Multi-level Memory for Task Oriented Dialogs

Recent end-to-end task oriented dialog systems use memory architectures to incorporate external knowledge in their dialogs. Current work makes simplifying assumptions about the structure of the knowledge base, such as the use of triples to represent knowledge, and combines dialog utterances (context) as well as knowledge base (KB) results as part of the same memory. This causes an explosion in the memory size, and makes the reasoning over memory harder. In addition, such a memory design forces hierarchical properties of the data to be fit into a triple structure of memory. This requires the memory reader to infer relationships across otherwise connected attributes. In this paper we relax the strong assumptions made by existing architectures and separate memories used for modeling dialog context and KB results. Instead of using triples to store KB results, we introduce a novel multi-level memory architecture consisting of cells for each query and their corresponding results. The multi-level memory first addresses queries, followed by results and finally each key-value pair within a result. We conduct detailed experiments on three publicly available task oriented dialog data sets and we find that our method conclusively outperforms current state-of-the-art models. We report a 15-25% increase in both entity F1 and BLEU scores.Comment: Accepted as full paper at NAACL 201

Mask & Focus: Conversation Modelling by Learning Concepts

Sequence to sequence models attempt to capture the correlation between all the words in the input and output sequences. While this is quite useful for machine translation where the correlation among the words is indeed quite strong, it becomes problematic for conversation modelling where the correlation is often at a much abstract level. In contrast, humans tend to focus on the essential concepts discussed in the conversation context and generate responses accordingly. In this paper, we attempt to mimic this response generating mechanism by learning the essential concepts in the context and response in an unsupervised manner. The proposed model, referred to as Mask \& Focus maps the input context to a sequence of concepts which are then used to generate the response concepts. Together, the context and the response concepts generate the final response. In order to learn context concepts from the training data automatically, we \emph{mask} words in the input and observe the effect of masking on response generation. We train our model to learn those response concepts that have high mutual information with respect to the context concepts, thereby guiding the model to \emph{focus} on the context concepts. Mask \& Focus achieves significant improvement over the existing baselines in several established metrics for dialogues.Comment: AAAI 202

MANAGEMENT OF INDIGENOUS RESOURCES FOR PROMOTION OF INDIGENOUS TOURISM: A STUDY OF SELECTED TRIBAL DISTRICTS OF MADHYA PRADESH

This research article aims to explore indigenous tourism and people, which is a hidden tourist treasure that can be showcased to the outer world for future research gaps. This study is an attempt to reflect the problems, concepts, scope, Government tourism policies, objectives, hypothesis research design, and limitations in the first chapter, followed by an extensive review of the literature to understand the impacts of indigenous tourism on indigenous community, perspectives of the indigenous community of promotion of indigenous tourism, management of indigenous resources, and tourist demands. Data was collected from the tourist respondents who are the direct beneficiaries of indigenous tourism at Balaghat, Mandla, and Dindori districts. In this backdrop, the study aims to portray the trend of results for making Indigenous tourism a viable business option by branding and positioning the study area in the international tourist map. Two questionnaires, one for tourists and another for the indigenous community, were made. The analysis of tourist data is in three parts. The first part is related to the demographic profile of tourists. The second part includes travel-related information, and the third part includes tourist activity. The analysis of community data is in three parts. The first part is related to the demographic profile of the community. The second part includes the impact of indigenous tourism on the community, and the third part includes perspectives of indigenous communities on indigenous tourism promotion. The findings reflect the socio-demographic profile of the members of the community. The tourist questionnaire yielded valuable insights with respect to travel information, preferences and behaviour, as well as activities undertaken by the tourists. The underlying factors influencing the impact of tourism on the community were found to be 1) Creation of Human Resources, 2) Social Incapacity, 3) Conservation Focus, 4) Community Awareness and Participation, 5) Promotion of Local Products, and 6) Infrastructure Improvement. Suggestions have been put forward in connection to developing a better understanding of the target customer, and the tourist market in general; recreation and accommodation options; further research, promotion programs, branding; and greater focus in the making of tourism policy

Prognostic and predictive markers of systemic sclerosis-interstitial lung disease in a clinical trial and long-term observational cohort

