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Speakability in drama involves the level of ease with which an individual can coordinate the pronunciation, singing, and emotion of a text. In translations of classical Chinese operas, reproducing the speakability of the original can determine the success of the stage performance of the opera. However, speakability in such translations has not been explored in the literature. Therefore, in this study, we investigated the similarity of the speakability in translations of An Enchanting Dream 惊梦 from The Peony Pavilion 牡丹亭 to that of the original Chinese through a corpus-driven investigation of versions of the opera annotated by Xu Yuanchong and translated by Xu Yuanchong and Xu Ming, Wang Rongpei, and Cyril Birch. We developed a prosodic phonological evaluation system in which duration and pitch were used to compare the source text and target texts by using InterPhonic 5.0 and Praat software. The results indicated that for duration when the context and characterization in the drama are considered, Wang’s translation did not adequately convey emotions. For pitch, the tone ranges of Xu and Xu’s translation fluctuated more drastically, which more effectively conveyed the emotional changes of the original text. Furthermore, the waviness of the pitches in Xu and Xu’s translation was similar to that of the original text. In this study, relative corpora were developed to determine the translated speakability of a Chinese classical opera. Our results may be valuable to translation studies and for the dissemination of traditional Chinese culture.

The management of large esophageal varices (EVs) remains challenging because of the difficulty of endoscopic variceal ligation and fatal post-endoscopic variceal ligation bleeding ulcers. The current study evaluated the efficacy and safety of balloon-compression endoscopic injection sclerotherapy (bc-EIS) in the treatment of large EVs.This retrospective study included 105 patients with cirrhosis exhibiting large EVs (64 in the bc-EIS group and 41 in the EIS group). Primary outcomes included the initial rate of variceal eradication and intraoperative bleeding signs. Secondary outcomes included incidences of rebleeding, mortality, complications, and optimal time of balloon-compression (bc).The initial rate of variceal eradication in the bc-EIS group was significantly higher than that in the EIS group (46.9 vs. 24.4%; P =0.021). The incidence of intraoperative bleeding, which was represented as oozing and spurting, in the bc-EIS group was markedly lower than that in the EIS group (43.8 vs. 61.0% and 9.4 vs. 39.0%, respectively; P =0.043). Patients in the bc-EIS group showed a significantly lower incidence of rebleeding (0.0 vs. 17.1%; P =0.001). However, no significant difference in mortality rate was observed between different groups. Chest pain or discomfort tended to be more common in the EIS group than in the bc-EIS group (58.5 vs. 17.2%; P =0.001). The cut-off value of 11.5-minutes appeared to have a maximum combined sensitivity and specificity of 80.0% and 58.8%, respectively. The area under the curve was 0.708 (95% confidence interval =0.576-0.839; P =0.004).bc-EIS could achieve a higher variceal eradication rate and milder intraoperative bleeding signs in large EVs. Furthermore, 11.5-minutes appeared to be the optimal compression time in bc-EIS.

A novel compact and wideband circularly polarized (CP) crossed dipole antenna is presented. To realize CP radiation, a new design concept of using coupling stub is first illustrated. The coupling stub is equivalent as a combination of a dipole-c and dipole-y. The dipole-c not only couples proper energy from the x-axis arranged driven dipole-x to the orthogonally arranged dipole-y, but also provides quadrature phase delay to the dipole-y. Therefore, CP radiation is realized for the presented configuration. To improve the input impedance caused by the strong coupling, a long narrow strip is incorporated for the enhancement of impedance bandwidth. Based on the design concept, a compact and wideband CP antenna by using the coupling stub and stepped square loop is developed to further increase the operation bandwidth and realize stable radiation. The designed antenna was finally fabricated for performance verification. Both the simulation and measurement show that the developed antenna can have a wide overlapped impedance and AR bandwidth from 1.1 to 1.74 GHz with a compact radiator size. In addition, stable antenna gain and radiation patterns are achieved for wireless communications.

