The Theoretical Source and Time Value of "People-centered" in the Forum of Party Building

  Author: Tsinghua University’s supreme leader, Professor Chen Mingfan, Dean of Socialism with Chinese characteristics Thought Research in New Era.

  The people-centered development thought has been fully displayed in the battles against epidemic, poverty alleviation and flood relief, showing the powerful force of the Chinese nation that is not afraid of any difficulties. Cultivating successors to the socialist cause is the meaning of the people-centered development thought. We should implement the people-centered development thought in the whole process of casting souls and educating people, guide college students to learn, believe and use, establish correct values of life through learning and practice, and strive hard on the road ahead.

  People-centered development thought is a creative application and development of Marxist mass historical view.

  Marxist view of mass history holds that the people are the main body of history. Marx and Engels pointed out: "Historical activities are the activities of the masses. With the deepening of historical activities, it will certainly expand the ranks of the masses." If the development of human society is a magnificent historical drama, then, as Marx said, the people are both "the playwright" and "the people in the drama". The Marxist principle that people create history has become an important theoretical cornerstone of historical materialism.

  In the process of leading China’s revolution and construction, Comrade Mao Zedong always regarded "serving the people wholeheartedly" as the Communist Party of China (CPC)’s purpose. Comrade Mao Zedong pointed out during the democratic revolution: "communist party’s line is the people’s line." After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, Comrade Mao Zedong pointed out that "our direction is the direction of the people, which is enshrined in the Constitution", and he also put forward the mass line of "from the masses to the masses" for the first time, which became the guiding principle for the Party to formulate and implement various policies. In the new historical period of reform and opening up, the party’s mass line has been further implemented and carried forward. Comrade Deng Xiaoping pointed out: "The mass line and the mass viewpoint are our family heirlooms." He repeatedly stressed that the people should support or not, agree or disagree, be happy or unhappy, and promise or not as the starting point and destination for formulating principles, policies and making decisions. After Socialism with Chinese characteristics entered a new era, the Supreme Leader General Secretary put forward the people-centered development thought as the guiding principle of the new development concept, so as to lead the overall situation of China’s economic and social development. General Secretary of the Supreme Leader pointed out: "The people’s yearning for a better life is our goal." The new era has put forward a series of difficult historical topics to the party. Facing the question of the times, General Secretary of the Supreme Leader pointed out: "The times are the writers, and we are the respondents.The people are the reviewers. The gains and losses of all the work of the ruling party will ultimately be judged by the people. The people-centered development thought inherits and carries forward the Communist Party of China (CPC)’s fine tradition, which is a creative application and development of Marxist mass historical view.

  The people-centered development thought has been vividly reflected in the battle against epidemic and poverty.

  The year 2020 is an extraordinary year in the history of China. The Communist Party of China (CPC) led the people of China in their arduous struggle to win the battle against epidemic, fight against poverty and fight against floods and disasters in southern China since summer, which protected people’s life safety and health and improved people’s well-being. People-centered development thought has become the main theme of these tough battles. A sudden epidemic in COVID-19 is rare in the history of human diseases because of its rapid spread, wide range of infection and great difficulty in prevention and control. The CPC Central Committee with the Supreme Leader as the core issued a battle mobilization order to the whole party and the people of the whole country: "People’s lives are more important than Mount Tai! As long as it is responsible for people’s lives, then what costs and consequences must be borne. " The Party Central Committee made precise policies, made overall arrangements, mobilized all possible manpower and resources, invested in the anti-epidemic struggle, party, government, military and civilian studies, and formed a strong joint force. The anti-disaster struggle and economic and social development were coordinated, and the losses were minimized as much as possible. China’s achievements in the fight against disasters have been praised by people all over the world, and also by unbiased people in western countries.

  When a great task falls from heaven, you must first sharpen your will. The epidemic in China is not over yet, and the flood is coming one after another. Since the beginning of summer, many places in southern China have been hit by heavy rains, and the water levels of many rivers have exceeded the warning line. The party has led the people to immediately fight against disasters and rescue. The General Secretary of the Supreme Leader made important instructions: "Require relevant departments in various regions to adhere to the people first and life first, make overall plans for epidemic prevention and control and flood control and disaster relief, adhere to the combination of preventive preparation and emergency response, strengthen flood monitoring, promptly investigate potential risks, effectively organize emergency rescue and disaster relief, properly resettle the affected people, maintain a good production and living order, and effectively put people’s lives in the first place." At present, the tough battle against epidemic and the fighting against floods and emergencies led by our party are all for the people, relying on the people and fighting the people’s war. China people have realized the importance of adhering to the Communist Party of China (CPC)’s leadership and the superiority of Socialism with Chinese characteristics system from the practice of fighting against epidemic and flood, thus inspiring their confidence and determination to realize the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. "With one heart and one mind, Mount Tai moves", there are no insurmountable tests and challenges, and there are no insurmountable difficulties and risks before the United and struggling people of China.

  This year is also the decisive year for the fight against poverty. General Secretary of the Supreme Leader pointed out: "In the past 70 years, the people of China have worked hard and created ‘ When the world is shocked ’ The development achievements, the problem of absolute poverty that has plagued the Chinese nation for thousands of years is about to come to a historic end and write a great legend in the history of human development! " The elimination of absolute poverty indicates that China has built a well-off society in an all-round way. Eliminating poverty is a global problem faced by many countries in the world today. Some countries are stuck in the vicious circle of poverty for a long time and fall into the "poverty trap" mentioned by development economics. China is the largest developing country in the world and one of the poorest countries in the world before liberation. Today’s China has lifted more than 800 million people out of poverty. Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the scale of poverty reduction has been over 10 million every year, and China’s contribution rate to global poverty reduction is over 70%, which has written a brilliant chapter in the history of human anti-poverty struggle. China has contributed effective experiences and programs to the cause of poverty reduction in the world, which has been praised by people all over the world. People-centered is the guiding ideology for China to win the battle against poverty. The General Secretary of the Supreme Leader pointed out: "Those who travel a hundred miles are half-ninety. The more critical they are, the more determined they must be to win, and the more determined they must be to attack the city and pull out the village. As long as all localities and departments earnestly shoulder their responsibilities and work hard, as long as the broad masses of cadres and people in poverty-stricken areas continue to forge ahead and work hard,As long as the whole party and the people of all ethnic groups in the country unite as one, stick to their goals and work hard, they will certainly win the tough battle of getting rid of poverty as scheduled. "Building a well-off society in an all-round way is only a staged victory in the long March of China’s socialist modernization. We have to get rid of absolute poverty step by step, so that all the people in the country can live a rich and beautiful life and realize their yearning for a better life step by step. This is the core implication of people-centered development thought.

  Cultivating successors to the socialist cause is the meaning of people-centered development thought.

