Rationalization for explainable NLP: a survey.

Recent advances in deep learning have improved the performance of many Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks such as translation, question-answering, and text classification. However, this improvement comes at the expense of model explainability. Black-box models make it difficult to understand the internals of a system and the process it takes to arrive at an output. Numerical (LIME, Shapley) and visualization (saliency heatmap) explainability techniques are helpful; however, they are insufficient because they require specialized knowledge. These factors led rationalization to emerge as a more accessible explainable technique in NLP. Rationalization justifies a model's output by providing a natural language explanation (rationale). Recent improvements in natural language generation have made rationalization an attractive technique because it is intuitive, human-comprehensible, and accessible to non-technical users. Since rationalization is a relatively new field, it is disorganized. As the first survey, rationalization literature in NLP from 2007 to 2022 is analyzed. This survey presents available methods, explainable evaluations, code, and datasets used across various NLP tasks that use rationalization. Further, a new subfield in Explainable AI (XAI), namely, Rational AI (RAI), is introduced to advance the current state of rationalization. A discussion on observed insights, challenges, and future directions is provided to point to promising research opportunities.

The Effect of Different Doses of Ciprofol in Patients with Painless Gastrointestinal Endoscopy.

Background: Ciprofol is currently used for painless gastrointestinal endoscopy and anesthesia induction. However, whether it is superior to propofol and its optimal dose remains unknown. Methods: A total of 149 patients, 63 males and 86 females, aged 18-80 years, BMI 18-28 kg/m2, ASA I-III, were divided randomly into four groups: propofol group (group P, n = 44), ciprofol 0.2mg/kg group (group C2, n = 38), ciprofol 0.3mg/kg group (group C3, n = 36) and ciprofol 0.4 mg/kg group (group C4, n = 31). Groups C2, C3 and C4 had injected IV with ciprofol 0.2, 0.3 and 0.4 mg/kg, respectively. Group P had injected IV with propofol 1.5mg/kg. The time for disappearance of the eyelash reflex, gastrointestinal endoscopy time, recovery time, and the Modified Observer's Assessment of Alertness/Sedation (MOAA/S) score at awakening (T1), 15 minutes after awakening (T2) and 30 minutes after awakening (T3) were recorded. Results: Compared with group P, the time to fall asleep was significantly shortened, and the incidence of nausea and vomiting and injection pain was significantly lower in groups C2, C3 and C4 (P < 0.05). There was no significant difference in recovery time and recovery quality between each group (P > 0.05). Compared with group P and C4, the incidence of hypotension and respiratory depression was significantly lower in groups C2 and C3 (P < 0.05). Conclusion: The appropriate dose of ciprofol for painless gastrointestinal endoscopy is more advantageous than propofol in hemodynamics and respiratory stability, with less injection pain and nausea and vomiting, which is worthy of clinical promotion.

TBX3 stimulates proliferation and stem cell self-renewal in bladder carcinoma.

BACKGROUND: With the change of people's lifestyle in recent years, bladder carcinoma has been the second leading cause of death for men. Nevertheless, surgical results of bladder carcinoma are unsatisfying with recurrence and distant metastasis. Therefore, it is urgent to find a new target for bladder carcinoma treatment. METHODS: The protein and mRNA expression levels of TBX3 in bladder carcinoma tissue samples and cells were tested using western blot and qRT-PCR assays, respectively. Cancer stem cells (CSCs) were separated with immunomagnetic beads. Expression levels of cell stemness-associated proteins CD44, CD24 and ESA in T24 CSCs and T24 cells were detected by western blot assay. Cell self-renewal ability was detected by stem cell sphere formation assay. CCK-8 and colony formation assays examined cell viability and proliferation. Cell apoptotic level was examined by flow cytometry. RESULTS: Elevated TBX3 expression in bladder carcinoma stimulated cell proliferation and inhibited cell apoptosis. Stemness-related proteins and TBX3 were highly expressed in T24 CSCs relative to those in normal bladder carcinoma cells. In addition, TBX3 promoted stem cell self-renewal and inhibited cell apoptosis. Finally, qRT-PCR, western blot and cell sphere formation assays revealed that the potential role of TGF-ß1 in the regulation of TBX3. CONCLUSION: TBX3, mediated by TGF-ß1, can promote bladder carcinoma cell proliferation, inhibit apoptosis, and enhance cell stemness. Hence, TBX3 is a potential target to stem cells of bladder carcinoma.

MicroRNA-143-3p/TBX3 Axis Represses Malignant Cell Behaviors in Bladder Cancer.

OBJECTIVE: To offer new insight for bladder cancer therapy through researching the microRNA-143-3p/TBX3 axis. METHODS: Differentially expressed microRNAs in bladder cancer were provided by databases to find microRNA that may regulate TBX3. qRT-PCR was utilized to test levels of TBX3 mRNA and microRNA-143-3p. Their binding was verified with a dual-luciferase method. Malignant cell behaviors were examined by cell functional experiments. Levels of TBX3 protein and proteins pertinent to epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) were tested by western blot. RESULTS: TBX3 was highly expressed in bladder cancer cells. MicroRNA-143-3p presented the most conspicuously negative correlation with TBX3, and they had binding sites. Cell functional experiments proved that TBX3 facilitated bladder cancer cell functions and EMT. MicroRNA-143-3p was demonstrated to downregulate TBX3 expression. Rescue assay further illuminated that microRNA-143-3p repressed bladder cancer cell functions and EMT through downregulating TBX3 expression. CONCLUSION: These data all indicated that TBX3 was modulated by microRNA-143-3p and acted as a cancer promoter gene in bladder cancer progression via affecting tumor proliferation, migration, invasion, and EMT. Therefore, a microRNA-143-3p/TBX3 network might be an underlying target for bladder cancer.

