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This article examines a group of Song-dynasty biji (miscellaneous jottings) anecdotes featuring the Northern Song literary giant Su Shi (style name Dongpo, 1037-1101) playfully engaging with Buddhist encounter dialogues. These religious accounts are well known for their riddle-like language and the baffling effect they create among their readers, prompting the question of whether they were read for humor. Previous scholarship on encounter dialogues focuses on the religious perspective, demonstrating that their perplexing language and rhetoric serve pedagogical and monastic functions. By contrast, this article explores Chan Buddhist humor from the perspective of the literati and vernacular culture by examining how encounter dialogues were incorporated in Song-dynasty vernacular plays and literati storytelling. Focusing on stories that depict Su Shi's playful engagement with encounter dialogues as a case study, this article reveals that an important part of Su Shi's humorous image is inspired and shaped by Buddhism. It also shows that humor in these biji stories is contingent on the readers' knowledge of Chan literature such as 'recorded dialogues' (yulu) and 'transmission records' (denglu), which were popular among literati during the Song. The anecdotal materials preserved in biji suggests a mutual influence between Chan literature and vernacular entertainment during the Song. I argue that, in addition to religious functions, literary factors of performance and aesthetics played significant roles in conditioning the entertaining effect of encounter dialogues, particularly when they were received outside of monastic circles., INTRODUCTION The Song dynasty (960-1279) witnessed a surge of interest in anecdotal writing by educated elites, resulting in a large corpus of personal collections known as biji (miscellaneous jottings). (1) [...]

Clarifying the effects of biodiversity on ecosystem stability in the context of global environmental change is crucial for maintaining ecosystem functions and services. Asynchronous changes between trophic levels over time (i.e. trophic community asynchrony) are expected to increase trophic mismatch and alter trophic interactions, which may consequently alter ecosystem stability. However, previous studies have often highlighted the stabilising mechanism of population asynchrony within a single trophic level, while rarely examining the mechanism of trophic community asynchrony between consumers and their food resources.In this study, we analysed the effects of population asynchrony within and between trophic levels on community stability under the disturbances of climate warming, fishery decline and de‐eutrophication, based on an 18‐year monthly monitoring dataset of 137 phytoplankton and 91 zooplankton in a subtropical lake.Our results showed that species diversity promoted community stability mainly by increasing population asynchrony both for phytoplankton and zooplankton. Trophic community asynchrony had a significant negative effect on zooplankton community stability rather than that of phytoplankton, which supports the match‐mismatch hypothesis that trophic mismatch has negative effects on consumers. Furthermore, the results of the structural equation models showed that warming and top‐down effects may simultaneously alter community stability through population dynamics processes within and between trophic levels, whereas nutrients act on community stability mainly through the processes within trophic levels. Moreover, we found that rising water temperature decreased trophic community asynchrony, which may challenge the prevailing idea that climate warming increases the trophic mismatch between primary producers and consumers.Overall, our study provides the first evidence that population and trophic community asynchrony have contrasting effects on consumer community stability, which offers a valuable insight for addressing global environmental change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shen Gua's Empiricism. By YA ZUO. Cambridge. MA: HARVARD UNIVERSITY ASIA CENTER, 2018. Pp. xiii + 333. $49.95. Song-dynasty scholar-official Shen Gua (sometimes rendered as Shen Kua or Shen Kuo [...]

