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Does the language we speak affect the way we think? This Element provides a synthesis of contemporary research on the interplay between language and cognition in speakers of two or more languages and examines variables deemed to impact bilingual acquisition and conceptualization of language-specific thinking patterns during L2 learning. An overview of different yet interrelated studies is offered across a variety of conceptual domains to illustrate different approaches and key variables. The comparison of monolingual and bilingual data demonstrates the highly integrative nature between L2 learning and the changing of one's entire cognitive outlook in L2 speakers. This Element makes relevant connections between language learning and bilingual cognition, aiming to shed new light on how learners acquire conceptual distinctions of the target language(s). It also raises theoretical and pedagogical issues that encourage teachers to reflect upon how to incorporate recent advances in language-and-cognition research with aspects of L2 teaching.
Many waterflooding oil fields, injecting water into an oil-bearing reservoir for pressure maintenance, are in their middle to late stages of development. To explore the geological conditions and improve oilfield recovery of the most important well group of the Hu 136 block, located on the border areas of three provinces (Henan, Shandong, and Hebei), Zhongyuan Oilfield, Sinopec, central China, a 14C cross-well tracer monitoring technology was developed and applied in monitoring the development status and recognize the heterogeneity of oil reservoirs. The tracer response in the production well was tracked, and the water drive speed, swept volume of the injection fluid were obtained. Finally, the reservoir heterogeneity characteristics, such as the dilution coefficient, porosity, permeability, and average pore-throat radius, were fitted according to the mathematical model of the heterogeneous multi-layer inter-well theory. The 14C-AMS technique developed in this work is expected to be a potential analytical method for evaluating underground reservoir characteristics and providing crucial scientific guidance for the mid to late oil field recovery process.
The association between executive dysfunction, brain dysconnectivity, and inflammation is a prominent feature across major psychiatric disorders (MPDs), schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depressive disorder. A dimensional approach is warranted to delineate their mechanistic interplay across MPDs.
Methods
This single site study included a total of 1543 participants (1058 patients and 485 controls). In total, 1169 participants underwent diffusion tensor and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (745 patients and 379 controls completed the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test). Fractional anisotropy (FA) and regional homogeneity (ReHo) assessed structural and functional connectivity, respectively. Pro-inflammatory cytokine levels [interleukin (IL)-1β, IL-6, and tumor necrosis factor-α] were obtained in 325 participants using blood samples collected with 24 h of scanning. Group differences were determined for main measures, and correlation and mediation analyses and machine learning prediction modeling were performed.
Results
Executive deficits were associated with decreased FA, increased ReHo, and elevated IL-1β and IL-6 levels across MPDs, compared to controls. FA and ReHo alterations in fronto-limbic-striatal regions contributed to executive deficits. IL-1β mediated the association between FA and cognition, and IL-6 mediated the relationship between ReHo and cognition. Executive cognition was better predicted by both brain connectivity and cytokine measures than either one alone for FA-IL-1β and ReHo-IL-6.
Conclusions
Transdiagnostic associations among brain connectivity, inflammation, and executive cognition exist across MPDs, implicating common neurobiological substrates and mechanisms for executive deficits in MPDs. Further, inflammation-related brain dysconnectivity within fronto-limbic-striatal regions may represent a transdiagnostic dimension underlying executive dysfunction that could be leveraged to advance treatment.
It is generally accepted that high-oleic crops have at least 70% oleate. As compared to their normal-oleic counterparts, oil and food products made from high-oleic peanut have better keeping quality and are much healthier. Therefore, high-oleic peanut is well recognized by processors and consumers. However, owing to the limited availability of high-oleic donors, most present-day high-oleic peanut varietal releases merely have F435 type FAD2 mutations. Through screening of a mutagenized peanut population of 15L46, a high-yielding peanut line with desirable elliptical oblong large seeds, using near infrared model for predicting oleate content in individual single seeds, high-oleic peanut mutants were identified. Sequencing FAD2A and FAD2B of the mutants along with the wild type revealed that these mutants possessed G448A FAD2A (F435 type FAD2A mutation) and G558A FAD2B (non-F435 type FAD2B mutation). Expression of the wild and mutated type FAD2B in yeast verified that the functional mutation contributed to the high-oleic phenotype in these mutants. The mutants provided additional high-oleic donors to peanut quality improvement.
