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The purpose of this systematic review is to review the relevant studies on rhetorical strategies in humorous discourse and text to gain a comprehensive understanding of the role of rhetorical strategies in humorous discourse and to explore future research trends. A systematic literature review following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses was conducted in the present study. After data selection and screening followed the protocol criteria, 20 articles were included in this study. The results reveal that most of the prior researchers investigated one specific rhetorical strategy in an article, such as irony, metaphor, satire, insults, and metonymy, while some of them examined different rhetorical strategies simultaneously. Besides, all the included articles adopted a qualitative research method, and the theories they applied are diverse. Moreover, the functions of rhetorical strategies in different humorous discourses are summarized. The results show that the functions of rhetorical strategies differ in different types of humorous contexts, which depend on the speaker’s communication purpose in certain situations.

In this paper, we introduce a technique to enhance the computational efficiency of solution algorithms for high-dimensional discrete simulation-based optimization problems. The technique is based on innovative adaptive partitioning strategies that partition the feasible region using solutions that has already been simulated as well as prior knowledge of the problem of interesting. We integrate the proposed strategies with the Empirical Stochastic Branch-and-Bound framework proposed by Xu and Nelson (2013). This combination leads to a general-purpose discrete simulation-based optimization algorithm that is both globally convergent and has good small sample (finite-time) performance. The proposed general-purpose discrete simulation-based optimization algorithm is validated on a synthetic discrete simulation-based optimization problem and is then used to address a real-world car-sharing fleet assignment problem. Experiment results show that the proposed strategy can increase the algorithm efficiency significantly.

A urease inhibitor with good in vivo profile is considered as an alternative agent for treating infections caused by urease-producing bacteria such as Helicobacter pylori. Here, we report a series of N-monosubstituted thioureas, which act as effective urease inhibitors with very low cytotoxicity. One compound (b19) was evaluated in detail and shows promising features for further development as an agent to treat H. pylori caused diseases. Excellent values for the inhibition of b19 against both extracted urease and urease in intact cell were observed, which shows IC50 values of 0.16 ± 0.05 and 3.86 ± 0.10 µM, being 170- and 44-fold more potent than the clinically used drug AHA, respectively. Docking simulations suggested that the monosubstituted thiourea moiety penetrates urea binding site. In addition, b19 is a rapid and reversible urease inhibitor, and displays nM affinity to urease with very slow dissociation (k off=1.60 × 10−3 s−1) from the catalytic domain.