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Semantic and functional transformation of words is a common feature of all languages and has been one of the hot topics in language research. Being a common word in modern Chinese, “si” (death) has gone through the process of semantic transformation many times and has had multiple meanings. Previous researches mainly focus on the classification of various meanings of “death”, the differences and characteristics of the meaning of “si” (death) in different syntactic positions, and the intuitive research on the causes and paths of semantic transformation, but the latter is not systematical. In order to solve the problem, cognitive linguistics has put forward prototype category theory to find out the general rules of semantic and functional transformation. Prototype category theory emphasizes the motivation of the semantic transformation of words when guiding us to study the semantic transformation of words. Our study finds that the relationship between the new meanings derived from semantic transformation and the original meaning of “si” (death) can be reasonably explained by the prototype category theory in cognitive linguistics. This discovery proves from the reverse side that the prototype category is the main way of semantic and functional transformation of Chinese words, which fully demonstrates that the semantic and functional transformation of Chinese words conforms to the cognitive law of human beings, having strong motivation.

From the perspective of functional linguistics, this paper analyzes the features of the discourse pattern of political speeches from the perspective of critical discourse analysis, taking Biden’s 2020 election victory speech as a model, and explores how political speeches realize ideational functions in language through transitivity system, voice system and normalization system, and how they realize interpersonal functions through mood system and modality system, how to realize textual function through theme-rheme structure, information structure, and cohesion system. A political speaker's mastery of his own subjective and objective attitude, the shaping of the credibility and persuasiveness of his speech, the construction of one's own social identity, interpersonal relationship, and ideology can be embodied through the three meta-functions of language.

Lignin is a renewable and the most abundant aromatic source that can be used for extensive chemicals and materials. Although approximately 50 million tons of lignin are produced annually as a by-product of the pulp and paper industry, it is currently underutilized. It is important to know the structural features of technical lignin when considering its application. In this work, we have demonstrated the formation of low-molecular-weight constituents from hardwood (Eucalyptus) lignin, which produces much more low-molecular-weight constituents than softwood (spruce) lignin, after a chemical pulping process, and analyzed the micromolecular compositions in the alkali lignin after fractionation by dichloromethane (DCM) extraction. By applying analytical methods (gel-permeation chromatography, 2D NMR and GC-MS) with the aid of evidence from authenticated compounds, a great treasure trove of lignin-derived phenolic compounds from Eucalyptus alkali lignin were disclosed. Except for some common monomeric products, as many as 15 new lignin-derived monomers and dimers including syringaglycerol, diarylmethane, 1,2-diarylethanes, 1,2-diarylethenes, (arylvinyl ether)-linked arylglycerol dimers and isomeric syringaresinols were identified in the DCM-soluble fraction. Regarding the formation and evolution of the Cα-condensed β-aryl ether structure, a novel route that is potentially responsible for the high content of β-1 diarylethenes and diarylethanes in the lignin low-molecular-weight fraction, in addition to the β-1 (spirodienone) pathway, was proposed. This work not only provides novel insights into the chemical transformation of S–G lignin during the alkali pulping process, but also discovered lignin-derived phenolic monomers and dimers that can potentially be used as raw materials in the chemical or pharmaceutical industries.

We have developed a method to analyze all rare earth elements in silicate glasses and zircon minerals using a high lateral resolution secondary ion mass spectrometer (NanoSIMS). A 2nA O− primary beam was used to sputter a 7–8-μm diameter crater on the sample surface, and secondary positive ions were extracted for mass analysis using an accelerating voltage of 8 kV. A high mass resolving power of 9,400 at 10% peak height was attained to separate heavy REE from oxide of light REE. A multi-collector system combined with peak-jumping by magnetic field was adjusted to detect REEs and silicon-30 for calibration. Based on results of NIST SRM610 glass, sensitivities of REEs vary from 3 cps/ppm/nA of Lu to 13 cps/ppm/nA of Eu. Reproducibility of REE/Si ratios is better than 18% at 2σ. Secondary ion yields of REEs show positive relationships with their ionization potential of second valence. REEs of AS3, QGNG, and Torihama zircons were measured and calibrated against those of 91500 standard zircon. SIYs of REEs of zircon are identical to those of the glass standard. AS3 and QGNG data are generally consistent with those of previous work. Torihama REE data combined with the whole rock data provide partition coefficients of REEs between silicate melt and zircon. The relationship between these coefficients and ionic radius is explained by an elastic moduli model.

