Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Finetuning a multitask BERT for downstream tasks

Multitask models are of interest and importance in NLP because of their ability to handle a variety of different tasks. In particular, Transformer-based models such as BERT are able to generate useful sentence-level representations, leading to strong performance on many downstream tasks. There are many proposed methods for using BERT and its embeddings for downstream tasks. However, there has been little direct comparison between these methods, holding constant BERT’s model architecture. To address this gap, we perform experiments to find effective methods for building and finetuning a multitask BERT that simultaneously performs well on multiple tasks. We find that one-size-fits-all approach is not optimal—different tasks have different methods which work best. Among the methods we test, we find that cosine similarity works best for semantic textual similarity, while sentence concatenation works best for paraphrase detection. Also, we find that gradient surgery and model ensembling do not deliver significant performance gains, suggesting that training a multitask BERT may be a “natural” multitask learning problem, with few conflicting gradients between tasks.
Growth and Yield of Watermelon (Citrullus lanatus) in Plastic House in Response to White LED Supplementary Lighting

Watermelon plants cultivar ‘Kinaree 457’ were grown in plastic house under natural daylight only (control) or with nightly LED supplementary lighting for 6 h (6:00 pm-12:00 pm) or 12 h (6:00 pm-6:00 am) starting from transplanting up to fruit harvest. Plant height, leaf chlorophyll content and fruit yield significantly increased in response to 6 h supplementary LED lighting. Fruit mass, size (length x width) and flesh thickness at 6 h LED treatment were about 2.3 kg, 19.3 ×15.7 cm, and 15.7 cm, respectively, while the fruit of control had 1.7 kg, 16.0 × 14.3 cm, and 13.8 cm, respectively. No significant treatment effect was obtained on peel thickness, flesh color L* and b* values, juice pH and total soluble solids. However, 6 h LED treatment resulted in lower reddening flesh (lower a* values), firmness and higher titratable acidity relative to the control, suggesting the need for improvement in cultural management. Furthermore, multivariate statistics of principal component analysis (PCA) performed on physico-chemical quality revealed the variations among watermelons from lighting and control treatments regardless of lighting hour.
Screening of Red Rice (Oryza sativa L.) Landraces for Drought Tolerance at Early Stages Using PEG 6000

