Scalar inference (SI), e.g., utterances containing some being enriched to mean some but not all, is a central topic in semantics and pragmatics. Of recent interest in the experimental literature is scalar diversity: different lexical scales differ in their likelihood of leading to SI. Studies of scalar diversity have almost exclusively relied on the so-called inference task. In this article, we highlight two shortcomings of the inference task: it biases participants by providing them with the stronger alternative, and it obscures pragmatic inferences other than SI. We offer as an alternative a degree estimate task to investigate utterances containing scalar terms. We validate the degree estimate task, i.a., by successfully replicating a previous finding about scalar diversity: that the distinctness of scalar terms (some versus all) is a significant predictor of it. We then use degree estimates to reassess previous inference task-based findings. Our results show that biasing discourse contexts lead to lower degree estimates (i.e., more strengthened meanings) than a manipulation with only, which contrasts with prior literature’s findings. The article concludes that the inference and degree estimate tasks both have advantages: the former offers a straightforward definition of SI calculation, while the latter avoids explicitly mentioning a negated stronger alternative.

Although dietary factors have been examined as potential risk factors for liver cancer, the evidence is still inconclusive. Using a diet-wide association analysis, our research evaluated the associations of 126 foods and nutrients on the risk of liver cancer in a Chinese population. We obtained the diet consumption of 72,680 women in the Shanghai Women’s Health Study using baseline dietary questionnaires. The association between each food and nutrient and liver cancer risk was quantified by Cox regression model. A false discovery rate of 0.05 was used to determine the foods and nutrients which need to be verified. Totally 256 incident liver cancer cases were identified in 1,267,391 person-years during the follow-up duration. At the statistical significance level (P ≤ 0.05), higher intakes of cooked wheaten foods, pear, grape and copper were inversely associated with liver cancer risk, while spinach, leafy vegetables, eggplant and carrots showed the positive associations. After considering multiple comparisons, no dietary variable was associated with liver cancer risk. Similar findings were seen in the stratification, secondary and sensitivity analyses. Our findings observed no significant association between dietary factors and liver cancer risk after considering multiple comparisons in Chinese women. More evidence is needed to explore the associations between diet and female liver cancer occurrence.

Isolated multi-MeV $\gamma$-rays with attosecond duration, high collimation and beam angular momentum (BAM) may find many interesting applications in nuclear physics, astrophysics, etc. Here, we propose a scheme to generate such $\gamma$-rays via nonlinear Thomson scattering of a rotating relativistic electron sheet driven by a few-cycle twisted laser pulse interacting with a micro-droplet target. Our model clarifies the laser intensity threshold and carrier-envelope phase effect on the generation of the isolated electron sheet. Three-dimensional numerical simulations demonstrate the $\gamma$-ray emission with 320 attoseconds duration and peak brilliance of $9.3\times 10^{24}$ photons s${}^{-1}$ mrad${}^{-2}$ mm${}^{-2}$ per 0.1$\%$ bandwidth at 4.3 MeV. The $\gamma$-ray beam carries a large BAM of $2.8 \times 10^{16}\mathrm{\hslash}$, which arises from the efficient BAM transfer from the rotating electron sheet, subsequently leading to a unique angular distribution. This work should promote the experimental investigation of nonlinear Thomson scattering of rotating electron sheets in large laser facilities.

The evolution of the water-entry cavity affects the impact load and the motion of the body. This paper adopts the Eulerian finite element method for multiphase flow for simulations of the high-speed water-entry process. The accuracy and convergence of the numerical method are verified by comparing it with the experimental data and the results of the transient cavity dynamics theory. Based on the results, the representative characteristics of the cavity are discussed from the perspective of the cavity cross-section. It is found that the asymmetry of the cavity expansion and contraction durations is related to the motion of the free surface and the closure of the cavity. The uplift of the free surface suppresses cavity expansion, while the jet generated from free surface closure accelerates cavity contraction. The duration of the contraction of the cavity near the free surface is shorter than the expansion duration due to the change in the velocity distribution caused by the free surface motion. The necking phenomenon during deep closure leads to an increase in the internal pressure of the cavity, prolonging cavity contraction near the deep closure area. This work provides new insights into the cavity dynamics in high-speed water entry.