In the context of the deepening of population aging and the trial implementation of a progressive retirement delay policy in China, understanding the relationship between the labor force participation and health status of the elderly will not only enrich relevant research but also help the elderly better achieve their goals of active aging and aging. Using the 2018 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, this paper first established multiple linear regression models to analyze the impact of labor force participation on the health status of elderly people in China and then established simultaneous equation models using households living on minimum living allowances and the community average of labor participation as instrumental variables to deal with the endogeneity caused by two-way causality. The findings confirmed significant positive correlations between labor force participation and physical and mental health, while caring for grandchildren and participating in social activities were found to be negatively moderated the relationship between labor force participation and the physical and mental health of older adults. The impact of labor force participation on the physical health status of older men and the mental health status of older women may be greater. In addition, labor force participation may have a greater impact on the physical health of the rural elderly, and its impact on mental health was not found to be statistically significant between urban and rural areas.

A new method of designing a wideband differentially fed dual-polarized antenna by using three-strip transmission lines (TS-TLs) is presented. A wideband power divider composed of four TS-TLs is firstly proposed and illustrated by using its equivalent circuit. Based on the proposed power divider, a wideband differentially fed dual-polarized antenna with four in-band resonances is developed. To enhance the outof-band selectivity, two radiation nulls with quasi-elliptic response are obtained by utilizing the specifically designed structures in the TS-TL based power divider. The first radiation null at the lower out-of-band is produced by the resonance from the center strip of TS-TL and shorting coaxial cable. The second radiation null at the upper out-of-band is produced by the resonance from the slot formed by the dipole arm and the outer strip of TS-TL. Combining with the high 2nd -order harmonic suppression owing to the differentially fed method, the presented differentially fed antenna is demonstrated that it not only has high inband selectivity covering 1.67-2.91 GHz, but also has high out-of-band suppressions of 33.8 dB and 20.6 dB over the frequency bands of 0.6-1 GHz and 3.3-5 GHz. In addition, stable gain and beamwidth are achieved for base station applications.

This article presents a new design of a differentially fed substrate integrated planar antenna array with dual-polarization. Compared with the traditional dual-polarized antenna arrays, the proposed array antenna has the advantages of simple configuration, high cross-polarization discrimination (XPD), and high gain. The $2\times 2$ -element subarray design with a via-loaded crossover structure is used, which reduces the complexity of the array antenna. The operation bandwidth is improved by generating three resonances in the subarray. An $8\times 8$ antenna array is designed, prototyped, and tested to exemplify its potential applications in large dual-polarized antenna arrays. A planar orthomode transducer is used to achieve differential excitation for the antenna array. The measured results show that the proposed antenna array has an impedance bandwidth of 19.2–20.7 GHz for $|S_{11}| dB and port isolation higher than 20 dB. The array antenna exhibits a high XPD of 43 dB and a flat gain of about 22.2 dBi within the bandwidth.

This article presents a novel dual slant polarized antenna for millimeter-wave (mmWave) base stations. Compared with the traditional slant polarized mmWave antennas, the proposed antenna offers the advantages of high cross-polarization discrimination (XPD), good aperture efficiency, simple structure, and low profile. The corner-fed substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) cavity is adopted to improve the port isolation and XPD of this slot-coupled antenna. Four corner-truncated patches connected by a thin cross strip are placed over the SIW cavity to increase the operation bandwidth. Then, a $2\times 8$ antenna array is designed to exemplify the antenna element performance. To improve the impedance matching, a shorted patch is introduced in designing the series feeding network and the power divider. The experimental results show that the 2 dB-down gain bandwidth of the proposed antenna array reaches 6.0% and the port isolation is better than 20 dB. The gain and XPD of the antenna array measure 16.7 dBi and 25 dB at the center frequency, respectively.

