Synapse: Trajectory-as-Exemplar Prompting with Memory for Computer Control

Building agents using large language models (LLMs) to control computers is an emerging research field, where the agent perceives computer states and performs actions to accomplish complex tasks. Previous computer agents have demonstrated the benefits of in-context learning (ICL); however, their performance is hindered by several issues. First, the limited context length of LLMs and complex computer states restrict the number of exemplars, as a single webpage can consume the entire context. Second, the exemplars in current methods, such as high-level plans and multi-choice questions, cannot represent complete trajectories, leading to suboptimal performance in tasks that require many steps or repeated actions. Third, existing computer agents rely on task-specific exemplars and overlook the similarity among tasks, resulting in poor generalization to novel tasks. To address these challenges, we introduce Synapse, featuring three key components: i) state abstraction, which filters out task-irrelevant information from raw states, allowing more exemplars within the limited context, ii) trajectory-as-exemplar prompting, which prompts the LLM with complete trajectories of the abstracted states and actions for improved multi-step decision-making, and iii) exemplar memory, which stores the embeddings of exemplars and retrieves them via similarity search for generalization to novel tasks. We evaluate Synapse on MiniWoB++, a standard task suite, and Mind2Web, a real-world website benchmark. In MiniWoB++, Synapse achieves a 99.2% average success rate (a 10% relative improvement) across 64 tasks using demonstrations from only 48 tasks. Notably, Synapse is the first ICL method to solve the book-flight task in MiniWoB++. Synapse also exhibits a 53% relative improvement in average step success rate over the previous state-of-the-art prompting scheme in Mind2Web.Comment: 22 pages, 7 figure

Influence of ultrasound-assisted alkali treatment on the structural properties and functionalities of rice protein

peer-reviewedThe poor solubility of rice protein (RP) limits its applications in food industry. In this study, the effects of ultrasound-assisted alkali (UAA) treatment on the solubility, structure and functional properties of RP were investigated. Using UAA treatment, the solubility of RP increased with increasing alkali concentration, reaching a maximum value of 19.79 mg/mL at an alkali concentration of 0.08 M. The solubility was improved by 230-fold compared to un-treated samples. In addition, a reduction in particle size and degradation of the protein subunit were observed. UAA seemed to unfold the protein internal structural conformation and expose buried functional groups, which are linked to good emulsifying properties and foaming properties. A decrease in zeta potential was also observed after UAA treatment, which could be the reason for the decreased stability of the emulsion. UAA treatment modified the protein structure and significantly improved solubility

The synthesis and characterization of a xanthan gum-acrylamide-trimethylolpropane triglycidyl ether hydrogel

peer-reviewedTo improve the thermal stability and adsorption performance, xanthan gum was modified with acrylamide and trimethylolpropane triglycidyl ether (TTE). The modified xanthan gum (XGTTE) was characterized by Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, X-ray diffractogram (XRD), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The characteristic peaks at 3449, 1655, 1611 and 1420 cm−1 in the FT-IR confirm the modification. The XGTTE crystal grew well upon addition of TTE. The XRD and DSC data revealed that the XGTTE enhanced its thermal stability. Analysis of SEM revealed that the grafting introduced major changes on the microstructure making it porous and resulting in the adsorption of crystal violet (CV) with flocculation. The CV adsorption capacity of the hydrogel with different dosages of TTE (XGTTE2, XGTTE3, XGTTE4, XGTTE5 and XGTTE6) were between 28.13 with 35.12 mg/g. In addition, the adsorption capacity, thermal stability, and swelling property of XGTTE4 were the best

Interactions of vegetable proteins with other polymers: Structure-function relationships and applications in the food industry

peer-reviewedBackground In recent years, there has been increasing interest in vegetable proteins, due to their various health beneficial functions and wide applications in the food industry. Vegetable proteins combined with other edible polymers can be used to improve the quality and nutritional value of food products. In these complex food systems, interactions between different components are inevitable, and these interactions have a significant influence on the structure and functions of food products. Scope and approach This study reviews the current status of knowledge of interactions between vegetable proteins and other polymers (proteins or polysaccharides) in food systems and the structure of complexes formed by these interactions. The study also provides a comprehensive review of the applications of the complexes. Key findings and conclusions Vegetable proteins display different types of interactions with other polymers (e.g., polysaccharides, or animal proteins) under different conditions, thus forming a variety of complexes with different structures (e.g., double networks, mosaic textures and cross-linked structures), which showed different impact on properties of the final food products and their applications (e.g., substitution for fat, or encapsulation for bioactive ingredients) in the food industry. However, previous studies mainly focused on leguminous proteins and vegetable-protein-based mixtures of two polymers, further studies on other vegetable proteins and more complex food systems containing vegetable proteins and other polymers are required

Effect of ultrasound on physicochemical properties of emulsion stabilized by fish myofibrillar protein and xanthan gum

peer-reviewedTo investigate the effects ultrasound (20 kHz, 150–600 W) on physicochemical properties of emulsion stabilized by myofibrillar protein (MP) and xanthan gum (XG), the emulsions were characterized by Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, ζ-potential, particle size, rheology, surface tension, and confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM). FT-IR spectra confirmed the complexation of MP and XG, and ultrasound did not change the functional groups in the complexes. The emulsion treated at 300 W showed the best stability, with the lowest particle size, the lowest surface tension (26.7 mNm−1) and the largest ζ-potential absolute value (25.4 mV), that were confirmed in the CLSM photos. Ultrasound reduced the apparent viscosity of the MP-XG emulsions, and the changes of particle size were manifested in flow properties. Generally, ultrasound was successfully applied to improve the physical stability of MP-XG emulsion, which could be used as a novel delivery system for functional material

