Intermediate linguistic task fine-tuning on Multi-lingual models

State-of-the-art NLP systems are generally based on the assumption that the underlying models are provided with vast datasets to train on. However, especially when working in multi-lingual contexts, datasets are often scarce, thus more research should be carried out in this field. This thesis investigates the benefits of introducing an additional training step when fine-tuning NLP models, named Intermediate Training, which could be exploited to augment the data used for the training phase. The Intermediate Training step is applied by training models on NLP tasks that are not strictly related to the target task, aiming to verify if the models are able to leverage the learned knowledge of such tasks. Furthermore, in order to better analyze the synergies between different categories of NLP tasks, experimentations have been extended also to Multi-Task Training, in which the model is trained on multiple tasks at the same time.

Laying the path to consumer-level immersive simulation environment

Since the end of the long winter of virtual reality (VR) at the beginning of the 2010 decade, many improvements have been made in terms of hardware technologies and software platforms performances and costs. Many expect such trend will continue, pushing the penetration rate of virtual reality headsets to skyrocket at some point in the future, just as mobile platforms did before. In the meantime, virtual reality is slowly transitioning from a specialized laboratory-only technology, to a consumer electronics appliance, opening interesting opportunities and challenges. In this transition, two interesting research questions amount to how 2D-based content and applications may benefit (or be hurt) by the adoption of 3D-based immersive environments and to how to proficiently support such integration. Acknowledging the relevance of the former, we here consider the latter question, focusing our attention on the diversified family of PC-based simulation tools and platforms. VR-based visualization is, in fact, widely understood and appreciated in the simulation arena, but mainly confined to high performance computing laboratories. Our contribution here aims at characterizing the simulation tools which could benefit from immersive interfaces, along with a general framework and a preliminary implementation which may be put to good use to support their transition from uniquely 2D to blended 2D/3D environments.