The complexity of polysaccharide hydrothermal products increases the difficulty of exploring the formation of biochar, limiting the development of biochar. This work clarifies the completive effects of glucan's main hydrolysates on biochar formation from three aspects: experimental, thermodynamic, and kinetic. The products distribution illustrates that 5-HMF, FA, and LA are mainly involved in the formation of biochar. Biochar mainly includes furan ring, ether group, and ester group by the analysis of magic-angle-spinning nuclear magnetic resonance, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and elemental analysis. Combined experiments and density functional theory analysis, the etherification reaction of 5-HMF itself is most likely to occur and is key to form biochar, followed by the esterification of FA with 5-HMF, and then the etherification of 5-HMF and LA. The further verified experiments also manifest these results. This work will develop a foundation for exploring the complex formation mechanism of cellulose-based biochar.

Groundwater is essential for the sustainable development of the Guanzhong Basin, China, and its quality is mainly controlled by hydrogeochemical processes and anthropogenic pollution. This study used statistical and multivariate statistical analysis approaches to recognize the hydrogeochemical processes and affecting factors of groundwater in the central part of the Guanzhong Basin. Correlations among 14 hydrochemical parameters were statistically examined. Principal component analysis (PCA), factor analysis (FA), and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) techniques were applied to analyze the physicochemical variables to understand the affecting factors of groundwater quality in the study area. The correlation analysis results indicate that cation exchange is the dominant process affecting the concentration of Na+ and Ca2+ in the groundwater. Both the PCA and FA indicate that minerals dissolution/precipitation and human activities are the key factors that affect groundwater quality. All parameters except CO32- and pH increase from C1 to C4 obtained through the Q mode HCA. C4 has a hydrochemical type of SO4-Na·K, indicating that the sample of this cluster is primarily influenced by anthropogenic processes.

In this article, a novel millimeter-wave dual-polarized 2-D multibeam antenna array incorporating differentially fed antenna elements is proposed to achieve high cross-polarization discrimination (XPD) when the beams scan to the maximal pointing angles. The antenna element is composed of an SIW cavity with four shorted patches placed inside, and it is differentially excited for dual-polarization by a pair of feeding strips and transverse slots beneath the patches. Differential excitation is realized by a power divider designed on two laminate layers. Two Butler matrices placed perpendicularly with each other in different laminates are employed to generate four tilted beams with dual-polarization. A $2\times 2$ dual-polarized 2-D multibeam antenna array working at 28 GHz is designed, fabricated, and measured. The operation bandwidth of the antenna is 26.8–29.2 GHz. The improvement in the XPD is experimentally demonstrated by far-field measurement. When the beams scan to 30° off the boresight, the measured XPDs are 28 dB at the center frequency and higher than 25 dB over the operation bandwidth, which confirms that the cross-polarized radiation in the 2-D multibeam antenna array is suppressed by using the differential-feeding technique. The measured gain is in the range from 7.6 to 10.5 dBi.

A novel method of designing a wideband series-fed circularly polarized (CP) differential antenna by using crossed open slot-pairs is presented in this paper. The near-field distributions and input impedance analyses show that the closely spaced open slot-pairs can radiate as the crossed dipoles and have stable radiating resistance with a compact radiator size. Besides, a wideband half-power phase shifter by using open slot is proposed and utilized to realize CP radiation. The proposed CP antenna is composed of a wide slot-pair and a narrow slot-pair. In the antenna design, the narrow slot-pair is not only excited as a radiator, but also elaborately loaded to provide wideband half-power output and quadrature phase excitation to the wide slot-pair. Both the proposed half-power phase shifter and CP antenna are illustrated by the corresponding equivalent circuits. Based on these analyses, the proposed antenna is designed, fabricated and measured. Compared to the simulated traditionally designed counterpart, 2.1 times wider axial ratio bandwidth is achieved for the proposed antenna. The measured overlapped bandwidth for axial ratio 10 dB is 1.95-3.45 GHz (55.6%). Also, the antenna gain and radiation patterns are measured, which agree well with the simulated results.