  People are made up of individual people, which have continuity from generation to generation, and can only be passed down from generation to generation. Contemporary college students are about to take up their jobs one after another and become the backbone talents in all fronts. The Chinese dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation will come true in the hands of their generation. What doctrine they believe in and what road they take are related to the future and destiny of the future country. Therefore, it is urgent to educate college students’ ideals and beliefs. We should carry out the people-centered development thought in the whole process of cultivating people, and give priority to solving the problem of why people are, from entrance education, all-round cultivation of morality, intelligence and physique, social practice to employment guidance. Ideological and political courses in colleges and universities should play a leading role in the process of casting souls and educating people, and guide college students to establish the life value concept of serving the people wholeheartedly. The General Secretary of the Supreme Leader pointed out: "Youth’s life goals will be different, and their career choices will be different, but only by integrating their own ego into the big ego of the motherland and the big ego of the people, keeping pace with the times and sharing the destiny with the people can we better realize the value of life and sublimate the realm of life." Correctly understanding and handling the dialectical relationship between ego and ego is the core connotation of establishing correct life values.

  To guide college students to establish correct values of life, we must first guide them to master Marxist scientific theory. The characteristics and advantages of college students are that they believe in science and don’t like empty preaching. Marxist historical materialism is based on science. The view that the masses are the creators of history is one of the core essences of historical materialism, which scientifically answers the motive force of human historical development, thus explaining the similarities and differences between the laws of human social development and the laws of natural development. Both of them are objective, but promoting social progress depends on the subjective initiative of the masses, so respecting the initiative of the masses is the principled position of Marxism. After college students go to work, they must master and practice this scientific truth, closely link their own destiny with the destiny of the people, and show the brilliance of life value in the cause of serving the people. At present, the ideological and political courses offered in colleges and universities, such as an introduction to the basic principles of Marxism, an introduction to the theoretical system of Mao Zedong Thought and Socialism with Chinese characteristics, an outline of China’s modern history, ideological and moral cultivation and legal basis, all contain the contents of Marxist historical materialism, and the people-centered development thought should be integrated into them and internalized into the ideals and beliefs of college students.

  The power of role models is infinite. College students always choose the people they admire as their idols in the process of growing up, as a driving force and a benchmark for pushing themselves forward. We should give full play to the power of example in educating college students on life values that serve the people. Generations of great men emerged in the historical process of China’s revolution and construction set a shining example for college students to be loyal to, rely on and benefit the people, and heroic model figures emerged in various periods and fronts also set an example for young students to learn from. Their thoughts and achievements are of educational significance to young students’ determination to cast their souls. In a word, instilling scientific theories in the process of casting souls to educate people will help to improve students’ rational understanding, and using the power of examples will help to enhance students’ perceptual understanding, and on this basis, Huawei’s rational understanding will be improved. Only by organically combining the two can we achieve the effectiveness of ideal and belief education.

Controversy over the development and application of generative artificial intelligence is it compliant to constantly "feed" personal paintings to AI big models?

Beijing, China, December 6 (Reporter Zhou Yifan, Voice of China, General Station) According to the report of Voice of China, the Central Radio and Television General Station, recently, four painting creators sued the main company of the social platform Xiaohongshu and the main company of Xiaohongshu Trik software to the court, which caused concern. In the first half of this year, Xiaohongshu launched Trik, an AI painting picture generation model. Some fans found that the pictures, painting styles and some elements updated by Trik account were similar to the works of some painters.
Painters believe that Xiaohongshu is suspected of using their works to provide AI models for learning and generating highly similar works, which infringes on the legitimate rights and interests of the creators, so he sued the court. Since the release of ChatGPT, there have been disputes about the development and application of generative artificial intelligence. Should the data "fed" to the AI big model meet certain specifications? Does the expressive content it generates constitute infringement?
Recently, four painters sued Xiaohongshu main company Xingyin Information Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. and Xiaohongshu Trik software main company Ipsilong Information Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd. respectively, on the grounds that Xiaohongshu was suspected of infringing the copyrights of four painters.
In an interview with Voice of China, the painter "Genuine Youth Tuanzi" said that he found the suspected infringement in August this year. "In August this year, friends who painted and fans on my little red book told me in private that I found some pictures very similar to my works, so I went to the relevant notes and found that these pictures were all generated by the AI ​ ​ of Little Red Book. After discovering this, I released Weibo to defend my rights, and also posted a message on the platform of Little Red Book that I would stop updating to resist the infringement of Little Red Book AI."
Trik is suspected of infringing the works of Youth League members (1)
Trik is suspected of infringing the works of Youth League members (Part II)
Painter’s "Genuine Youth Tuanzi" Works
According to public reports, Xiaohongshu launched an AI painting creation application called "Trik" in the first half of this year. After users upload any photos, they can generate artistic paintings with one click, and the pictures questioned by painters are from this application.
Another painter, "It’s Snow Fish", stopped updating his official account of Little Red Book on August 10th this year, and wrote in the statement: Because the official of Little Red Book "feeds" AI his paintings without permission, and the overlord clause in the user agreement, he will not publish his works on the platform of Little Red Book from now on. Many of Xue Yu’s creative inspirations come from China’s ancient fairy tales. In contrast pictures, he shows the similarities between them. For example, in the theme of Kuafu’s Day by Day, Xue Yu shows Kuafu’s persistence in chasing the sun, visualizing these emotions of fear and fatigue into the image of a beast; The image of "wolf" appears in the picture generated by Trik, the AI software of Xiaohongshu. Xueyu believes that Trik is not "generative learning" in essence, but splitting and reorganizing his pictures. In the explanation of Qing Tuanzi, it is also pointed out that the color matching elements and picture styles are highly similar.
Comparison between Trik’s Works and the painter’s "It’s Snow Fish"
Snowfish issued a stop statement in Xiaohongshu in August this year.
Qing Tuanzi said: "From a painter’s point of view, I think the pictures it produces are a disguised version of the manuscript, including the brushes I use in my paintings and the detailed ways of depicting flowers, which are all created by myself and have personal marks. But you can see the shadow of this work in his paintings. "
Qing Tuanzi believes that the formation of painting style is the condensation of personal wisdom and needs the efforts of creators. Learning AI big model "indiscriminately" will reduce the space for human creative development. "If you just say plagiarism between paintings, there are also relevant laws and regulations in law. I think a painter must take time to form his own style, even if you learn from other people’s styles, it will take time. However, AI can produce such homogenized pictures in large quantities, which is actually compressing the creative space of the original author in disguise. "
In the written reply to Voice of China, the painter "the clouds are light and the wind is light" said that after the case was filed, Xiaohongshu hoped to negotiate with the painters, but everyone agreed not to accept mediation, hoping that this case could become a reference case when AI drawings and creators had copyright disputes.
The contrast picture released by the painter Yun Danfeng is generated by Trik on the left and the artist’s work on the right.
The contrast picture released by the painter Yun Danfeng is generated by Trik on the left and the artist’s work on the right.
Qing Tuanzi said: "Our main appeal through legal channels is definitely to stop the infringement. At the same time, we hope that through this case, everyone will pay attention to the infringement of the AI ​ ​ model base. AI, like processing things in a factory, is generated in batches. However, painting actually does not require one-click creation. When learning or copying a style becomes very simple, no one wants to spend any more time creating new styles. "
As for the specific circumstances of the case, the reporter also got in touch with Xiaohongshu. The other party said that it is inconvenient to release more information because it has entered the judicial process.
The essence of generative AI is to generate new data with specific characteristics or attributes by learning and analyzing a large amount of data. Should the data "fed" to the AI model meet certain specifications? In April this year, the National Internet Information Office issued the Administrative Measures for Generative Artificial Intelligence Services (Draft for Comment). In July 2023, the Interim Measures for the Management of Generative Artificial Intelligence Services was released.
Zhao Zhanling, a researcher at the Intellectual Property Center of China University of Political Science and Law, believes that the identification of "substantial similarity" will be the key in the case of four painters suing Xiaohongshu main company and Xiaohongshu Trik software main company. "Regarding the Measures for the Administration of Generative Artificial Intelligence Services (Draft for Comment), there is a provision that the data activities of this pre-training and optimization training shall comply with the following provisions, one of which is that those involving intellectual property rights shall not infringe upon the intellectual property rights enjoyed by others according to law. However, there is no clear regulation on whether the act of using other people’s paintings as a database for pre-training or training involves intellectual property rights. If we say that the generated result itself is substantially similar to that of others, this undoubtedly constitutes infringement. However, if we say that the results generated by AI are not substantially similar to other people’s works in the legal sense, is it ok to only use paintings as the material for the’ feeding’ big model? The management method is not clear. Therefore, the key lies in whether the generated result itself is substantially similar to other people’s works. "
Bao Ran, deputy secretary-general of Zhongguancun Modern Information Consumption Application Industry Technology Alliance, said that with the development of AI technology, similar disputes and lawsuits are bound to appear one after another, and both the industry and the law should answer the above questions.
Bao Ran said: "The new wave of technology represented by generative artificial intelligence is based on deep learning and neural network technology, based on the framework of transformer, and then training the model of generative artificial intelligence in the form of massive feeding of artificial corpus. In this field, at present, in fact, there has always been a question whether the relevant corpus used to train the generative artificial intelligence model involves infringement. Many basic concepts and technical principles of this emerging technical tool, technical means and algorithm are still unclear to most people. At present, there are many gaps, so we understand that this field must be a high-risk area for litigation and disputes for a long time. "
From the perspective of legal norms, it is also necessary to further formulate detailed rules around industry development and social consensus in the future. Yu Yamin, an intellectual property legal expert, believes that promoting the development of emerging technologies is as important as earnestly safeguarding legitimate rights and interests. "Some time ago, in the first case of AI generating copyright in related fields of pictures, there was a view that I agreed with the artificial intelligence model: it was actually just a tool for human creation. From this perspective, the works in this case can be attributed to the category of fine arts. However, this is actually different from the mode of copyright infringement. The traditional copyright infringement is that the alleged infringer uses the relevant works without authorization. In the creative environment of artificial intelligence model, AI actually uses other people’s works to form a new picture and work through re-processing or derivation, and the similarity comparison between the newly generated works and the works of the original works owners, as well as the process of artificial intelligence synthesis, should be regulated by corresponding rules, and we also look forward to the improvement of relevant laws. "
According to the reporter’s understanding, the case of four painters suing Xiaohongshu main company and Xiaohongshu Trik software main company has been filed, and the voice of China will continue to pay attention to the follow-up progress.
Reporting/feedback

