A Study of L2 English L1 Chinese Native Speakers’ Acquisition of Chinese Topic-comment Constructions

The study conducted a research on L1 Chinese and L2 English speakers’ acquisition of Chinese topic-comment constructions. Several results were found. First, the type of the topic, the position of the topic, and the English proficiency did exert influence on Chinese native speakers’ perception of Chinese topic-comment constructions. To analyze Chinese native speakers’ perception of Chinese topic-comment constructions, three aspects need to be considered. Second, backward transfer from English to Chinese seemed to occur in high English proficiency group when they comprehended the Chinese topic-comment constructions. For the high English proficiency group, because of the backward transfer from English to Chinese, they seemed to have got used to subject-prominence feature of English and unlearnt the topic-prominence feature of Chinese. Therefore, when they encountered sentence that topic was placed in complement clause, they still felt acceptable. Another explanation is that they appeared to transfer the strategy used in processing English garden path sentences into Chinese, which facilitated their understanding of Chinese garden path sentences (in this study, it is the construction whose topic is in complement clause). Third, when participants, dealt with the constructions that moved-topics are in complement clause (Chinese garden path sentences), they tended to adopt the late closure strategy and minimal attachment strategy, which undermined their acceptability of this kind of sentences

Anthropogenic Activities Generate High-Refractory Black Carbon along the Yangtze River Continuum

12 pages, 7 figuresCombustion-driven particulate black carbon (PBC) is a crucial slow-cycling pool in the organic carbon flux from rivers to oceans. Since the refractoriness of PBC stems from the association of non-homologous char and soot, the composition and source of char and soot must be considered when investigating riverine PBC. Samples along the Yangtze River continuum during different hydrological periods were collected in this study to investigate the association and asynchronous combustion drive of char and soot in PBC. The results revealed that PBC in the Yangtze River, with higher refractory nature, accounts for 13.73 ± 6.89% of particulate organic carbon, and soot occupies 37.53 ± 11.00% of PBC. The preponderant contribution of fossil fuel combustion to soot (92.57 ± 3.20%) compared to char (27.55 ± 5.92%), suggested that fossil fuel combustion is a crucial driver for PBC with high soot percentage. Redundancy analysis and structural equation modeling confirmed that the fossil fuel energy used by anthropogenic activities promoting soot is the crucial reason for high-refractory PBC. We estimated that the Yangtze River transported 0.15–0.23 Tg of soot and 0.15–0.25 Tg of char to the ocean annually, and the export of large higher refractory PBC to the ocean can form a long-term sink and prolong the residence time of terrigenous carbonThis study was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (nos. 42277214, 42207256, and 41971286), major programs of the National Social Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 22&ZD136), the Special Science and Technology Innovation Program for Carbon Peak and Carbon Neutralization of Jiangsu Province (grant no. BE2022612)Peer reviewe

Predicting nosocomial lower respiratory tract infections by a risk index based system

Although belonging to one of the most common type of nosocomial infection, there was currently no simple prediction model for lower respiratory tract infections (LRTIs). This study aims to develop a risk index based system for predicting nosocomial LRTIs based on data from a large point-prevalence survey. Among the 49328 patients included, the prevalence of nosocomial LRTIs was 1.70% (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.64% to 1.76%). The areas under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve for logistic regression and fisher discriminant analysis were 0.907 (95% CI, 0.897 to 0.917) and 0.902 (95% CI, 0.892 to 0.912), respectively. The constructed risk index based system also displayed excellent discrimination (area under the ROC curve: 0.905 [95% CI, 0.895 to 0.915]) to identify LRTI in internal validation. Six risk levels were generated according to the risk score distribution of study population, ranging from 0 to 5, the corresponding prevalence of nosocomial LRTIs were 0.00%, 0.39%, 3.86%, 12.38%, 28.79% and 44.83%, respectively. The sensitivity and specificity of prediction were 0.87 and 0.79, respectively, when the best cut-off point of risk score was set to 14. Our study suggested that this newly constructed risk index based system might be applied to boost more rational infection control programs in clinical settings

Efficient and bright warm-white electroluminescence from lead-free metal halides.

Solution-processed metal-halide perovskites are emerging as one of the most promising materials for displays, lighting and energy generation. Currently, the best-performing perovskite optoelectronic devices are based on lead halides and the lead toxicity severely restricts their practical applications. Moreover, efficient white electroluminescence from broadband-emission metal halides remains a challenge. Here we demonstrate efficient and bright lead-free LEDs based on cesium copper halides enabled by introducing an organic additive (Tween, polyethylene glycol sorbitan monooleate) into the precursor solutions. We find the additive can reduce the trap states, enhancing the photoluminescence quantum efficiency of the metal halide films, and increase the surface potential, facilitating the hole injection and transport in the LEDs. Consequently, we achieve warm-white LEDs reaching an external quantum efficiency of 3.1% and a luminance of 1570 cd m-2 at a low voltage of 5.4 V, showing great promise of lead-free metal halides for solution-processed white LED applications

