Boosting Neural Machine Translation with Dependency-Scaled Self-Attention Network

Syntax knowledge contributes its powerful strength in Neural machine translation (NMT) tasks. Early NMT works supposed that syntax details can be automatically learned from numerous texts via attention networks. However, succeeding researches pointed out that limited by the uncontrolled nature of attention computation, the NMT model requires an external syntax to capture the deep syntactic awareness. Although existing syntax-aware NMT methods have bored great fruits in combining syntax, the additional workloads they introduced render the model heavy and slow. Particularly, these efforts scarcely involve the Transformer-based NMT and modify its core self-attention network (SAN). To this end, we propose a parameter-free, dependency-scaled self-attention network (Deps-SAN) for syntax-aware Transformer-based NMT. A quantified matrix of dependency closeness between tokens is constructed to impose explicit syntactic constraints into the SAN for learning syntactic details and dispelling the dispersion of attention distributions. Two knowledge sparsing techniques are further integrated to avoid the model overfitting the dependency noises introduce by the external parser. Experiments and analyses on IWSLT14 German-to-English and WMT16 German-to-English benchmark NMT tasks verify the effectiveness of our approach

The identification and characterization of nucleic acid chaperone activity of human enterovirus 71 nonstructural protein 3AB

AbstractHuman enterovirus 71 (EV71) belongs to the genus Enterovirus in the family Picornaviridae and has been recognized as one of the most important pathogens that cause emerging infectious disease. Despite of the importance of EV71, the nonstructural protein 3AB from this virus is little understood for its function during EV71 replication. Here we expressed EV71 3AB protein as recombinant protein in a eukaryotic expression system and uncovered that this protein possesses a nucleic acid helix-destabilizing and strand annealing acceleration activity in a dose-dependent manner, indicating that EV71 3AB is a nucleic acid chaperone protein. Moreover, we characterized the RNA chaperone activity of EV71 3AB, and revealed that divalent metal ions, such as Mg2+ and Zn2+, were able to inhibit the RNA helix-destabilizing activity of 3AB to different extents. Moreover, we determined that 3B plus the last 7 amino acids at the C-terminal of 3A (termed 3B+7) possess the RNA chaperone activity, and five amino acids, i.e. Lys-80, Phe-82, Phe-85, Tyr-89, and Arg-103, are critical and probably the active sites of 3AB for its RNA chaperone activity. This report reveals that EV71 3AB displays an RNA chaperone activity, adds a new member to the growing list of virus-encoded RNA chaperones, and provides novel knowledge about the virology of EV71

Differential gene expression in liver and small intestine from lactating rats compared to age-matched virgin controls detects increased mRNA of cholesterol biosynthetic genes

BACKGROUND: Lactation increases energy demands four- to five-fold, leading to a two- to three-fold increase in food consumption, requiring a proportional adjustment in the ability of the lactating dam to absorb nutrients and to synthesize critical biomolecules, such as cholesterol, to meet the dietary needs of both the offspring and the dam. The size and hydrophobicity of the bile acid pool increases during lactation, implying an increased absorption and disposition of lipids, sterols, nutrients, and xenobiotics. In order to investigate changes at the transcriptomics level, we utilized an exon array and calculated expression levels to investigate changes in gene expression in the liver, duodenum, jejunum, and ileum of lactating dams when compared against age-matched virgin controls. RESULTS: A two-way mixed models ANOVA was applied to detect differentially expressed genes. Significance calls were defined as a p \u3c 0.05 for the overall physiologic state effect (lactation vs. control), and a within tissue pairwise comparison of p \u3c 0.01. The proportion of false positives, an estimate of the ratio of false positives in the list of differentially expressed genes, was calculated for each tissue. The number of differentially expressed genes was 420 in the liver, 337 in the duodenum, 402 in the jejunum, and 523 in the ileum. The list of differentially expressed genes was in turn analyzed by Ingenuity Pathways Analysis (IPA) to detect biological pathways that were overrepresented. In all tissues, sterol regulatory element binding protein (Srebp)-regulated genes involved in cholesterol synthesis showed increased mRNA expression, with the fewest changes detected in the jejunum. We detected increased Scap mRNA in the liver only, suggesting an explanation for the difference in response to lactation between the liver and small intestine. Expression of Cyp7a1, which catalyzes the rate limiting step in the bile acid biosynthetic pathway, was also significantly increased in liver. In addition, decreased levels of mRNA associated with T-cell signaling were found in the jejunum and ileum. Several members of the Solute Carrier (SLC) and Adenosine Triphosphate Binding Cassette (ABC) superfamilies of membrane transporters were found to be differentially expressed; these genes may play a role in differences in nutrient and xenobiotic absorption and disposition. mRNA expression of SLC39a4_predicted, a zinc transporter, was increased in all tissues, suggesting that it is involved in increased zinc uptake during lactation. Microarray data are available through GEO under GSE19175. CONCLUSIONS: We detected differential expression of mRNA from several pathways in lactating dams, including upregulation of the cholesterol biosynthetic pathway in liver and intestine, consistent with Srebp activation. Differential T-Cell signaling in the two most distal regions of the small intestine (ileum and jejunum) was also noted, as well as differential expression of transporters that likely play a key role in nutrient uptake

IL-8 Enhances Therapeutic Effects of BMSCs on Bone Regeneration via CXCR2-Mediated PI3k/Akt Signaling Pathway