Despite being one of the most important staple food consumed by more than half of the world population, the development of red rice still lacks behind the regular white rice. In Madura, most farmers still use their local landraces with red pericarp. Since most of the growing season is dependent on rainfall, those landraces are expected to provide some useful genes related to drought tolerance. This research aimed to select drought-tolerant accessions candidates of red rice derived from pure lines selection at early stages using PEG 6000. A randomized complete block design was used with two factors and three replications, the first factor was red rice genotype and the second factor was two levels of PEG 6000 concentration (0% and 25%). The results showed that there were different responses in all genotypes used in terms of their responses to PEG 6000 screening. Seedling length, seminal root length, shoot length, seminal root dry weight, and shoot dry weight were reduced by the application of PEG 6000 compared to non-PEG 6000 media. Two genotypes had a better response to PEG 6000 treatment compared to check tolerant (Salumpikit), and these are expected to become a valuable resources for further breeding activities.
Frequency and Predictors of Dysplasia in Pseudopolyp-like Colorectal Lesions in Patients with Long-Standing Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Simple Summary Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients with long-standing and extensive colitis have an enhanced risk of developing colorectal cancer and, therefore, they must undergo surveillance colonoscopies at regular intervals. The presence of polyps in an area inside colitis, commonly referred to as “pseudopolyps”, seems to increase the risk of CRC in IBD, but it is unclear whether there are some subsets of pseudopolyp-like lesions that might eventually undergo neoplastic transformation. In the present study, we evaluated the frequency and predictors of dysplasia in IBD-associated pseudopolyp-like colorectal lesions. Our study shows that more than one-fifth of pseudopolyp-like lesions are dysplastic, and the majority of such neoplastic lesions are greater than 5 mm and located in the right colon. Therefore, lesions with such morphologic features must be removed even if they are present in an area inside colitis. Abstract Current endoscopic surveillance programs do not consider inflammatory bowel disease (IBD)-associated post-inflammatory polyps (pseudopolyps) per se clinically relevant, even though their presence seems to increase the risk of colorectal cancer (CRC). However, it remains unclear whether the link between pseudopolyps and CRC is indirect or whether some subsets of pseudopolyp-like lesions might eventually undergo neoplastic transformation. This study aimed to assess the frequency and predictors of dysplasia in pseudopolyp-like lesions in a population with long-standing colonic IBD. This was a retrospective, single-center study including patients with a colonic IBD (median disease duration of 192 months) and at least a pseudopolyp-like lesion biopsied or resected in the period from April 2021 to November 2022. One hundred and five pseudopolyps were identified in 105 patients (80 with ulcerative colitis and 25 with Crohn’s disease). Twenty-three out of 105 pseudopolyp samples (22%) had dysplastic foci, and half of the dysplastic lesions were hyperplastic. Multivariate analysis showed that the age of the patients (odds ratio (OR) 1.1; p = 0.0012), size (OR 1.39; p = 0.0005), and right colonic location (OR 5.32; p = 0.04) were independent predictors of dysplasia, while previous exposure to immunosuppressors/biologics and left colonic location of the lesions were inversely correlated to dysplasia (OR 0.11; p = 0.005, and OR 0.09; p = 0.0008, respectively). No differences were seen between ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease patients. Lesions with a size greater than 5 mm had a sensitivity of 87% and a specificity of 63% to be dysplastic. These data show that one-fourth of pseudopolyp-like lesions evident during surveillance colonoscopy in patients with longstanding IBD bear dysplastic foci and suggest treating such lesions properly.
Contribution of Classroom Climate to the Teaching of Agriculture at Senior Secondary Schools in Eswatini

The impact of classroom climate on students and staff can be either beneficial or a barrier to the teaching and learning process. Unfortunately, there is no study that has been conducted on the contribution of classroom climate to the teaching of high school agriculture students in Eswatini. Therefore, the study sought to find out the contribution of classroom climate to the teaching of agriculture in senior secondary schools in Eswatini. An exploratory research design was used in the study. A total of sixteen schools were randomly selected; and one agriculture class was picked for an observation for the contribution of classroom climate to the teaching of agriculture. After the observation, an interview was conducted with the classroom teacher to complement and explain some of the observation. The observation schedule and interview protocol were peer reviewed to address issues of trustworthiness. Data were collected in February 2019. Findings revealed that the four variables: presage, context, process and products were contributing to the classroom climate; thus enhancing the teaching of agriculture. Therefore, the study recommended that agriculture must be taught by teachers who have received training on the subject matter and have the technical skill in solving problems.
Beyond conventional capacity design: towards a new design philosophy

The paper illuminates a new seismic design philosophy, which takes advantage of soil “failure” to protect the superstructure. A reversal of conventional “capacity design” is introduced, through intentional under-designing of the foundation. A simple but realistic bridge is used as an illustrative example of the effectiveness of the new philosophy. Two alternatives are compared : one in compliance with conventional capacity design, with over-designed foundation so that the plastic “hinge” develops in the superstructure ; and one with under-designed foundation, so that the plastic “hinge” may occur in the soil. The seismic performance of the two alternatives is investigated through numerical (finite element) and experimental (shaking table) simulation. It is shown that the performance of both alternatives is totally acceptable for moderate seismic motions. For large intensity seismic motions, the performance of the new scheme is shown to be advantageous, not only avoiding collapse but hardly suffering any inelastic structural deformation. Naturally, there is always a price to pay, which is none other than increased foundation settlement and residual rotation.
L¹-FRAMEWORK FOR CONTINUOUS DEPENDENCE AND ERROR ESTIMATES FOR QUASILINEAR ANISOTROPIC DEGENERATE PARABOLIC EQUATIONSL¹-FRAMEWORK FOR CONTINUOUS DEPENDENCE AND ERROR ESTIMATES FOR QUASILINEAR ANISOTROPIC DEGENERATE PARABOLIC EQUATIONS

