BigCilin: An Automatic Chinese Open-domain Knowledge Graph with Fine-grained Hypernym-Hyponym Relations

This paper presents BigCilin, the first Chinese open-domain knowledge graph with fine-grained hypernym-hyponym re-lations which are extracted automatically from multiple sources for Chinese named entities. With the fine-grained hypernym-hyponym relations, BigCilin owns flexible semantic hierarchical structure. Since the hypernym-hyponym paths are automati-cally generated and one entity may have several senses, we provide a path disambi-guation solution to map a hypernym-hyponym path of one entity to its one sense on the condition that the path and the sense express the same meaning. In order to conveniently access our BigCilin Knowle-dge graph, we provide web interface in two ways. One is that it supports querying any Chinese named entity and browsing the extracted hypernym-hyponym paths surro-unding the query entity. The other is that it gives a top-down browsing view to illust-rate the overall hierarchical structure of our BigCilin knowledge graph over some sam-pled entities.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Kuaipedia: a Large-scale Multi-modal Short-video Encyclopedia

Online encyclopedias, such as Wikipedia, have been well-developed and researched in the last two decades. One can find any attributes or other information of a wiki item on a wiki page edited by a community of volunteers. However, the traditional text, images and tables can hardly express some aspects of an wiki item. For example, when we talk about ``Shiba Inu'', one may care more about ``How to feed it'' or ``How to train it not to protect its food''. Currently, short-video platforms have become a hallmark in the online world. Whether you're on TikTok, Instagram, Kuaishou, or YouTube Shorts, short-video apps have changed how we consume and create content today. Except for producing short videos for entertainment, we can find more and more authors sharing insightful knowledge widely across all walks of life. These short videos, which we call knowledge videos, can easily express any aspects (e.g. hair or how-to-feed) consumers want to know about an item (e.g. Shiba Inu), and they can be systematically analyzed and organized like an online encyclopedia. In this paper, we propose Kuaipedia, a large-scale multi-modal encyclopedia consisting of items, aspects, and short videos lined to them, which was extracted from billions of videos of Kuaishou (Kwai), a well-known short-video platform in China. We first collected items from multiple sources and mined user-centered aspects from millions of users' queries to build an item-aspect tree. Then we propose a new task called ``multi-modal item-aspect linking'' as an expansion of ``entity linking'' to link short videos into item-aspect pairs and build the whole short-video encyclopedia. Intrinsic evaluations show that our encyclopedia is of large scale and highly accurate. We also conduct sufficient extrinsic experiments to show how Kuaipedia can help fundamental applications such as entity typing and entity linking

Causal Thinking: Uncovering Hidden Assumptions and Interpretations ofStatistical Analysis in Building Science

Causal thinking emphasizes the understanding of asymmetric causal relationships between variables, requiring us to specify which variable is the cause (independent variable) and which is the effect (dependent variable). Reversing the causal relationship direction can lead to profoundly different assumptions and interpretations. We demonstrate this by comparing two linear regression approaches used in thermal comfort research: Approach (a), which regresses thermal sensation votes (y-axis) on indoor temperature (x-axis); Approach (b), which does the reverse, regressing indoor temperature (y-axis) on thermal sensation votes (x-axis). From a correlational perspective, they may appear interchangeable, but causal thinking reveals substantial and practical differences between them. Approach (a) represents occupants’ thermal sensations as responses to indoor temperature. In contrast, Approach (b), rooted in adaptive comfort theory, suggests that thermal sensations can trigger behavioral changes, which in turn alter indoor temperature. Using the same data, we found that two approaches lead to different neutral temperatures and comfort zones. Approach (b) leads to what we call a ‘preferred zone’, which is 10 °C narrower than the conventionally derived comfort zone using Approach (a). We hypothesize that the ‘preferred zone’ might be interpreted as thermal conditions that occupants are likely to choose when they have significant control over their personal and environmental thermal settings. This finding has important implications for occupant comfort and building energy efficiency. We highlight the importance of integrating causal thinking into correlation-based statistical methods, which have been prevalent in building science research, especially given the increasing volume of data in the built environment

Robust Antibacterial Activity of Xanthan-Gum-Stabilized and Patterned CeO2–x–TiO2 Antifog Films

Increased occurrence of antimicrobial resistance leads to a huge burden on patients, the healthcare system, and society worldwide. Developing antimicrobial materials through doping rare-earth elements is a new strategy to overcome this challenge. To this end, we design antibacterial films containing CeO; 2-; x; -TiO; 2; , xanthan gum, poly(acrylic acid), and hyaluronic acid. CeO; 2-; x; -TiO; 2; inks are additionally integrated into a hexagonal grid for prominent transparency. Such design yields not only an antibacterial efficacy of ∼100% toward; Staphylococcus aureus; and; Escherichia coli; but also excellent antifog performance for 72 h in a 100% humidity atmosphere. Moreover, FluidFM is employed to understand the interaction in-depth between bacteria and materials. We further reveal that reactive oxygen species (ROS) are crucial for the bactericidal activity of; E. coli; through fluorescent spectroscopic analysis and SEM imaging. We meanwhile confirm that Ce; 3+; ions are involved in the stripping phosphate groups, damaging the cell membrane of; S. aureus; . Therefore, the hexagonal mesh and xanthan-gum cross-linking chains act as a reservoir for ROS and Ce; 3+; ions, realizing a long-lasting antibacterial function. We hence develop an antibacterial and antifog dual-functional material that has the potential for a broad application in display devices, medical devices, food packaging, and wearable electronics

East Asian monsoon variability over the last seven glacial cycles recorded by a loess sequence from the northwestern Chinese Loess Plateau

A 180-m-thick loess-paleosol sequence from the northwestern Chinese Loess Plateau was investigated to construct a high-resolution record of the East Asian monsoon variability over the last seven glacial-interglacial cycles. The low-field magnetic susceptibility (?, mass-specific) and the mean grain size are used as proxies for changes in the intensity of the East Asian summer and winter monsoon, respectively. Because of the weaker pedogenesis at the northwestern Chinese Loess Plateau compared to the central Chinese Loess Plateau, our ? and mean grain size records show a muted glacial-interglacial contrast for the Asian summer monsoon but an enhanced contrast for the Asian winter monsoon. Although better resolved, most orbital-scale East Asian monsoon variations captured by our ? and grain size records are similar to those reported from the central Chinese Loess Plateau. Nevertheless, variations in ? exhibit clear precessional cycles in three paleosol layers (i.e., S1, S2, and S3), corresponding with solar insolation maxima. Furthermore, unlike ? records at the central Chinese Loess Plateau where ? is dramatically enhanced at paleosol S5SS1 (corresponding to marine isotope stage 13), our new ? record shows a major enhancement at paleosol S4 (corresponding to marine isotope stage 11), which indicates geographic differences in the timing of local monsoon precipitation in the two regions