OBJECTIVES: Explore prognostic and predictive markers of systemic sclerosis-associated interstitial lung disease (SSc-ILD) outcomes in a phase 3 trial (focuSSced) and prognostic markers in a real-world cohort (SMART). METHODS: The focuSSced SSc-ILD subgroup included 68 of 106 placebo-treated and 68 of 104 tocilizumab-treated patients. The SMART cohort included 505 patients with SSc-ILD. Linear mixed-effect models were used to identify factors associated with change in forced vital capacity (FVC). Kaplan-Meier estimation and Cox regression were used for time-to-event analyses. RESULTS: In placebo-treated focuSSced patients, sex was a significant prognostic factor for FVC decline; males had increased risk for absolute decline ≥10% in percent-predicted FVC (ppFVC) and 0.22% faster weekly FVC decline than females (P = 0.0001). FVC was 9.8% lower in patients with C-reactive protein >6 mg/ml versus those with C-reactive protein ≤6 mg/ml (P = 0.0059). Tocilizumab reduced the risk for ≥10% decline in ppFVC in patients who were male, had earlier disease (<2 years duration), had interleukin-6 levels <10 pg/ml, or had anti-topoisomerase antibodies (ATA). In the SMART cohort, prognostic factors for ppFVC <70% were male sex, ATA, and low baseline FVC. Males had 3.3% lower FVC 1 year after disease onset (P < 0.001) and 0.6% faster yearly decline (P = 0.03) than females. CONCLUSION: Prognostic markers in SSc-ILD were similar between focuSSced and SMART. Male sex and inflammatory markers were associated with lower FVC but interleukin-6 ≥ 10 pg/ml was not predictive of response to tocilizumab. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT02453256

Current and Future Outlook on Disease Modification and Defining Low Disease Activity in Systemic Sclerosis

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/155996/1/art41246_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/155996/2/art41246.pd

The global burden of adolescent and young adult cancer in 2019 : a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019

Background In estimating the global burden of cancer, adolescents and young adults with cancer are often overlooked, despite being a distinct subgroup with unique epidemiology, clinical care needs, and societal impact. Comprehensive estimates of the global cancer burden in adolescents and young adults (aged 15-39 years) are lacking. To address this gap, we analysed results from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2019, with a focus on the outcome of disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs), to inform global cancer control measures in adolescents and young adults. Methods Using the GBD 2019 methodology, international mortality data were collected from vital registration systems, verbal autopsies, and population-based cancer registry inputs modelled with mortality-to-incidence ratios (MIRs). Incidence was computed with mortality estimates and corresponding MIRs. Prevalence estimates were calculated using modelled survival and multiplied by disability weights to obtain years lived with disability (YLDs). Years of life lost (YLLs) were calculated as age-specific cancer deaths multiplied by the standard life expectancy at the age of death. The main outcome was DALYs (the sum of YLLs and YLDs). Estimates were presented globally and by Socio-demographic Index (SDI) quintiles (countries ranked and divided into five equal SDI groups), and all estimates were presented with corresponding 95% uncertainty intervals (UIs). For this analysis, we used the age range of 15-39 years to define adolescents and young adults. Findings There were 1.19 million (95% UI 1.11-1.28) incident cancer cases and 396 000 (370 000-425 000) deaths due to cancer among people aged 15-39 years worldwide in 2019. The highest age-standardised incidence rates occurred in high SDI (59.6 [54.5-65.7] per 100 000 person-years) and high-middle SDI countries (53.2 [48.8-57.9] per 100 000 person-years), while the highest age-standardised mortality rates were in low-middle SDI (14.2 [12.9-15.6] per 100 000 person-years) and middle SDI (13.6 [12.6-14.8] per 100 000 person-years) countries. In 2019, adolescent and young adult cancers contributed 23.5 million (21.9-25.2) DALYs to the global burden of disease, of which 2.7% (1.9-3.6) came from YLDs and 97.3% (96.4-98.1) from YLLs. Cancer was the fourth leading cause of death and tenth leading cause of DALYs in adolescents and young adults globally. Interpretation Adolescent and young adult cancers contributed substantially to the overall adolescent and young adult disease burden globally in 2019. These results provide new insights into the distribution and magnitude of the adolescent and young adult cancer burden around the world. With notable differences observed across SDI settings, these estimates can inform global and country-level cancer control efforts. Copyright (C) 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.Peer reviewe