Datong Basin in China is a typical arid–semiarid inland basin, with high levels and wide distributions of arsenic (As), fluoride (F−), and iodine (I). To better understand the presence of low-quality groundwater in Datong Basin and assess the health risks for local residents, groundwater samples were collected from the shallow aquifer and in medium-deep groundwater and analyzed for As, F−, I, and nitrate (NO3−). Maxima of 1932 μg/L for As, 80.89 mg/L for F−, 2300 μg/L for I, and 3854.74 mg/L for NO3− were detected in shallow groundwater, which greatly exceeded the WHO limits for drinking purpose. High-As groundwater was present in both shallow and medium-deep aquifers. High-F− and high-NO3− groundwater was widely distributed in the shallow aquifer, and high-I groundwater was mainly present in the medium-deep aquifers. Poor-quality groundwater in the Datong Basin is mainly caused by local geological and climatic conditions, which are characterized by strong evaporation, active water–rock interactions, thick lacustrine sediment, low groundwater flow rate, and reducing and weak alkaline environments. However, groundwater quality was further impacted by agricultural activities in some areas, as shallow groundwater was also polluted by nitrate. Datong Basin inhabitants face high health risk caused by high concentrations of As, F−, I, and NO3−. The mean noncarcinogenic risk values (HQtotal) were 18.40 for children, 10.94 for adult females, and 9.47 for adult males due to exposure to contaminants in shallow groundwater; and 13.76 for children, 8.18 for adult females, and 7.08 for adult males because of exposure to medium-deep groundwater. Further, the carcinogenic risks (CR) caused by exposure to As were very high for local inhabitants, with the mean and median CR values of 4.20×10−3 and 4.13×10−4 in shallow groundwater and 3.44×10−3 and 1.71×10−4 in medium-deep groundwater, respectively.

Aedes albopictus (Skuse) is a vector of several arboviruses, such as dengue, chikungunya, West Nile, and Zika viruses. At present, the use of synthetic insecticides is the main vector control strategy. However, the widespread and long-term use of insecticides has aroused several problems, including insecticide resistance, environmental pollution, and non-target species effects, thereby encouraging researchers to search for new alternatives derived from natural products. In recent decades, essential oils (EOs) as natural alternatives to control mosquitoes have received increasing attention. In the initial larvicidal activity screen, two Rutaceae plants (Citrus aurantium and Citrus paradisi) EOs were selected and evaluated for killing Ae. albopictus larvae. The LC50 values of C. aurantium and C. paradisi EOs against Ae. albopictus were 91.7 and 100.9 ppm, respectively. The main components of C. aurantium EO include diethyl o-phthalate (37.32%), limonene (10.04%), and methyl dihydrojasmonate (6.48%). The main components of C. paradisi EO include limonene (60.51%), diethyl o-phthalate (11.75%), linalool (7.90%), and styralyl acetate (6.28%). Among these main components of the two EOs, limonene showed potent larvicidal activity, with the LC50 value of 39.7 ppm. The nanoemulsions of limonene were prepared and characterized. The duration of larvicidal activity was greater in the limonene nanoemulsions than when limonene was applied in solvent. This study demonstrates that EOs of plants in family Rutaceae are a potential resource to develop new larvicides, and nanoemulsification is an effective method for improving the physicochemical properties and efficacy of natural products as larvicides.

Groundwater contamination risk assessment is not only the basis for groundwater management, but also an effective tool for groundwater pollution control and prevention. However, only groundwater vulnerability assessment is not enough to prove the risk of groundwater contamination. Therefore, this study describes an evaluation method combining aquifer intrinsic vulnerability and pollution source loading to evaluate groundwater contamination risk in Guanzhong Basin on a macro scale. A modified DRATICL model was introduced to evaluate the intrinsic vulnerability, and the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and the entropy weight method were combined to determine the weight of each evaluation factor. Pollution loading was evaluated by quantifying the characteristics of potential pollution sources, mainly including pollutant toxicity, pollutant release possibility and potential pollutant release amount. Finally, total iron, Cl−, SO42−, F−, COD (Chemical Oxygen Demand), NO3−, NO2− and TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) are used to calculate the water quality index and verify the model results. The results showed that industries were the most harmful potential pollution sources in the study area, followed by landfills. Very high vulnerability areas were mainly situated around Huazhou District, Huayin and Dali County, as well as the low terraces around Zhouzhi County and Hu County, which are mainly caused by shallow groundwater depth and high net recharge. The final groundwater contamination risk results showed the high groundwater contamination risks are detected around Xi'an City, Xianyang City, Hancheng City and Dali County. Both high vulnerability and high pollution loading were present at the Jingwei District in the north of Xi'an City, where a priority attention should be given.