The assessment of seed quality and physiological potential is essential in seed production and crop breeding. In the process of rapid detection of seed viability using tetrazolium (TZ) staining, it is necessary to spend a lot of labour and material resources to explore the pretreatment and staining methods of hard and solid seeds with physical barriers. This study explores the TZ staining methods of six hard seeds (Tilia miqueliana, Tilia henryana, Sassafras tzumu, Prunus subhirtella, Prunus sibirica, and Juglans mandshurica) and summarizes the TZ staining conditions required for hard seeds by combining the difference in fat content between seeds and the kinship between species, thus providing a rapid viability test method for the protection of germplasm resources of endangered plants and the optimization of seed bank construction. The TZ staining of six species of hard seeds requires a staining temperature above 35 °C and a TZ solution concentration higher than 1%. Endospermic seeds require shorter staining times than exalbuminous seeds. The higher the fat content of the seeds, the lower the required incubation temperature and TZ concentration for staining, and the longer the staining time. And the closer the relationship between the two species, the more similar their staining conditions become. The TZ staining method of similar species can be predicted according to the genetic distance between the phylogenetic trees, and the viability of new species can be detected quickly.

Excessive iodine can lead to goiters. However, the relationship between the water iodine concentration (WIC) and goiter rate (GR) is unclear. This study aims to explore the factors that influence children’s GR in areas with high WIC and analyse the threshold value of the GR increase associated with the WIC. According to the monitoring of the areas with high WIC in China in 2018–2020, a total of 54 050 children in eight high water iodine provinces were chosen. Drinking water, urine and edible salt samples of children were collected. The thyroid volume (Tvol) was measured. A generalised additive model (GAM) was used to analyse the relationship between the WIC and GR in children. Among the 54 050 children in areas with high WIC, the overall GR was 3·34 %, the median of water iodine concentration was 127·0 µg/l, the median of urinary iodine concentration was 318 µg/l and the non-iodised salt coverage rate (NISCR) was 63·51 %. According to the GAM analysis results, water iodine and urinary iodine are factors that influence the Tvol and GR, while the NISCR affects only the GR. When the WIC was more than 420 µg/l or the urinary iodine concentration was more than 800 µg/l, the GR increased rapidly. When the NISCR reached more than 85 %, the GR was the lowest. Thus, in areas with high WIC, WIC more than 420 µg/l may increase the risk of goiter, and the NISCR should be increased to over 85 % to avoid goiters in children.

Implicatures serve as an important testing ground for examining the process of integrating semantic and pragmatic information. Starting with Bott & Noveck (2004), several studies have found that implicature computation is costly. More recently, attention has shifted toward identifying contextual cues that modulate this processing cost. Specifically, it has been hypothesized that calculation rate and processing cost are a function of whether the Question Under Discussion (QUD) supports generating the implicature (Degen 2013; Degen & Tanenhaus 2015). In this paper, we present a novel elicitation task establishing what the relevant QUDs are for a given context (Experiment 1). In Experiment 2, a sentence-picture verification study, we extend earlier findings about the effect of QUDs on scalar inference to a different kind of pragmatic inference: it-cleft exhaustivity. For both inferences, we find that under QUDs that bias toward calculation, there is no increase in reaction times, but under QUDs that bias against calculating the inference we observe longer reaction times. These results are most compatible with a constraint-based account of implicature, where QUD is one of many cues. Additionally, we explore whether our findings can be informative in narrowing down precisely what aspect of the inferential process incurs a cost.

Solid solution 0.94Na0.5Bi0.5TiO3–6BaTiO3 (NBT–6BT) is considered to be one kind of lead-free piezoelectric materials with excellent electrical properties due to the existence of morphotropic phase boundary (MPB). However, its relatively lower depolarization temperature is a long-standing bottleneck for the application of NBT-based piezoelectric ceramics. In this work, the influence of thermal quenching on depolarization temperature and electrical properties of rare-earth Ho-doped NBT–6BT lead-free ceramics was investigated. It was shown that the relative high piezoelectric performance, as well as an improvement of depolarization temperature (Td), can be realized by thermal quenching. The results showed that the quenching process induced high concentration of oxygen vacancy, giving rise to the change of octahedra mode and enhanced lattice distortion, which is benefit to the temperature stability of piezoelectric and ferroelectric properties. Furthermore, up-conversion photoluminescence (PL) of Ho-doped NBT–6BT could be effectively tuned by the introduction of oxygen vacancy, suggesting a promising potential in optical–electrical multifunctional devices.

