Intersecting distributed networks support convergent linguistic functioning across different languages in bilinguals

How bilingual brains accomplish the processing of more than one language has been widely investigated by neuroimaging studies. The assimilation-accommodation hypothesis holds that both the same brain neural networks supporting the native language and additional new neural networks are utilized to implement second language processing. However, whether and how this hypothesis applies at the finer-grained levels of both brain anatomical organization and linguistic functions remains unknown. To address this issue, we scanned Chinese-English bilinguals during an implicit reading task involving Chinese words, English words and Chinese pinyin. We observed broad brain cortical regions wherein interdigitated distributed neural populations supported the same cognitive components of different languages. Although spatially separate, regions including the opercular and triangular parts of the inferior frontal gyrus, temporal pole, superior and middle temporal gyrus, precentral gyrus and supplementary motor areas were found to perform the same linguistic functions across languages, indicating regional-level functional assimilation supported by voxel-wise anatomical accommodation. Taken together, the findings not only verify the functional independence of neural representations of different languages, but show co-representation organization of both languages in most language regions, revealing linguistic-feature specific accommodation and assimilation between first and second languages

Detection of the Diffuse Supernova Neutrino Background with JUNO

As an underground multi-purpose neutrino detector with 20 kton liquid scintillator, Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is competitive with and complementary to the water-Cherenkov detectors on the search for the diffuse supernova neutrino background (DSNB). Typical supernova models predict 2-4 events per year within the optimal observation window in the JUNO detector. The dominant background is from the neutral-current (NC) interaction of atmospheric neutrinos with 12C nuclei, which surpasses the DSNB by more than one order of magnitude. We evaluated the systematic uncertainty of NC background from the spread of a variety of data-driven models and further developed a method to determine NC background within 15\% with {\it{in}} {\it{situ}} measurements after ten years of running. Besides, the NC-like backgrounds can be effectively suppressed by the intrinsic pulse-shape discrimination (PSD) capabilities of liquid scintillators. In this talk, I will present in detail the improvements on NC background uncertainty evaluation, PSD discriminator development, and finally, the potential of DSNB sensitivity in JUNO

Potential of Core-Collapse Supernova Neutrino Detection at JUNO

JUNO is an underground neutrino observatory under construction in Jiangmen, China. It uses 20kton liquid scintillator as target, which enables it to detect supernova burst neutrinos of a large statistics for the next galactic core-collapse supernova (CCSN) and also pre-supernova neutrinos from the nearby CCSN progenitors. All flavors of supernova burst neutrinos can be detected by JUNO via several interaction channels, including inverse beta decay, elastic scattering on electron and proton, interactions on C12 nuclei, etc. This retains the possibility for JUNO to reconstruct the energy spectra of supernova burst neutrinos of all flavors. The real time monitoring systems based on FPGA and DAQ are under development in JUNO, which allow prompt alert and trigger-less data acquisition of CCSN events. The alert performances of both monitoring systems have been thoroughly studied using simulations. Moreover, once a CCSN is tagged, the system can give fast characterizations, such as directionality and light curve

EPT: Data Augmentation with Embedded Prompt Tuning for Low-Resource Named Entity Recognition

Data augmentation methods are often used to address data scarcity in natural language processing (NLP). However, token-label misalignment, which refers to situations where tokens are matched with incorrect entity labels in the augmented sentences, hinders the data augmentation methods from achieving high scores in token-level tasks like named entity recognition (NER). In this paper, we propose embedded prompt tuning (EPT) as a novel data augmentation approach to low-resource NER. To address the problem of token-label misalignment, we implicitly embed NER labels as prompt into the hidden layer of pre-trained language model, and therefore entity tokens masked can be predicted by the finetuned EPT. Hence, EPT can generate high-quality and high-diverse data with various entities, which improves performance of NER. As datasets of cross-domain NER are available, we also explore NER domain adaption with EPT. The experimental results show that EPT achieves substantial improvement over the baseline methods on low-resource NER tasks

Language Nativeness Modulates Physiological Responses to Moral vs. Immoral Concepts in Chinese–English Bilinguals: Evidence from Event-Related Potential and Psychophysiological Measures

Morality has been an integral part of social cognition and our daily life, and different languages may exert distinct impacts on human moral judgment. However, it remains unclear how moral concept is encoded in the bilingual brain. This study, therefore, aimed to explore the emotional and cognitive involvement of bilingual morality judgement by using combined event-related potential (ERP) and psychophysiological (including skin, heart, and pulse) measures. In the experiment, thirty-one Chinese–English bilingual participants were asked to make moral judgments in Chinese and English, respectively. Our results revealed increased early frontal N400 and decreased LPC in L1 moral concept encoding as compared to L2, suggesting that L1 was more reliant on automatic processes and emotions yet less on elaboration. In contrast, L2 moral and immoral concepts elicited enhanced LPC, decreased N400, and greater automatic psychophysiological electrocardiograph responses, which might reflect more elaborate processing despite blunted emotional responses and increased anxiety. Additionally, both behavioral and P200 data revealed a reliable immorality bias across languages. Our results were discussed in light of the dual-process framework of moral judgments and the (dis)embodiment of bilingual processing, which may advance our understanding of the interplay between language and morality as well as between emotion and cognition

Waste into treasure: New insight to inhibit scale generation in industrial circulating cooling water