The Chinese ambassador to Japan lodged a solemn protest with the Japanese government over the discharge of nuclear polluted water from Fukushima.

  Xinhua News Agency, Tokyo, August 24th-China’s ambassador to Japan, Wu Jianghao, lodged a solemn protest with Japan’s Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Masayoshi Okano on the 24th, regarding Japan’s launching of the Fukushima nuclear polluted water discharge into the sea.

  Wu Jianghao said that today, Japan ignored strong doubts and opposition at home and abroad, shifted the risk of nuclear pollution to neighboring countries including China and the international community, put its own self-interest above the long-term well-being of people in the region and around the world, put the global marine environment and the health of all mankind as a dangerous bet, and insisted on officially launching the Fukushima nuclear pollution water discharge. China resolutely opposed this and once again lodged a solemn protest with Japan, demanding that Japan immediately stop this extremely selfish and irresponsible behavior.

  Wu Jianghao pointed out that the Fukushima nuclear accident is one of the most serious nuclear accidents in the world so far, causing a large amount of radioactive materials to leak. There is no precedent in the world to deal with it by discharging the sea, and there is still a lack of technology that has been tested by science and practice and proved to be "safe and harmless". Without fully demonstrating the long-term safety and reliability of the existing sea-discharging technology, gaining extensive understanding from all stakeholders, and establishing a complete international supervision and compensation mechanism, Japan insists on forcibly starting sea-discharging, which contains huge risks and unpredictable hazards.

  Wu Jianghao emphasized that the ocean is the blue home on which all mankind depends, and all countries have the obligation of international law to protect and preserve the marine environment. Japan has no right to decide to dump nuclear polluted water into the sea without authorization, and must bear full responsibility for the consequences caused by it. China seriously urges Japan to immediately stop discharging the sea, communicate honestly with its neighboring countries in a responsible manner, accept strict supervision by the international community, and effectively dispose of nuclear polluted water in a scientific, safe and transparent way. If Japan insists on doing it, it will bear long-term moral and legal responsibilities.

  Wu Jianghao pointed out that’s exclusion from the sea has aroused strong concerns of Japanese consumers about food safety. China government has always adhered to the people first, and must resolutely respond to people’s concerns and safeguard the marine environment, food safety and public health. It is natural and necessary for the China government to announce a total suspension of the import of Japanese aquatic products. The responsibility for this situation lies entirely with the Japanese side, which should reflect on itself.

"AI Loli" came back after Peking University was born in 1995. She won eight top papers at a time, and now Dharma Institute has opened up seven NLP models.

Original attention to frontier science and technology qubit

Mengchen Bowen is from Aofei Temple.

Quantum bit report | WeChat official account QbitAI

There was once a master student of Peking University who won eight papers in ACL of the International Summit at one time during his school days, two of which were one work, and also boarded a hot search in Zhihu.

After that hot search, this "big paper writer" seems to have gradually disappeared.

Today, she came back with AliceMind, a deep language model system of Ali Dharma Institute.

Luo Fuli, who is called "AI Loli" by the outside world, is responsible for the open source of seven models in AliceMind.

Her experience is a bit legendary.

I didn’t have much contact with computers before I went to college, but I stumbled into the computer major of Beijing Normal University by mistake.

When I first entered school, I jumped to the top one or two by hard work because I didn’t have the bottom of basic grades.

In my junior year, I entered the Language Computing Laboratory of Peking University as an intern, chose NLP as my research direction, taught myself Python within three months and submitted a top-level paper (not a work).

Bao Yan entered Peking University, and his master’s degree published more than 20 papers at international summit in two years.

However, unexpectedly, she did not choose to continue her doctoral studies, but joined the Ali Dharma Institute after graduation in 2020, hoping to do some practical research.