Groundwater quality is defined by various water quality parameters. The aims of the research are to understand the relationships among different groundwater quality parameters and to trace the sour...

Redox-responsive surfactant based on selenium atom has recently attracted considerable interests. Herein, we have designed and synthesized three selenium-containing cationic surfactants with different headgroups, including N-(benzylselanyl-undecyl)-N,N,N-trimethyl ammonium bromide (BSeTAB)/pyridinium bromide (BSePyB)/methylpyrrolidinium bromide (BSeMPB). Their micellization in dilute solution was investigated by surface tension and conductivity, and was related to redox-induced change in molecular structure. Both 1H NMR and ESI-MS spectra demonstrated that selenide in the reduced form is transformed into selenoxide after oxidation with H2O2, whatever the headgroup is. The formation of selenoxide not only increases the hydrophilicity of surfactant, resulting in a more negative $$ \Delta {G}_{\mathrm{ads}}^o $$ , larger cmc, cmc/C20 ratio, and Gmin, compared to the reduced forms, but also provides a new polar headgroup, making it behave like bola-type structure and enhancing the hydrophilicity. The relatively smaller cmc, larger cmc/C20 ratio, and more negative $$ \Delta {G}_m^o $$ value all revealed that the pyridinium or pyrrolidinium polar headgroup is more favorable for the micelle formation than the trimethylammonium group. The thermodynamic parameters showed that the micellization is transformed from entropy-driven mode to enthalpy-driven mode with increasing temperature and the transition temperature at which $$ \Delta {H}_m^o $$ equals to $$ -\mathrm{T}\Delta {S}_m^o $$ is lowest for BSeMPB, and highest for BSePyB.

This study evaluated the food safety of the swimming crab (Portunus trituberculatus) found in Shandong Province, China and obtained information on possible edible parts and gender differences. White and brown muscle samples from 108 swimming crabs were collected from seven cities along the eastern coastline of Shandong Province and analyzed for levels of Cu, Zn, Ni, As, Fe, Mn, Cr, Se, Cd, and Pb. There were significant differences in the metal concentrations among different edible muscles. High concentrations of Zn, Mn, and Cr were found in leg and claw meat while Fe, Cu, Ni, As, Cd, Pb, and Se were predominantly found in the hepatopancreas and gonads. Gender differences were found only for Fe and Zn. Based on the estimated daily intake (EDI), target hazard quotient (THQ), total target hazard quotient (TTHQ), and the permissible safety limits prescribed by various agencies, consumption of the swimming crab is considered safe.

The mobile communication systems have evolved rapidly in recent decades, from the 1st generation (1G) in the 1980s to the 2nd generation (2G) in the 1990s, 3G in the 2000s and 4G in 2010s. We are now in the transition period from 4G to 5G, and there are already lots of research activities investigating the 6G technologies. A variety of frequency bands have been employed in mobile communications. Figure 1 illustrates typical frequency bands of 2/3/4/5G mobile communication base station. The 2/3/4G systems occupy a wide frequency range including 698 to 960 MHz and 1710 to 2690 MHz, while 5G employs several different frequency bands such as 3.3-3.6 GHz, 4.8 - 5.0 GHz, 37 -43.5 GHz, etc. Hence the co-existence of 2/3/4/5G becomes a hot topic. In particular, it is important to investigate the development of base-station antennas which can have a compact size and can achieve a very wideband impedance matching performance for covering the frequency bands of 2/3/4G. The antenna also needs to achieve dual polarization with high isolation between two input ports, high polarization purity, stable radiation patterns and constant beamwidth across the frequency range. In addition, the antenna needs to be immune to the inferences from radio signals of 5G systems [1]–[2]. This invited talk has two parts. First, a review of recent development in wideband dual-polarized antennas for base stations will be provided, and different antenna technologies will be discussed. Then, three examples of wideband dual-polarized antennas for base station applications, recently developed at the University of Kent, UK, will be presented. These include a wideband dual-polarized antenna which achieves a compact size by using a shared dipole approach, a compact-size highly integrated shared-dipole antenna with wideband dual polarizations, and a compact dual-polarized antenna with the configuration of the equivalent electric and magnetic dipoles and using the parasitic strips and shorting sheet to realize wideband harmonic suppression. These three antennas are verified by both the simulated and measured results, including the S-parameters and radiation patterns. Good agreements are achieved to show that these antennas can be the good candidates for the base station applications. Figure 2 shows one of the wideband dual-polarized antennas and its radiation pattern. During the talk, the designs of these three antennas and their simulation and measurement results will be discussed. Finally, a discussion of future challenges will be given at the end.