We develop a general L1–framework for deriving continuous dependence and error estimates for quasilinear anisotropic degenerate parabolic equations with the aid of the Chen-Perthame kinetic approach. We apply our L1–framework to establish an explicit estimate for continuous dependence on the nonlinearities and an optimal error estimate for the vanishing anisotropic viscosity method, without imposition of bounded variation of the approximate solutions. Finally, as an example of a direct application of this framework to numerical methods, we focus on a linear convection-diffusion model equation and derive an L1 error estimate for an upwind-central finite difference scheme.
Children as social actors negotiating their privacy in the digital commercial context

This study advances research on children’s negotiation of online commercial privacy by identifying an act of digital agency by children that may serve their current needs but can also impact children negatively. Secondly, it identifies certain factors children consider while evaluating the trustworthiness of apps and websites before disclosing information online. Eight focus group discussions with children (13–16 years) in Finland’s capital region are analysed using thematic analysis. Our findings highlight that while children’s digital literacy education is needed, ensuring that education translates to children’s online practices is also essential. We also recommend increasing corporations’ accountability in ensuring children’s privacy.
The relationship between cervical spine range of motion and postural sway in mechanical neck pain: A cross-sectional study

Background: Impairments in postural sway have been identified in people with mechanical neck pain. The influence of cervical spine range of motion (ROM) on postural sway is unclear in mechanical neck pain (MNP). Objective: This study investigated the relationship between cervical spine range of motion (ROM) and postural sway in MNP. Methods: The cervical ROM was measured using the Cervical Range of Motion (CROM) device. Standing postural sway characterised by mean centre of pressure (COP) measurements in the anterior posterior (AP) and medio-lateral direction with eyes closed and feet together condition was recorded on a posturography platform. Pearson product moment correlation coefficient was used to identify the relationship between cervical ROM and postural sway. Results: Seventy-two MNP individuals (Mean age: 29.9±11.7) of either sex (Male: Female=23:49) were recruited. Overall, no statistically significant correlations were identified between cervical spine ROM in sagittal and frontal plane and postural sway (r values ranging from 0.00 to −0.38; p-values >0.05). However, a weak negative correlation was present between the cervical rotation and AP (r-value=−0.23; p-value=0.04) and mediolateral (r-value=−0.38; p-value=0.01) COP excursion. Conclusion: The cervical spine ROM was found to have a weak relationship with postural sway in individuals with MNP. This suggests the investigation of other mechanisms especially muscle tension which might be responsible for altered postural sway in MNP.
Curriculum Multi-Negative Augmentation for Debiased Video Grounding

Video Grounding (VG) aims to locate the desired segment from a video given a sentence query. Recent studies have found that current VG models are prone to over-rely the groundtruth moment annotation distribution biases in the training set. To discourage the standard VG model's behavior of exploiting such temporal annotation biases and improve the model generalization ability, we propose multiple negative augmentations in a hierarchical way, including cross-video augmentations from clip-/video-level, and self-shuffled augmentations with masks. These augmentations can effectively diversify the data distribution so that the model can make more reasonable predictions instead of merely fitting the temporal biases. However, directly adopting such data augmentation strategy may inevitably carry some noise shown in our cases, since not all of the handcrafted augmentations are semantically irrelevant to the groundtruth video. To further denoise and improve the grounding accuracy, we design a multi-stage curriculum strategy to adaptively train the standard VG model from easy to hard negative augmentations. Experiments on newly collected Charades-CD and ActivityNet-CD datasets demonstrate our proposed strategy can improve the performance of the base model on both i.i. d and o.o. d scenarios.
High degree of independence in the feeding apparatus of planarian flatworms