Lignin condensation reactions are hard to avoid or control during separation, which is a deterrent to lignin isolation and post-conversation, especially for the full utilization of lignocelluloses. Selective protection of β-aryl ether linkages in the isolation process is crucial to lignin valorization. Herein, a two-step acid/alkali separation method assisted with l-cysteine for

In polymer solar cells (PSCs), twisted polymer donors usually have low photovoltaic efficiencies due to their poor photoactive layer morphologies. Herein, we successfully improved twisted polymer (PBDT-3T) photovoltaic efficiency by employing C=O groups (PBDT-3TCO) to enhance intermolecular interactions. The maximum power conversion efficiency (PCE) of PBDT-3T is only 1.05%, while the PCE of PBDT-3TCO reaches 11.77% in non-fullerene (NF) PSCs. Both polymers-based PSCs show very similar open-circuit voltages but remarkable differences in their short-circuit currents and fill factors. The single crystals of both functionalized terthiophenes with methyl substituents demonstrate that the terthiophene with C=O units changes molecular pattern by forming intra/inter molecular S ××× O and O ××× H interactions but its molecular planarity does not significantly improve. Our comparative studies show that PBDT-3TCO with C=O units possesses a strong aggregation property and optimal photoactive layer morphology in NF PSCs. This study provides important insight into the design of high-performance twisted polymer donors for NF PSCs.

Exploration of the application prospects of cattail fibers (CFs) in natural composites, and other fields is important for the sustainable development of new, green, light-weight, functional biomass materials. In this study, the physical and chemical properties, micro/nano structure, and mechanical characteristics of CFs were investigated. The CFs have a low density (618.0 kg m−3). The results of transmission electron microscopy and tensile testing data indicated that the cattail trunk fiber (CTF) bundle is composed of parenchyma cells and solid stone cells, demonstrating high specific modulus (10.1 MPa∙m3·kg−1) and high elongation at break (3.9%). In turn, the cattail branch fiber (CBF) bundle is composed of parenchyma cells with specific “half-honeycomb” shape. The inner diaphragms divide these cells into the open cavities. This structural feature endows the CTF bundles with stable structure, good oil absorption and storage capacities. The chemical component and the Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy analyses show that the CFs have higher lignin content (20.6%) and wax content (11.5%), which are conducive to the improvement of corrosion resistance, thermal stability and lipophilic–hydrophobic property of CF. Finally, the thermogravimetric analysis indicates that its final degradation temperature is 404.5 °C, which is beneficial to the increase in processability of CFs-reinforced composites.

Phenolation is a commonly used method to improve the reactivity of lignin for various applications. In this study, resinol lignin models (syringaresinol and pinoresinol) and eucalyptus alkali lignin were treated under acid-catalyzed phenolation conditions to investigate the products derived from resinol (β-β) structures of lignins. The phenolation products were characterized by means of GC-MS and NMR spectroscopy following separation using flash chromatography and thin-layer chromatography. A series of new naphthalene products were identified from phenolation of syringaresinol, and the corresponding guaiacyl analogs were also identified by GC-MS. The C1-Cα bond of these resinol compounds was cleaved to release syringol or guaiacol during phenolation. In addition, diphenylmethane products formed from phenol or phenol and syringol/guaiacol were found in the phenolation products. Comparatively, more naphthalene products were obtained by phenolation from syringaresinol than those obtained from pinoresinol. HSQC NMR characterization of the phenolated alkali lignin revealed that naphthalene structures formed in the phenolated lignin.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the natural Luffa vine (LV) fiber to be effectively used as cellulose fiber reinforcing material for lightweight and decay-resistance composite materials. The physical, chemical, thermal, and morphological properties of the LV fibers, together with their microstructure are investigated. The test results conclude that the LV density, microscopic characteristics, and mechanical properties show that this crop is a lightweight (200–550 kg/m3) natural fiber with a porous structure and a high specific modulus (1.18–2.04 MPa∙ m3/kg). The chemical, X-ray diffraction and the Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy analyses indicate that the LV has a high lignin content (25.18%) and a relatively high relative crystallinity (37.18%) of cellulose, and it contains saponins, which increase its erosion resistance and hardness. The thermogravimetric analysis reveals that the fibers can stand up to 315.4 °C. Moreover, due to their kinetic activation energy of 63.9 kJ/mol, they can be used as reinforcement materials in thermoplastic green composites with a working temperature below 300°.

