Multimodal Cross-lingual Summarization for Videos: A Revisit in Knowledge Distillation Induced Triple-stage Training Method.

Multimodal summarization (MS) for videos aims to generate summaries from multi-source information (e.g., video and text transcript), and this technique has made promising progress recently. However, existing works are limited to monolingual video scenarios, overlooking the demands of non-native language video viewers to understand cross-lingual videos in practical applications. It stimulates us to introduce multimodal cross-lingual summarization for videos (MCLS), which aims at generating cross-lingual summarization from multimodal input of videos. Considering the challenge of high annotation cost and resource constraints in MCLS, we propose a knowledge distillation (KD) induced triple-stage training method to assist MCLS by transferring knowledge from abundant monolingual MS data to those data with insufficient volumes. In the triple-stage training method, a video-guided dual fusion network (VDF) is designed as the backbone network to integrate multimodal and cross-lingual information through different fusion strategies of encoder and decoder; what's more, we propose two cross-lingual knowledge distillation strategies: adaptive pooling distillation and language-adaptive warping distillation (LAWD). These strategies are tailored for distillation objects (i.e., encoder-level and vocab-level KD) to facilitate effective knowledge transfer across cross-lingual sequences of varying lengths between MS and MCLS models. Specifically, to tackle the challenge of unequal length of parallel cross-language sequences in KD, our proposed LAWD can directly conduct cross-language distillation while keeping the language feature shape unchanged to reduce potential information loss. We meticulously annotated the How2-MCLS dataset based on the How2 dataset to simulate the MCLS scenario. The experimental results show that the proposed method achieves competitive performance compared to strong baselines, and can bring substantial performance improvements to MCLS models by transferring knowledge from the MS model.

Effects of schisandrin B on hypoxia-related cognitive function and protein expression in vascular dementia rats.

Vascular dementia (VD) a heterogenous group of brain disorders in which cognitive impairment is attributable to vascular risk factors and cerebrovascular disease. A common phenomenon in VD is a dysfunctional cerebral regulatory mechanism associated with insufficient cerebral blood flow, ischemia and hypoxia. Under hypoxic conditions oxygen supply to the brain results in neuronal death leading to neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer's (AD) and VD. In conditions of hypoxia and low oxygen perfusion, expression of hypoxia-inducible factor 1 alpha (HIF-1α) increases under conditions of low oxygen and low perfusion associated with upregulation of expression of hypoxia-upregulated mitochondrial movement regulator (HUMMR), which promotes anterograde mitochondrial transport by binding with trafficking protein kinesin 2 (TRAK2). Schisandrin B (Sch B) an active component derived from Chinese herb Wuweizi prevented ß-amyloid protein induced morphological alterations and cell death using a SH-SY5Y neuronal cells considered an AD model. It was thus of interest to determine whether Sch B might also alleviate VD using a rat bilateral common carotid artery occlusion (BCAO) dementia model. The aim of this study was to examine the effects of Sch B in BCAO on cognitive functions such as Morris water maze test and underlying mechanisms involving expression of HIF-1α, TRAK2, and HUMMR levels. The results showed that Sch B improved learning and memory function of rats with VD and exerted a protective effect on the hippocampus by inhibition of protein expression of HIF-1α, TRAK2, and HUMMR factors. Evidence indicates that Sch B may be considered as an alternative in VD treatment.

Morphological and molecular characterization of a Sarcocystis species infecting donkeys from China.

There is considerable confusion concerning the relationships among species of Sarcocystis found in donkeys and horses. Here, we describe a Sarcocystis species in Chinese donkeys (Equus asinus). Sarcocysts were found in 12 of 32 (37.5%) adult donkeys. By light microscopy, they were divided into two types, thin-walled and thick-walled. The thin-walled were macroscopic (up to 320 µm wide) and had short club-like protrusions (up to 2.7 µm long); the thick-walled were microscopic (up to 135 µm wide) and had villar protrusions (up to 5.4 µm long). Ultrastructures of the two types exhibited similar morphological characteristics, including bundled microtubules in the core of the villar protrusions penetrating diagonally into the ground substance, similar to wall type 11c. Three genetic markers, 18S rDNA, 28S rDNA, and mitochondrial cox1, obtained from the two morphotypes were sequenced and analyzed. The sequences of the three loci in the two morphotypes presented high intraspecific similarities of 97.2-99.5%, 97.8-99.6% and 99.0 - 99.9%, respectively. The most similar sequences in GenBank to the newly obtained 18S rDNA, 28S rDNA and cox1 sequences were those of Sarcocystis spp. in horses, with similarities of 90.0 - 97.5%, 94.7 - 95.1%, and 82.6 - 84.5%, respectively. Phylogenetic analysis using the three genetic markers indicated that the Sarcocystis sp. in donkeys formed an individual clade most closely related to a clade encompassing Sarcocystis spp. in horses. Further studies are needed for taxonomic identification of sarcocysts in donkeys because the Sarcocystis species in donkeys and horses are not successfully cross transmissible despite morphological similarities.