Since the 21st century, transparent flexible sensors (TFSs) have been widely employed in abundant fields, such as smart glasses, intelligent watches, robots, electronic skin, especially biomedicine. Presently, various materials have been developed, such as metal‐based, carbon‐based, conductive polymer‐based, and ionic liquid‐based (IL‐based) materials. Compared with the first three materials, IL, as a novel material, with the tendency of green chemistry development, has a high application prospect in TFSs. Based on this, this paper mainly discusses recent advances in TFSs based on ILs, with special emphasis on the role of ILs and the factors influencing transparency as well as electricity. The current challenges and opportunities for each type of sensors based on IL are also studied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The chemo‐regulation abilities of chemotherapeutic medications are appealing to address the low immunogenicity, immunosuppressive lactate microenvironment, and adaptive immune resistance of colorectal cancer. In this work, the proteolysis targeting chimera (PROTAC) of BRD4 (dBET57) is found to downregulate colorectal cancer glycolysis through the transcription inhibition of c‐Myc, which also inhibits the expression of programmed death ligand 1 (PD‐L1) to reverse immune evasion and avoid adaptive immune resistance. Based on this, self‐delivery nano‐PROTACs (designated as DdLD NPs) are further fabricated by the self‐assembly of doxorubicin (DOX) and dBET57 with the assistance of DSPE‐PEG2000. DdLD NPs can improve the stability, intracellular delivery, and tumor targeting accumulation of DOX and dBET57. Meanwhile, the chemotherapeutic effect of DdLD NPs can efficiently destroy colorectal cancer cells to trigger a robust immunogenic cell death (ICD). More importantly, the chemo‐regulation effects of DdLD NPs can inhibit colorectal cancer glycolysis to reduce the lactate production, and downregulate the PD‐L1 expression through BRD4 degradation. Taking advantages of the chemotherapy and chemo‐regulation ability, DdLD NPs systemically activated the antitumor immunity to suppress the primary and metastatic colorectal cancer progression without inducing any systemic side effects. Such self‐delivery nano‐PROTACs may provide a new insight for chemotherapy‐enabled tumor immunotherapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines accounts of women during war and social turmoil in Hong Mai's (1123-1202) collection of anomalous occurrences, the Yijian zhi (Record of the listener). Recent scholarship, relying on Song-period women's biographies, contends that the wars of the twelfth century contributed to Southern Song elite men's increasing efforts to analogize female fidelity to men's political loyalty in China since the Song. This article conveys another dimension: the emotional trauma of Southern Song society's war-time experiences. Such reading unveils at least three types of Yijian zhi accounts on women during war: the model virtue type, which falls neatly into the heroic women narrative tradition; the moral uncanny type, which features the scary side of righteous cruelty; and the lighthearted joking type, which mitigates the intensity of the traumatic experience of displacement. An examination of female fidelity in these eclectic accounts suggests that gendered moral discourses attached to women's biographies do not fully reflect how Southern Song society remembered women's suffering during national crises. This article demonstrates that, struggling to come to terms with the aftermath of wars and social disorder, Hong Mai and his contemporaries were still in the process of grappling with the tenet of female fidelity and its implications for men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A trifunctionalization cascade reaction of substituted maleimides was developed to generate a series of disulfonylated diazosuccinimides in satisfactory yields by employing readily available sulfonyl hydrazides as both diazo source and sulfonylation reagent. The notable features of this developed method include avoiding the use of transition metal catalysts, environmentally benign H2O as the solvent, mild reaction conditions, good functional group tolerance, and the late‐stage modification of drugs. The derivatization reactions were effectively applied to synthesize aminosulfonylation‐substituted maleimides. The involved radical pathway was also demonstrated by mechanistic studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brassinosteroids (BRs) play vital roles in the plant life cycle and synthetic BRs are widely used to increase crop yield and plant stress tolerance. Among them are 24R-methyl-epibrassinolide (24-EBL) and 24S-ethyl-28-homobrassinolide (28-HBL), which differ from brassinolide (BL, the most active BR) at the C-24 position. Although it is well known that 24-EBL is 10% active as BL, there is no consensus on the bioactivity of 28-HBL. A recent outpouring of research interest in 28-HBL on major crops accompanied with a surge of industrial-scale synthesis that produces mixtures of active (22R,23R)-28-HBL and inactive (22S,23S)-28HBL, demands a standardized assay system capable of analyzing different synthetic "28-HBL" products. In this study, the relative bioactivity of 28-HBL to BL and 24-EBL, including its capacity to induce the well-established BR responses at molecular, biochemical, and physiological levels, was systematically analyzed using the whole seedlings of the wild-type and BR-deficient mutant of Arabidopsis thaliana. These multi-level bioassays consistently showed that 28-HBL exhibits a much stronger bioactivity than 24-EBL and is almost as active as BL in rescuing the short hypocotyl phenotype of the dark-grown det2 mutant. These results are consistent with the previously established structure–activity relationship of BRs, proving that this multi-level whole seedling bioassay system could be used to analyze different batches of industrially produced 28-HBL or other BL analogs to ensure the full potential of BRs in modern agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Warm-sector heavy rainfall (WR), shear-line heavy rainfall (SR), and frontal heavy rainfall (FR) are three types of rainfall that frequently occur during the pre-summer rainy season in south China. In this research, we investigated the differences in microphysical characteristics of heavy rainfall events during the