Let $\{M_{n}\}_{n=1}^{\infty }$ be a sequence of expanding matrices with $M_{n}=\operatorname{diag}(p_{n},q_{n})$, and let $\{{\mathcal{D}}_{n}\}_{n=1}^{\infty }$ be a sequence of digit sets with ${\mathcal{D}}_{n}=\{(0,0)^{t},(a_{n},0)^{t},(0,b_{n})^{t},\pm (a_{n},b_{n})^{t}\}$, where $p_{n}$, $q_{n}$, $a_{n}$ and $b_{n}$ are positive integers for all $n\geqslant 1$. If $\sup _{n\geqslant 1}\{\frac{a_{n}}{p_{n}},\frac{b_{n}}{q_{n}}\}<\infty$, then the infinite convolution $\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}_{\{M_{n}\},\{{\mathcal{D}}_{n}\}}=\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FF}_{M_{1}^{-1}{\mathcal{D}}_{1}}\ast \unicode[STIX]{x1D6FF}_{(M_{1}M_{2})^{-1}{\mathcal{D}}_{2}}\ast \cdots \,$ is a Borel probability measure (Cantor–Dust–Moran measure). In this paper, we investigate whenever there exists a discrete set $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6EC}$ such that $\{e^{2\unicode[STIX]{x1D70B}i\langle \unicode[STIX]{x1D706},x\rangle }:\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}\in \unicode[STIX]{x1D6EC}\}$ is an orthonormal basis for $L^{2}(\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}_{\{M_{n}\},\{{\mathcal{D}}_{n}\}})$.

Drag reduction at the external surface of a cylinder in turbulent flows along the axial direction by circumferential wall motion is studied by direct numerical simulations. The circumferential wall oscillation can lead to drag reduction due to the formation of a Stokes layer, but it may also result in centrifugal instability, which can enhance turbulence and increase drag. In the present work, the Reynolds number based on the reference friction velocity and the nominal thickness of the boundary layer is 272. A map describing the relationship between the drag-reduction rate and the control parameters, namely, the angular frequency $\unicode[STIX]{x1D714}^{+}=\unicode[STIX]{x1D714}\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}/u_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}0}^{2}$ and the streamwise wavenumber $k_{x}^{+}=k_{x}\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}/u_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}0}$, is obtained at the oscillation amplitude of ${A^{+}=A/u}_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}0}=16$, where $u_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}0}$ is the friction velocity of the uncontrolled flow and $\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}$ is the kinematic viscosity of the fluid. The maximum drag-reduction rate and the maximum drag-increase rate are both approximately 48 %, which are respectively attained at $(\unicode[STIX]{x1D714}^{+},k_{x}^{+})=$ (0.0126, 0.0148) and (0.0246, 0.0018). The drag-reduction rate can be scaled well with the help of the effective thickness of the Stokes layer. The drag increase is observed in a narrow triangular region in the frequency–wavenumber plane. The vortices induced by the centrifugal instability become the primary coherent structure in the near-wall region, and they are closely correlated with the high skin friction. In these drag-increase cases, the effective control frequency or wavenumber is crucial in scaling the drag-increase rate. As the wall curvature normalised by the boundary layer thickness becomes larger, the drag-increase region in the $(\unicode[STIX]{x1D714}^{+},k_{x}^{+})$ plane as well as the maximum drag-increase rate also become larger. Net energy saving with a considerable drag-reduction rate is possible when reducing the oscillation amplitude. At $A^{+}=4$, a net energy saving of 18 % can be achieved with a drag-reduction rate of 25 % if only the power dissipation due to viscous stress is taken into account in an ideal actuation system.

Owing to lack of a definitive correlation between carbon supports and catalytic activity of single-atom Fe-active sites, rational design and preparation of single-atom Fe catalysts have so far been elusive. Herein we designed and prepared one-dimensional core–shell nanostructured single-atom Fe catalysts, in which carbon nanofibers and carbon nanotubes with different crystallinities and electrical conductivities were used as supports to host single-atom Fe-active sites. It was found that the carbon supports with higher electrical conductivity accelerate charge transfer and enhance the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) activity of single-atom Fe-active sites as well as the ORR durability of the final catalyst.

