Challenges in Emotion Style Transfer: An Exploration with a Lexical Substitution Pipeline

We propose the task of emotion style transfer, which is particularly challenging, as emotions (here: anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, surprise) are on the fence between content and style. To understand the particular difficulties of this task, we design a transparent emotion style transfer pipeline based on three steps: (1) select the words that are promising to be substituted to change the emotion (with a brute-force approach and selection based on the attention mechanism of an emotion classifier), (2) find sets of words as candidates for substituting the words (based on lexical and distributional semantics), and (3) select the most promising combination of substitutions with an objective function which consists of components for content (based on BERT sentence embeddings), emotion (based on an emotion classifier), and fluency (based on a neural language model). This comparably straight-forward setup enables us to explore the task and understand in what cases lexical substitution can vary the emotional load of texts, how changes in content and style interact and if they are at odds. We further evaluate our pipeline quantitatively in an automated and an annotation study based on Tweets and find, indeed, that simultaneous adjustments of content and emotion are conflicting objectives: as we show in a qualitative analysis motivated by Scherer's emotion component model, this is particularly the case for implicit emotion expressions based on cognitive appraisal or descriptions of bodily reactions.Comment: Accepted at the SocialNLP Workshop at ACL 202

Geometry of second adjointness for p-adic groups

We present a geometric proof of Bernstein's second adjointness for a reductive $p$-adic group. Our approach is based on geometry of the wonderful compactification and related varieties. Considering asymptotic behavior of a function on the group in a neighborhood of a boundary stratum of the compactification, we get a "co-specialization" map between spaces of functions on various varieties with $G\times G$ action. These maps can be viewed as maps of bimodules for the Hecke algebra, and the corresponding natural transformations of functors lead to the second adjointness. We also get a formula for the "co-specialization" map expressing it as a composition of the orishperic transform and inverse intertwining operator; a parallel result for $D$-modules was obtained in arXiv:0902.1493. As a byproduct we obtain a formula for the Plancherel functional restricted to a certain commutative subalgebra in the Hecke algebra, generalizing a result by Opdam.Comment: 40 pages; minor, mostly typographical corrections; final versio

Modulation of TGF-beta signaling by proinflammatory cytokines in articular chondrocytes.

OBJECTIVE: The normal structure and function of articular cartilage are the result of a precisely balanced interaction between anabolic and catabolic processes. The transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-beta) family of growth factors generally exerts an anabolic or repair response; in contrast, proinflammatory cytokines such as interleukin 1 beta (IL-1beta) and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) exert a strong catabolic effect. Recent evidence has shown that IL-1beta, and TNF-alpha, and the TGF-beta signaling pathways share an antagonistic relationship. The aim of this study was to determine whether the modulation of the response of articular chondrocytes to TGF-beta by IL-1beta or TNF-alpha signaling pathways occurs through regulation of activity and availability of mothers against DPP (Drosophila) human homologue (Smad) proteins. METHODS: Human articular chondrocytes isolated from knee joints from patients with osteoarthritis (OA) or normal bovine chondrocytes were cultured in suspension in poly-(2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate)-coated dishes with either 10% fetal bovine serum media or serum-deprived media 6h before treatment with IL-1beta alone, TNF-alpha alone or IL-1beta followed by TGF-beta. Nuclear extracts were examined by electrophoretic mobility-shift assays (EMSA) for nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-kappaB) and Smad3/4 deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) binding. Nuclear extracts were also subjected to the TranSignal Protein/DNA array (Panomics, Redwood City, CA) enabling the simultaneous semiquantitative assessment of DNA-binding activity of 54 different transcription factors. Nuclear phospho-Smad2/3 and total Smad7 protein expression in whole cell lysates were studied by Western blot. Cytoplasmic Smad7, type II collagen alpha 1 (COL2A1), aggrecan and SRY-related high mobility group-Box gene 9 (SOX-9) mRNA expression were measured by real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR). RESULTS: The DNA-binding activity of Smad3/4 in the TranSignal Protein/DNA array was downregulated by TNF-alpha (46%) or IL-1beta treatment (42%). EMSA analysis showed a consistent reduction in Smad3/4 DNA-binding activity in human articular chondrocytes treated with IL-1beta or TNF-alpha. TGF-beta-induced Smad3/4 DNA-binding activity and Smad2/3 phosphorylation were also reduced following pretreatment with IL-1beta in human OA and bovine chondrocytes. Real-time PCR and Western blot analysis showed that IL-1beta partially reversed the TGF-beta stimulation of Smad7 mRNA and protein levels in TGF-beta-treated human OA cells. In contrast, TGF-beta-stimulated COL2A1, aggrecan, and SOX-9 mRNA levels were abrogated by IL-1beta. CONCLUSIONS: IL-1beta or TNF-alpha exerted a suppressive effect on Smad3/4 DNA-binding activity in human articular chondrocytes, as well as on TGF-beta-induced stimulation of Smad3/4 DNA-binding activity and Smad2/3 phosphorylation in human OA and bovine articular chondrocytes. IL-1beta partially reversed the increase in TGF-beta-stimulated Smad7 mRNA or protein levels suggesting that Smad7 may not be involved in the suppression of TGF-beta signaling induced by IL-1beta or TNF-alpha in articular chondrocytes. The balance between the IL-1beta or TNF-alpha and the TGF-beta signaling pathways is crucial for maintenance of articular cartilage homeostasis and its disruption likely plays a substantial role in the pathogenesis of OA

