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We present Chirpy Cardinal, an open-domain social chatbot. Aiming to be both informative and conversational, our bot chats with users in an authentic, emotionally intelligent way. By integrating controlled neural generation with scaffolded, hand-written dialogue, we let both the user and bot take turns driving the conversation, producing an engaging and socially fluent experience. Deployed in the fourth iteration of the Alexa Prize Socialbot Grand Challenge, Chirpy Cardinal handled thousands of conversations per day, placing second out of nine bots with an average user rating of 3.58/5. 

A number of crop wild relatives can tolerate extreme stress to a degree outside the range observed in their domesticated relatives. However, it is unclear whether or how the molecular mechanisms employed by these species can be translated to domesticated crops. Paspalum (Paspalum vaginatum) is a self-incompatible and multiply stress-tolerant wild relative of maize and sorghum. Here, we describe the sequencing and pseudomolecule level assembly of a vegetatively propagated accession ofP. vaginatum. Phylogenetic analysis based on 6,151 single-copy syntenic orthologues conserved in 6 related grass species places paspalum as an outgroup of the maize-sorghum clade. In parallel metabolic experiments, paspalum, but neither maize nor sorghum, exhibits a significant increase in trehalose when grown under nutrient-deficit conditions. Inducing trehalose accumulation in maize, imitating the metabolic phenotype of paspalum, results in autophagy dependent increases in biomass accumulation.

 

We present Chirpy Cardinal, an open-domain dialogue agent, as a research platform for the 2019 Alexa Prize competition. Building an open-domain socialbot that talks to real people is challenging – such a system must meet multiple user expectations such as broad world knowledge, conversational style, and emotional connection. Our socialbot engages users on their terms – prioritizing their interests, feelings and autonomy. As a result, our socialbot provides a responsive, personalized user experience, capable of talking knowledgeably about a wide variety of topics, as well as chatting empathetically about ordinary life. Neural generation plays a key role in achieving these goals, providing the backbone for our conversational and emotional tone. At the end of the competition, Chirpy Cardinal progressed to the finals with an average rating of 3.6/5.0, a median conversation duration of 2 minutes 16 seconds, and a 90th percentile duration of over 12 minutes. 

As a step towards trait mapping in the halophyte seashore paspalum (Paspalum vaginatumSw.), we developed an F₁mapping population from a cross between two genetically diverse and heterozygous accessions, 509022 and HI33. Progeny were genotyped using a genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS) approach and sequence reads were analyzed for single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) using the UGbS-Flex pipeline. More markers were identified that segregated in the maternal parent (HA maps) compared to the paternal parent (AH maps), suggesting that 509022 had overall higher levels of heterozygosity than HI33. We also generated maps that consisted of markers that were heterozygous in both parents (HH maps). The AH, HA and HH maps each comprised more than 1000 markers. Markers formed 10 linkage groups, corresponding to the ten seashore paspalum chromosomes. Comparative analyses showed that each seashore paspalum chromosome was syntenic to and highly colinear with a single sorghum chromosome. Four inversions were identified, two of which were sorghum-specific while the other two were likely specific to seashore paspalum. These high-density maps are the first available genetic maps for seashore paspalum. The maps will provide a valuable tool for plant breeders and others in thePaspalumcommunity to identify traits of interest, including salt tolerance.