DCQA: Document-Level Chart Question Answering towards Complex Reasoning and Common-Sense Understanding

Visually-situated languages such as charts and plots are omnipresent in real-world documents. These graphical depictions are human-readable and are often analyzed in visually-rich documents to address a variety of questions that necessitate complex reasoning and common-sense responses. Despite the growing number of datasets that aim to answer questions over charts, most only address this task in isolation, without considering the broader context of document-level question answering. Moreover, such datasets lack adequate common-sense reasoning information in their questions. In this work, we introduce a novel task named document-level chart question answering (DCQA). The goal of this task is to conduct document-level question answering, extracting charts or plots in the document via document layout analysis (DLA) first and subsequently performing chart question answering (CQA). The newly developed benchmark dataset comprises 50,010 synthetic documents integrating charts in a wide range of styles (6 styles in contrast to 3 for PlotQA and ChartQA) and includes 699,051 questions that demand a high degree of reasoning ability and common-sense understanding. Besides, we present the development of a potent question-answer generation engine that employs table data, a rich color set, and basic question templates to produce a vast array of reasoning question-answer pairs automatically. Based on DCQA, we devise an OCR-free transformer for document-level chart-oriented understanding, capable of DLA and answering complex reasoning and common-sense questions over charts in an OCR-free manner. Our DCQA dataset is expected to foster research on understanding visualizations in documents, especially for scenarios that require complex reasoning for charts in the visually-rich document. We implement and evaluate a set of baselines, and our proposed method achieves comparable results

Synthesis of Cyclopentadienols by Rhodium-Catalyzed C–H Activation of 8‑Formylquinolines and [2+2+1] Carbocyclization with Alkynes

An efficient Rh­(III)-catalyzed redox-neutral [2+2+1] coupling between 8-formylquinolines and alkynes has been realized for the synthesis of cyclopentadienols with broad substrate scope and functional group tolerance. The reaction occurs via C (acyl)–H activation with double insertion of the alkyne in high atom-economy. Instead of simply undergoing a [2+2+1] cyclization, a subsequent formal intermolecular 1,5-shift of the hydroxyl group is involved, which affords a thermodynamically more stable, conjugated cyclopentadienol

Ruthenium(II)-Catalyzed C-H Activation of Imidamides and Divergent Couplings with Diazo Compounds: Substrate-Controlled Synthesis of Indoles and 3H-Indoles

Indoles are an important structural motif that is commonly found in biologically active molecules. In this work, conditions for divergent couplings between imidamides and acceptor-acceptor diazo compounds were developed that afforded NH indoles and 3H-indoles under ruthenium catalysis. The coupling of alpha-diazoketoesters afforded NHindoles by cleavage of the C(N2)-C(acyl) bond whereas alpha-diazomalonates gave 3H-indoles by C-N bond cleavage. This reaction constitutes the first intermolecular coupling of diazo substrates with arenes by ruthenium-catalyzed C-H activation

Qingre Lishi Tuihuang therapy for acute icteric hepatitis B: A systematic review

Objective: To assess the efficacy of Qingre Lishi Tuihuang therapy (QLTT) for acute icteric hepatitis B infection. Methods: Eight electronic databases were searched from inception to December 2016 with no language restrictions for reports of randomized controlled trials evaluating the effect of QLTT treating acute icteric hepatitis B. Two researchers independently extracted detailed data and assessed methodological quality. Review Manager 5.3.0 software was used to analyze the data. Results: A total of 13 randomized controlled trials involving 2238 participants were included in this review. The methodological quality was generally poor. The results indicated that supplemented Yinchenhao decoction combined with non-specific treatments was more effective in improving the cure rate (risk ratio = 1.80; 95% CI 1.21–2.68) and reducing the serum levels of total bilirubin (mean difference = −29.74; 95% CI −31.91 to −27.57) and aspartate aminotransferase. Other self-made prescriptions conforming to QLTT plus non-specific treatments had beneficial effect for acute icteric hepatitis B in curing this disease (risk ratio = 1.48; 95% CI 1.27–1.73), as well as for negative seroconversion of HBeAg (risk ratio = 1.39; 95% CI 1.11–1.74). Supplemented Yinchenhao decoction plus non-specific treatments was more effective than other self-made prescriptions conforming to QLTT in reducing serum total bilirubin level. Conclusion: Qingre Lishi Tuihuang therapy appears to improve effect based on non-specific treatments for the treatment of acute icteric hepatitis B. However, it is premature to draw confirmative conclusions, owing to the poor methodological quality and high clinical heterogeneity of the included trials. Further well-designed clinical randomized controlled trials with large sample sizes should be undertaken