period of 10-15 May 2022 based on the combined observations from 11 S-band polarimetric radars in south China. The conclusions are as follows: (1) WR has the highest radar echo top height, the strongest radar echo at all altitudes, the highest lightning density, and the most active ice-phase process, which suggests that the convection is the most vigorous in the WR, moderate in the FR, and the weakest in the SR. (2) Three types of rainfall are all marine-type precipitation, the massweighted mean diameter (Dm, mm) and the intercept parameter (Nw, mm-1m-3) of the raindrops in the WR are the largest. (3) The WR possesses the highest proportion of graupel compared with the FR and SR, and stronger updrafts and more abundant water vapor supply may lead to larger raindrops during the melting and collision-coalescence processes. (4) Over all the heights, liquid and ice water content in the WR are higher than those in the SR and FR, the ratio of ice to liquid water content in the WR is as high as 27% when ZH exceeds 50 dBZ, definitely higher than that in the SR and FR, indicating that the active ice-phase process existing in the WR is conducive to the formation of heavy rainfall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the data of Automatic Weather Stations (AWSs), ERA5 reanalysis, sounding, wind profile radar, and dual-polarization radar are used to study an extreme rainfall event in the south China Coast on 11 to 12 May 2022 from the aspects of thermodynamics and microphysical characteristics under the influence of low-level jets (LLJs). Results show that: (1) The extreme rainfall event can be divided into two stages: the first stage (S1) from 0000 to 0600 LST on May 12 and the second stage (S2) from 0700 to 1700 LST on the same day. During S1, the rainfall is mainly caused by the upper-level shortwave trough and the boundary layer jet (BLJ), characterized by strong upward motion on the windward side of mountains. In S2, the combined influence of the BLJ and synoptic-system-related low-level jet (SLLJ) increases the vertical wind shear and vertical vorticity, strengthening the rainstorm. In combination with the effect of topography, a warm and humid southwest flow continuously transports water vapor to farther north, resulting in a significant increase in rainfall over the study area (on the terrain's windward slope). From S1 to S2, the altitude of a divergence center in the upper air decreases obviously. (2) The rainfalls in the two stages are both associated with the mesoscale convergence line (MCL) on the surface, and the wind field from the mesoscale outflow boundary (MOB) in S1 is in the same direction as the environmental winds. Due to a small area of convergence that is left behind the MOB, convection moves eastward quickly and causes a short duration of heavy rainfall. In S2, the convergence along the MOB is enhanced, which strengthens the rainfall and leads to strong outflows, further enhancing the surface convergence near the MOB and forming a positive feedback mechanism. It results in a slow motion of convection and a long duration of heavy rainfall. (3) In terms of microphysics, the center of a strong echo in S1 is higher than in S2. The warm-rain process of the oceanic type characterizes both stages, but the convective intensity in S2 is significantly stronger than that in S1, featuring bigger drop sizes and lower concentrations. It is mainly due to the strengthening of LLJs, which makes small cloud droplets lift to melting levels, enhancing the ice phase process (riming process), producing large amounts of graupel particles and enhancing the melting and collision processes as they fall, resulting in the increase of liquid water content (LWC) and the formation of large raindrops near the surface. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aiming at the needs of mechanism analysis of rainstorms and development of numerical prediction models in south China, the Guangzhou Institute of Tropical and Marine Meteorology of China Meteorological Administration and the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences jointly set up the Longmen Cloud Physics Field Experiment Base, China Meteorological Administration. This paper introduces the instruments and field experiments of this base, provides an overview of the recent advances in retrieval algorithms of microphysical parameters, improved understanding of microphysical characteristics, as well as the formation mechanisms and numerical prediction of heavy rainfalls in south China based on the field experiments dataset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background. NK cells are imperative in spontaneous antitumor response of various cancers. Currently, lncRNAs are considered important modulators of the tumor microenvironment. This study investigated the molecular mechanism by which mitotically associated long noncoding RNA (MANCR) controls killing effect of NK cells on lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) in the tumor microenvironment. Methods. The interplay between MANCR and miRNA-30d-5p was analyzed by bioinformatics. Expression of MANCR mRNA and miRNA-30d-5p was examined using qRT-PCR. Dual-luciferase reporter and RIP assays were utilized to verify the targeted relationship between MANCR and miRNA-30d-5p. To investigate regulation of MANCR/miRNA-30d-5p axis in NK cell killing effect on LUAD cells, western blot tested the protein level of perforin and granzyme B. ELISA determined the level of IFN-γ. CytoTox 96 Non-Radioactive Cytotoxicity Assay kit was applied for cytotoxicity detection of NK cells. Perforin and granzyme B fluorescence intensity was measured via immunofluorescence, and cell apoptosis levels were also revealed via flow cytometry. Results. MANCR was found to be upregulated, while miRNA-30d-5p expression was downregulated in LUAD tissues. Overexpression of MANCR in LUAD cells significantly reduced NK cell IFN-γ secretion, expression of granzyme B and perforin, and NK cell killing effect. In addition, MANCR could target and downregulate miRNA-30d-5p expression, and miRNA-30d-5p overexpression reversed the inhibition of NK cell killing effect caused by MANCR overexpression. Conclusion. MANCR inhibited the killing effect of NK cells on LUAD via targeting and downregulating miRNA-30d-5p and provided new ideas for antitumor therapy based on tumor microenvironment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]