Vitamin E stabilizes iron and mitochondrial metabolism in pulmonary fibrosis

Introduction: Pulmonary fibrosis (PF) is a fatal chronic lung disease that causes structural damage and decreased lung function and has a poor prognosis. Currently, there is no medicine that can truly cure PF. Vitamin E (VE) is a group of natural antioxidants with anticancer and antimutagenic properties. There have been a few reports about the attenuation of PF by VE in experimental animals, but the molecular mechanisms are not fully understood.Methods: Bleomycin-induced PF (BLM-PF) mouse model, and cultured mouse primary lung fibroblasts and MLE 12 cells were utilized. Pathological examination of lung sections, immunoblotting, immunofluorescent staining, and real-time PCR were conducted in this study.Results: We confirmed that VE significantly delayed the progression of BLM-PF and increased the survival rates of experimental mice with PF. VE suppressed the pathological activation and fibrotic differentiation of lung fibroblasts and epithelial-mesenchymal transition and alleviated the inflammatory response in BLM-induced fibrotic lungs and pulmonary epithelial cells in vitro. Importantly, VE reduced BLM-induced ferritin expression in fibrotic lungs, whereas VE did not exhibit iron chelation properties in fibroblasts or epithelial cells in vitro. Furthermore, VE protected against mitochondrial dysmorphology and normalized mitochondrial protein expression in BLM-PF lungs. Consistently, VE suppressed apoptosis in BLM-PF lungs and pulmonary epithelial cells in vitro.Discussion: Collectively, VE markedly inhibited BLM-induced PF through a complex mechanism, including improving iron metabolism and mitochondrial structure and function, mitigating inflammation, and decreasing the fibrotic functions of fibroblasts and epithelial cells. Therefore, VE presents a highly potential therapeutic against PF due to its multiple protective effects with few side effects

Short-time Prediction of Urban Rail Transit Passenger Flow

Accurate prediction of short-term passenger flow in urban rail transit systems plays a crucial role in optimizing operations and enhancing passenger experience. This study presents a scientific approach to predict subway passenger flow by analyzing characteristic patterns, identifying key factors influencing passenger flow changes, and leveraging relevant data sources. The multi-source data used in this study are described and pre-processed to capture the spatial, temporal, and other factors that contribute to subway passenger flow distribution. Utilizing the extracted features as inputs, an improved Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) method is employed for short-term passenger flow prediction. The performance of the improved LSTM method is compared and analyzed against traditional methods. The results demonstrate that the proposed approach outperforms traditional methods in terms of prediction accuracy for the same prediction target. Furthermore, the fusion of multi-source data and the inclusion of external factors significantly enhance the prediction accuracy. This research highlights the importance of considering various factors and data sources when forecasting short-term passenger flow in urban rail transit systems. By employing an improved LSTM method and integrating multiple data dimensions, the proposed approach offers superior prediction accuracy compared to traditional methods. The findings contribute to the development of efficient and reliable prediction models for optimizing urban rail transit operations and improving passenger services

Design of a Large-Scale Piezoelectric Transducer Network Layer and Its Reliability Verification for Space Structures

As an effective structural health monitoring (SHM) technology, the piezoelectric transducer (PZT) and guided wave-based monitoring methods have attracted growing interest in the space field. When facing the large-scale monitoring requirements of space structures, a lot of PZTs are needed and may cause problems regarding to additional weight of connection cables, placement efficiency and performance consistency. The PZT layer is a promising solution against these problems. However, the current PZT layers still face challenges from large-scale lightweight monitoring and the lack of reliability assessment under extreme space service conditions. In this paper, a large-scale PZT network layer (LPNL) design method is proposed to overcome these challenges, by adopting a large-scale lightweight PZT network design method and network splitting–recombination based integration strategy. The developed LPNL offers the advantages of being large size, lightweight, ultra-thin, flexible, customized in shape and highly reliable. A series of extreme environmental tests are performed to verify the reliability of the developed LPNL under space service environment, including extreme temperature conditions, vibration at different flying phases, landing impact, and flying overload. Results show that the developed LPNL can withstand these harsh environmental conditions and presents high reliability and functionality

Design of the user-side contract power transfer transaction mechanism considering adjustable loads

In recent years, to cope with the increasing uncertainty of load side, the adjustability of load side is constantly improved. However, the power deviation of user side hasn’t been well adjusted due to the lack of the channel. This not only makes users face higher risks, but also makes incomplete use of sufficient load side adjustable resources. One of the effective ways to solve the problems above is user-side contract power transfer transaction. In this paper, main forms of adjustable load in major fields are discussed at first, then the user-side contract power transfer transaction mechanism considering adjustable load is proposed, finally the validity of the proposed mechanism is verified by a study case

Does music intervention relieve depression or anxiety in people living with dementia? A systematic review and meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: This study aimed to summarize the available evidence on music intervention alleviating depression or anxiety in dementia. METHODS: A comprehensive literature search was performed to analyze the effects of music intervention on depression or anxiety. Subgroups were created to explore the effect of intervention period, duration, and frequency on efficacy. The effect size was reported as a mean standardized difference (SMD) with 95% confidence interval (CI). RESULTS: The analysis included 19 articles involving 614 samples. Thirteen studies for relieving depression revealed that, with an increase in intervention period, the efficacy decreased and then increased, whereas with an increase of intervention duration, the effect became better. A weekly intervention is ideal. Seven studies verifying the impact on anxiety relief revealed that the effect of intervention within 12 wk is significant; with an increase of intervention duration, the effect became better. A weekly intervention is ideal. Collaborative analysis showed that long low-frequency interventions are more efficient than short high-frequency interventions. CONCLUSIONS: Music intervention can relieve depression or anxiety in people living with dementia. Weekly short interventions of more than 45 min are effective for emotional regulation. Future research should concentrate on severe dementia and follow-up impact