The present study investigated the inhibitory role of ginkgo fallen leaves on scale generation in industrial circulating cooling water (ICCW), and the dual scale inhibition mechanism was revealed to demonstrate the ICCW engineering application potential of ginkgo fallen leaves treatment. The results showed that pH, alkalinity and turbidity decreased from 8.68, 295.74 mg/L and 2.482 NTU to 7.27, 111.23 mg/L and 0.483 NTU, respectively, after adding 7.5 g/L fallen leaves in 2 h. The ascorbic acid released by the fallen leaves not only decreased the ICCW alkalinity, but also complexed with the residual Ca2+ to form calcium ascorbate, which combined to inhibit the ICCW scale generation. Finally, compared to other chemical scale inhibition methods, fallen leaves treatment could save 0.34–850 CNY/ton in agent costs. Also, no additional building area was required, saving infrastructure costs. Therefore, turning fallen leaves waste into treasure provided the green and sustainable innovative strategy for scale inhibition in the ICCW, and has significant potential for engineering applications

Assessment of Genotoxic Effects by Constructing a 3D Cellular System with Highly Sensitive Mutagenic Human–Hamster Hybrid Cells

Owing to complex microenvironmental conditions, it is challenging to reflect the actual biological responses of tissues or the body in a two-dimensional (2D) cellular system. In the present study, a low-attachment-cultivation technique was employed to establish a highly sensitive 3D human–hamster hybrid (A_L) model to study the mutagenic effects of environmental pollutants. The results showed that the established 3D system has apparent organizational characteristics. The average diameter and average cell number of the 3D cells were approximately 240 μm and 1500, respectively. The expression of stemness and cell-junction genes (biomarkers for 3D cells) was higher than that in 2D cells. The present study analyzed the mutagenic effects of the environmental carcinogens arsenite and silver nanoparticles using the established 3D system to demonstrate its efficiency in mutagenic assessment. The results showed that the mutagenic effects of arsenite (10 μM) and silver nanoparticles (10 μg/mL) were 70 ± 3 and 99 ± 7 per 10⁵ survivors, respectively. These values were much lower than those from 2D A_L cells and comparable to those from the <i>in vivo</i> system. These results suggest that the developed 3D-cell-culture model based on the 2D A_L cellular system more effectively reflects the actual gene-mutation frequency of mutagens <i>in vivo</i>

Cerebellar gray matter alterations predict deep brain stimulation outcomes in Meige syndrome

Background: The physiopathologic mechanism of Meige syndrome (MS) has not been clarified, and neuroimaging studies centering on cerebellar changes in MS are scarce. Moreover, even though deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the subthalamic nucleus (STN) has been recognized as an effective surgical treatment for MS, there has been no reliable biomarker to predict its efficacy. Objective: To characterize the volumetric alterations of gray matter (GM) in the cerebellum in MS and to identify GM measurements related to a good STN-DBS outcome. Methods: We used voxel-based morphometry and lobule-based morphometry to compare the regional and lobular GM differences in the cerebellum between 47 MS patients and 52 normal human controls (HCs), as well as between 31 DBS responders and 10 DBS non-responders. Both volumetric analyses were achieved using the Spatially Unbiased Infratentorial Toolbox (SUIT). Further, we performed partial correlation analyses to probe the relationship between the cerebellar GM changes and clinical scores. Finally, we plotted the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve to select biomarkers for MS diagnosis and DBS outcomes prediction. Results: Compared to HCs, MS patients had GM atrophy in lobule Crus I, lobule VI, lobule VIIb, lobule VIIIa, and lobule VIIIb. Compared to DBS responders, DBS non-responders had lower GM volume in the left lobule VIIIb. Moreover, partial correlation analyses revealed a positive relationship between the GM volume of the significant regions/lobules and the symptom improvement rate after DBS surgery. ROC analyses demonstrated that the GM volume of the significant cluster in the left lobule VIIIb could not only distinguish MS patients from HCs but also predict the outcomes of STN-DBS surgery with high accuracy. Conclusion: MS patients display bilateral GM shrinkage in the cerebellum relative to HCs. Regional GM volume of the left lobule VIIIb can be a reliable biomarker for MS diagnosis and DBS outcomes prediction

Screening for blood leukocyte microRNA biomarkers responsible for association between qi deficiency constitution and Pi-qi-deficiency syndrome of chronic superficial gastritis

Objective: To screen for blood leukocyte microRNA (miRNA) biomarkers responsible for the association between the traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) qi deficiency constitution (QDC) and the Pi-qi-deficiency syndrome (PQDS) of chronic superficial gastritis (CSG). Methods: Peripheral blood leukocytes were separated from people of two TCM constitutions (balance and qi deficiency) and from CSG patients with PQDS. Total RNA was isolated from the leukocytes and subjected to subsequent high-throughput miRNA sequencing to identify the miRNAs that are specifically and highly expressed in persons of QDC and CSG patients with PQDS. In addition, the target genes of the associated miRNAs were predicted. Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway-based enrichment analyses of these target genes were performed to further evaluate the associated miRNA candidates as potential biomarkers responsible for the association between QDC and PQDS of CSG. Results: Compared with the control group with a balance constitution (P 1.5 or <0.5), 31 and 38 differentially expressed miRNAs were found in persons of QDC and CSG patients with PQDS, respectively. In particular, hsa-miR-145-5p and hsa-miR-146a-3p were highly expressed in both the persons of QDC and CSG patients with PQDS. GO analysis of the target genes of the two common miRNAs showed that they were mainly associated with functions related to synthesis and metabolism, such as cellular nitrogen compound metabolic processes, biosynthetic processes, cellular protein modification processes, and cellular component assembly. KEGG analysis identified the common pathways enriched among the target genes, including the Hippo signaling pathway and the transcriptional misregulation pathway. The common target genes of the two miRNAs seemed to be associated with the spliceosome pathway and the RNA degradation pathway. Conclusion: Hsa-miR-145-5p and hsa-miR-146a-3p may serve as candidate biomarkers responsible for the association between QDC and PQDS of CSG. Keywords: Qi deficiency constitution, Pi-qi-deficiency syndrome, Chronic superficial gastritis, MicroRNA sequencin