In the two years since she entered the industry, the number of papers she sent has obviously decreased.

When reading, the surrounding evaluation mechanism is very concerned about the number of your papers. But when it comes to industry, I don’t pursue quantity now, but mainly pursue whether this work is really valuable and influential in this field.

She led the development of cross-language pre-training model VECO in Dharma Institute, and became one of the eight models of AliceMind. This time, AliceMind opened the source collectively, and she provoked the beam.

Simple is the best.

Luo Fuli worked in the industry this year, compared with when she was in academia, her mentality has changed a lot:

When I was in school, I always tried to put forward a very complicated model, which everyone couldn’t understand and the paper reviewers couldn’t understand, but when I got to the industry, I would find that the model that was understandable and effective at a glance was the best.

This is also the thinking of the deep language model team of Dharma Institute where she works. The eight AliceMind models they created have successively reached the top of the six NLP authoritative lists of GLUE, CLUE, XTREME, VQA Challenge, DocVQA and MS MARCO.

The meaning of Alice in AliceMind is actually very simple, that is, Alibaba’s collection of encoder-decoders.

The models are as simple as this name, all of which are based on the actual business needs and are innovated and improved on the basis of Encoder-decoder.

StructBERT, a general language model, adds two new objective functions at word level and sentence level on the basis of BERT, which is equivalent to letting AI master the ability of "reading Chinese characters in sequence without affecting".

This is because the team found in Ali’s business that users often have incorrect grammar and word order when using scenes easily such as e-commerce and entertainment products.

This requires the language model to accurately understand and give correct expressions and responses when faced with words with disordered word order and irregular grammar.

AliceMind has just topped the multimodal authority list VQA Challenge 2021 again.

The competition task of VQA Challenge is similar to picture-looking question and answer. Given an image and natural language questions about the image, AI needs to provide accurate natural language answers.

In this regard, AliceMind’s multi-modal model StructVBERT, based on the general model StructBERT, introduces both text and image modes.

Using more efficient visual features and innovative cross-attention mechanism, joint modeling is carried out in a unified multimodal semantic space.

In addition to cross-modal, VECO, a cross-language model led by Luo Fuli, was also hired by ACL2021.

The cross-attention mechanism is also introduced into VECO, which changes the instability of automatic modeling of cross-language information in the hidden layer in the past, but completes it explicitly.

Another innovation of VECO is to fully learn the tasks for language understanding (NLU) and generation (NLG) during the pre-training, and let them learn from each other and improve each other.

Now Luo Fuli reviews the work of VECO, and there are also some regrets:

If I was in school two years ago, I would think it was so simple. I could add a lot of fancy skills. However, in order to consider the universality of the architecture in different business scenarios, the industry has to sacrifice some complicated and interesting model designs.

PALM, the generative language model in AliceMind, changes the pre-training goal from reconstructing the input text to predicting the subsequent text.

Such a change makes the model understand the input text more deeply, and achieves better results in questions and answers generation, text retelling, reply generation, text summarization and other tasks.

There are also StructuralLM, machine reading comprehension model UED and knowledge-driven language model LatticeBERT, all of which have made obvious advantages in their respective fields.

In addition to the seven models of this open source, AliceMind also includes a very large-scale unified model PLUG for Chinese understanding and generation.

The models in AliceMind seem to have a common feature, that is, they are good at "cross-border".

From cross-language and cross-modal to the unification of language understanding and generation, different inputs are modeled in a larger coding space based on Transformer architecture.

Luo Fuli added:

AliceMind’s solution of using Transformer as a unified model architecture is mature, but to achieve better "cross-border", the next direction of efforts is to solve the problem of deep integration and matching of different types or granularity inputs.

Expanding models with diverse abilities from the basic model and combining them in practical business make AliceMind the most comprehensive deep language model system in the industry.

So where did AliceMind go?

Landing is a systematic project.

AliceMind has been launched on the NLP platform inside Ali, which can be used by different departments.

Demo is also provided on the official website, such as this language generation module based on PLUG model.

Enter excerpts from Dream of Red Mansions:

You can generate a continuation:

And there are dozens of Demo like this for everyone to try out.

However, these services on official website are not all supported by AliceMind, and many of them are just small models inspired by this system.

So where are the cores of this open source currently working?

The most widely used is e-commerce.

In particular, Alibaba International Business Unit (ICBU) or a department with cross-border e-commerce business like AliExpress is the direct beneficiary of the multilingual model VECO.

VECO is one of the eight models in AliceMind system, which is used for multi-language understanding and cross-language text embedding and classification, and has mastered more than 100 languages.

Ali’s internal translation platform based on AliceMind is called about 1 billion times a day, creating hundreds of millions of dollars of international cross-border trade and other international business business value.

As Huang Songfang, the head of the deep language model team of Dharma Institute, said, "Language model landing is a systematic project":

The language model is completed on the platform from training, fine-tuning to distillation and compression, to the whole deployment and online. After online, it is connected with the business system and can be directly embedded in their business logic and business system.

AliceMind’s contribution is also found in the more familiar Taobao photo-taking and Tmall Elf smart speakers.

At present, AliceMind has landed in dozens of core businesses in Ali, with an average of 5 billion calls per day and more than 200 active scenes.

In addition to Ali, AliceMind has also contributed a lot to the medical field, especially cancer treatment.

As a deep learning language model system with autonomous learning ability, AliceMind will have a rearrangement mechanism when it is applied to search engines.

Aiming at a specific kind of medical literature, AliceMind will make a series of relevant texts after rough arrangement, and then combine the information such as article type and citation map again to rearrange them constantly.

At the same time, the extracted information is fused with the known structured knowledge to build a knowledge system, and finally the highest quality clinical literature is obtained.

In the recent international evaluation of precision medicine attended by 16 world-renowned teams, with this precision medicine search engine, Ali team won the first place in two clinical evidence quality evaluations:

Such a high-precision professional medical search engine can provide high-quality clinical decision-making assistance for clinicians when treating diseases.

AliceMind also appears in the legal field.

The Higher People’s Court of Zhejiang Province cooperated with Dharma Institute to realize the intelligent trial system of the whole process from filing a case to the generation of judgment documents.

In this pilot unit, AI’s sharing of the workload of judges has increased the rate of sentencing in court to 90%, and the time for closing the case has also been shortened from an average of 40 days to 50 minutes.

At present, the daily cumulative call volume of AliNLP platform based on AliceMind exceeds trillions, and it is used by more than 1,000 business parties every day.

E-commerce, education, medical care, energy, communication, law, content search, urban brain … More and more fields have become more convenient and smarter with the participation of AliceMind.

What to do after open source?

At present, the pre-training language model is very popular in NLP field and the whole learning field, and the model of super-large-scale parameters has become a trend.

In this regard, Huang Songfang, the head of the deep language model team of Dharma Institute and the general manager of AliceMind, said:

In fact, our side will not blindly pursue greatness, but will place great emphasis on its landing.

From research and development to practical application, a language model can’t be done by an enterprise.

It is also necessary for the developers of the whole community to participate, so that it is possible to apply the formula algorithm in academic papers to everyone’s convenience.