During the lignification of grass cell walls, ferulate acts like a nucleation site that can cross couple with monolignols, i.e. coniferyl alcohol and sinapyl alcohol, to form dimeric products. Here we investigated in detail the ferulate-sinapyl alcohol cross-coupling products in an effort on better understanding the nature and scope of lignin-ferulate interactions. In a biomimetic oxidative system, sinapyl alcohol (SA) reacted with ethyl ferulate (FA), a simplified model for feruloyl polysaccharides in plants, to give a mixture of dozens of dimeric products. We delineated the structure of each product by GC-MS and NMR characterizations. It was found that sinapyl alcohol readily reacts with ethyl ferulate producing various cross-coupled dimers including SA-(β–5)-FA (compound 6), SA-(β–8)-FA (both ester and lactones, compounds 7 and 9), and SA-(β–O–4)-FA (compound 8) cross-coupled products in addition to homo-coupled products from ethyl ferulate or sinapyl alcohol. SA-(β–O–4)-FA 8 was identified for the first time in a vitro free radical biomimetic system and the homo-coupled SA-(β–O–4)-SA 3 from sinapyl alcohol was accurately quantified as less than 5%, while the half-open syringaresinol 5 was discovered when dimerization of SA was catalyzed by peroxidase in a biomimetic buffer system. Moreover, one new compound 18 formed by the cross-coupled linkage SA-(β–5)-FA (de-protonated) was identified by GC-MS and NMR, and one possible FA-(8–β)-SA dimer 19* was proposed.

Sulfide-silicate melt partitioning controls the behavior of gold in magmas, which is critical for understanding the Earth's deep gold cycle and formation of gold deposits. However, the mechanisms that control the sulfide-silicate melt partitioning of gold remain largely unknown. Here we present constraints from laboratory experiments on the partition coefficient of gold between monosulfide-solid-solution (MSS) and silicate melt ( D A u M S S / S M ) under conditions relevant for magmatism at subduction settings. Thirty-five experiments were performed in Au capsules to determine D A u M S S / S M at 950-1050 °C, 0.5-3 GPa, oxygen fugacity (fO2) of ∼FMQ-1.7 to FMQ+2.7 (FMQ refers to the fayalite-magnetite-quartz buffer), and sulfur fugacity (fS2) of −2.2 to 2.1, using a piston cylinder apparatus. The silicate melt composition changes from dry to hydrous andesite to rhyolite. The results obtained from electron microprobe and laser-ablation ICP-MS analyses show that the gold solubility in silicate melts ranges from 0.01 to 55.3 ppm and is strongly correlated with the melt sulfur content [S]melt at fO2 of ∼FMQ-1.7 to FMQ+1.6, which can be explained by the formation of complex Au-S species in the silicate melts. The gold solubility in MSS ranges from 130 to 2800 ppm, which is mainly controlled by fS2. D A u M S S / S M ranges from 10 to 14000 at fO2 of ∼FMQ-1.7 to FMQ+1.6, the large variation of which can be fully explained by combined [S]melt and fS2. Therefore, all of the parameters that can directly affect [S]melt and fS2, such as alkali metals, water, FeO, and fO2, can indirectly affect D A u M S S / S M . The mechanisms that control the sulfide-silicate melt partitioning of gold and the other chalcophile elements, such as Ni, Re, and Mo, differ significantly. This is because gold is dissolved mainly as Au-S species in the silicate melts, while the other chalcophile elements are dissolved mainly as metal oxides in the silicate melts. Applying the correlation between D A u M S S / S M and [S]melt to slab melting and arc magmatic differentiation under different redox conditions, we find that ancient to modern slab melts carry negligible to less than 25% of the slab gold to the subarc mantle; however, gold-enrichment can occur in MSS-saturated arc magmas that have differentiated under moderately oxidized conditions with fO2 between FMQ and FMQ+1.6, in particular if the magmatic crystallization follows a fractional crystallization model. We conclude that moderately oxidized magmas with high contents of alkali metals, sulfur, and water, owing to their low D A u M S S / S M and efficient magma-to-fluid transfer of gold and sulfur, have a high potential to form gold deposits.