The gut microbiota plays an important role in animals’ survival in their local environments. The intertidal rocky shore is a key interface of oceanic, atmospheric and terrestrial environments, and the transmission modes of microbes between an intertidal host and the environment are complex and largely ignored. In the present study, we characterized the gut microbiota of the intertidal snail Nerita yoldii, which is experiencing a northward range shift under the combined impacts of climate change and anthropogenic seascape transformation, and also determined the nearby environmental microbiota on the rock and in the seawater at five locations along the snail's distribution range in China. The gut microbial communities were significantly different from the environmental microbial communities, and the dominant phyla were Tenericutes, Cyanobacteria and Bacteroidetes, and Proteobacteria in the gut, rock and seawater microbial communities, respectively. At the genus level, Mycoplasma, with a relative abundance of 48.0 ± 10.2%, was the dominant genus in the gut microbial community, however, the relative abundances of this genus on the rock and in the water were low. These results imply that the gut microbial community of the intertidal snail N. yoldii is relatively independent from the environmental microbial community, and the dominant genus Mycoplasma in the gut, that is rare in the environment, can potentially assist the snail living in the harsh intertidal environment, especially at its northernmost distribution range edge.
Tumour-associated macrophages (TAMs) constitute a plastic and heterogeneous cell population of the tumour microenvironment (TME) that can account for up to 50% of solid tumours. TAMs heterogeneous are associated with different cancer types and stages, different stimulation of bioactive molecules and different TME, which are crucial drivers of tumour progression, metastasis and resistance to therapy. In this context, understanding the sources and regulatory mechanisms of TAM heterogeneity and searching for novel therapies targeting TAM subpopulations are essential for future studies. In this review, we discuss emerging evidence highlighting the redefinition of TAM heterogeneity from three different directions: origins, phenotypes and functions. We notably focus on the causes and consequences of TAM heterogeneity which have implications for the evolution of therapeutic strategies that targeted the subpopulations of TAMs.
Although immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have produced remarkable responses in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients, receivers still have a relatively low response rate. Initial response assessment by conventional imaging and evaluation criteria is often unable to identify whether patients can achieve durable clinical benefit from ICIs. Overall, there are sparse effective biomarkers identified to screen NSCLC patients responding to this therapy. A lot of studies have reported that patients with specific gene mutations may benefit from or resist to immunotherapy. However, the single gene mutation may be not effective enough to predict the benefit from immunotherapy for patients. With the advancement in sequencing technology, further studies indicate that many mutations often co-occur and suggest a drastic transformation of tumour microenvironment phenotype. Moreover, co-mutation events have been reported to synergise to activate or suppress signalling pathways of anti-tumour immune response, which also indicates a potential target for combining intervention. Thus, the different mutation profile (especially co-mutation) of patients may be an important concern for predicting or promoting the efficacy of ICIs. However, there is a lack of comprehensive knowledge of this field until now. Therefore, in this study, we reviewed and elaborated the value of cancer mutation profile in predicting the efficacy of immunotherapy and analysed the underlying mechanisms, to provide an alternative way for screening dominant groups, and thereby, optimising individualised therapy for NSCLC patients.
This study aimed to examine the impact of different dietary patterns on stroke outcomes among type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) patients in China.
Design:
Participants were enrolled by a stratified random cluster sampling method in the study. After collecting dietary data using a quantified FFQ, latent class analysis was used to identify dietary patterns, and propensity score matching was used to reduce confounding effects between different dietary patterns. Binary logistic regression and conditional logistic regression were used to analyse the relationship between dietary patterns and stroke in patients with T2DM.
Setting:
A cross-sectional survey available from December 2013 to January 2014.
Participants:
A total of 13 731 Chinese residents aged 18 years or over.
Results:
Two dietary patterns were identified: 61·2 % of T2DM patients were categorised in the high-fat dietary pattern while 38·8 % of patients were characterised by the balanced dietary pattern. Compared with the high-fat dietary pattern, the balanced dietary pattern was associated with reduced stroke risk (OR = 0·63, 95 %CI 0·52, 0·76, P < 0·001) after adjusting for confounding factors. The protective effect of the balanced model did not differ significantly (interaction P > 0·05).
Conclusions:
This study provides sufficient evidence to support the dietary intervention strategies to prevent stroke effectively. Maintaining a balanced dietary pattern, especially with moderate consumption of foods rich in quality protein and fresh vegetables in T2DM patients, might decrease the risk of stroke in China.
A proportion of patients with bipolar disorder (BD) manifests with only unipolar mania (UM). This study examined relevant clinical features and psychosocial characteristics in UM compared with depressive-manic (D-M) subgroups. Moreover, comorbidity patterns of physical conditions and psychiatric disorders were evaluated between the UM and D-M groups.
Methods
This clinical retrospective study (N = 1015) analyzed cases with an average of 10 years of illness duration and a nationwide population-based cohort (N = 8343) followed up for 10 years in the Taiwanese population. UM was defined as patients who did not experience depressive episodes and were not prescribed adequate antidepressant treatment during the disease course of BD. Logistic regression models adjusted for relevant covariates were used to evaluate the characteristics and lifetime comorbidities in the two groups.