In this contribution, feeding behaviour assays with the three species Paucumara falcata, Dugesia sp. and Girardia sp. were used to investigate the function of the pharynx during feeding and whether absence of feeding behaviour until full regeneration is a widespread phenomenon among planarians from different taxonomic groups. Our results showed that feeding behaviour of decapitated flatworms was inhibited. Intact worms responded only to pork liver pieces, but isolated pharynges were highly responsive to both pork liver pieces and pork liver extracts. After transverse cutting, the oral part of the isolated pharynx was responsive, while the aboral part showed no response to food items, suggesting that the oral portion of pharynx plays a crucial role during feeding.
The measurement of teachers’ attitudes toward inclusive education: An empirical study in East Java, Indonesia

Abstract The three inclusive schools in West Sumatra Province, which were formed in 2002, is proof that Indonesia has implemented an inclusive education system. Until now, the benchmark for the success of implementation in East Java has not been measured. The method that can be done is to measure teacher attitudes toward inclusive education. In this study, the ITAIE scale was used to measure their attitudes towards inclusive education. The current study investigated 1477 teachers in the inclusive school in East Java, including kindergarten, elementary, junior high, and senior high school levels. This study found that the attitude of East Java teachers towards inclusive education was positive (61.1%). The factors that influence the positive attitude of teachers toward inclusive education are the level of the school where the teacher works. Teachers who work at the kindergarten level are more favorable than teachers who work at other school levels. In addition, the experience of teaching in inclusive schools also plays an important role. The longer they teach, the more positive their attitude towards inclusive education. Also, teachers who have participated in training programs in inclusive education have a more positive attitude than teachers who have not yet attended the training.
Characterization of the CH Addition Product from Meta- and Ortho-Xylene + CH Reaction and Direct Experimental Observation of the Tetrabromine Cluster Br4 using Synchrotron Photoionization Mass Spectrometry

We present the first determination of the homoatomic polyhalogen tetrabromine, Br4, in the gas phase. Detection was achieved through the photolysis of CHBr3 in a photoionization mass spectrometry experiment via tunable synchrotron VUV radiation at the Advanced Light Source of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Analysis of the experimental data was aided by computations carried out at the cam-B3LYP/aug-cc-pVTZ and CCSD(T) levels of theory. The photoionization spectrum of Br4 was compared to theory and a D2h rectangular geometry is postulated. Homopolyatomic halogen chemistry has a long and rich historical foundation since the late 18th century and has continued interest today.1-3 Fundamental insights into such chemistry is driven by a wide range of phenomena. Polybromine crystals have use in superconducting materials, whereas atomic and molecular bromine have a significant role in climate cycles including ozone depletion.4-7 Although diatomic halogens have long been well characterized, this renewed interest expands to larger clusters, Xn, for n>2.8-10 Triatomic clusters, X3, have been spectroscopically characterized for X= Cl, Br, and I by X-ray crystallography and Raman spectroscopy.10-14 Interaction of X3 with the dimer, X2, is found to form X5 for X= Br, I.15-17 Clusters with n=4 are more elusive. Gillespie et. al.18, 19 synthesized the diamagnetic I4 in the solid state (while Brichall and Myers20 found it in solution) with a structure described by π*π* overlap and having a square planar geometry. Additionally, Chance et. al.21 conducted electric deflection studies on a set of halogen clusters and proposed that Br4 is polar. Multiple theoretical investigations have worked to further propose the structure of Br4. Schuster et. al.22 conducted a DFT study of neutral and ionic polybromine clusters from n=1-5 and proposed a Lshaped neutral Br4 and a twisted Br4 with Cs and C1 symmetry, respectively. However, Thanthiriwatte et. al.23 included dispersion corrected DFT methods as well as ab-initio CCSD(T)
African Substrates Rather Than European Lexifiers to Augment African-diaspora Creole Translation