Chelerythrine induced cell death through ROS-dependent ER stress in human prostate cancer cells.

INTRODUCTION: Prostate cancer is the most common noncutaneous cancer and the second leading cause of cancer-related mortality worldwide and the third in USA in 2017. Chelerythrine (CHE), a naturalbenzo[c]phenanthridine alkaloid, formerly identified as a protein kinase C inhibitor, has also shown anticancer effect through a number of mechanisms. Herein, effect and mechanism of the CHE-induced apoptosis via reactive oxygen species (ROS)-mediated endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress in prostate cancer cells were studied for the first time. METHODS: In our present study, we investigated whether CHE induced cell viability decrease, colony formation inhibition, and apoptosis in a dose-dependent manner in PC-3 cells. In addition, we showed that CHE increases intracellular ROS and leads to ROS-dependent ER stress and cell apoptosis. RESULTS: Pre-treatment with N-acetyl cysteine, an ROS scavenger, totally reversed the CHE-induced cancer cell apoptosis as well as ER stress activation, suggesting that the ROS generation was responsible for the anticancer effects of CHE. CONCLUSION: Taken together, our findings support one of the anticancer mechanisms by which CHE increased ROS accumulation in prostate cancer cells, thereby leading to ER stress and caused intrinsic apoptotic signaling. The study reveals that CHE could be a potential candidate for application in the treatment of prostate cancer.

Liberal Entity Extraction: Rapid Construction of Fine-Grained Entity Typing Systems.

The ability of automatically recognizing and typing entities in natural language without prior knowledge (e.g., predefined entity types) is a major challenge in processing such data. Most existing entity typing systems are limited to certain domains, genres, and languages. In this article, we propose a novel unsupervised entity-typing framework by combining symbolic and distributional semantics. We start from learning three types of representations for each entity mention: general semantic representation, specific context representation, and knowledge representation based on knowledge bases. Then we develop a novel joint hierarchical clustering and linking algorithm to type all mentions using these representations. This framework does not rely on any annotated data, predefined typing schema, or handcrafted features; therefore, it can be quickly adapted to a new domain, genre, and/or language. Experiments on genres (news and discussion forum) show comparable performance with state-of-the-art supervised typing systems trained from a large amount of labeled data. Results on various languages (English, Chinese, Japanese, Hausa, and Yoruba) and domains (general and biomedical) demonstrate the portability of our framework.

Tumor-specific upregulation of human leukocyte antigen-G expression in bladder transitional cell carcinoma.

Human leukocyte antigen-G (HLA-G) is a potent immunosuppressive molecule that induces functional silencing of both innate and adaptive immune responses. The relevance of the aberrant HLA-G expression in malignant contexts has been intensively investigated. However, its expression status and clinical significance in bladder cancer remain to be elucidated. In the current study, HLA-G expression in 75 primary bladder transitional cell carcinoma (TCC) lesions was analyzed with immunohistochemistry, and relationship between HLA-G expression and clinical parameters, including disease stage was evaluated. Plasma soluble HLA-G levels were analyzed in 15 TCC patients and 109 normal controls. Data revealed that HLA-G was expressed in 68.0% (51/75) primary TCC lesions, whereas it was undetectable in adjacent normal bladder tissues. The proportion of HLA-G expression in TCC samples varied from negative to 100%, and no significant association was observed for the HLA-G expression status with the patient age, gender, and disease stage. Furthermore, no significance for sHLA-G levels was observed between the TCC patients and normal controls (median 10.75 vs 8.69 U/ml, p = 0.578). Given its immunotolerant properties, our finding suggested that lesion HLA-G expression upregulated in bladder TCC lesions might be an additional mechanism for tumor cells evading from host immunosurveillance; however, its clinical relevance needs further investigation.

Iron-promoted elimination of beta-thioalkoxy alcohols. Olefination by coupling of a carbonyl group with a dithioacetal.

Treatment of propargylic dithiolanes with nBuLi followed by a carbonyl electrophile yields the corresponding propargylic dithioacetals. Upon treatment with 1 equiv of Fe(acac)3 and excess MeMgI, elimination of SR and OH moieties from 8 affords the corresponding olefins in satisfactory yield. Benzylic dithioacetals behave similarly. The reaction can be considered an alternative of McMurry coupling of two different carbonyl equivalents.

Kumada-Corriu reactions of alkyl halides with alkynyl nucleophiles.

[reaction: see text] Pd(2)(dba)(3)-Ph(3)P-catalyzed Kumada-Corriu coupling reactions of unactivated alkyl bromides or iodides with an alkynyl nucleophile furnish C(sp)-C(sp)3 bond formation. Alkynyl nucleophiles can be alkynyllithiums or the corresponding Grignard reagents. The superior performance of Ph(3)P ligand over the trialkylphosphine ligands indicates that this cross-coupling reaction may be a reductive-elimination-controlled process.

Nickel-catalyzed olefination of unactivated aliphatic dithioacetals.

[reaction: see text] Olefination of aliphatic dithioacetals with Grignard reagents is catalyzed by Ni(acac)(2) in the presence of an appropriate trialkylphosphine ligand.