Dharma Institute hopes that through open source, it can lower the threshold of research and innovative application in the industry and make the language AI enter the era of big industry.

Next, AliceMind intends to strengthen cooperation with interdisciplinary units such as linguistics and neuroscience, and expand the language AI into larger applications.

Open source address:

https://github.com/alibaba/AliceMind

AliceMind official website:

https://nlp.aliyun.com/portal#/alice

Related papers:

General pre-training model StructBERT;

https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.04577

Multilingual pre-training model VECO;

https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.16046

Production pre-training model PALM;

https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.07159

Multimodal pre-training model E2E-VLP;

https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.01804

Structured pre-training model StructuralLM;

https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.11210

Reading comprehension model:

https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/AAAI/article/view/16584

Lattice-BERT, a pre-training model integrating knowledge;

https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.07204

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Original title: "AI Loli" came back after Peking University was born in 1995. She won eight top papers at a time, and now she is open to seven NLP models in Dharma Institute. "

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Three-minute quick view of "News Network" 2019.12.02

News of current affairs

  1| The Supreme Leader and the Russian President made a video connection to witness the ventilation ceremony for the commissioning of the East China-Russia natural gas pipeline.

  2| Supreme Leader Meets Secretary of Russian Federation Security Council.

  3| Li Keqiang telephoned the President of the European Commission.

  4| Li Keqiang made important instructions on carrying out the pilot reform of "separating licenses from licenses" in the Pilot Free Trade Zone, stressing that it is necessary to continuously promote the construction of a market-oriented, rule-based and international business environment, and promote the start-up and development of more new enterprises.

  5| Han Zheng attended a teleconference on training and deployment of the pilot project of "separation of licenses" and delivered a speech.

  Theme Education of "Do not forget your initiative mind, Remember Mission"

  Issue a notice | Recently, the Central Leading Group for Education on the Theme of "Do not forget your initiative mind, Keep Your Mission in Mind" issued the Notice on Rectifying the Problems of "Achievement Project" and "Face Project" such as the excessive landscape lighting project.

  The Fourth Plenary Session of the Nineteenth Central Committee

  Preach | In order to better study and implement the spirit of the Fourth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee, Guangdong, Chongqing, Qinghai, Shaanxi and other places have carried out various publicity activities for the grassroots and combined with reality.

  "A large-scale achievement exhibition to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the founding of People’s Republic of China (PRC)"

  Online and offline heat is not reduced | "Great course and brilliant achievements — — More than two months after the opening of the large-scale achievement exhibition to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the founding of People’s Republic of China (PRC), the enthusiasm of all walks of life to watch the exhibition has continued unabated, with the number of on-site visitors exceeding 2 million and the number of online exhibition halls exceeding 100 million.

  Walking at the grassroots level to see "six stabilities"

  Open and win-win | Under the background that the global economy is still facing great downward pressure, China has further expanded its opening up, injected new vitality into the world economy, and constantly optimized its business environment, attracting more and more foreign investors to achieve win-win cooperation with China.

  "model of the times"

  Zhu Youyong | The Propaganda Department of the CPC Central Committee awarded Zhu Youyong the title of "Model of the Times" today (2nd). Zhu Youyong is an academician of China Academy of Engineering and a famous expert in plant pathology in China. He actively participated in the cause of poverty alleviation and took root in poverty alleviation in Lancang Lahu Autonomous County, Yunnan Province.

The so-called "Hong Kong Bill of Rights and Democracy" was signed into law.

  Sanctions | A spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced at a regular press conference today (2nd) that the China administration has decided to suspend the examination and approval of applications for US warships to go to Hong Kong for rest with immediate effect, and at the same time, impose sanctions on non-governmental organizations such as the National Foundation for Democracy, which performed badly in the storm of amending laws in Hong Kong.

  Views from all walks of life in Hong Kong | People from all walks of life in Hong Kong have said in recent days that the US signed the so-called "Hong Kong Bill of Rights and Democracy" into law in an attempt to interfere in Hong Kong affairs to contain China’s development, which is doomed to failure.

  Comments | The People’s Daily, which will be published tomorrow (3rd), will publish a commentator’s article entitled "It is wishful thinking to use Hong Kong as an anti-China tool, and playing the" Hong Kong card "will not succeed". Xinhua News Agency today (2nd) broadcast a commentator’s article entitled "The US attempt to control China by messing with Hong Kong is doomed to failure". Today (2nd), our station published the international critical review "Hong Kong is quite unpopular".

  economic data

  China Logistics Industry Prosperity Index | In November, the prosperity index of China’s logistics industry was 58.9%, up 4.7 percentage points from last month. Industries such as express delivery, warehousing, railway transportation and road transportation continue to remain active.

  "National Traffic Safety Day"

  Keep the rules and eliminate hidden dangers | Today (2nd) is the eighth traffic safety day in China. Traffic police departments in Beijing, Chongqing, Guangxi, Zhejiang and other places have carried out various interactive activities such as VR simulation experience of drunk driving and vehicle collision test around the theme of "obeying rules and eliminating hidden dangers, and traveling safely and civilized".

sports news

  China has won many international competitions | In the 2019 ITTF Men’s World Cup final, Fan Zhendong defeated Japanese player Zhang Benzhihe 4-2 and successfully defended her title. In the men’s online individual final of the 34th World Trampoline Championships, Gao Lei won four consecutive championships with a total score of 61.705. China’s men’s relay team won the men’s 5000-meter relay in the short track speed skating World Cup in Nagoya.

  home news

  Hainan Island International Film Festival | The 2nd Hainan Island International Film Festival opened in Sanya on the evening of 2nd. In the special session to pay tribute to the 70th anniversary of the founding of New China at the opening ceremony, 12 filmmakers reviewed the development of New China with excellent films from various eras since the founding of the Republic.

  international news

  Declaration on Women’s Rights and Interests | The recently concluded United Nations Asia-Pacific Women’s Rights Review Conference in Bangkok adopted the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration — — Asia-Pacific Ministerial Declaration on Promoting Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment.

  Intervention | The Syrian Arab News Agency reported on the 1st that the Syrian Foreign Ministry issued a statement on the same day, accusing the United States of trying to interfere in the work of the Syrian Constitutional Council, interfering in Syria’s internal affairs and trying to impose the US agenda on others.

  Sanctions issues | Larijani, Speaker of the Iranian Parliament, said on the 1st that Iran has always insisted on working with the United States to solve the problems related to US sanctions against Iraq, and the door has not been closed.

  Russian over-the-horizon radar station | On the 1st, the first "container" over-the-horizon radar station of the Russian Air Force officially entered the combat duty in the Republic of Moldova in western Russia.

Shooting case | On the 1st, a shooting incident occurred in two places in the United States. Four people, including the gunman, were killed and 10 others were injured. According to statistics, since the beginning of this year, the number of people killed by gun violence in the United States has approached 36,000.

