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When processing signals, information entropy theory and data fusion theory have their own advantages. The former can improve the sensitivity of signals, while the latter can superimpose multisource information to correct system deviations and obtain the best identification results. Therefore, we introduce two theories into structural damage identification to improve the reliability of damage identification. First, based on the modal strain energy damage identification index, combined with information entropy and data fusion theory, a fusion entropy index (FE) and an entropy weight fusion index (EWF) are constructed. Then, the simply supported beam and truss structure model are established for damage simulation, which verified that the FE index and EWF index can accurately locate the damage. The polynomial fitting method is used to identify the damage degree of the structure, and the identification results obtained are more accurate. Finally, a simple-supported steel beam model is established in the laboratory for verification and analysis. The results show that the proposed FE index and EWF index have high damage sensitivity, noise resistance, and robustness, and relatively speaking, EWF index damage recognition ability is better. The method proposed in this paper provides an empirical method for practical engineering application.

Supplemental Figures 1-2 including: (1) Supplementary Figure 1. Genome-wide genetic association and lung cancer risk in discovery stage; (2) Supplementary Figure 2. Genome-wide gene-asbestos exposure interactions and lung cancer risk in discovery stage.

Background: Occupational asbestos exposure has been found to increase lung cancer risk in epidemiologic studies.Methods: We conducted an asbestos exposure–gene interaction analyses among several Caucasian populations who were current or ex-smokers. The discovery phase included 833 Caucasian cases and 739 Caucasian controls, and used a genome-wide association study (GWAS) to identify single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) with gene–asbestos interaction effects. The top ranked SNPs from the discovery phase were replicated within the International Lung and Cancer Consortium (ILCCO). First, in silico replication was conducted in those groups that had GWAS and asbestos exposure data, including 1,548 cases and 1,527 controls. This step was followed by de novo genotyping to replicate the results from the in silico replication, and included 1,539 cases and 1,761 controls. Multiple logistic regression was used to assess the SNP–asbestos exposure interaction effects on lung cancer risk.Results: We observed significantly increased lung cancer risk among MIRLET7BHG (MIRLET7B host gene located at 22q13.31) polymorphisms rs13053856, rs11090910, rs11703832, and rs12170325 heterozygous and homozygous variant allele(s) carriers (P < 5 × 10−7 by likelihood ratio test; df = 1). Among the heterozygous and homozygous variant allele(s) carriers of polymorphisms rs13053856, rs11090910, rs11703832, and rs12170325, each unit increase in the natural log-transformed asbestos exposure score was associated with age-, sex-, smoking status, and center-adjusted ORs of 1.34 [95% confidence interval (CI), 1.18–1.51], 1.24 (95% CI, 1.14–1.35), 1.28 (95% CI, 1.17–1.40), and 1.26 (95% CI, 1.15–1.38), respectively, for lung cancer risk.Conclusion: Our findings suggest that MIRLET7BHG polymorphisms may be important predictive markers for asbestos exposure–related lung cancer.Impact: To our knowledge, our study is the first report using a systematic genome-wide analysis in combination with detailed asbestos exposure data and replication to evaluate asbestos-associated lung cancer risk. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 24(10); 1564–73. ©2015 AACR.

A universal method for MOF@PVA bead preparation for efficient dynamic low concentration VOC adsorption.

OpenCourseWare (OCW) and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have gained increasing popularity and importance because they greatly expand students’ access to university lectures. Although the main ...

Zinc finger protein 671 (ZNF671) has been described as a vital cancer inhibitor in multiple neoplasms, yet the functional roles of ZNF671 in colorectal carcinoma (CRC) remain unresolved. This project examined the possible link between ZNF671 and CRC. Lower levels of ZNF671 were observed in CRC tissue compared with noncancerous tissue, which were related to a worse survival rate in CRC patients. High methylation levels at the ZNF671 gene promoter region were shown in CRC tissue, which were inversely correlated with ZNF671 expression. Treatment with demethylation agents restored ZNF671 levels in CRC cell lines. Up-regulation of ZNF671 resulted in suppressive effects on the proliferative ability and metastatic potency of CRC cells. Moreover, the up-regulation of ZNF671 reinforced the chemosensitivity of CRC cells. A mechanism study determined ZNF671 to be a vital mediator of Notch signaling. The up-regulation of ZNF671 decreased the expression of Notch1 and lowered the levels of NICD, HES1, and HEY1. The overexpression of NICD1 diminished ZNF671-mediated antitumor effects. ZNF671 depletion reinforced Notch signaling, and Notch suppression reversed ZNF671-depletion-elicited protumor effects. Moreover, the overexpression of ZNF671 weakened the tumorigenicity of CRC cells in a xenograft model in vivo. In summary, ZNF671 exerts a cancer-inhibiting function in CRC via the deactivation of Notch signaling. Low ZNF671 levels caused by gene promoter hypermethylation contribute to the malignant transformation of CRC. This work underlines the interest of ZNF671 as a target candidate for exploiting novel anti-CRC therapies.

