A Corpus-based Contrastive Study on Metaphors of “yan/Salt” in Chinese and English

Salt, as one of the most indispensable factors in daily life, also plays a significant role in everyday language. Taking salt as the topic, this paper aims to summarize the similarities and differences between the metaphors of salt in Chinese and English, and to examine the reasons behind. This paper chooses BCC (Beijing Language and Culture University Corpus) and COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English), and then divides the first 1000 entries from corpus into serval target domains based on the theory of metaphor. There are three major findings: metaphors of salt have four common target domains in both languages; the target domains in English is more abundant and positive than in Chinese; the differences between metaphors of salt in Chinese and in English mainly brought about by living environment, religious and cultural factors.Salt, as one of the most indispensable factors in daily life, also plays a significant role in everyday language. Taking salt as the topic, this paper aims to summarize the similarities and differences between the metaphors of salt in Chinese and English, and to examine the reasons behind. This paper chooses BCC (Beijing Language and Culture University Corpus) and COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English), and then divides the first 1000 entries from corpus into serval target domains based on the theory of metaphor. There are three major findings: metaphors of salt have four common target domains in both languages; the target domains in English is more abundant and positive than in Chinese; the differences between metaphors of salt in Chinese and in English mainly brought about by living environment, religious and cultural factors

Strong quantum nonlocality without entanglement in nn-partite system with even nn

In multipartite systems, great progress has been made recently on the study of strong quantum nonlocality without entanglement. However, the existence of orthogonal product sets with strong quantum nonlocality in even party systems remains unknown. Here the even number is greater than four. In this paper, we successfully construct strongly nonlocal orthogonal product sets in $n$-partite systems for all even $n$, which answers the open questions given by Halder et al. [\href{https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.122.040403} {Phys. Rev. Lett \textbf{122}, 040403 (2019)}] and Yuan et al. [\href{https://journals.aps.org/pra/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevA.102.042228} {Phys. Rev. A \textbf{102}, 042228 (2020)}] for any possible even party systems. Thus, we find general construction of strongly nonlocal orthogonal product sets in space $\otimes_{i=1}^{n}\mathcal{C}^{d_{i}}$ ($n,d_{i}\geq 3$) and show that there do exist incomplete orthogonal product bases that can be strongly nonlocal in any possible $n$-partite systems for all even $n$. Our newly constructed orthogonal product sets are asymmetric. We analyze the differences and connections between these sets and the known orthogonal product sets in odd party systems. In addition, we present a local state discrimination protocol for our sets by using additional entangled resource. When at least two subsystems have dimensions greater than three, the protocol consumes less entanglement than teleportation-based protocol. Strongly nonlocal set implies that the information cannot be completely accessed as long as it does not happen that all parties are together. As an application, we connect our sets with local information hiding in multipartite system.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figure

Studies on Metadiscourse since the 3rd Millennium

Metadiscourse refer to linguistic resources that are used to refer to the act and the context of writing about some subject matter. Study of metadiscourse provides a gateway for understanding interactional features of texts or speech, looking beyond the ideational dimension of texts at how writers characterize the world and function interpersonally. The ability of writers to use metadiscourse effectively, to control the level of personality in their texts by offering a credible representation of themselves and their ideas, is seen as a defining feature of successful writing (Hyland, 2008). This paper provides a literature review of the theories in modelling metadiscourse and the studies investigating metadiscourse for the past 15 years, and propose future research directions based on the review. Keywords: Metadiscourse, interactional features, literature revie

SmartUnit: Empirical Evaluations for Automated Unit Testing of Embedded Software in Industry

In this paper, we aim at the automated unit coverage-based testing for embedded software. To achieve the goal, by analyzing the industrial requirements and our previous work on automated unit testing tool CAUT, we rebuild a new tool, SmartUnit, to solve the engineering requirements that take place in our partner companies. SmartUnit is a dynamic symbolic execution implementation, which supports statement, branch, boundary value and MC/DC coverage. SmartUnit has been used to test more than one million lines of code in real projects. For confidentiality motives, we select three in-house real projects for the empirical evaluations. We also carry out our evaluations on two open source database projects, SQLite and PostgreSQL, to test the scalability of our tool since the scale of the embedded software project is mostly not large, 5K-50K lines of code on average. From our experimental results, in general, more than 90% of functions in commercial embedded software achieve 100% statement, branch, MC/DC coverage, more than 80% of functions in SQLite achieve 100% MC/DC coverage, and more than 60% of functions in PostgreSQL achieve 100% MC/DC coverage. Moreover, SmartUnit is able to find the runtime exceptions at the unit testing level. We also have reported exceptions like array index out of bounds and divided-by-zero in SQLite. Furthermore, we analyze the reasons of low coverage in automated unit testing in our setting and give a survey on the situation of manual unit testing with respect to automated unit testing in industry.Comment: In Proceedings of 40th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Practice Track, Gothenburg, Sweden, May 27-June 3, 2018 (ICSE-SEIP '18), 10 page

Solution processed molecular floating gate for flexible flash memories

Solution processed fullerene (C60) molecular floating gate layer has been employed in low voltage nonvolatile memory device on flexible substrates. We systematically studied the charge trapping mechanism of the fullerene floating gate for both p-type pentacene and n-type copper hexadecafluorophthalocyanine (F16CuPc) semiconductor in a transistor based flash memory architecture. The devices based on pentacene as semiconductor exhibited both hole and electron trapping ability, whereas devices with F16CuPc trapped electrons alone due to abundant electron density. All the devices exhibited large memory window, long charge retention time, good endurance property and excellent flexibility. The obtained results have great potential for application in large area flexible electronic devices

Exploring the underlying mechanisms of obesity and diabetes and the potential of Traditional Chinese Medicine: an overview of the literature

Obesity and diabetes are closely related metabolic disorders that have become major public health concerns worldwide. Over the past few decades, numerous studies have explored the underlying mechanisms of these disorders and identified various risk factors, including genetics, lifestyle, and dietary habits. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has been increasingly recognized for its potential to manage obesity and diabetes. Weight loss is difficult to sustain, and several diabetic therapies, such as sulfonylureas, thiazolidinediones, and insulin, might make it harder to lose weight. While lifestyle changes should be the primary approach for people interested in lowering weight, drugs are also worth investigating. Since some of the newer glucose-lowering medications that cause weight loss, such as glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1 RAs) and sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitors (SGLT2i), are additionally utilized or are under consideration for use as anti-obesity drugs, the frontier between glucose-lowering medication and weight loss drugs appears to be shifting. This review provides an overview of the literature on the underlying mechanisms of obesity and diabetes and the prospect of TCM in their management. We discuss the various TCM interventions, including acupuncture, herbal medicine, and dietary therapy, and their effects on metabolic health. We also highlight the potential of TCM in regulating gut microbiota, reducing inflammation, and improving insulin sensitivity. The findings suggest that TCM may provide a promising approach to preventing and managing obesity and diabetes. However, further well-designed studies are needed to confirm the efficacy and safety of TCM interventions and to elucidate their underlying mechanisms of action