Effect of plant protein mixtures on the microstructure and rheological properties of myofibrillar protein gel derived from red sea bream (Pagrosomus major)

peer-reviewedIn this study, the influence of plant protein mixtures (soy protein isolate (SPI) + peanut protein isolate (PPI), SPI + rice protein isolate (RPI), and PPI + RPI) on the microstructure, rheological properties and molecular driving forces of myofibrillar protein (MP) gels was studied. SPI could form a gel with smoother and denser network, while the structures of PPI and RPI gels were rougher, which led to the network structures of SPI + PPI and SPI + RPI gels but the disrupted structure of PPI + RPI gel. However, the SPI + RPI and PPI + RPI gels with different microstructures exhibited larger gel strength compared to the RPI gel. After mixing MP with the mixture of SPI + PPI and SPI + RPI, the mixed gels became more compact, evener and smoother, while the mixture of PPI + RPI induced more pores to the MP gel. However, G′ values of these three kinds of mixed gels were similar and much larger than that of MP gel. In addition, the molecular driving forces involved in the mixed plant protein gels and mixed MP-plant protein gels were mainly hydrophobic interactions and disulfide bonds

ChatRadio-Valuer: A Chat Large Language Model for Generalizable Radiology Report Generation Based on Multi-institution and Multi-system Data

Radiology report generation, as a key step in medical image analysis, is critical to the quantitative analysis of clinically informed decision-making levels. However, complex and diverse radiology reports with cross-source heterogeneity pose a huge generalizability challenge to the current methods under massive data volume, mainly because the style and normativity of radiology reports are obviously distinctive among institutions, body regions inspected and radiologists. Recently, the advent of large language models (LLM) offers great potential for recognizing signs of health conditions. To resolve the above problem, we collaborate with the Second Xiangya Hospital in China and propose ChatRadio-Valuer based on the LLM, a tailored model for automatic radiology report generation that learns generalizable representations and provides a basis pattern for model adaptation in sophisticated analysts' cases. Specifically, ChatRadio-Valuer is trained based on the radiology reports from a single institution by means of supervised fine-tuning, and then adapted to disease diagnosis tasks for human multi-system evaluation (i.e., chest, abdomen, muscle-skeleton, head, and maxillofacial $\&$ neck) from six different institutions in clinical-level events. The clinical dataset utilized in this study encompasses a remarkable total of \textbf{332,673} observations. From the comprehensive results on engineering indicators, clinical efficacy and deployment cost metrics, it can be shown that ChatRadio-Valuer consistently outperforms state-of-the-art models, especially ChatGPT (GPT-3.5-Turbo) and GPT-4 et al., in terms of the diseases diagnosis from radiology reports. ChatRadio-Valuer provides an effective avenue to boost model generalization performance and alleviate the annotation workload of experts to enable the promotion of clinical AI applications in radiology reports

Influence of ultrasound-assisted alkali treatment on the structural properties and functionalities of rice protein

The poor solubility of rice protein (RP) limits its applications in food industry. In this study, the effects of ultrasound-assisted alkali (UAA) treatment on the solubility, structure and functional properties of RP were investigated. Using UAA treatment, the solubility of RP increased with increasing alkali concentration, reaching a maximum value of 19.79 mg/mL at an alkali concentration of 0.08 M. The solubility was improved by 230-fold compared to un-treated samples. In addition, a reduction in particle size and degradation of the protein subunit were observed. UAA seemed to unfold the protein internal structural conformation and expose buried functional groups, which are linked to good emulsifying properties and foaming properties. A decrease in zeta potential was also observed after UAA treatment, which could be the reason for the decreased stability of the emulsion. UAA treatment modified the protein structure and significantly improved solubility

Curdlan enhances the structure of myosin gel model

The aim of this work was to investigate the gelation mechanism of curdlan on surimi using a myosin gel model. Experimental results showed that with increased levels of curdlan, the water‐holding capacity, gel strength, and storage modulus of a myosin gel first increased and then decreased. The optimum level of curdlan was found to be 1%. Moreover, myosin–curdlan mixed gel showed decreased water liquidity based on the results of low‐field nuclear magnetic resonance. The enhanced physicochemical properties of myosin–curdlan mixed gel were attributed to the strengthened hydrogen bonding and to the uniform and compact network structure shown by Fourier‐transform infrared spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy. The results of this study suggest that curdlan has the potential to be used in surimi‐based seafood products to enhance the gel structure

Curdlan enhances the structure of myosin gel model

The aim of this work was to investigate the gelation mechanism of curdlan on surimi using a myosin gel model. Experimental results showed that with increased levels of curdlan, the water‐holding capacity, gel strength, and storage modulus of a myosin gel first increased and then decreased. The optimum level of curdlan was found to be 1%. Moreover, myosin–curdlan mixed gel showed decreased water liquidity based on the results of low‐field nuclear magnetic resonance. The enhanced physicochemical properties of myosin–curdlan mixed gel were attributed to the strengthened hydrogen bonding and to the uniform and compact network structure shown by Fourier‐transform infrared spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy. The results of this study suggest that curdlan has the potential to be used in surimi‐based seafood products to enhance the gel structure