The selective synthesis of energetically less favorable ring-shaped nanostructures by liquid phase synthetic chemistry is a huge challenge. Herein, we report a precise synthesis of carbon nanorings with a well-defined morphology and tunable thickness based on asymmetric intramicellar phase-transition-induced tip-to-tip assembly via mixing hydrophobic long-chain octadecanol and block copolymer F127. This orientational self-assembly depends on the hydrophobicity difference of the intermediate’s surface, which triggers directional interactions that surpass the entropy cost of undesired connections and help assemble intermediates into defined ringlike structures. Based on a ringlike template, carbon nanorings with adjustable sizes can be attained by changing synthetic variables. More importantly, diverse units including crescentlike, podlike, and garlandlike nanostructures can also be created through controlling the kinetics of the self-assembly process. This discovery lays a solid foundation for the challenging construction of such a precise configuration on the nanoscale, which would not only promote fundamental studies but also pave the way for the development of advanced nanodevices with unique properties., Carbon nanorings with a well-defined morphology and tunable thickness have been selectively synthesized via asymmetric intramicellar phase-transition-induced tip-to-tip assembly.

This study explores the differences between academic lectures and TED talks by comparing their respective frequent four-word lexical bundles, and the discourse functions of those bundles in these two registers. The results indicate that academic lectures use more varied lexical bundles at a higher frequency than TED talks do. The functional distributions of the bundles further reveal that referential bundles are prevalent in both registers. However, TED speakers use more lexical bundles to organize their discourse and to guide the audience through their talks, while academic lecturers use more stance bundles to show their intentions and to inform the audience about upcoming events. The distinctive characteristics of academic lectures and TED talks are revealed via the divergent sets of lexical bundles in the two registers; the two registers are also shown to differ greatly in terms of the use of lexical bundles for different functions.

Good listening comprehension contributes greatly to academic performance. One factor in developing good listening comprehension is knowing the functions of lexical bundles. While some research has been done on lexical bundles, their functions in academic lectures have not been extensively investigated. Drawing on an 8.8-million-word corpus of academic lectures across four disciplines, we investigated the functions of high-frequency lexical bundles in academic lectures and examined the similarities and differences in the four disciplines. We discovered that lexical bundles most often perform referential and stance functions in academic lectures, although their function as discourse organizers is also important. Given these and other functions of high-frequency lexical bundles, instruction targeting functions can contribute to improving core listening skills, such as listening for details and listening and predicting, and overall comprehension of lectures. Apart from important functions, we also found variations and similarities in the use of lexical bundles across disciplines, suggesting that these should be taken into account in bundle instruction to help students become more proficient in lecture comprehension.

Germ-cell transcription factors control gene networks that regulate oocyte differentiation and primordial follicle formation during early, postnatal mouse oogenesis. Taking advantage of gene-edited mice lacking transcription factors expressed in female germ cells, we analyzed global gene expression profiles in perinatal ovaries from wildtype, FiglaNull, Lhx8Null and Sohlh1Null mice. Figla deficiency dysregulates expression of meiosis-related genes (e.g. Sycp3, Rad51, Ybx2) and a variety of genes (e.g. Nobox, Lhx8, Taf4b, Sohlh1, Sohlh2, Gdf9) associated with oocyte growth and differentiation. The absence of FIGLA significantly impedes meiotic progression, causes DNA damage and results in oocyte apoptosis. Moreover, we find that FIGLA and other transcriptional regulator proteins (e.g. NOBOX, LHX8, SOHLH1, SOHLH2) are co-expressed in the same subset of germ cells in perinatal ovaries and Figla ablation dramatically disrupts KIT, NOBOX, LHX8, SOHLH1 and SOHLH2 abundance. In addition, not only do FIGLA, LHX8 and SOHLH1 cross-regulate each other, they also cooperate by direct interaction with each during early oocyte development and share downstream gene targets. Thus, our findings substantiate a major role for FIGLA, LHX8 and SOHLH1 as multifunctional regulators of networks necessary for oocyte maintenance and differentiation during early folliculogenesis.