Sensitive analysis of fluorine and chlorine elements in water solution using laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy assisted with molecular synthesis.

Fluorine and chlorine are key elements to affecting water quality, but they are hard to be determined by conventional laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS). To achieve high sensitivity detection of them, the CaF and CaCl molecules were synthesized by combining calcium in calcite and F and Cl in sample. The temporal characteristics of CaF and CaCl molecular emissions were investigated. It shows that molecular emission of CaF and CaCl has a longer lifetime and high spectral intensity than that of their atomic emissions. Such unique feature of molecular emission inspired us to use it for high sensitivity analysis of Cl and F elements in water. The results show that these two elements can be sensitively and accurately detected using LIBS assisted with molecular emission. The limits of detections (LoDs) were 0.38 mg/L and 1.03 mg/L for F and Cl elements, respectively, and the limit of quantitation (LoQ) was 3.404 mg/L to 20.569 mg/L for fluorine elements and 9.986 mg/L to 39.757 mg/L for fluorine. These detection limits can meet the World Health Organization's detection requirements for F and Cl elements in water. The results show that LIBS assisted with molecular synthesis has a huge potential in water quality monitoring.

Porcine natriuretic peptide type B (pNPPB) maintains mouse oocyte meiotic arrest via natriuretic peptide receptor 2 (NPR2) in cumulus cells.

In mouse ovarian follicles, the oocyte is maintained in meiotic prophase arrest by natriuretic peptide type C (NPPC) acting via its cognate receptor, natriuretic peptide receptor 2 (NPR2). As there is a marked species difference in the receptor selectivity of the natriuretic peptide family, this study examined the functional effect of other natriuretic peptides, type A (NPPA) and type B (NPPB), acting via NPR2 on mouse-oocyte meiotic arrest. The results by quantitative, reverse-transcriptase PCR showed that Npr2 was the predominant natriuretic peptide receptor transcript, and that Npr1 and Npr3 mRNA levels were negligible in cumulus cells isolated from equine chorionic gonadotropin (eCG)-primed, immature female mice. While NPPA and NPPB from human and rat had no effect on oocyte maturation, porcine NPPB (pNPPB) maintained oocyte meiotic arrest in a dose-dependent manner. Furthermore, pNPPB-mediated meiotic arrest and cGMP production could be completely blocked by the NPR2 inhibitor sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P). Neither the NPR1 antagonist anantin or Npr1 knockout had an effect on pNPPB-mediated meiotic arrest. Thus, pNPPB can functionally maintain mouse-oocyte meiotic arrest by the receptor NPR2 of cumulus cells. These findings demonstrate that pNPPB may be used as a probe to identify the essential amino acid sequences for activation of NPR2.

Epidermal growth factor receptor signaling-dependent calcium elevation in cumulus cells is required for NPR2 inhibition and meiotic resumption in mouse oocytes.

In preovulatory ovarian follicles, the oocyte is maintained in meiotic prophase arrest by natriuretic peptide precursor C (NPPC) and its receptor natriuretic peptide receptor 2 (NPR2). LH treatment results in the decrease of NPR2 guanylyl cyclase activity that promotes resumption of meiosis. We investigated the regulatory mechanism of LH-activated epidermal growth factor (EGF) receptor signaling on NPR2 function. Cumulus cell-oocyte complex is cultured in the medium with 30 nM NPPC to prevent oocyte spontaneous maturation. In this system, EGF could stimulate oocyte meiotic resumption after 4 hours of incubation. Further study showed that EGF elevated intracellular calcium concentrations of cumulus cells and decreased cGMP levels in cumulus cells and oocytes, and calcium-elevating reagents ionomycin and sphingosine-1-phosphate mimicked the effects of EGF on oocyte maturation and cGMP levels. EGF-mediated cGMP levels and meiotic resumption could be reversed by EGF receptor inhibitor AG1478 and the calcium chelator bis-(o-aminophenoxy)-ethane-N,N,N',N'-tetraacetic acid, tetra(acetoxymethyl)-ester. EGF also decreased the expression of Npr2 mRNA in cumulus cells, which may not be involved in meiotic resumption, because the block of NPR2 protein de novo synthesis by cycloheximide had no effect on NPPC and EGF-mediated oocyte maturation. However, EGF had no effect on oocyte maturation when meiotic arrest was maintained in the present of cGMP analog 8-bromoadenosine-cGMP. These results suggest that EGF receptor signaling induces meiotic resumption by elevating calcium concentrations of cumulus cells to decrease NPR2 guanylyl cyclase activity.