“Reporting or Interpreting?”—A Discoursal Study of Broadcasts on NBA Games in China

From the perspective of empirical discourse analysis, this paper identifies the site broadcasters’ roles and cognitive blending process in NBA (National Basketball Association) broadcasts in China. The authors find that NBA broadcasters chiefly interpret the information they have obtained from sports sites and interviews with the coaches and players, employing various interpreting strategies, such as commentary, amplification, supplementation and restructure. Cognitively, the language that NBA broadcasters applied reveals their cognitive blending process of interpreting techniques, strategies, sports knowledge and attitudes towards the games, of who take up different roles to fulfill different communicating purposes, all of which project various cognitions on NBA games. Despite the fact that one role might make certain linguistic behaviors prevail over the others, especially their interpreting role, NBA site broadcasters coordinate it with other roles properly through which they present different levels of translational and constructional schematicity, thus yielding a coherent and constructional working mode of NBA broadcasting practice in China

Transfert de charge en fonction de la vitesse de course pour les coureurs du sexe masculin qui touchent le sol avec l’arrière-pied

The purpose of this study was to identify the influence of running speed on plantar pressure, and to use a load transfer algorithm to investigate the load transference in healthy recreational male runners who had a natural rear-foot strike pattern. Totally, 49 healthy males participated in this study, 39 of them (age 22.8 ± 1.8 years, weight 65.6 ± 7.9 kg, height 171.9 ± 4.0 cm) were identified as rear-foot strike runners. Data of pressure parameters, including maximum force, peak pressure, contact area and force-time integral (FTI) was recorded by Pedar-X insole plantar pressure measurement system at 8 different speeds (5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 km/h). The results indicated that with the increase of running speed, plantar pressure significantly increased under all foot regions except for the big toe. Faster running speeds resulted in significant lower FTI in all foot regions except for lateral midfoot and heel. Medial metatarsal, central metatarsal, and big toe were the main loading regions for rear-foot strike male runners during running. Load transferred from medial foot to lateral foot in transverse direction, and from toes to metatarsal, midfoot and heel in the longitudinal direction with increasing speeds. As a component of the spring mechanism, the arch played a key role in supporting and transferring loads. © 2020 by the author(s)

The associations between gut microbiota and chronic respiratory diseases: a Mendelian randomization study

IntroductionGrowing evidence indicates that variations in the composition of the gut microbiota are linked to the onset and progression of chronic respiratory diseases (CRDs), albeit the causal relationship between the two remains unclear.MethodsWe conducted a comprehensive two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis to investigate the relationship between gut microbiota and five main CRDs, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), asthma, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), sarcoidosis, and pneumoconiosis. For MR analysis, the inverse variance weighted (IVW) method was utilized as the primary method. The MR–Egger, weighted median, and MR-PRESSO statistical methods were used as a supplement. To detect heterogeneity and pleiotropy, the Cochrane and Rucker Q test, MR–Egger intercept test, and MR-PRESSO global test were then implemented. The leave-one-out strategy was also applied to assess the consistency of the MR results.ResultsBased on substantial genetic data obtained from genome-wide association studies (GWAS) comprising 3,504,473 European participants, our study offers evidence that several gut microbial taxa, including 14 probable microbial taxa (specifically, 5, 3, 2, 3 and 1 for COPD, asthma, IPF, sarcoidosis, and pneumoconiosis, respectively) and 33 possible microbial taxa (specifically, 6, 7, 8, 7 and 5 for COPD, asthma, IPF, sarcoidosis, and pneumoconiosis, respectively) play significant roles in the formation of CRDs.DiscussionThis work implies causal relationships between the gut microbiota and CRDs, thereby shedding new light on the gut microbiota-mediated prevention of CRDs

