Neural Paraphrase Identification of Questions with Noisy Pretraining

We present a solution to the problem of paraphrase identification of questions. We focus on a recent dataset of question pairs annotated with binary paraphrase labels and show that a variant of the decomposable attention model (Parikh et al., 2016) results in accurate performance on this task, while being far simpler than many competing neural architectures. Furthermore, when the model is pretrained on a noisy dataset of automatically collected question paraphrases, it obtains the best reported performance on the dataset

CONQRR: Conversational Query Rewriting for Retrieval with Reinforcement Learning

Compared to standard retrieval tasks, passage retrieval for conversational question answering (CQA) poses new challenges in understanding the current user question, as each question needs to be interpreted within the dialogue context. Moreover, it can be expensive to re-train well-established retrievers such as search engines that are originally developed for non-conversational queries. To facilitate their use, we develop a query rewriting model CONQRR that rewrites a conversational question in the context into a standalone question. It is trained with a novel reward function to directly optimize towards retrieval using reinforcement learning and can be adapted to any off-the-shelf retriever. We show that CONQRR achieves state-of-the-art results on a recent open-domain CQA dataset containing conversations from three different sources, and is effective for two different off-the-shelf retrievers. Our extensive analysis also shows the robustness of CONQRR to out-of-domain dialogues as well as to zero query rewriting supervision

Web Based Applications and Their Testing Approach

ABSTRACT: Internet is perhaps the most popular medium of sharing information today and its popularity is growing day by day. People refer to it for almost all sorts of reasons, and with growing usage the concept of security risks arises. Security risks arise mainly because the internet is a two-way medium. Personal information is shared over the internet through web-based applications which we use for many useful purposes like applying for passports, online ticket booking, online testing sites, social networking sites, etc. To ensure that the web-based applications offer full productivity and good security of the users' information it is important that the development procedure of these applications be redefined keeping things like feasibility, security aspects, and problems that are likely to be faced during future maintenance in mind. We are proposing a novel and scientific technique for designing ideal web-based applications. This technique includes various testing methods like white-box testing, black-box testing, etc. to make sure that the application is working as required, and that the limits or bounds on its constituent variables and functions are not violated. It must be made sure that confidential data such as passwords are properly encrypted using latest technologies like md5, and the special users of the application like Master user/admin user are provided with secured privileges. It must also be ensured that the application is compatible on various modern browser platforms. We have tested the method and found it to be quite up to our expectations. Thus, if the proposed method is followed properly it shall not only increase the security aspect of the applications but also reduce efforts required for the maintenance of the application in future

Is dexmedetomidine better than propofol and fentanyl combination in minor day care procedures? A prospective randomised double-blind study

Background and Aims: The growing popularity and trend of day care (ambulatory) anaesthesia has led to the development of newer and efficient drug regimen. We decided to evaluate the efficacy of two drug regimens namely dexmedetomidine and propofol with midazolam and fentanyl for moderate sedation characteristics in minor surgical procedures in terms of analgesia, intra-operative sedation, haemodynamic stability and side effects related. Methods: Totally, 60 adult American Society of Anaesthesiologists class I-II patients posted for day care surgeries of duration 0.05). Rescue analgesia with fentanyl was needed in 30% patients of Group D compared to 17.63% patients of Group P (P < 0.05). The level of arousal was faster and better in Group D at 5 min after the procedure (P < 0.05). Haemodynamics were stable in Group D as with Group P patients (P < 0.005). Dry mouth reported by 16.67% patients. Conclusion: Dexmedetomidine can be a useful adjuvant rather than the sole sedative-analgesic agent during minor surgeries and be a valuable alternative to propofol in terms of moderate sedation, haemodynamic stability with minimal transient side effects