Comparison of the Writing Styles of Experienced and Novice Journalists

A comparison of writing styles of 152 experienced journalists and 60 novice writers indicated professional reporters tend to use l~nger words, longer sentences, and more complex sentence structure. Comparisons among writing styles of four individual newspaper groups and the novice group identified 10 significant variables and indicated novice style is less comprehensible and cohesive. Newspaper styles differed along the stylistic dimension of creativeness and complexity. This study seems to be the first comparing writing styles of professional and student journalists using computer- generated measurements of stylistic variables. The technique seems promising, and further research to refine the process is encouraged.Higher Educatio

Investigating the observed sensitivities of air-quality extremes to meteorological drivers via quantile regression

Air pollution variability is strongly dependent on meteorology. However, quantifying the impacts of changes in regional climatology on pollution extremes can be difficult due to the many non-linear and competing meteorological influences on the production, transport, and removal of pollutant species. Furthermore, observed pollutant levels at many sites show sensitivities at the extremes that differ from those of the overall mean, indicating relationships that would be poorly characterized by simple linear regressions. To address this challenge, we apply quantile regression to observed daily ozone (O[subscript 3]) and fine particulate matter (PM[subscript 2.5]) levels and reanalysis meteorological fields in the USA over the past decade to specifically identify the meteorological sensitivities of higher pollutant levels. From an initial set of over 1700 possible meteorological indicators (including 28 meteorological variables with 63 different temporal options), we generate reduced sets of O[subscript 3] and PM[subscript 2.5] indicators for both summer and winter months, analyzing pollutant sensitivities to each for response quantiles ranging from 2 to 98 %. Primary covariates connected to high-quantile O[subscript 3] levels include temperature and relative humidity in the summer, while winter O[subscript 3] levels are most commonly associated with incoming radiation flux. Covariates associated with summer PM[subscript 2.5] include temperature, wind speed, and tropospheric stability at many locations, while stability, humidity, and planetary boundary layer height are the key covariates most frequently associated with winter PM[subscript 2.5]. We find key differences in covariate sensitivities across regions and quantiles. For example, we find nationally averaged sensitivities of 95th percentile summer O[subscript 3] to changes in maximum daily temperature of approximately 0.9 ppb °C[superscript −1], while the sensitivity of 50th percentile summer O[subscript 3] (the annual median) is only 0.6 ppb °C[superscript −1]. This gap points to differing sensitivities within various percentiles of the pollutant distribution, highlighting the need for statistical tools capable of identifying meteorological impacts across the entire response spectrum.United States. Environmental Protection Agency (Grant/Cooperative Agreement RD-83522801

To Give Chinese Children "a Memorable China":the Trend of Chinese Indigenous Picture Books

To investigate if drug solubility in pharmaceutical excipients used in lipid based formulations (LBFs) can be predicted from physicochemical properties. Solubility was measured for 30 structurally diverse drug molecules in soybean oil (SBO, long-chain triglyceride; TG(LC)), Captex355 (medium-chain triglyceride; TG(MC)), polysorbate 80 (PS80; surfactant) and PEG400 co-solvent and used as responses during PLS model development. Melting point and calculated molecular descriptors were used as variables and the PLS models were validated with test sets and permutation tests. Solvation capacity of SBO and Captex355 was equal on a mol per mol scale (R (2) = 0.98). A strong correlation was also found between PS80 and PEG400 (R (2) = 0.85), identifying the significant contribution of the ethoxylation for the solvation capacity of PS80. In silico models based on calculated descriptors were successfully developed for drug solubility in SBO (R (2) = 0.81, Q (2) = 0.76) and Captex355 (R (2) = 0.84, Q (2) = 0.80). However, solubility in PS80 and PEG400 were not possible to quantitatively predict from molecular structure. Solubility measured in one excipient can be used to predict solubility in another, herein exemplified with TG(MC) versus TG(LC), and PS80 versus PEG400. We also show, for the first time, that solubility in TG(MC) and TG(LC) can be predicted from rapidly calculated molecular descriptors