Background/Aims: Tissue engineering bone transplantation with bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) is an effective technology to treat massive bone loss, while molecular regulation of the bone regeneration processes remains poorly understood. Here, we aimed to assess the role of interleukin-8 (IL-8) in the recruitment of host cells by seeded BMSCs and in the bone regeneration. Methods: A transwell assay was performed to examine the role of IL-8/CXCR1/CXCR2/PI3k/Akt on the migration potential of hBMSCs. The in vitro chondrogenic differentiation of hBMSCs was assessed by examination of 2 chondrogenic markers, Sox9 and type 2 collagen (COL2). mBMSCs were used in tissue engineered bone (TEB) with/without IL-8 implanted into bone defect area with CXCR2 or Akt inhibitors. Density and Masson staining of the regenerated bone were assessed. The chondrogenesis was assessed by expression levels of associated proteins, Sox9 and COL2, by RT-qPCR and by immunohistochemistry. Results: IL-8 may trigger in vitro migration of hBMSCs via CXCR2-mediated PI3k/Akt signaling pathway. IL-8 enhances osteogenesis in the TEB-implanted bone defect in mice. IL-8 induces chondrogenic differentiation of hBMSCs via CXCR2-mediated PI3k/Akt signaling pathway in vitro and in vivo. Conclusions: IL-8 enhances therapeutic effects of MSCs on bone regeneration via CXCR2-mediated PI3k/Akt signaling pathway

New Exact Traveling Wave Solutions of the Time Fractional Complex Ginzburg-Landau Equation via the Conformable Fractional Derivative

In this study, the exact traveling wave solutions of the time fractional complex Ginzburg-Landau equation with the Kerr law and dual-power law nonlinearity are studied. The nonlinear fractional partial differential equations are converted to a nonlinear ordinary differential equation via a traveling wave transformation in the sense of conformable fractional derivatives. A range of solutions, which include hyperbolic function solutions, trigonometric function solutions, and rational function solutions, is derived by utilizing the new extended G′/G-expansion method. By selecting appropriate parameters of the solutions, numerical simulations are presented to explain further the propagation of optical pulses in optic fibers

New traveling wave solutions, phase portrait and chaotic pattern for the stochastic modified Korteweg–de Vries equation

This article mainly studies the new traveling wave solutions of the stochastic modified Korteweg–de Vries equation with multiplicative noise. The traveling wave solutions in the form of hyperbolic function, trigonometric function, rational function and Jacobi elliptic function are obtained by transforming the modified Korteweg–de Vries equation into an ordinary differential equation through traveling wave transformation, and combining it with the complete discriminant system of polynomials. This article fully applies visual analysis technology and provides graphical representations of the obtained solutions in multiple dimensions such as phase maps, sensitivity maps, 3D maps and 2D maps, providing an intuitive and convenient channel for people to further understand the physical characteristics of the solutions for the stochastic modified Korteweg–de Vries equation. This article provides a rich graphical analysis of the solutions to the stochastic modified Korteweg–de Vries equation from multiple perspectives, and provides a fast and efficient solution method for the exact solution of the equation. The research method in this paper can also be used to study nonlinear partial differential equation in other fields

Exact solutions of the stochastic fractional long–short wave interaction system with multiplicative noise in generalized elastic medium

The long–short wave interaction system (L-SWIS) is an important model describing the interaction of two waves propagating in a generalized elastic medium. In this study, the bifurcation and the influence of random interaction on the exact solution of the stochastic fractional long–short wave interaction system (SFL-SWIS) with multiplicative Brownian motion are studied, where the derivative refers to the modified Riemann–Liouville definition. After the Hamiltonian system is established by traveling wave transformation and first-order integration, we obtain abundant exact parametric solutions of SFL-SWIS. Also, the three-dimensional graph of some obtained results are drawn by using the symbolic calculation software Maple, which is used to show the influence of fractional derivative and random interaction on the solution. The obtained solitary wave solutions and exact solutions include the elliptic function solution, trigonometric function solution, exponential function solution and singular periodic solution. This study is the first to investigate the bifurcation and exact solution of SFL-SWIS, and the obtained results are theoretically and practically important to the propagation of optical signals, plasma waves and ocean waves

New traveling solutions, phase portrait and chaotic pattern for the generalized (2+1)-dimensional nonlinear conformable fractional stochastic Schrödinger equations forced by multiplicative Brownian motion

The paper mainly studies the traveling wave solutions, phase portrait and chaotic pattern of the generalized fractional stochastic Schrödinger equations forced by multiplicative Brownian motion. By using the polynomial complete discrimination method, the hyperbolic functions, rational functions and Jacobi elliptic function solutions are obtained. Moreover, the physics properties of the obtained solutions are shown through three-dimensional, two-dimensional and contour graphs. In order to help better analyze dynamic behavior, phase diagrams, chaos behavior and sensitivity are plotted by using Maple software

Exact Single Traveling Wave Solutions for Generalized Fractional Gardner Equations

In this paper, the classification of all single traveling wave solutions to generalized fractional Gardner equations is presented by utilizing the complete discrimination system method. Under the fractional traveling wave transformation, generalized fractional Gardner equations can be reduced to an ordinary differential equations. All possible exact traveling wave solutions are given through the complete discrimination system of the fourth-order polynomial. Moreover, graphical representations of different kinds of the exact solutions reveal that the method is of significance for searching the exact solutions to generalized fractional Gardner equations