An Analysis of the Characteristics of Chinese Female College Students’ English Conversation

This article analyzed the characteristics of Chinese female college students’ English conversation from the perspective of second language acquisition by using some theories of sociolinguistics and discourse analysis. After analysis, it was found that female students used hedges and intensifiers extensively in second language conversations. Additionally, the participants consciously maintained the face of their peers and made the conversation take place in an atmosphere of equality and solidarity. Through the use of deixis, the conversation was well organized and carried out smoothly. The participants changed their roles, gave and took the floors, and offered new information to prolong the conversation. Although female language had many characteristics, it cannot be fully reflected in this sample conducted in a second language

Genesis and evolution of bedforms on cohesive mud beds and simulated bedrock channels

Most previous studies on the genesis and evolution of bedforms have focused on aggradational bedforms within cohesionless sediments, with very few investigations that concern either erosive bedform genesis and evolution or bedrock channel abrasion processes. The study presented here details experiments that involve the genesis and formation of erosional bedform features within natural (soft clay) cohesive sediment beds and analogue bedrock substrates by modelling clay under the effect of both open-channel plain water flows, and sediment-laden flows. A new approach without using plaster-of-Paris or real bedrock developed provides a feasible method to simulate the genesis and evolution of the erosional bedforms in cohesive sediment beds and sculpted forms in bedrock channels on relatively short time-scales in the laboratory by using a realistic substrate substitute. A series of flume experiments are presented herein where the undrained shear strength of two different kinds of substrate material is systematically varied under constant flow conditions. Experiments using plain water flow indicated that erosive bedforms in cohesive sediment substrate cannot be produced only under the effect of sediment-free flow. Particulate-laden flows do form erosional bedforms in both kinds of clay beds and the shear strength of the bed material plays a key role in determining the diversity of erosional features forming on such substrates. Optimisation of modelling clay beds has enabled us to successfully replicate a suite of bedrock bedforms, including potholes, flutes, longitudinal furrows, etc., that have clear equivalents to those observed in bedrock rivers and contributed to investigate the genesis and evolution process of them and explore the flow structures within and above them in experimental analogue bedrock substrate for the first time

Bcl-2 hijacks the arsenic trioxide resistance in SH-SY5Y cells

Aresenic trioxide (ATO) is proven to be active against leukaemia cells by inducing apoptosis and differentiation. Even though ATO could effectively induce remissions of leukaemia cells, the drug resistance was observed occasionally. To further dissect the mechanism of ATO resistance, we selected the ATO-resistant SH-SY5Y cells and found that Bcl-2 controlled the sensitivity of ATO in SH-SY5Y cells. We report that necroptosis, autophagy, NF-ƘB and MAPK signalling pathway are not involved in ATO-induced apoptosis. Moreover, the ATO-resistant cells showed distinct mitochondrial morphology compared with that of ATO-sensitive cells. Intriguingly, nude mice-bearing ATO-sensitive cells derived xenograft tumours are more sensitive to ATO treatment compared with that of ATO-resistant cells. These data demonstrate that cancer cells can acquire the ATO-resistance ability by increasing the Bcl-2 expression

Bedform genesis in bedrock substrates: Insights into formative processes from a new experimental approach and the importance of suspension-dominated abrasion

Bedrock channels are common in the natural environment, and bedrock channel erosion sets the pace of denudation in many river catchments. However, in comparison to the large number of studies concerning the formation of alluvial bedforms, relatively few investigations have concerned bedrock bedform genesis. Field-based analysis of sculptured forms within bedrock channels has been restricted notably by the slow rate of bedform development in such environments. Furthermore, only a limited number of flume-scale experiments have been conducted that attempt to simulate the genesis of sculpted bedforms in bedrock channels. This study demonstrates that optimisation of clay beds through analysis of clay strength enables the development of features analogous to bedrock river channel bedforms — even at a scale that is orders of magnitude smaller than some natural examples. Three sets of suspended sediment-laden experiments were carried out using hard, medium, and soft clay bed substrates. A suite of erosive bedforms (including potholes, flutes, and furrows) developed on all experimental beds. All observed erosional features have clear equivalents to those observed in natural bedrock rivers. Bed shear strength was found to be a significant factor for the genesis of different types of simulated bedrock bedforms in our experiments with other factors, such as flow velocity, bed slope, and flow depth held approximately constant. Importantly, in a subset of experiments performed with an absence of suspended sediment, fluid flow did not result in the erosion and development of bedforms in the clay bed. Hence, this work illustrates that abrasion by suspended sediments is the key process required for the formation of these simulated bedrock bedforms in our experiments, in the absence of bedload abrasion; other processes such as plucking, cavitation, and dissolution will have been negligible