Examining Scientific Writing Styles from the Perspective of Linguistic Complexity

Publishing articles in high-impact English journals is difficult for scholars around the world, especially for non-native English-speaking scholars (NNESs), most of whom struggle with proficiency in English. In order to uncover the differences in English scientific writing between native English-speaking scholars (NESs) and NNESs, we collected a large-scale data set containing more than 150,000 full-text articles published in PLoS between 2006 and 2015. We divided these articles into three groups according to the ethnic backgrounds of the first and corresponding authors, obtained by Ethnea, and examined the scientific writing styles in English from a two-fold perspective of linguistic complexity: (1) syntactic complexity, including measurements of sentence length and sentence complexity; and (2) lexical complexity, including measurements of lexical diversity, lexical density, and lexical sophistication. The observations suggest marginal differences between groups in syntactical and lexical complexity.Comment: 6 figure

Identification of Protective Pneumococcal TH17T_{H}17 Antigens from the Soluble Fraction of a Killed Whole Cell Vaccine

Mucosal or parenteral immunization with a killed unencapsulated pneumococcal whole cell antigen (WCA) with an adjuvant protects mice from colonization by a $T_{H}17$ CD4+ cell-mediated mechanism. Using preparative SDS gels, we separated the soluble proteins that compose the WCA in order to identify fractions that were immunogenic and protective. We screened these fractions for their ability to stimulate IL-17A secretion from splenocytes obtained from mice immunized with WCA and adjuvant. We identified 12 proteins within the stimulatory fractions by mass spectrometry; these proteins were then cloned, recombinantly expressed and purified using an Escherichia coli expression system. The ability of these proteins to induce IL-17A secretion was then evaluated by stimulation of mouse splenocytes. Of the four most stimulatory proteins, three were protective in a mouse pneumococcal serotype 6B colonization model. This work thus describes a method for identifying immunogenic proteins from the soluble fraction of pneumococcus and shows that several of the proteins identified protect mice from colonization when used as mucosal vaccines. We propose that, by providing protection against pneumococcal colonization, one or more of these proteins may serve as components of a multivalent pneumococcal vaccine

In vitro micro-propagation of Longiflorum-Asiatic (LA) hybrids lily (Lilium) cultivar ‘eyeliner’

Bulblets propagation by tissue culture was one of the key techniques in the production of lily (Lilium) bulbs. Therefore, in vitro micro propagation of lily bulblets was studied in detail in this paper. L A hybrids lily cultivar ‘eyeliner’ was selected as the materials. By using the method of orthogonal design, the following were concluded from the research: the optimum treatment and disinfection methods of ‘eyeliner’ bulb scales was soaking in 1:500 carbendazim solution for 30 min, disinfection in 75% alcohol for 10 to 60 s, disinfection in 2% NaClO solution for 15 min; the optimum medium for bud induction of ‘eyeliner’ was MS + 0.5 mg·L-1 6-benzyl aminopurine (6-BA) + 0.1 mg·L-1 naphlene acetic acid (NAA) + 90 g·L-1 sucrose, and 25°C and in darkness; the optimum medium for bulblets induction of ‘eyeliner’ was 2MS + 1.0 mg·L-1 6-BA + 0.5 mg·L-1 NAA + sucrose 90 g·L-1 + Paclobutrazol (PP333) 2 mg·L-1; the optimum culture condition for bulblets induction of ‘eyeliner’ was 20°C, 14 h·day-1 lightness + 10 h·day-1 darkness. The optimum medium for rooting culture of ‘eyeliner’ was ½ MS + 0.8 mg·L-1 NAA + 3 g·L-1 activated charcoal, 20°C, 14 h·day-1 lightness + 10 h·day-1 darkness.Keywords: Lily bulb, orthogonal experiment, in vitro micro propagatio

Persistent Ballistic Entanglement Spreading with Optimal Control in Quantum Spin Chains

Entanglement propagation provides a key routine to understand quantum many-body dynamics in and out of equilibrium. In this work, we uncover that the ``variational entanglement-enhancing'' field (VEEF) robustly induces a persistent ballistic spreading of entanglement in quantum spin chains. The VEEF is time dependent, and is optimally controlled to maximize the bipartite entanglement entropy (EE) of the final state. Such a linear growth persists till the EE reaches the genuine saturation $\tilde{S} = - \log_{2} 2^{-\frac{N}{2}}=\frac{N}{2}$ with $N$ the total number of spins. The EE satisfies $S(t) = v t$ for the time $t \leq \frac{N}{2v}$, with $v$ the velocity. These results are in sharp contrast with the behaviors without VEEF, where the EE generally approaches a sub-saturation known as the Page value $\tilde{S}_{P} =\tilde{S} - \frac{1}{2\ln{2}}$ in the long-time limit, and the entanglement growth deviates from being linear before the Page value is reached. The dependence between the velocity and interactions is explored, with $v \simeq 2.76$, $4.98$, and $5.75$ for the spin chains with Ising, XY, and Heisenberg interactions, respectively. We further show that the nonlinear growth of EE emerges with the presence of long-range interactions.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure