Genie: A Generator of Natural Language Semantic Parsers for Virtual Assistant Commands

To understand diverse natural language commands, virtual assistants today are trained with numerous labor-intensive, manually annotated sentences. This paper presents a methodology and the Genie toolkit that can handle new compound commands with significantly less manual effort. We advocate formalizing the capability of virtual assistants with a Virtual Assistant Programming Language (VAPL) and using a neural semantic parser to translate natural language into VAPL code. Genie needs only a small realistic set of input sentences for validating the neural model. Developers write templates to synthesize data; Genie uses crowdsourced paraphrases and data augmentation, along with the synthesized data, to train a semantic parser. We also propose design principles that make VAPL languages amenable to natural language translation. We apply these principles to revise ThingTalk, the language used by the Almond virtual assistant. We use Genie to build the first semantic parser that can support compound virtual assistants commands with unquoted free-form parameters. Genie achieves a 62% accuracy on realistic user inputs. We demonstrate Genie's generality by showing a 19% and 31% improvement over the previous state of the art on a music skill, aggregate functions, and access control.Comment: To appear in PLDI 201

Genetic differentiation of European grayling (Thymallus thymallus) populations in Serbia, based on mitochondrial and nuclear DNA analyses

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The structure and diversity of grayling (<it>Thymallus thymallus</it>) populations have been well studied in most of its native habitat; however the southernmost populations of the Balkan Peninsula remain largely unexplored. The purpose of this study was to assess the genetic diversity of Serbian grayling populations, detect the impact of stocking and provide guidelines for conservation and management.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Eighty grayling individuals were collected from four rivers (Ibar, Lim, Drina and Rzav). The mitochondrial DNA control region (CR; 595 bp of the 3'end and 74 bp of flanking tRNA) and the ATP6 gene (630 bp fragment) were sequenced for 20 individuals (five from each locality). In addition, all individuals were genotyped with 12 microsatellite loci. The diversity and structure of the populations as well as the recent and ancient population declines were studied using specialized software.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We detected three new haplotypes in the mtDNA CR and four haplotypes in the ATP6 gene of which three had not been described before. Previously, one CR haplotype and two ATP6 gene haplotypes had been identified as allochthonous, originating from Slovenia. Reconstruction of phylogenetic relations placed the remaining two CR haplotypes from the River Danube drainage of Serbia into a new clade, which is related to the previously described sister Slovenian clade. These two clades form a new Balkan clade. Microsatellite marker analysis showed that all four populations are genetically distinct from each other without any sign of intra-population structure, although stocking of the most diverse population (Drina River) was confirmed by mtDNA analysis. Recent and historical population declines of Serbian grayling do not differ from those of other European populations.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our study shows that (1) the Ibar, Lim and Drina Rivers grayling populations are genetically distinct from populations outside of Serbia and thus should be managed as native populations in spite of some introgression in the Drina River population and (2) the Rzav River population is not appropriate for further stocking activities since it originates from stocked Slovenian grayling. However, the Rzav River population does not represent an immediate danger to other populations because it is physically isolated from these.</p

A Tale of Four “Carp”: Invasion Potential and Ecological Niche Modeling

. We assessed the geographic potential of four Eurasian cyprinid fishes (common carp, tench, grass carp, black carp) as invaders in North America via ecological niche modeling (ENM). These “carp” represent four stages of invasion of the continent (a long-established invader with a wide distribution, a long-established invader with a limited distribution, a spreading invader whose distribution is expanding, and a newly introduced potential invader that is not yet established), and as such illustrate the progressive reduction of distributional disequilibrium over the history of species' invasions.We used ENM to estimate the potential distributional area for each species in North America using models based on native range distribution data. Environmental data layers for native and introduced ranges were imported from state, national, and international climate and environmental databases. Models were evaluated using independent validation data on native and invaded areas. We calculated omission error for the independent validation data for each species: all native range tests were highly successful (all omission values <7%); invaded-range predictions were predictive for common and grass carp (omission values 8.8 and 19.8%, respectively). Model omission was high for introduced tench populations (54.7%), but the model correctly identified some areas where the species has been successful; distributional predictions for black carp show that large portions of eastern North America are at risk.ENMs predicted potential ranges of carp species accurately even in regions where the species have not been present until recently. ENM can forecast species' potential geographic ranges with reasonable precision and within the short screening time required by proposed U.S. invasive species legislation

R\ue9vision du genre Toxabramis G\ufcnther (Pisces, Cyprinidae)

Volume: 35Start Page: 457End Page: 46

Donn\ue9es sur la forme nominale de Gobio uranoscopus (Pisces, Cyprinidae)

Volume: 42Start Page: 165End Page: 16