The use of English referring expressions by Chinese children living in Britain

This thesis examined the English referring expressions used by the Chinese children living in Britain and English children matched by English language ability to the Chinese children. Two adult groups (one Chinese and one English) were used as controls. Two experiments were conducted in a year time apart, involving 166 participants in total. In the experiments, participants described stories presented in pictures to listeners who could (El) or could not (E2) see the pictures. The stories in El described two protagonists of different genders, those in E2 described two of the same gender. Predictions concerned the use of appropriate referring expressions on first mention of novel entities and on second mention of familiar entities; whether a thematic subject strategy was used; whether Chinese children's choice of specific referring expressions (Bare Nouns, Demonstratives, and Zero Anaphors) was influenced by their first language; and which factors (Fist Language, English Language Ability, Cognitive Ability, and Age) were significant predictors of the children's use of English referring expressions. The main results were as follows: Both groups of children used definite references on second mention more frequently than they used indefinite references on first mention. There were hardly any transcripts showing use of a thematic subject strategy. Instead, participants used either an explicit strategy, in which full explicit noun phrases were used throughout or a strategy in which the subject slot is reserved for the current topic, which may change a the discourse proceeds. English parents predominantly used this second strategy. Regression analyses showed that cognitive ability was the best predictor of first mention indefinites in both experiments and of second mention definites in El, where definite articles were appropriate for identifying the referent. English language ability was the best predictor of second mention definites in both experiments. These results were discussed in relation to previous studies and the notion of mental models. It was concluded that Chinese children did not use an inter-language that contained information about specific words or phrases. The major effect of first language may be discourse level strategies, but this was only appeared with the parents

Breeding response of transcript profiling in developing seeds of Brassica napus

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The upgrading of rapeseed cultivars has resulted in a substantial improvement in yield and quality in China over the past 30 years. With the selective pressure against fatty acid composition and oil content, high erucic acid- and low oil-content cultivars have been replaced by low erucic acid- and high oil-content cultivars. The high erucic acid cultivar Zhongyou 821 and its descendent, low erucic acid cultivar Zhongshuang 9, are representatives of two generations of the most outstanding Chinese rapeseed cultivars (<it>B. napus</it>) developed the past 2 decades. This paper compares the transcriptional profiles of Zhongshuang 9 and Zhongyou 821 for 32 genes that are principally involved in lipid biosynthesis during seed development in order to elucidate how the transcriptional profiles of these genes responded to quality improvement over the past 20 years.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Comparison of the cultivar Zhongyou 821 with its descendent, Zhongshuang 9, shows that the transcriptional levels of seven of the 32 genes were upregulated by 30% to 109%, including <it>FAD3</it>, <it>ACCase, FAE1</it>, <it>GKTP</it>, <it>Caleosin</it>, <it>GAPDH</it>, and <it>PEPC</it>. Of the 32 genes, 10 (<it>KAS3, β-CT, BcRK6, P450, FatA, Oleosin, FAD6, FatB, α-CT </it>and <it>SUC1</it>) were downregulated by at least 20% and most by 50%. The <it>Napin </it>gene alone accounted for over 75% of total transcription from all 32 genes assessed in both cultivars. Most of the genes showed significant correlation with fatty acid accumulation, but the correlation in ZS9 was significantly different from that in ZY821. Higher <it>KCR2 </it>activity is associated with higher C16:0, C18:0, and C18:2 in both cultivars, lower C22:1 and total fatty acid content in ZY821, and lower 18:1 in ZS9.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>This paper illustrates the response of the transcription levels of 32 genes to breeding in developing rapeseed seeds. Both cultivars showed similar transcription profiles, with the <it>Napin </it>gene predominantly transcribed. Selective pressure for zero erucic acid, low glucosinolate, high oleic acid and high oil content, as well as high yield, resulted in higher <it>FAD3</it>, <it>ACCase, FAE1</it>, <it>GKTP</it>, <it>Caleosin</it>, <it>GAPDH</it>, and <it>PEPC </it>expression levels and lower <it>KAS3, β-CT, BcRK6, P450, FatA, Oleosin, FAD6, FatB, α-CT </it>and <it>SUC1 </it>expression levels. It also resulted in altered relationships between these genes during storage accumulation in seed development.</p

Multi-View Broad Learning System for Primate Oculomotor Decision Decoding

Multi-view learning improves the learning performance by utilizing multi-view data: data collected from multiple sources, or feature sets extracted from the same data source. This approach is suitable for primate brain state decoding using cortical neural signals. This is because the complementary components of simultaneously recorded neural signals, local field potentials (LFPs) and action potentials (spikes), can be treated as two views. In this paper, we extended broad learning system (BLS), a recently proposed wide neural network architecture, from single-view learning to multi-view learning, and validated its performance in decoding monkeys' oculomotor decision from medial frontal LFPs and spikes. We demonstrated that medial frontal LFPs and spikes in non-human primate do contain complementary information about the oculomotor decision, and that the proposed multi-view BLS is a more effective approach for decoding the oculomotor decision than several classical and state-of-the-art single-view and multi-view learning approaches

Refractive uses of layered and two-dimensional materials for integrated photonics

The scientific community has witnessed tremendous expansion of research on layered (i.e. two-dimensional, 2D) materials, with increasing recent focus on applications to photonics. Layered materials are particularly exciting for manipulating light in the confined geometry of photonic integrated circuits, where key material properties include strong and controllable light-matter interaction, and limited optical loss. Layered materials feature tunable optical properties, phases that are promising for electro-optics, and a panoply of polymorphs that suggest a rich design space for highly-nonperturbative photonic integrated devices based on phase-change functionality. All of these features are manifest in materials with band gap above the photonics-relevant near-infrared (NIR) spectral band ($\sim$ 0.5 - 1 eV), meaning that they can be harnessed in refractive (i.e. non-absorptive) applications.Comment: review paper. ACS Photonics (2020

Interaction Driven Topological Phase Transition in Monolayer CrCl2_2(pyrazine)2_2

The quadratic band crossing points (QBCPs) at Fermi level in two-dimension have been proposed to be unstable under electron-electron interaction. The possible interaction driven states include quantum anomalous Hall (QAH) state and various nematic ordered states. In this work, motivated by the discovery of ferromagnetic van der Waals layered metal-organic framework CrCl$_2$(pyrazine)$_2$, we theoretically propose that the single layer of CrCl$_2$(pyrazine)$_2$ might realize one or some of these interaction driven states based on the QBCP protected by $C_4$ symmetry. By introducing the short-range density-density type repulsion interactions into this system, we have found the phase diagram depending on different interaction range and strength. The exotic phases include the staggered chiral flux state manifesting QAH effect, the site-nematic insulator and the site-nematic Dirac semimetal state. The QAH state is robust against perturbations breaking the QBCP but it is weakened by increasing temperature. The metal-organic framework is tunable by changing the transition-metal elements, which might improve the gap size and stability of this interaction induced QAH state