Contrastive Representation Learning for Exemplar-Guided Paraphrase Generation

Exemplar-Guided Paraphrase Generation (EGPG) aims to generate a target sentence which conforms to the style of the given exemplar while encapsulating the content information of the source sentence. In this paper, we propose a new method with the goal of learning a better representation of the style and the content. This method is mainly motivated by the recent success of contrastive learning which has demonstrated its power in unsupervised feature extraction tasks. The idea is to design two contrastive losses with respect to the content and the style by considering two problem characteristics during training. One characteristic is that the target sentence shares the same content with the source sentence, and the second characteristic is that the target sentence shares the same style with the exemplar. These two contrastive losses are incorporated into the general encoder-decoder paradigm. Experiments on two datasets, namely QQP-Pos and ParaNMT, demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed constrastive losses.

Using Collaborative Filtering to Model Argument Selection

This study evaluates whether model-based Collaborative Filtering (CF) algorithms, which have been extensively studied and widely used to build recommender systems, can be used to predict which common nouns a predicate can take as its complement. We find that, when trained on verb-noun co-occurrence data drawn from the Corpus of Contemporary American-English (COCA), two popular model-based CF algorithms, Singular Value Decomposition and Non-negative Matrix Factorization, perform well on this task, each achieving an AUROC of at least 0.89 and surpassing several different baselines. We then show that the embedding-vectors for verbs and nouns learned by the two CF models can be quantized (via application of k-means clustering) with minimal loss of performance on the prediction task while only using a small number of verb and noun clusters (relative to the number of distinct verbs and nouns). Finally we evaluate the alignment between the quantized embedding vectors for verbs and the Levin verb classes, finding that the alignment surpassed several randomized baselines. We conclude by discussing how model-based CF algorithms might be applied to learning restrictions on constituent selection between various lexical categories and how these (learned) models could then be used to augment a (rule-based) constituency grammar.

Flux and Resistances Analysis in ultrafiltration used as pretreatment of sea water desalination

In this research the effects of various parameters on flux and fouling in Dead -End Flat Sheet Ultrafiltration (DEFS) were studied using saline solutions contaminated by humic acid as fouling material.

Using milk retantate that resulting from Ultrafiltration technology in making White cheese

This study aimed to manifactor white cheese using bovine milk retentate and concentrated with Ultrafiltration using (Frames & plates) system, and compared it with white cheese made from original milk in terms of chemical composition, cheese yield, sensory characteristics.

A study of sludge characteristics of Biological Treatment by Extended Aeration at Merge Maarban station

The determination of sludge characteristics of wastewater treatment process has the primary role in the treatment and disposal. This research aims to determine the sludge characteristics by studying specific resistance factor of the sludge on the filtration at Merge Maarban station, so we took samples of sludge from the station and made several laboratory experiments and we got the time of intensify sludge, moisture and The concentration of the solid substances. we calculated specific resistance factor values of the sludge when the moisture values are ( 97.5 , 95.5 , 94 , 92 , 91 , 88 ) %. The research results showed a decrease in resistivity factor value of sludge on the filtration as its moisture become less and the sludge drying time takes tow weeks.

Using milk retantate that resulting from Ultrafiltration technology in making Mozzarella cheese

This study aimed to manifactor mozzarella cheese using bovine milk retentate and concentrated with Ultrafiltration using (Frames & plates) system, and compared it with mozzarella cheese made from original milk in terms of chemical composition, cheese yield, sensory and rheological characteristics.

Recycling of Filters Backwash Water (Example : Water Treatment Plant on Roum Dam by Asswayda )

Resulting backwash water from existing filters, in the water purification plants, is actually thrown in most cases in water bodies, valleys or discharged into other system without making any benefit from it. The amount of backwash water is well estimated to be in average (3-4%) of purified water amount. Even if this amount is generally not relevant, it can however be considered to be useful in some circumstances, where the source water is rare or there is no water resource in the region at all. Treatment of backwash water depends on the reuse need of it, either for drinking or irrigation purposes, so that the treated water must be in accordance with the water quality standard stated in related specifications. In this research, the resulting backwash water purification plant at Roum Dam near Swaida town has been scientifically analyzed and treated in a plant designed and built for this purpose. In this paper, the results of experiments are discussed; important facts have been concluded and economic feasibility for water reuse was determined.

Approach for the integration of filtering techniques with the search engines

We offer in this approach the integration of search engines with filtering techniques, through the dynamic relationship of hybridization between collaborative filtering and content based filtering in order to solve the past limitations and improve precision and recall of retrieved documents. The approach uses Domain ontology model in the representation of user profile to reduce errors and confusion resulting from consideration for user profile as a single entity, as well as taking advantage from user activity for adaptation of user profile to reflect the state of user.

Reducing the blocking Effect in Image and Video Coding by Three Modes of Adaptive Filtering or Interpolating

Most image and video coding techniques are based on the method of Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) after partitioning the image into square blocks. This method is called block DCT (BDCT). It is considered as one of the best methods of image and video compression. However, in cases of high compression ratios, the BDCT method results in the block boundaries being visible in the reconstructed image (after decoding). This distortion is called the blocking effect or blocking artifacts. In this research we illustrate the blocking effect and its causes. Then, we propose two methods for reducing the blocking effect using a 3-mode adaptive filtering and a 3-mode adaptive interpolation. We realize the two proposed methods by two suitable algorithms, seeking to effectively and relatively simply reduce the blocking artifacts without causing degradation of the other characteristics of the image quality (taking into account some specific requirements of video coding). We present the results of applying both the algorithms. The results show the effectiveness of the two proposed methods.

Fractionation of whey protein using novel membrane filtration process

Recent advances in membrane filtration technology provided new opportunities for large scale low – cost protein fractionation from whey . Exposure of whey to a pH of 5.0 prior to micro filtration using a 0.1 μm ceramic membrane led to optimised retention of higher molecular weight proteins immunoglobulin, bovine serum albumin and lactoferrin. The resulting permeate contained a protein fraction enriched in Alfa – lactalbumin and Beta – lactoglobulin. Enrichment of Alfa –lactalbumin relative to Beta –lactoglobulin was accomplished using new UF ceramic membranes with different molecular weight cut – off.