Geographic trends in range sizes explain patterns in bird responses to urbanization in Europe

The probability of occurrence of bird species in towns/cities increases with their range sizes, and Rapoport’s rule states that range sizes increase with latitude. To test the hypothesis that the increasing number of bird species persisting in cities at higher latitudes of Europe is linked to their larger range sizes, we compiled data on bird communities of: a) 41 urban bird atlases; b) 37 city core zones from published sources; c) regions of nine grid cells of the EBCC Atlas of European Breeding Birds around each city. We tested whether the proportion of species from particular regional bird assemblages entering cities (i.e., proportional richness) was related to the geographical  position, mean range size of regional avifaunas, proportion of vegetated areas and city habitat heterogeneity. The mean range sizes of the observed and randomly selected urban avifaunas were contrasted. The proportional richness of urban avifaunas was positively related to the geographic position and mean range size of birds in regional assemblages. The evidence favoured range sizes if considering the European range sizes or latitudinal extents, but was limited for global range sizes. Randomizations tended to show larger range sizes for the real avifaunas than in the randomly selected ones. For urban core zones, the results were less clear-cut with some evidence only in favour of the European range sizes. No role of vegetation or habitat heterogeneity was found. In conclusion, while vegetation availability or heterogeneity did not show any effects, spatial position and range sizes of birds in regional assemblages seemed to influence the proportional richness of cities and their core zones. Factors correlated with spatial position (e.g., climate) might increase the attractivity of particular cities to birds. However, the effects of range sizes indicated that urbanization possibly has more negative impacts on the avifauna in the regions occupied by less widespread species

On the depth r Bernstein projector

In this paper we prove an explicit formula for the Bernstein projector to representations of depth at most r. As a consequence, we show that the depth zero Bernstein projector is supported on topologically unipotent elements and it is equal to the restriction of the character of the Steinberg representation. As another application, we deduce that the depth r Bernstein projector is stable. Moreover, for integral depths our proof is purely local.Comment: 42 pages, a grant acknowledgement is change

A categorical approach to the stable center conjecture

The stable center conjecture asserts that the space of stable distributions in the Bernstein center of a reductive p-adic is closed under convolution. It is closely related to the notion of an L-packet and endoscopy theory. We describe a categorical approach to the depth zero part of the conjecture. As an illustration of our method, we show that the Bernstein projector to the depth zero spectrum is stable.Comment: 74 pages, a grant acknowledgement is change