Narrativizing Knowledge Graphs

Any natural language expression of a set of facts - that can be represented as a knowledge graph - will more or less overtly assume a specific perspective on these facts. In this paper we see the conversion of a given knowledge graph into natural language as the construction of a narrative about the assertions made by the knowledge graph. We, therefore, propose a specific pipeline that can be applied to produce linguistic narratives from knowledge graphs using an ontological layer and corresponding rules that turn a knowledge graph into a semantic specification for natural language generation. Critically, narratives are seen as necessarily committing to specific perspectives taken on the facts presented. We show how this most commonly neglected facet of producing summaries of facts can be brought under control

Rare glutamic acid methyl ester peptaibols from Sepedonium ampullosporum Damon KSH 534 exhibit promising antifungal and anticancer activity

Fungal species of genus Sepedonium are rich sources of diverse secondary metabolites (e.g., alkaloids, peptaibols), which exhibit variable biological activities. Herein, two new peptaibols, named ampullosporin F (1) and ampullosporin G (2), together with five known compounds, ampullosporin A (3), peptaibolin (4), chrysosporide (5), c(Trp-Ser) (6) and c(Trp-Ala) (7), have been isolated from the culture of Sepedonium ampullosporum Damon strain KSH534. The structures of 1 and 2 were elucidated based on ESI-HRMS(n) experiments and intense 1D and 2D NMR analyses. The sequence of ampullosporin F (1) was determined to be Ac-Trp(1)-Ala(2)-Aib(3)-Aib(4)-Leu(5)-Aib(6)-Gln(7)-Aib(8)-Aib(9)-Aib(10)-GluOMe(11)-Leu(12)-Aib(13)-Gln(14)-Leuol(15), while ampullosporin G (2) differs from 1 by exchanging the position of Gln(7) with GluOMe(11). Furthermore, the total synthesis of 1 and 2 was carried out on solid-phase to confirm the absolute configuration of all chiral amino acids as L. In addition, ampullosporin F (1) and G (2) showed significant antifungal activity against B. cinerea and P. infestans, but were inactive against S. tritici. Cell viability assays using human prostate (PC-3) and colorectal (HT-29) cancer cells confirmed potent anticancer activities of 1 and 2. Furthermore, a molecular docking study was performed in silico as an attempt to explain the structure-activity correlation of the characteristic ampullosporins (1–3)

An OPR3-independent pathway uses 4,5-didehydrojasmonate for jasmonate synthesis.

Biosynthesis of the phytohormone jasmonoyl-isoleucine (JA-Ile) requires reduction of the JA precursor 12-oxo-phytodienoic acid (OPDA) by OPDA reductase 3 (OPR3). Previous analyses of the opr3-1 Arabidopsis mutant suggested an OPDA signaling role independent of JA-Ile and its receptor COI1; however, this hypothesis has been challenged because opr3-1 is a conditional allele not completely impaired in JA-Ile biosynthesis. To clarify the role of OPR3 and OPDA in JA-independent defenses, we isolated and characterized a loss-of-function opr3-3 allele. Strikingly, opr3-3 plants remained resistant to necrotrophic pathogens and insect feeding, and activated COI1-dependent JA-mediated gene expression. Analysis of OPDA derivatives identified 4,5-didehydro-JA in wounded wild-type and opr3-3 plants. OPR2 was found to reduce 4,5-didehydro-JA to JA, explaining the accumulation of JA-Ile and activation of JA-Ile-responses in opr3-3 mutants. Our results demonstrate that in the absence of OPR3, OPDA enters the β-oxidation pathway to produce 4,5-ddh-JA as a direct precursor of JA and JA-Ile, thus identifying an OPR3-independent pathway for JA biosynthesis

Do (and say) as I say: Linguistic adaptation in human-computer dialogs

© Theodora Koulouri, Stanislao Lauria, and Robert D. Macredie. This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.There is strong research evidence showing that people naturally align to each other’s vocabulary, sentence structure, and acoustic features in dialog, yet little is known about how the alignment mechanism operates in the interaction between users and computer systems let alone how it may be exploited to improve the efficiency of the interaction. This article provides an account of lexical alignment in human–computer dialogs, based on empirical data collected in a simulated human–computer interaction scenario. The results indicate that alignment is present, resulting in the gradual reduction and stabilization of the vocabulary-in-use, and that it is also reciprocal. Further, the results suggest that when system and user errors occur, the development of alignment is temporarily disrupted and users tend to introduce novel words to the dialog. The results also indicate that alignment in human–computer interaction may have a strong strategic component and is used as a resource to compensate for less optimal (visually impoverished) interaction conditions. Moreover, lower alignment is associated with less successful interaction, as measured by user perceptions. The article distills the results of the study into design recommendations for human–computer dialog systems and uses them to outline a model of dialog management that supports and exploits alignment through mechanisms for in-use adaptation of the system’s grammar and lexicon

Modeling domain knowledge : know-how and know-what

The approach to knowledge representation taken in the multi-modal, multi-domain, and multi-scenario dialogue system - SmartKom - is presented. We focus on the ontological and representational issues and choices helping to construct an ontology, which is shared by multiple components of the system, can be re-used in different projects and applied to various tasks. Finally, two applications of the ontology - highlighting the usefulness of our approach - are describe