Results
The proportion of UM ranged from 12.91% to 14.87% in the two datasets. Compared with the D-M group, the UM group had more psychotic symptoms, fewer suicidal behaviors, a higher proportion of morningness chronotype, better sleep quality, higher extraversion, lower neuroticism, and less harm avoidance personality traits. Substantially different lifetime comorbidity patterns were observed between the two groups.
Conclusions
Patients with UM exhibited distinct clinical and psychosocial features compared with patients with the D-M subtype. In particular, a higher risk of comorbid cardiovascular diseases and anxiety disorders is apparent in patients with D-M. Further studies are warranted to investigate the underlying mechanisms for diverse presentations in subgroups of BDs.
A multidecadal-resolved stalagmite δ18O record from two nearby caves, Lianhua and Dragon, in Shanxi Province, northern China, characterizes the detailed East Asian summer monsoon (EASM) intensity changes at 114.6–108.3 ka during Marine Oxygen Isotope Stage 5d. Our record shows an intensification of the EASM at 114.6–109.5 ka, followed by a rapid weakening at 109.5–108.4 ka. The millennial-scale strong monsoonal event appears to be correlated with the warm Greenland interstadial 25 (GI 25), whereas the weak monsoonal event is related to the cold Greenland stadial 25 within dating errors. The GI 25 monsoonal event registered in our record is also documented in various published time series from different regions of China. The lines of evidence indicate that this event occurred over the entirety of monsoonal China and was also broadly antiphase, similar to the corresponding event on a millennial time scale in the South American monsoon territory. In our record, one 700 yr weak monsoon event at 110.7+0.6−0.5 to 110.0+0.8−0.4 ka divides the GI 25 into three substages. These multicentennial to millennial–scale monsoon events correspond to two warm periods and an intervening cold interval for the intra-interstadial climate oscillations within GI 25, thus supporting a persistent coupling of the high- and low-latitude climate systems over the last glacial period.
For the safety problems caused by the limited landing space of the deck during the arresting process of the carrier-based aircraft, a dynamic model of the carrier-based aircraft’s landing and arresting is built. Based on the batch simulation method, the lateral dynamics safety envelope of the aircraft during the arresting was defined, and the dynamic response of the key points in the envelope during the arresting process was investigated. Subsequently, the influence of engine thrust and aircraft quality on the arresting safety envelope was studied based on reasonable safety evaluation indicators, and the safety status envelope of the deck arresting was given. Then, the particular Hamilton-Jacobi partial differential equation is used to obtain the lateral dynamics safety envelope of the carrier-based aircraft in the process of landing and arresting by backward inversion. Results indicate that engine thrust and landing quality have little effect on the yaw angle in the arresting safety boundary during the arresting. Additionally, with the engine thrust and landing quality increase, the maximum safe off-centre distance gradually decreases, and the safety boundary decreases accordingly. During the phase of landing glide, the engine thrust and quality have little effect on the maximum safe eccentric distance. When the engine thrust is increased by 40%, the maximum safe yaw angle is reduced from 0.3°, and the safety boundary is reduced by 4.2%. When the aircraftquality increases by 40%, the maximum safe yaw angle is reduced by 0.4°, and the safety boundary is reduced by 2.8%. The findings of this paper can provide framework for the research on theaircraft-to-carrier dynamic matching characteristics of the carrier-based system, and is of great significance to the research on improving the safety of the carrier-based aircraft landing arresting.
Grey matter (GM) reduction is a consistent observation in established late stages of schizophrenia, but patients in the untreated early stages of illness display an increase as well as a decrease in GM distribution relative to healthy controls (HC). The relative excess of GM may indicate putative compensatory responses, though to date its relevance is unclear.
Methods
343 first-episode treatment-naïve patients with schizophrenia (FES) and 342 HC were recruited. Multivariate source-based morphometry was performed to identify covarying ‘networks' of grey matter concentration (GMC). Neurocognitive scores using the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB) and symptom burden using the Positive and Negative Symptoms Scale (PANSS) were obtained. Bivariate linear relationships between GMC and cognition/symptoms were studied.
Results
Compared to healthy subjects, FES had prominently lower GMC in two components; the first consists of the anterior insula, inferior frontal gyrus, anterior cingulate and the second component with the superior temporal gyrus, precuneus, inferior/superior parietal lobule, cuneus, and lingual gyrus. Higher GMC was seen in adjacent areas of the middle and superior temporal gyrus, middle frontal gyrus, inferior parietal cortex and putamen. Greater GMC of this component was associated with lower duration of untreated psychosis, less severe positive symptoms and better performance on cognitive tests.