An equation of state (EOS) explicit in Helmholtz free energy has been improved to calculate the PVTx and vapor–liquid phase equilibrium properties of CH4–CO2 fluid mixture. This EOS, where four mixing parameters are used, is based on highly accurate EOSs recommended by NIST for pure components (CH4 and CO2) and contains a simple generalized departure function presented by Lemmon and Jacobsen (1999). Comparison with experimental data available indicates that the EOS can calculate both vapor–liquid phase equilibrium and volumetric properties of this binary fluid system with accuracy close to that of experimental data up to high temperature and pressure within full range of composition. The EOS of CH4–CO2 fluid, together with the updated Gibbs free energy model of solid CO2 (dry ice), is applied to calculate the CH4 content (xCH4) and molar volume (Vm) of the CH4–CO2 fluid inclusion based on the assumption that the volume of an inclusion keeps constant during heating and cooling. Vm−xCH4 diagrams are presented, which describe phase transitions involving vapor, liquid and CO2 solid phases of CH4–CO2 fluid inclusions. Isochores of CH4–CO2 inclusions at given xCH4 and Vm can be easily calculated from the improved EOS.

Neutrosophic numbers (NNs), which contain determinate part and indeterminate part, are considered as a useful tool to express the indeterminate evaluation information which is common in real situation. The TODIM which is the short of Interactive and Multicriteria Decision Making in Portuguese can take the bounded rationality of decision makers into consideration based on the prospect theory. However, the classical TODIM method can only process the multiple attribute decision making (MADM) problems in which the attribute values are crisp numbers. The purpose of the paper is to give a new method to handle multiple attribute group decision making problems with neutrosophic numbers, which means we combine the TODIM with neutrosophic numbers to deal with MADM problems. In this paper, we firstly introduce the definition, the properties and the operational laws of the neutrosophic numbers, and then the possibility degree function is introduced concisely. Secondly, we represent the idea and steps of TODIM, and then we extend the TODIM method to the multiple attribute group decision making (MAGDM) with neutrosophic numbers. Finally, we use an illustrative example to demonstrate the practicality and effectiveness of the proposed method.

The exploration of luffa vine (LV) in the polymer composites field can contribute to the development of lightweight composites and expand their use in new wide scale applications. In this study, the physical and chemical properties and the microstructure of the LV fibers were investigated by various techniques. The results of LV density and microscopic characteristics indicated that this crop is a lightweight (with density mainly concentrated in 0.30–0.45 g cm−3) natural fiber with a porous structure (the ratio of wall to lumen: 0.2–0.3). Transmission electron microscopy and nanoindentation analyses showed that the secondary wall of the LV sclerenchyma cell is made up of two layers with spiral thickening and exhibiting a high nanoindentation modulus (7.8–10.4 GPa) and a high nanoindentation hardness (0.40–0.58 GPa). The chemical composition and X-ray diffraction analysis indicated that the LV has high lignin content (20–25%) and a relatively high relative crystallinity index of cellulose, which are conducive to increase the hardness of the LV fiber. Moreover, microscopic characteristics analysis also revealed that the LV fiber cells have a relatively high aspect ratio (30.3), there are pit pairs on the LV fiber cell walls, and the core fiber cells of the LV have relatively high flexibility coefficient (0.8), which are beneficial to increase the processability of composite materials with the LV fibers as reinforcement.