Machine translation (MT) model training is difficult for low-resource languages. This is especially true for African-diaspora Creole languages because of data scarcity. Cross-lingual data augmentation methods with knowledge transfer from related high-resource languages are a common technique to overcome this disadvantage. For instance, practitioners may transfer knowledge from a language in the same language family as the low-resource language of interest. Africandiaspora Creole languages are low-resource and simultaneously have relationships with multiple language groups. These languages, such as Haitian Creole and Jamaican Patois, are typically lexified by colonial European languages, but they are structurally similar to African languages. We explore the advantages of transferring knowledge from the European lexifier language versus the phylogenetic and typological relatives of the African substrate languages. We analysed Haitian and Jamaican MT: both controlling tightly for data properties across compared transfer languages and later allowing use of all data we collected. Our inquiry demonstrates a significant advantage in using African transfer languages in some settings.
AfriSign: Machine Translation for African Sign Languages

Sign language translation is an active area of research with the main goal of bridging the communication gap between deaf and hearing individuals. In Natural Language Processing (NLP), there is a growing interest in this task, leading to new datasets and research on translation approaches. But while there has been significant progress for sign languages from high-income countries, minimal research has been conducted on African sign language translation. In this paper, we curate a novel dataset of African sign languages, with a focus on machine translation as the main application. The dataset contains English Bible verses and videos with translations into six different African sign languages. Using this dataset, we report experiments on African sign language machine translation, including baseline Transformer systems, multilingual training and cross-lingual transfer learning.
Cuts and Stitches: Does Model Merging Produce Better Multitask Learners?

Parameter averaging has shown promising results as a method of transferring learned capabilities in models in a non-learning setting. In this project, we attempt to explore the use of parameter averaging across models with a shared structure as a means to increase model performance. Specifically, we attempt to independently finetune BERT across three tasks — sentiment classification, paraphrase detection, and semantic equivalence detection — and use Fisher-weighted parameter averaging as introduced by Matena and Raffel (2021) to create a final model that performs well across all three tasks. We implement the same experiment with the parameter averaging method of model soups proposed by Wortsman et al. (2022) to benchmark the usefulness of Fisher-weighted averaging. Furthermore, to evaluate the uniqueness of parameter averaging as a whole, we also implement multitask learning in a gradient-based setting with round-robin style training and gradient surgery Yu et al. (2020) to serve as baselines of other performance-focused frameworks. We evaluate the performance of each method through three uncorrelated measurements and provide in-depth analysis of the performance of each method through ablation studies. We find that parameter averaging through Greedy soups yields the most optimal model in terms of average task performance, matching 98 . 9% of the performance of the best single-task models. In contrast, our experiments show that parameter averaging through Fisher-weighted averaging fails to increase performance in a multitask setting over its best candidate model.
Burnout and Social Support among Healthcare Workers during Covid-19: Evidence from Italy

In this study, I examine the relationship between burnout and social support among healthcare workers in Italy. Burnout has been a serious concern among professions who must work closely and help other individuals. Due to the epidemic of the Covid-19 Pandemic, it has especially been a challenge for healthcare workers in the past few years. A validated Italian version of the MBI scale is conducted from 332 healthcare workers. Burnout scale is measured by its three subscales: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment. Social support is analyzed from the questionnaires regarding partners or spouses, family, friends, and colleagues. Multiple regression analysis shows social support is correlated to less emotional exhaustion and depersonalization and higher personal accomplishment. Regression discontinuity design is used to observe the causality between burnout subscales and social support instruments of partners and coworkers. Although the study finds social support is associated to less burnout among the participated Italian healthcare workers, the regression discontinuity design indicates there is no significant causal effect of burnout subscales on social support instruments.