Previous studies have indicated that some food items and nutrients are associated with uric acid metabolism in humans. However, little is known about the role of dietary patterns in hyperuricaemia. We designed this case–control study to evaluate the associations between dietary patterns and newly diagnosed hyperuricaemia in Chinese adults. A total of 1422 cases and 1422 controls were generated from 14 538 participants using the 1:1 ratio propensity score matching methods. Dietary intake was assessed using a validated self-administered FFQ. Dietary patterns were derived by factor analysis. Hyperuricaemia was defined as concentrations of serum uric acid higher than 7 mg/dl (416·5 μmol/l) for men and 6 mg/dl (357 μmol/l) for women. Three dietary patterns were derived by factor analysis: sweet pattern; vegetable pattern; animal foods pattern. The animal foods pattern characterised by higher intake of an animal organ, seafood and processed meat products was associated with higher prevalence of newly diagnosed hyperuricaemia (Pfor trend<0·01) after adjustment. Compared with the participants in the lowest quartile of the animal foods pattern, the OR of newly diagnosed hyperuricaemia in the highest quartile was 1·50 (95 % CI 1·20, 1·87). The other two dietary patterns were not associated with the prevalence of newly diagnosed hyperuricaemia after adjustment. In conclusion, a diet rich in animal organ, seafood and processed meat products is associated with higher prevalence of newly diagnosed hyperuricaemia in a Chinese population. Further cohort studies and randomised controlled trials are required to clarify these findings.

Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is a major cause of chronic kidney disease. We aimed to investigate the effect of the low-protein diets (LPD) supplemented with ketoacids (LPD+KA) in KKAy mice, an early type 2 DN model. KKAy mice were treated with normal protein diet (NPD), LPD or LPD+KA from 12 to 24 weeks of age. A period of 12-week treatment with LPD significantly reduced albuminuria as compared with that observed after NPD treatment. Treatment with LPD+KA further reduced albuminuria as compared with that observed with LPD treatment alone. Moreover, LPD treatment reduced mesangial expansion, thickness of glomerular basement membrane and the severity of the podocyte foot process effacement in KKAy mice; these effects were more pronounced in KKAy mice treated with LPD+KA. Both LPD and LPD+KA treatments slightly reduced total body weight, but had no significant effect on kidney weight and blood glucose concentrations when compared with NPD-treated KKAy mice. LPD treatment slightly attenuated oxidative stress in kidneys as compared with that observed in NPD-treated KKAy mice; however, LPD+KA treatment remarkably ameliorated oxidative stress in diabetic kidneys as shown by decreased malondialdehyde concentrations, protein carbonylation, nitrotyrosine expression and increased superoxide dismutase expression. Nutritional therapy using LPD+KA confers additional renal benefits as compared with those of LPD treatment alone in early type 2 DN through inhibition of oxidative stress.

High-quality carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and graphene synthesized by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) have unique one- and two-dimensional structures made up of sp2-hybridized carbon atoms and excellent physical and chemical properties. They have shown potential for use in electronics, optoelectronics, energy-storage devices, composites, and sensors. In this article, we review important milestones in these uses of CNTs and graphene produced by CVD, with special emphasis on the latest advances and remaining challenges. The key characteristics and advantages of CNTs and graphene synthesized by CVD for different applications are compared, and future trends in the use of these nanocarbons are discussed.

The purpose of this work is, based on CAFE method, to study the microstructure evolution and optimize the quality of the large-scale titanium slab ingot during EBCHM. The nucleation parameters of the microstructure simulation of titanium ingot are determined based on one of the actual experimental results. For the determined parameters, our theoretical results are agreement with other experimental results. The effects of pouring temperature and pulling speed on the microstructure are presented based on CAFE method. The quantitative analyses of the simulated results show that with the pulling speed increasing, the number of grains decreases, whereas the mean grain radius increases under identical thermal condition; with the pouring temperature increasing, the mean grain radius increases under the given pulling speed. Our results are very important to obtain the optimal structure of the ingots by controlling pulling speed and pouring temperature.