Previous studies on ESL/EFL learners’ verb-noun (V-N) miscollocations have shed some light on common miscollocation types and possible causes. However, barriers to further understanding of learners’ difficulties still exist, such as the limited amount of learner data generated from small corpora and the labor-intensive process of manually retrieving collocational errors. To provide researchers with a more efficient retrieval method, this study proposed the use of the Sketch-Diff function in the Sketch Engine (SKE) platform to semi-automatically retrieve collocation errors in large learner corpora. To test the feasibility of this semi-automatic retrieval method, a 7.4-million-word EFL learner corpus was investigated with Sketch-Diff, and 4541 tokens of common miscollocations were identified. Analysis of these miscollocations revealed that most errors were verb-based and often caused by negative transfer from the learners’ L1, undergeneralization (e.g., ignorance of L2 syntactic rules), and approximation (e.g., the misuse of near-synonyms, hyper-/hyponyms, antonyms, and lexemes with similar sound/form). This study demonstrates that using Sketch-Diff to retrieve V-N miscollocations from a large learner corpus is both feasible and efficient. This method can be applied to other languages to further deepen our understanding of L2 learners’ difficulties in collocation acquisition.

MicroRNA (miRNA) abundance is tightly controlled by regulation of biogenesis and decay. Here we show that the mir-35 miRNA family undergoes selective decay at the transition from embryonic to larval development in C. elegans. The seed sequence of the miRNA is necessary and largely sufficient for this regulation. Sequences outside the seed (3’ end) regulate mir-35 abundance in the embryo but are not necessary for sharp decay at the transition to larval development. Enzymatic modifications of the miRNA 3’ end are neither prevalent nor correlated with changes in decay, suggesting that miRNA 3’ end display is not a core feature of this mechanism and further supporting a seed-driven decay model. Our findings demonstrate that seed sequence-specific decay can selectively and coherently regulate all redundant members of a miRNA seed family, a class of mechanism that has great biological and therapeutic potential for dynamic regulation of a miRNA family’s target repertoire.

The roles of ambient fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in the prevention of colorectal cancer (CRC) have been scarcely highlighted as there is short of empirical evidence regarding the influences of PM2.5 on multistep carcinogenic processes of CRC. A retrospective cohort design with multistate outcomes was envisaged by linking monthly average PM2.5 concentrations at 22 city/county level with large-scale cohorts of cancer-screened population to study the influences of PM2.5 on short-term inflammatory process and multistep carcinogenic processes of CRC. Our study included a nationwide CRC screening cohort of 4,628,995 aged 50–69 years who attended first screen between 2004 and 2009 and continued periodical screens until 2016. We aimed to illustrate the carcinogenesis of PM2.5 related to CRC by applying both hierarchical logistical and multistate Markov regression models to estimate the effects of air pollution on fecal immunochemical test (FIT) positive (a proxy of inflammatory marker) and pre-clinical and clinical states of CRC in the nationwide cohort. We found a significant association of high PM2.5 exposure and FIT-positive by an increased risk of 11% [95% confidence interval (CI), 10–12]. PM2.5 enhanced the risk of being preclinical state by 14% (95% CI, 10–18) and that of subsequent progression from pre-clinical to clinical state by 21% (95% CI, 14–28). Furthermore, the elevated risks for CRC carcinogenesis were significantly higher for people living in high PM2.5 pollution areas in terms of yearly averages and the number days above 35 µg/m3 than those living in low PM2.5 pollution areas. We concluded that both short-term and long-term PM2.5 exposure were associated with multistep progression of CRC, which were useful to design precision primary and secondary prevention strategies of CRC for people who are exposed to high PM2.5 pollution.

Purpose An automatic text annotation system (ATAS) that can collect resources from different databases through Linked Data (LD) for automatically annotating ancient texts was developed in this study to support digital humanities research. It allows the humanists referring to resources from diverse databases when interpreting ancient texts as well as provides a friendly text annotation reader for humanists interpreting ancient text through reading. The paper aims to discuss whether the ATAS is helpful to support digital humanities research or not. Design/methodology/approach Based on the quasi-experimental design, the ATAS developed in this study and MARKUS semi-ATAS were compared whether the significant differences in the reading effectiveness and technology acceptance for supporting humanists interpreting ancient text of the Ming dynasty’s collections existed or not. Additionally, lag sequential analysis was also used to analyze users’ operation behaviors on the ATAS. A semi-structured in-depth interview was also applied to understand users’ opinions and perception of using the ATAS to interpret ancient texts through reading. Findings The experimental results reveal that the ATAS has higher reading effectiveness than MARKUS semi-ATAS, but not reaching the statistically significant difference. The technology acceptance of the ATAS is significantly higher than that of MARKUS semi-ATAS. Particularly, the function comparison of the two systems shows that the ATAS presents more perceived ease of use on the functions of term search, connection to source websites and adding annotation than MARKUS semi-ATAS. Furthermore, the reading interface of ATAS is simple and understandable and is more suitable for reading than MARKUS semi-ATAS. Among all the considered LD sources, Moedict, which is an online Chinese dictionary, was confirmed as the most helpful one. Research limitations/implications This study adopted Jieba Chinese parser to perform the word segmentation process based on a parser lexicon for the Chinese ancient texts of the Ming dynasty’s collections. The accuracy of word segmentation to a lexicon-based Chinese parser is limited due to ignoring the grammar and semantics of ancient texts. Moreover, the original parser lexicon used in Jieba Chinese parser only contains the modern words. This will reduce the accuracy of word segmentation for Chinese ancient texts. The two limitations that affect Jieba Chinese parser to correctly perform the word segmentation process for Chinese ancient texts will significantly affect the effectiveness of using ATAS to support digital humanities research. This study thus proposed a practicable scheme by adding new terms into the parser lexicon based on humanists’ self-judgment to improve the accuracy of word segmentation of Jieba Chinese parser. Practical implications Although some digital humanities platforms have been successfully developed to support digital humanities research for humanists, most of them have still not provided a friendly digital reading environment to support humanists on interpreting texts. For this reason, this study developed an ATAS that can automatically retrieve LD sources from different databases on the Internet to supply rich annotation information on reading texts to help humanists interpret texts. This study brings digital humanities research to a new ground. Originality/value This study proposed a novel ATAS that can automatically annotate useful information on an ancient text to increase the readability of the ancient text based on LD sources from different databases, thus helping humanists obtain a deeper and broader understanding in the ancient text. Currently, there is no this kind of tool developed for humanists to support digital humanities research.