"Agent Carter" joins Winnie the Pooh Live Edition and McGregor Group CP

Hayley atwell will join Disney’s "Winnie the Pooh" live-action movie


1905 movie network news Hayley atwell, the "special agent" in the film, will join the Disney "Winnie the Pooh" live-action movie Christopher Robin, and will play the wife of the actor Christopher Robin, and form a CP with ewan mcgregor, who has previously announced his joining.

British actor hayley atwell has a deep relationship with Disney. After playing peggy carter in Marvel Comics’s Captain America, he also starred in the derivative drama "Agent Carter" jointly launched by Marvel TV and ABC TV. In addition, she also played the role of Cinderella’s biological mother in the 2015 live-action version.

 

It is reported that the "Winnie the Pooh" live-action movie will focus on the adult story of Winnie the Pooh owner Christopher Robin. When he grew up, Robin became a successful businessman, and work was more important to him than his wife and daughter. Faced with the pressure of life, Robin gradually lost his childhood imagination. At this time, Winnie the Pooh, Pig, Tigger and other "good friends" returned to his life, hoping to help him find the "hundred acres of forest". Robin will therefore make a choice and balance between real life and childhood playmates.

 

The film’s current production team can be described as extraordinary strength. Marc forster, who once filmed "Living in My Writing" and "Living in My Writing", will be the director. The screenplay was co-written by screenwriter tom mccarthy and screenwriter Eric Schnord. The specific release date has not yet been determined.

China’s energy structure is further optimized, and the reserve system plays the role of coal security.

CCTV News:The reporter learned from the China Coal Industry Association that in the first quarter of this year, while China’s electricity consumption was increasing, coal-fired power generation declined, the proportion of new energy power generation further increased, and China’s energy structure was further optimized.

The data shows that in March, China’s raw coal output above designated size was 400 million tons, down 4.2% year-on-year. In the first quarter, the output of raw coal above designated size in China was 1.11 billion tons, down by 47 million tons or 4.1% year-on-year. At the same time, the power generation of renewable energy has steadily increased. In the first quarter, the national renewable energy power generation reached 687.5 billion kWh, accounting for about 30.7% of the total power generation. Among them, the photovoltaic power generation of wind power reached 425.3 billion kWh, a year-on-year increase of 25%.

China will establish a coal capacity reserve system.

New energy power generation has the characteristics of seasonality and fluctuation. While the proportion of new energy power generation in China is increasing, in order to ensure the safety of power grid and make coal-fired power enterprises have more flexible channels to use coal, China recently issued the "Implementation Opinions on Establishing Coal Capacity Reserve System" (hereinafter referred to as "Implementation Opinions"), which can be used and issued when thermal power needs coal.

The reporter in this newly-built coal reserve base in Tai ‘an, Shandong Province saw that after the coal transported from the coal-producing area by railway is reserved here, it can be sent to the surrounding power plants and coal-consuming enterprises by road and water transport, and when there is an energy gap nearby, the reserve coal can be mobilized to realize the elastic supply of coal. At present, five thousand-ton berths and 23.4 kilometers of special railway lines have been built here. At the same time, it has the capacity of storing 500,000 tons of coal, and the annual cargo throughput can reach 32 million tons.

In the "Implementation Opinions", it is proposed that by 2027, China will initially establish a coal capacity reserve system, and approve the construction of a number of coal mine projects with capacity reserves in an orderly manner to form a certain scale of schedulable capacity reserve. By 2030, the capacity reserve system will be more perfect, the capacity management system will be more perfect, and efforts will be made to form a schedulable capacity reserve of about 300 million tons/year.

The proportion of less intelligent mines in China will further increase.

Safety production is the premise and guarantee of the development of coal industry, and it is also the focus of coal mine construction and transformation in recent years. Less people and intelligent mines related to safety production have become the development trend of coal industry.

Recently, the State Administration of Mine Safety and other seven departments issued "Guiding Opinions on Deepening the Intelligent Construction of Mines to Promote the Safe Development of Mines", pointing out that by 2026, China will establish a complete mine intelligent standard system, which can intelligently warn against major disasters. The intelligent production capacity of coal mines in China accounts for no less than 60%, and the replacement rates of intelligent equipment or robots for dangerous and heavy jobs in coal mines and non-coal mines are not less than 30% and 20% respectively, and the number of underground personnel in mines nationwide will be reduced by more than 10%. By 2030, the intrinsic safety level of mines will be greatly improved.

In Inner Mongolia, an open-pit coal mine with an annual output of 35 million tons, the first unmanned pure electric mine truck transportation system in China is under intense operation. Compared with the traditional manual driving mode, it can improve the mine efficiency and realize less people’s work.

This coal deep processing enterprise in Shaanxi recently upgraded its intelligent factory system, in which the intelligent monitoring system can monitor the state, temperature, pressure and vibration of key equipment in real time and give an alarm in real time when abnormal working conditions occur. In addition, the company also deployed a large number of auxiliary robots to assist the staff in production on the spot, achieving safe and efficient production operations with fewer people.

The security situation has deteriorated, and Afghan government forces have fought fiercely with the Taliban in many places.

  Since the United States and NATO began to withdraw their troops from Afghanistan on May 1, the Taliban have stepped up their offensive in Afghanistan, fought fiercely with government forces and captured many areas, including areas bordering some Central Asian countries in the north. On the 9th local time, fierce fighting between the Taliban and Afghan government forces continued in many areas. The Afghan Defense Ministry said on the 9th that in the past 24 hours, Afghan security forces clashed with the Taliban in more than a dozen provinces, killing 131 people and injuring 99 Taliban members.

  Recently, the situation in the northern provinces of Afghanistan has been particularly turbulent. In the past few days, the Taliban have continued to attack Fort Nau, the capital of Badghis province, in an attempt to occupy the city. Fort Nau is located in the northwest of Afghanistan, adjacent to Turkmenistan. On the 9th local time, the Afghan Ministry of Defence said that the government forces had repelled the Taliban and regained "complete control" of Fort Nau. In the battle, 69 Taliban militants were killed by the government forces. According to Al Jazeera, many other areas in Badghis province are still under Taliban control.

   Taliban captured several border crossings in Afghanistan.

  In addition, on the 9th local time, the Taliban announced that it had "completely captured" Turagondi, the border crossing between Afghanistan and Turkmenistan. A spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry said that government forces are trying to recapture this port. According to Iranian media reports on the 9th, the Taliban have taken control of two border crossings between Afghanistan and Iran.

  Up to now, the Taliban have seized several border crossings in Afghanistan, which border Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Iran respectively.

   The Taliban attacked Kandahar, a major southern city.

  On the 9th, Sputnik news agency & radio quoted a source as saying that Taliban forces also invaded Kandahar city, the capital of Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan, and fought fiercely with government forces. Rukhulla Kanzada, Governor of Kandahar Province, said that the government forces have controlled the situation and the Taliban forces are withdrawing.

Western media exposed Putin’s "health secrets": love sports, eat healthy, quit smoking and alcohol.

