Cross-Lingual Retrieval Augmented Prompt for Low-Resource Languages

Multilingual Pretrained Language Models (MPLMs) perform strongly in cross-lingual transfer. We propose Prompts Augmented by Retrieval Crosslingually (PARC) to improve zero-shot performance on low-resource languages (LRLs) by augmenting the context with prompts consisting of semantically similar sentences retrieved from a high-resource language (HRL). PARC improves zero-shot performance on three downstream tasks (sentiment classification, topic categorization, natural language inference) with multilingual parallel test sets across 10 LRLs covering 6 language families in unlabeled (+5.1%) and labeled settings (+16.3%). PARC also outperforms finetuning by 3.7%. We find a significant positive correlation between cross-lingual transfer performance on one side, and the similarity between high- and low-resource languages as well as the amount of low-resource pretraining data on the other side. A robustness analysis suggests that PARC has the potential to achieve even stronger performance with more powerful MPLMs

Cross-Lingual Retrieval Augmented Prompt for Low-Resource Languages

Multilingual Pretrained Language Models (MPLMs) have shown their strong multilinguality in recent empirical cross-lingual transfer studies. In this paper, we propose the Prompts Augmented by Retrieval Crosslingually (PARC) pipeline to improve the zero-shot performance on low-resource languages (LRLs) by augmenting the context with semantically similar sentences retrieved from a high-resource language (HRL) as prompts. PARC improves the zero-shot performance on three downstream tasks (binary sentiment classification, topic categorization and natural language inference) with multilingual parallel test sets across 10 LRLs covering 6 language families in both unlabeled settings (+5.1%) and labeled settings (+16.3%). PARC-labeled also outperforms the finetuning baseline by 3.7%. We find a significant positive correlation between cross-lingual transfer performance on one side, and the similarity between the high- and low-resource languages as well as the amount of low-resource pretraining data on the other side. A robustness analysis suggests that PARC has the potential to achieve even stronger performance with more powerful MPLMs.Comment: Accepted to Findings of ACL 202

Poly[[diaqua­bis­(μ3-3-carboxyl­ato-4-hy­droxy­benzene­sulfonato)­tri-μ2-pyrazine-tetra­silver(I)] dihydrate]

The title coordination polymer, {[Ag4(C7H4O6S)2(C4H4N2)3(H2O)2]·2H2O}n, contains two independent AgI ions. One AgI ion is coordinated by one O atom from a 3-carboxyl­ato-4-hy­droxy­benzene­sulfonate (L) ligand, two N atoms from two pyrazine ligands and a water mol­ecule. The other AgI ion is coordinated by two O atoms from two L ligands and one N atom from a pyrazine ligand. One of the pyrazine ligands lies on an inversion center. The L and pyrazine ligands link the AgI ions into polymeric layers parallel to the ac plane. The layers are connected by inter­molecular O—H⋯O hydrogen bonds. An intra­molecular O—H⋯O hydrogen bond is also present in the L ligand

Amyloid-like aggregates of neuronal tau induced by formaldehyde promote apoptosis of neuronal cells

BACKGROUND: The microtubule associated protein tau is the principle component of neurofibrillar tangles, which are a characteristic marker in the pathology of Alzheimer's disease; similar lesions are also observed after chronic alcohol abuse. Formaldehyde is a common environmental contaminant and also a metabolite of methanol. Although many studies have been done on methanol and formaldehyde intoxication, none of these address the contribution of protein misfolding to the pathological mechanism, in particular the effect of formaldehyde on protein conformation and polymerization. RESULTS: We found that unlike the typical globular protein BSA, the natively-unfolded structure of human neuronal tau was induced to misfold and aggregate in the presence of ~0.01% formaldehyde, leading to formation of amyloid-like deposits that appeared as densely staining granules by electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy, and bound the amyloid-specific dyes thioflavin T and Congo Red. The amyloid-like aggregates of tau were found to induce apoptosis in the neurotypic cell line SH-SY5Y and in rat hippocampal cells, as observed by Hoechst 33258 staining, assay of caspase-3 activity, and flow cytometry using Annexin V and Propidium Iodide staining. Further experiments showed that Congo Red specifically attenuated the caspase-3 activity induced by amyloid-like deposits of tau. CONCLUSION: The results suggest that low concentrations of formaldehyde can induce human tau protein to form neurotoxic aggregates, which could play a role in the induction of tauopathies

Poly[[tetra­aqua­tetra­kis­[μ3-5-(pyridine-4-carboxamido)­isophthalato]­cobalt(II)­diholmium(III)] tetra­hydrate]

In the centrosymmetric polymeric title compound, {[CoHo2(C14H8N2O5)4(H2O)4]·4H2O}n, the HoIII ion is coordinated by one water mol­ecule and four 5-(pyridine-4-carboxamido)­isophthalate (L) ligands in a distorted square-anti­prismatic arrangement. The CoII ion, located on an inversion center, is coordinated by two pyridine N atoms, two carboxyl­ate O atoms and two water mol­ecules in a distorted octa­hedral geometry. One L ligand bridges two Ho ions and one Co ion through two carboxyl­ate groups and one pyridine N atom. The other L ligand bridges two Ho ions and one Co ion through two carboxyl­ate groups, while the uncoordinated pyridine N atom accepts a hydrogen bond from an adjacent coordinated water mol­ecule. Extensive O—H⋯O, N—H⋯O and O—H⋯N hydrogen bonding is present in the crystal

AIF Downregulation and Its Interaction with STK3 in Renal Cell Carcinoma

Apoptosis-inducing factor (AIF) plays a crucial role in caspase-independent programmed cell death by triggering chromatin condensation and DNA fragmentation. Therefore, it might be involved in cell homeostasis and tumor development. In this study, we report significant AIF downregulation in the majority of renal cell carcinomas (RCC). In a group of RCC specimens, 84% (43 out of 51) had AIF downregulation by immunohistochemistry stain. Additional 10 kidney tumors, including an oxyphilic adenoma, also had significant AIF downregulation by Northern blot analysis. The mechanisms of the AIF downregulation included both AIF deletion and its promoter methylation. Forced expression of AIF in RCC cell lines induced massive apoptosis. Further analysis revealed that AIF interacted with STK3, a known regulator of apoptosis, and enhanced its phosphorylation at Thr180. These results suggest that AIF downregulation is a common event in kidney tumor development. AIF loss may lead to decreased STK3 activity, defective apoptosis and malignant transformation