Chlorinated conjugated polymers not only show great potential for the realization of highly efficient polymer solar cells (PSCs) but also have simple and high-yield synthetic routes and low-cost raw materials available for their preparation. However, the study of the structure-property relationship of chlorinated polymers is lagging. Now two chlorinated conjugated polymers, PCl(3)BDB-T and PCl(4)BDB-T are investigated. When the polymers were used to fabricate PSCs with the nonfullerene acceptor (IT-4F), surprisingly, the PCl(3)BDB-T:IT-4F-based device exhibited a negligible power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 0.18 %, while the PCl(4)BDB-T:IT-4F-based device showed an outstanding PCE of 12.33 %. These results provide new insight for the rational design and synthesis of novel chlorinated polymer donors for further improving the photovoltaic efficiencies of PSCs.

The intuitionistic uncertain fuzzy linguistic variable can easily expressthe fuzzy information, and the power average (PA) operator is a usefultool which provides more versatility in the information aggregation procedure.At the same time, Einstein operations are a kind of various t-normsand t-conorms families which can be used to perform the corresponding intersectionsand unions of intuitionistic fuzzy sets (IFSs). In this paper, wewill combine the PA operator and Einstein operations to intuitionistic uncertainlinguistic environment, and propose some new PA operators. Firstly,the definition and some basic operations of intuitionistic uncertain linguisticnumber (IULN), power aggregation (PA) operator and Einstein operationsare introduced. Then, we propose intuitionistic uncertain linguistic fuzzypowered Einstein averaging (IULFPEA) operator, intuitionistic uncertain linguisticfuzzy powered Einstein weighted (IULFPEWA) operator, intuitionisticuncertain linguistic fuzzy Einstein geometric (IULFPEG) operator and intuitionisticuncertain linguistic fuzzy Einstein weighted geometric (IULFPEWG)operator, and discuss some properties of them in detail. Furthermore, we developthe decision making methods for multi-attribute group decision making(MAGDM) problems with intuitionistic uncertain linguistic information andgive the detail decision steps. At last, an illustrate example is given to showthe process of decision making and the effectiveness of the proposed method.

The IAPWS-95 formulation explicit in Helmholtz free energy proposed by Wagner and Prus (The IAPWS formulation 1995 for the thermodynamic properties of ordinary water substance for general and scientific use, Journal of Physical and Chemical Reference Data 2002 31(2), 387–535) is extended to calculate the volumetric property of the fluid water from 1 GPa and 273 K to 20 GPa and 4273 K. Comparison with large experimental and molecular dynamic simulation data above 1 GPa shows that the equation of state can reproduce the volume of the fluid water with an average absolute deviation of 0.52%. Thus the original IAPWS-95 formulation together with the extended part can be used in a much larger temperature–pressure region: 273–4273 K and 0–20 GPa. In addition, this paper also reports a reliable and highly efficient method to calculate the saturated properties of water so that the equation of state can be conveniently applied in the study of fluid inclusion: calculating homogenization pressures, homogenization densities (or molar volumes) and isochores. Computer code of the model can be obtained from the first author.

The IAPWS-95 formulation explicit in Helmholtz free energy proposed by Wagner and Pruβ (2002) is the best equation of state of water, from which all thermodynamic properties can be obtained over a wide T – p range from 273.16 to 1273 K and from 0 to 1000 MPa with experimental accuracy. This paper reports the applications of the IAPWS-95 formulation in fluid inclusion and mineral-water phase equilibria. A reliable and highly efficient calculation method is presented for the saturated properties of water so that the formulation can be conveniently applied in the study of fluid inclusion, such as calculating homogenization pressures, homogenization densities (or molar volumes), volume fractions and isochores. Meanwhile, the univariant curves of some mineral-dehydration reactions are calculated based on the IAPWS-95 formulation. The computer code of the IAPWS-95 formulation can be obtained from the corresponding author.