  [Global Network Reporter Wang Boyaqi] "The 66-year-old Russian leader looks better than he did 10 years ago." On 26th, El Mundo, a Spanish newspaper, commented on Russian President Vladimir Putin and analyzed the reasons for his good health. Le Monde concluded that Putin’s long-term health can be attributed to three points: loving sports, eating healthy, and giving up smoking and alcohol.

  Black leather coat, sidecar motorcycle — — On the 26th, El Mundo, a newspaper in Spain, started with a photo of Putin’s recent motorcycle appearance in Crimea, and discussed how Putin can maintain his "young" appearance.

  "Russia Today" (RT) quoted this article as saying that Putin said, "The 66-year-old Russian leader looks better than he did 10 years ago." Then, from the perspective of sports, the article comments on Putin and says, "This is a president who is best at sports in the Kremlin. He likes hockey, swimming and hiking, and he also won the judo competition."

  El Mundo said that Putin’s ex-wife lyudmila had revealed that Putin often went to gyms and swimming pools in the morning after simply dealing with some urgent matters. Usually, after the day’s training, Putin will enter two small pools: one of them has a water temperature of about 43℃, while the other has a temperature of only 13℃.

  The article also said that through the Russian media, we learned about every activity of Putin during his vacation in Tuva: fishing, diving, riding bareback and swimming in cold water … … This gives the outside world an impression — — Putin’s figure has always been good.

  In addition to insisting on exercise, Putin also has his own set of standards for his dietary nutrition intake. According to the article, Putin likes to eat rice and wheat, and tends to eat cheese, omelets, quail eggs and other foods for breakfast.

  In addition, the report also said that Putin liked martial arts since he was a child, and it was precisely because of this enthusiasm that he stayed away from bad habits such as smoking and drinking.

  Of course, Putin’s "staying young" is also related to his clothing style. The article reveals that the Russian president prefers Italian clothing brands, and even sports cannot be an excuse for him to "disregard the image" — — According to Esquire magazine, Putin once wore a $3,000 dress during exercise.

  Finally, El Mundo concluded that the secret of Putin’s "staying young forever" can be regarded as abstinence from alcohol, persistent exercise, balanced diet and "occasionally swimming in cold water".

Medical history-Proteus syndrome: medical exploration behind "elephant man" deformity

