluorescence. All films exhibited blue/bluish violet fluorescence and showed blue shift, in comparison with pristine DPO. This work introduced a new method to fabricate two-component molecular materials with tunable blue/bluish violet luminescence properties and provided a new perspective to prepare organic luminescent film materials, layer film materials, cocrystal materials, and cocrystal film materials. Importantly, these materials have potential applications in the fields of next generation of photofunctional materials

Final report on project SP1210: Lowland peatland systems in England and Wales – evaluating greenhouse gas fluxes and carbon balances

Lowland peatlands represent one of the most carbon-rich ecosystems in the UK. As a result of widespread habitat modification and drainage to support agriculture and peat extraction, they have been converted from natural carbon sinks into major carbon sources, and are now amongst the largest sources of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the UK land-use sector. Despite this, they have previously received relatively little policy attention, and measures to reduce GHG emissions either through re-wetting and restoration or improved management of agricultural land remain at a relatively early stage. In part, this has stemmed from a lack of reliable measurements on the carbon and GHG balance of UK lowland peatlands. This project aimed to address this evidence gap via an unprecedented programme of consistent, multi year field measurements at a total of 15 lowland peatland sites in England and Wales, ranging from conservation managed ‘near-natural’ ecosystems to intensively managed agricultural and extraction sites. The use of standardised measurement and data analysis protocols allowed the magnitude of GHG emissions and removals by peatlands to be quantified across this heterogeneous data set, and for controlling factors to be identified. The network of seven flux towers established during the project is believed to be unique on peatlands globally, and has provided new insights into the processes the control GHG fluxes in lowland peatlands. The work undertaken is intended to support the future development and implementation of agricultural management and restoration measures aimed at reducing the contribution of these important ecosystems to UK GHG emissions

Benefits of Huang Lian mediated by gut microbiota on HFD/STZ-induced type 2 diabetes mellitus in mice

BackgroundHuang Lian (HL), one of the traditional Chinese medicines (TCMs) that contains multiple active components including berberine (BBR), has been used to treat symptoms associated with diabetes for thousands of years. Compared to the monomer of BBR, HL exerts a better glucose-lowering activity and plays different roles in regulating gut microbiota. However, it remains unclear what role the gut microbiota plays in the anti-diabetic activity of HL.MethodsIn this study, a type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) mouse model was induced with a six-week high-fat diet (HFD) and a one-time injection of streptozotocin (STZ, 75 mg/kg). One group of these mice was administrated HL (50 mg/kg) through oral gavage two weeks after HFD feeding commenced and continued for four weeks; the other mice were given distilled water as disease control. Comprehensive analyses of physiological indices related to glycolipid metabolism, gut microbiota, untargeted metabolome, and hepatic genes expression, function prediction by PICRUSt2 were performed to identify potential mechanism.ResultsWe found that HL, in addition to decreasing body fat accumulation, effectively improved insulin resistance by stimulating the hepatic insulin-mediated signaling pathway. In comparison with the control group, HL treatment constructed a distinct gut microbiota and bile acid (BA) profile. The HL-treated microbiota was dominated by bacteria belonging to Bacteroides and the Clostridium innocuum group, which were associated with BA metabolism. Based on the correlation analysis, the altered BAs were closely correlated with the improvement of T2DM-related markers.ConclusionThese results indicated that the anti-diabetic activity of HL was achieved, at least partly, by regulating the structure of the gut microbiota and the composition of BAs

Prevalence of and Risk Factors for Peripheral Neuropathy in Chinese Patients With Diabetes: A Multicenter Cross-Sectional Study

Diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN) is the most common complication of diabetes, and its progression significantly worsens the patient's quality of life. This study investigated the prevalence and risk factors associated with DPN in a large sample of Beijing individuals with type 1 and 2 diabetes, as well as compared the diagnostic methods for DPN. A total of 2,048 diabetic patients from 13 centers in Beijing were assessed for DPN through questionnaires and examination. Patients were divided into DPN group and suspected DPN/non-DPN group. The demographic, clinical and biological characteristics between the two groups were compared. Binary logistic regression analysis was performed to identify potential variables associated with DPN in diabetic patients. The diagnostic methods for DPN were also compared. Among the 2,048 diabetic patients, 73 cases of type 1 diabetes mellitus, 1,975 cases of type 2 diabetes were included in this study. Among them, 714 (34.86%) were identified with DPN, 537 (26.22%) were suspected of having DPN, and 797 (38.92%) were identified without DPN. Patient's age, duration of diabetes, and diabetic retinopathy were the significant independent risk factor for DPN among patients with type 2 diabetes. The odds ratio (OR) was 1.439 (95% confidence interval (CI): 1.282–1.616, P < 0.001), 1.297 (95% CI: 1.151–1.462, P < 0.001), and 0.637 (95% CI: 0.506–0.802, P < 0.001), respectively. Ankle reflex, temperature sensation plus vibration sensation are the best screening test for patients with type 1 and 2 diabetes. The Youden indexes were 62.2 and 69.8%, respectively. The prevalence rates of DPN in the Chinese patients with type 1 and type 2 diabetes in Beijing were 21.92 and 35.34%, respectively. Patient's age, duration of diabetes, and diabetic retinopathy are the independent risk factors for DPN