To optimize the accuracy of ozone (O3) concentration prediction, this paper proposes a combined prediction model of O3 hourly concentration, FC-LsOA-KELM, which integrates multiple machine learning methods. The model has three parts. The first part is the feature construction (FC), which is based on correlation analysis and incorporates time-delay effect analysis to provide a valuable feature set. The second part is the kernel extreme learning machine (KELM), which can establish a complex mapping relationship between feature set and prediction object. The third part is the lioness optimization algorithm (LsOA), which is purposed to find the optimal parameter combination of KELM. Then, we use air pollution data from 11 cities on Fenwei Plain in China from 2 January 2015 to 30 December 2019 to test the validity of FC-LsOA-KELM and compare it with other prediction methods. The experimental results show that FC-LsOA-KELM can obtain better prediction results and has a better performance.

Groundwater nitrate (NO

This paper presents a concept of using half-power phase shifter to design a circularly polarized (CP) antenna. The half-power phase shifter is composed of an open slot and a microstrip line. By elaborately loading the open slot under the microstrip line, half-power energy is radiated and half-power energy is transmitted to the end. Interestingly, the transmission phase bandwidth obtained at the end is significantly increased owing to the loading of the open slot. By using this design method, a wideband CP antenna is developed, which is composed of a pair of wide slots and a pair of narrow slot. The narrow slot pair is loaded not only for radiation, but also for the wideband quadrature phase transmission to the wide slot pair. The developed CP was finally fabricated and measured to verify the design concept. Both the measured and simulated results show that the developed antenna can have a wide AR and impedance bandwidth from 1.95 GHz to 3.45 GHz.

A dual-polarized 2D multibeam antenna array working at millimeter-wave (mmWave) frequencies is presented in this paper. In conventional multibeam antenna arrays, low polarization discrimination (XPD) is observed when beams scan off the boresight. In our design, the differential feeding technique is employed in antenna element design to achieve high port isolation and high cross-polarization discrimination (XPD) for all beams. To validate this concept, the antenna array and the multibeam feeding network operating at 28 GHz are designed and fabricated. High XPD, high port isolation and stable radiation patterns are obtained in the designed antenna. The measured results show that the XPD for all beams are higher than 28 dB and port isolations are greater than 20 dB over the bandwidth 26.8 GHz-29.2 GHz. The proposed antenna is a promising candidate for future wireless communication systems due to good radiation performance, easy integration, low cost, and low profile.

A wideband dual-band dual-polarized antenna is presented in this paper for 5G base station applications. Two squared loop patches are utilized for lower band and upper band radiations, and also the size reduction. To excited the square loop patches, a linear and H-shaped slots are used to couple the energy to the top radiating patches. Due to the requirements of dual-band operation and very low reflection coefficients, balanced open-circuited stubs and high impedance line are elaborately introduced to match the dual-band operation. The proposed antenna was designed, fabricated, and measured for verification. The measured results show that the proposed antenna can work at 3.3-3.64 GHz and 4.8-5.02 GHz with the overlapped reflection coefficients lower than -15 dB and isolation higher than 33.3 dB. In addition, unidirectional radiation patterns are achieved at both lower and upper bands for 5G base station applications.