Organosilicon leather coating technology based on carbon peak strategy

Based on the demand of carbon peak and carbon emission reduction strategy, divinyl-terminated polydimethylsiloxane (ViPDMSVi), poly(methylhydrosiloxane) (PMHS), divinyl-terminated polymethylvinylsiloxane (ViPMVSVi), and fumed silica were used as primary raw materials, polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) synthetic leather coating was in situ constructed by thermally induced hydrosilylation polymerization on the synthetic leather substrate. The effect of the viscosity of ViPDMSVi, the active hydrogen content of PMHS, the molar ratio of vinyl groups to active hydrogen, the dosage of ViPMVSVi and fumed silica on the performance of PDMS polymer coating, including mechanical properties, cold resistance, flexural resistance, abrasion resistance, hydrophobic and anti-fouling properties were investigated. The results show that ViPDMSVi with high vinyl content and PMHS with low active hydrogen content is more conducive to obtaining organosilicon coating with better mechanical properties, the optimized dosage of ViPMVSVi and fumed silica was 7 wt% and 40 wt%, respectively. In this case, the tensile strength and the broken elongation of the PDMS polymer coating reached 5.96 MPa and 481%, showing reasonable mechanical properties for leather coating. Compared with polyurethane based or polyvinyl chloride based synthetic leather, the silicon based synthetic leather prepared by this method exhibits excellent cold resistance, abrasion resistance, super hydrophobicity, and anti-fouling characteristics

Load transference with the gain of excessive body mass: A two-year longitudinal study

Previous studies investigating the effect of excessive weight on the foot have commonly been cross-sectional; therefore, it is still unclear how the foot function gradually changes with the increased body mass that is physiologically gained over time. This study aimed to use a load transfer method to identify the mechanism of how the foot function changed with the increased excessive body mass over two years. Taking normal weight as the baseline, fifteen children became overweight or obese (group 1), and fifteen counterparts maintained normal weight (group 0) over the two years. Barefoot walking was assessed using a Footscan® plate system. A load transfer method was used based upon the relative force–time integral (FTI) to provide an insight into plantar load transference as children increased in weight. Significantly increased FTIs were found at the big toe (BT), medial metatarsal (MM), lateral metatarsal (LM), and lateral heel (HL) in group 1, while at BT, MM, medial heel (HM), and HL in group 0. Foot load showed a posterior to anterior transferal from midfoot (2.5%) and heel (7.0%) to metatarsal and big toe in group 1. The control group, however, shifted the loading within the metatarsal level from LM to HM (4.1%), and equally relieved weight from around the midfoot (MF) (3.0%) to BT, MM, HM and HL. Earlier weight loss intervention is required to prevent further adverse effects on foot functions caused by excessive weight-bearing. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland

The effects of ECMO on neurological function recovery of critical patients: A double-edged sword

Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) played an important role in the treatment of patients with critical care such as cardiac arrest (CA) and acute respiratory distress syndrome. ECMO is gradually showing its advantages in terms of speed and effectiveness of circulatory support, as it provides adequate cerebral blood flow (CBF) to the patient and ensures the perfusion of organs. ECMO enhances patient survival and improves their neurological prognosis. However, ECMO-related brain complications are also important because of the high risk of death and the associated poor outcomes. We summarized the reported complications related to ECMO for patients with CA, such as north–south syndrome, hypoxic–ischemic brain injury, cerebral ischemia–reperfusion injury, impaired intracranial vascular autoregulation, embolic stroke, intracranial hemorrhage, and brain death. The exact mechanism of ECMO on the role of brain function is unclear. Here we review the pathophysiological mechanisms associated with ECMO in the protection of neurologic function in recent years, as well as the ECMO-related complications in brain and the means to improve it, to provide ideas for the treatment of brain function protection in CA patients

Video delivery networks : challenges, solutions and future directions

Internet video ecosystems are faced with the increasing requirements in versatile applications, ubiquitous consumption and freedom of creation and sharing, in which the user experience for high-quality services has become more and more important. Internet is also under tremendous pressure due to the exponential growth in video consumption. Video providers have been using content delivery networks (CDNs) to deliver high-quality video services. However, the new features in video generation and consumption require CDN to address the scalability, quality of service and flexibility challenges. As a result, we need to rethink future CDN for sustainable video delivery. To this end, we give an overview for the Internet video ecosystem evolution. We survey the existing video delivery solutions from the perspective of economic relationships, algorithms, mechanisms and architectures. At the end of the article, we propose a data-driven information plane for video delivery network as the future direction and discuss two case studies to demonstrate its necessity