Conclusions
In untreated stages of schizophrenia, both a distributed lower and higher GMC is observable. While the higher GMC is relatively modest, it occurs across frontoparietal, temporal and subcortical regions in association with reduced illness burden suggesting a compensatory role for higher GMC in the early stages of schizophrenia.
In training deep learning networks, the optimizer and related learning rate are often used without much thought or with minimal tuning, even though it is crucial in ensuring a fast convergence to a good quality minimum of the loss function that can also generalize well on the test dataset. Drawing inspiration from the successful application of cyclical learning rate policy to computer vision tasks, we explore how cyclical learning rate can be applied to train transformer-based neural networks for neural machine translation. From our carefully designed experiments, we show that the choice of optimizers and the associated cyclical learning rate policy can have a significant impact on the performance. In addition, we establish guidelines when applying cyclical learning rates to neural machine translation tasks.
Bladder cancer is the most common malignant tumour of the urinary system that is characterised by significant intra-tumoural heterogeneity. While large-scale sequencing projects have provided a preliminary understanding of tumour heterogeneity, these findings are based on the average signals obtained from the pooled populations of diverse cells. Recent advances in single-cell sequencing (SCS) technologies have been critical in this regard, opening up new ways of understanding the nuanced tumour biology by identifying distinct cellular subpopulations, dissecting the tumour microenvironment, and characterizing cellular genomic mutations. By integrating these novel insights, SCS technologies are expected to make powerful and meaningful changes to the current diagnosis and treatment of bladder cancer through the identification and usage of novel biomarkers as well as targeted therapeutics. SCS can discriminate complex heterogeneity in a large population of tumour cells and determine the key molecular properties that influence clinical outcomes. Here, we review the advances in single-cell technologies and discuss their applications in cancer research and clinical practice, with a specific focus on bladder cancer.
We investigated the drug resistance of Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates from patients with tuberculosis (TB) and HIV, and those diagnosed with only TB in Sichuan, China. TB isolates were obtained from January 2018 to December 2020 and subjected to drug susceptibility testing (DST) to 11 anti-TB drugs and to GeneXpert MTB/RIF testing. The overall proportion of drug-resistant TB (DR-TB) isolates was 32.1% (n = 10 946). HIV testing was not universally available for outpatient TB cases, only 29.5% (3227/10 946) cases had HIV testing results. The observed proportion of multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) isolates was almost double than that of the national level, with approximately 1.5% and 0.1% of the isolates being extensively drug resistant and universally drug resistant, respectively. The proportions of resistant isolates were generally higher in 2018 and 2019 than in 2020. Furthermore, the sensitivities of GeneXpert during 2018–2020 demonstrated a downward trend (80.9, 95% confidence intervals (CI) 76.8–85.0; 80.2, 95% CI 76.4–84.1 and 75.4, 95% CI 70.7–80.2, respectively). Approximately 69.0% (7557/10 946) of the TB cases with DST results were subjected to GeneXpert detection. Overall, the DR-TB status and the use of GeneXpert in Sichuan have improved, but DR-TB challenges remain. HIV testing for all TB cases is recommended.
In this paper, we present explicit and computable error bounds for the asymptotic expansions of the Hermite polynomials with Plancherel–Rotach scale. Three cases, depending on whether the scaled variable lies in the outer or oscillatory interval, or it is the turning point, are considered separately. We introduce the ‘branch cut’ technique to express the error terms as integrals on the contour taken as the one-sided limit of curves approaching the branch cut. This new technique enables us to derive simple error bounds in terms of elementary functions. We also provide recursive procedures for the computation of the coefficients appearing in the asymptotic expansions.
Due to less light scattering and a better signal-to-noise ratio in deep imaging, two-photon fluorescence microscopy (TPFM) has been widely used in biomedical photonics since its advent. However, optical aberrations degrade the performance of TPFM in terms of the signal intensity and the imaging depth and therefore restrict its application. Here, we introduce adaptive optics based on the genetic algorithm to detect the distorted wavefront of the excitation laser beam and then perform aberration correction to optimize the performance of TPFM. By using a spatial light modulator as the wavefront controller, the correction phase is obtained through a signal feedback loop and a process of natural selection. The experimental results show that the signal intensity and imaging depth of TPFM are improved after aberration correction. Finally, the method was applied to two-photon fluorescence lifetime imaging, which helps to improve the signal-to-noise ratio and the accuracy of lifetime analysis. Furthermore, the method can also be implemented in other experiments, such as three-photon microscopy, light-sheet microscopy, and super-resolution microscopy.