Although TED talks are commonly used as supplementary listening materials in English classrooms, whether they are suitable materials for academic listening is still arguable. This study thus employs the Academic Spoken Word List (ASWL) and the British National Corpus and Corpus of Contemporary American English (BNC/COCA) lists to analyze TED talks’ vocabulary profiles in a corpus consisting of transcripts of 2085 such talks from six main topics. The analysis reveals high coverage of the ASWL over TED talks at approximately 90%. The coverage figure is similar to that of the ASWL over academic speech, suggesting that TED talks should be suitable materials for academic listening. Learners are also likely to learn high-frequency academic spoken vocabulary from such talks. This study also discovers that learners can reach the same coverage of TED talks by studying either the 1741 word families in the ASWL or the first 2000 word families in the BNC/COCA lists. The learning load is lower for learners to study the ASWL, thus making it a more suitable vocabulary support for comprehending TED talks. Based on the findings, this study provides several useful suggestions regarding how TED talks can be used in EAP courses.

Many studies have explored differences in the use of intensifiers by people of different genders, but few have focused on additional compounding variables that may affect gendered intensifier use. This study thus explored the effects of academics’ gender and subject area on intensifier use in their lectures, as well as the interactions between these two variables. Significant differences were found in the use of intensifiers between genders and between academic disciplines, with male lecturers using significantly more intensifiers than female ones did, and significantly fewer intensifiers occurring in the hard sciences than the soft ones. Of the two variables, discipline was more influential on intensifier variation than gender was. The interaction data, meanwhile, indicated that although male lecturers in both disciplinary groups used intensifiers frequently, their language behaviors were affected far more by the norms of the lecture genre than by discipline. The female lecturers’ intensifier usage, on the other hand, was substantially influenced by both gender and discipline. Taken as a whole, these findings reveal that, although gender is undeniably an important factor in it, intensifier variation is more likely to be explicated through research on the interactive effects of gender and other variables.

提要：有鑑於專業華語的研究與教材仍為不足，本研究基以人文社會科學領域之高頻詞，應用以網路為語料庫的概念，自網頁擷取了約 4 千 3 百萬字之語料建置人文社會科學語料庫，並據此建置學術搭配詞檢索系統，可提供豐富搭配詞資訊與例句為教學與教材編纂所用。與收錄一般語料之中央研究院平衡語料庫相比亦發現，本系統可提供較多學術相關之搭配詞，彰顯此語料庫之學術色彩，亦顯示此種語料庫建置方式有其效用，可應用於未來專業華語之探究。

In this work dynamic wetting failure of Newtonian liquids in a curtain coating geometry is studied using a hydrodynamic model developed in our prior work (Liu et al., 2016b). The model is used to predict the onset of wetting failure with curtain heights consistent with prior experimental setups. In the model, a Navier-slip boundary condition and constant contact angle are used to describe the dynamic contact line (DCL). The governing equations are solved with the Galerkin finite-element method and the critical substrate speed is identified at which wetting failure occurs. A boundary of a coating window is constructed which outlines the critical substrate speed for different flow rates of the liquid curtain. The model predictions are compared with prior experimental observations reported by Blake et al. (1999) and Marston et al. (2009). The model reproduces the non-monotonic behavior of the critical speed as the liquid flow rate increases. When surfactants are absent, our results suggest that the experimental observations can largely be explained with a model that uses the simplest boundary conditions at the DCL (Navier-slip and constant contact angle) and accounts for the air stresses there to accurately calculate interface shapes. When surfactants are present, our results suggest that a decrease in the equilibrium surface tension may not be the only mechanism responsible for changes in the shape of the coating window. In particular, Marangoni stresses may play an important role.