In 1980, The Elephant Man, a drama film directed by david lynch, was widely praised in the United States, which set off a wave of research and discussion on the elephant man. The film tells a heartwarming story of the Victorian era. At the exhibition, Frederick Treves, a doctor in London Hospital, found Joseph Merrick, a seriously deformed elephant man. He was deeply touched and selflessly brought him to the hospital for medical treatment and life relief, thus changing the life track of the elephant man. It was also the treatment of Dr. Treves that started the medical research of "Elephant Man" that has been going on since the 1980s. With the development of medical technology, the deepening of medical exploration and the emergence of more similar patients, this medical problem that has plagued the medical community for more than a hundred years has gradually become clear.
Dr. Frederick Treves
Joseph Merrick was born in Leicestershire, central England in 1862. When he was born, he looked healthy, just like a normal baby, but when he was 5 years old, his skin began to show gray stripes and his body showed initial symptoms. Later, because his mother died, his father remarried, and a series of family changes, Merrick dropped out of school to find a job, and worked as a cigarette and a small trader. With the growth of age, Merrick’s deformity becomes more and more serious. People are either afraid of him or don’t understand what he says, and it becomes more and more difficult to make a living. At the age of 17, Merrick moved into the workhouse, which was the only way to support himself. In 1884, Merrick contacted Sam Torr, the owner of the freak show, and left the workhouse to start his career as an elephant man. In England in the 19th century, the freak show has become a popular pastime, which is widely welcomed by people from all walks of life and attracts the attention of many medical professionals. It is also at the scene of the freak show that Dr. Treves discovered Merrick."Elephant Man" has a set of explanations for his deformity: "My deformity is because my mother was frightened by elephants when she was pregnant. At that time, the circus was performing in the street, and my mother was walking along the street. Unfortunately, she was pushed to the foot of the elephant and was always terrified. This is the reason why I am deformed. " This explanation is called "Maternal Impression", that is, the shape of the unborn child may be changed by the mother’s experience during pregnancy.
In 19th century England, "maternal influence" was a very popular concept, which was often used to explain many malformations. For example, a baby born to a white mother had a black mark, which would be interpreted as the mother being frightened by a "black moor" during pregnancy. A newborn’s hands are marked with bright red marks, which may be because the mother is too fond of lobsters during pregnancy and so on. At that time, the deformity was often attributed to the pregnant mother. If a woman experienced fear during pregnancy, or liked a certain food very much, or witnessed something unusual, her child would be marked accordingly.
Although the public accepted the explanation of this etiology, there was controversy and discussion in the medical field at that time. Among many medical explanations, one explanation is that babies and pregnant women are linked through the placenta, and the emotional and nervous fluctuations of pregnant women will inevitably be transmitted to the baby through the placenta, thus affecting the growth of the baby; However, some people questioned this view, suggesting that the placenta does not transmit nerve effects, but only transports nutrients. Obviously, "maternal influence" is only a simple explanation of deformity, and the diagnosis and treatment of "elephant man" can not suit the right medicine, nor has it been widely affirmed by the medical community.
Dr. Treves is a famous British surgeon and anatomist. He was famous for performing appendicitis surgery on the soon-to-be-crowned Edward VII in 1888, and was praised as one of the most outstanding surgeons in Victorian era in 1900. He described Merrick’s symptoms in detail in his memoirs:
His huge and deformed head has a huge bone lump swollen on his forehead, and the brown skin at the back of his head is spongy. The abnormal growth of the forehead bone almost blocked one eye. Another big bone grew from the upper jaw of his mouth, which made his words blurred and drooling. On the whole, his face is like a rough piece of wood, without any expression. The meat on the back hangs down to the middle of the thigh like a sack, and it is also covered with disgusting brown skin, as is the skin on the chest. The right hand can hardly be used, as big and stupid as a fin. On the contrary, the left hand is normal and the skin is smooth. The lower limbs are also deformed and clumsy.
Judging from the research on the symptoms of Elephant Man, the early medical circles thought that Elephant Man suffered from Elephantiasis, a disease caused by the infection of filamentous worms spread by mosquitoes, which is very common in tropical areas. In the late 19th century, the cause of elephantiasis was still unknown, until Patrick Manson, a Scottish doctor who was later known as the "father of tropical medicine", found in his research that there were embryos laid by worms in the affected area of the patient and appeared in the patient’s blood. He also observed the dead mosquitoes on the microscope glass and found that there were similar parasites in the mosquitoes’ stomachs. It can be inferred that pathogenic worms are transmitted from person to person through mosquitoes. They penetrate the skin and settle in lymphatic vessels, and then continue to multiply, leading to lymphatic obstruction and inflammation, as well as hypertrophy of skin and subcutaneous tissue. What is more special is that there are few obvious symptoms before the age of 15, and it mainly affects the legs and external genitalia. Skin ulcers, cracks and discoloration are more common. Representatively, the symptoms of "elephant-like human" skin are relatively consistent, but after careful comparison, elephantiasis does not endanger bones, and there is no fibrous tumor, which is inconsistent with the symptoms of elephant-like human bone deformity and fibroma all over the body.
According to the information about "Elephant Man" provided by Treves, Henry Radcliffe Crocker, a British dermatologist, speculated that Merrick might suffer from a combination of skin relaxation and neuromatous elephantiasis and an unknown bone deformity, and proposed to link these diseases with neurological diseases. Treves reached a consensus with him on this issue, from single disease to comprehensive disease diagnosis, and from skin disease to nervous system.In 1909, Frederick parks weber, a doctor at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, further suggested that Merrick suffered from Von Recklinghausen’s Disease, later called Neurofibromatosis, which was named after the German pathologist Friedrich von Recklinghausen. "Elephant Man" was specifically diagnosed as multiple neurofibroma type I, and the symptoms of type I were milk coffee spots and neurofibromatous skin tumors, which were often accompanied by various deformities and other diseases. For most of the 20th century, "Elephant Man" was generally regarded as a patient with neurofibromatosis. With the research entering a new field, this diagnosis was questioned in the 1980s. Nevertheless, it is still of great significance in the medical diagnosis of Joseph Merrick’s illness.
Dr. Frederick Parks Weber
In 1986, Dr. Friedrich von recklinghausen (M. M. Cohen) and J.A.R. Tibbles (J.A.R. Tibbles) wrote in the British Medical Journal that Merrick was suffering from Proteus syndrome and congenital disorder. Although Merrick’s condition is similar to neurofibromatosis, some aspects of his body do not directly correspond to the diagnosis. In Treves’s and dermatologist Crocker’s detailed examination report on Merrick, there are no two important features of multiple neurofibroma type I: milk coffee spot or axillary freckles, and both of these features exist in 99% patients with multiple neurofibroma type I. On the contrary, Cohen and Dubles said that Merrick showed the following characteristics of Proteus syndrome: large skull deformity; Bone hyperplasia of skull; Hypertrophy of long bones and thickened skin and subcutaneous tissue, lipomas and other unknown subcutaneous masses. Prologis syndrome has a stronger effect on body tissue than neurofibroma.Proteus is one of the sea gods in Greek mythology, and it is said that he is the son of Poseidon. He knows everything about the past, present and future, because he doesn’t want to disclose what he knows. Whenever he is caught, he will run away in various forms. The word "protean" comes from Proteus, which means "changeable in shape or form". It was a German doctor named Hans-Rudolf Wiedemann who first linked Proteus with "Elephant Man Disease". In 1983, he named this congenital disease "Proteus Syndrome", which is an extremely rare disease. It is estimated that only one person will get sick in every one million people in the world.
It was not until 2011 that the medical community generally recognized Proteus syndrome as the result of AKT1 (a protein kinase) mutation. Abnormal genes exist in some cells, which will produce an abnormal protein and increase cell proliferation, while unaffected cells behave normally. With the identification of genetic basis and the development of consistent international diagnostic standards, many uncertainties of the syndrome have been overcome. Unfortunately, there is no effective treatment for Proteus syndrome at present, and early detection and symptomatic treatment are the main ways. It is common for patients to deal with skin abnormalities, including regular assessment of lesions to ensure that lipomas and vascular malformations will not cause more serious problems; Use laser treatment to remove blood vessel spots on skin, such as wine spots and capillary hemangioma; If the lesion interferes with functional activities or for cosmetic purposes, surgical resection can be performed.
Back to the elephant man, Dr. Treves met the elephant man at the freak show. With the in-depth development of capitalism, the entertainment in the 19th century has surpassed the form of gathering acquaintances in the old days, forming a relatively mature industrial chain, and the gathering of public demand. Driven by market interests, the combination of freak show managers and freaks has made the organization and management of freak shows more large-scale. In British society, it has set off a popular trend of grotesque shows. It is this social environment that provides the soil for the cultivation and production of "elephant man". "Elephant Man" is not a real species, but a manager’s propaganda in the form of "hype" in order to attract more visitors and gain greater benefits. Although Merrick doesn’t have the characteristics of an elephant in appearance, the canvas poster outside the exhibition hall reads "A man with the characteristics of an elephant", and all the words and sentences in the performance brochure reflect his elephant-like characteristics, emphasizing that his right hand is almost the same size and shape as the elephant’s front leg, and his thick and bulging skin is like the elephant’s skin, shaping Merrick into a miraculous image of half man and half beast.
Undoubtedly, the image of "Elephant Man" is carefully created by managers for the audience, and it is actually a "new species" constructed under commercial interests. At that time, there was not a clear distinction between the popular explanation and the professional explanation of deformity, and the right to explain the deformed body was not fully accepted by the medical profession, so managers were given a variety of different explanations. Merrick’s brochure insisted that although he was deformed, he didn’t feel any discomfort, suggesting that Merrick was not sick and didn’t feel pain, so as to appease the audience and reduce their discomfort. Explaining "Elephant Man" as a healthy person from the manager’s description actually drags the professional medicine to make the concept of deformity sick, but at the same time, the manager publicizes the medical significance of the deformed body of "Elephant Man", making the deformity show both entertaining and educational, attracting many medical professionals, and Dr. Treves is one of them. Dr. Treves’s concern and care for "elephant man" actually brought the deformity of "elephant man" into the category of diseases, which promoted the explanation of Merrick’s deformity in medicine. Looking back on the medical exploration behind the elephant-like human deformity for more than a hundred years, it is precisely here that it began. From the early discovery and description of the disease, to the misdiagnosis of neurofibromatosis, and finally to the diagnosis of Proteus syndrome, with the change of medical concepts and research, it is the embodiment of the responsibility of several generations of medical people. This is easy to be associated with the occurrence of medical historical narrative, and in a sense, it is precisely because of caring for people.
Merrick’s life has changed dramatically since he entered the hospital in London, because Francis Carr Gomm, the dean, told the story of "Elephant Man" in The Times, and Merrick got the attention of all walks of life. Subsequently, an endless stream of visitors came to Merrick’s ward to express their condolences to him, so he was pulled into the rapidly expanding social circle from the isolated small room and even visited by the Princess of Wales. During this period, Merrick learned to associate with people, no longer afraid of crowds, and his life gradually normalized. But one day in April, 1890, Merrick was found lying on his back in bed, choking to death. Because of his physical deformity, Merrick had to rest with his back against the pillow, his arms around his legs and his head on his knees for a long time. It was always his dream to lie down and sleep like ordinary people. Dramatically, in the end, he was lucky enough to die peacefully with the gesture he could desire.
reference data
1.Montagu,Ashley, The elephant man: A study in human dignity, New York: E. P. Dutton,1979
2.Treves, Frederick, The Elephant Man and other reminiscences, London: Cassell And CompanyLtd.,1923
3.J.A.R.Tibbles, M.M.Cohen, The Proteus Syndrome:The Elephant Man Diagnosed, British Medical Journal(Clinical Research Edition), Vol.293, No.6548(Sep.13,1986), pp.683-685
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