Echo questions serve two pragmatic functions (recapitulatory and explicatory) and are subdivided into two types (yes-no echo question and wh-echo question) in verbal communication. Yet to date, most ...relevant studies have been conducted in European languages like English and Spanish. It remains unknown whether the different functions of echo questions can be conveyed via prosody in spoken Chinese. Additionally, no comparison was made on the diversified algorithmic models in predicting functions by the prosodity of Chinese echo questions, a novel linguistic cognition in nature. This motivated us to use different acoustic cues to predict different pragmatic functions of Chinese echo questions by virtue of acoustic experiment and data modeling. The results showed that for yes-no echo question, explicatory function exhibited higher pitch and intensity patterns than recapitulatory function whereas for wh-echo question, recapitulatory function demonstrated higher pitch and intensity patterns than explicatory function. With regard to data modeling, the algorithm Support Vector Machine (SVM) relative to Random Forest (RF) and Logistic Regression (LR) performed better when predicting different functions using prosodic cues in both yes-no and wh-echo questions. This study from a digitized perspective adds evidence to the cognition of echo questions' functions on a prosodic basis.
Peer feedback is essential in writing English as a Second/Foreign Language (ESL/EFL). Traditionally, offline PF was more widely favored but nowadays online peer feedback (OPF) has become frequent in ...ESL/EFL learners’ daily writing. This study is undertaken to probe into the gains of using OPF in ESL/EFL writing on the basis of 37 research articles published in core journals from 2012 till 2022. In order to accurately cover the previous researches, we capitalize on three methods to evaluate and analyze the data, i.e., database search, citation search and manual search. Results show that from the perspective of the ESL/EFL learners’ gains, the OPF is basically divided into two categories (cognitive OPF and affective OPF), involving eight aspects in all: face-based strategies, revision-based comments, writing performance, learning environment, reflection/critical thinking/responsibility, writing emotion, motivation, and attitudes; and OPF can be well supported by a set of theories like Process-oriented Writing Theory, Collaborative Learning Theory, Interactionist Theory of L2 Acquisition and Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory. By comparison, the gains from OPF outperform those from offline PF in many dimensions (e.g., face-based strategies), despite some overlaps (e.g., the shift of the role) that were revealed in several investigations. Based on the past studies, we propose some pedagogical implications on OPF from ESL/EFL writing, including accenting the “student-centered” teaching strategy, providing students with OPF on the basis of incremental knowledge, adopting OPF regularly in ESL/EFL writing activities to shape personalities and outlooks and putting OPF into its full play with recourse to abundant internet-based vehicles. This review is desired to provide a guideline for both the peer feedback practice and the upcoming scholarly researches with respect to EFL/ESL writing.
Using clean solar energy to reduce CO2 into value-added products not only consumes the over-emitted CO2 that causes environmental problems, but also generates fuel chemicals to alleviate energy ...crises. The photocatalytic CO2 reduction reaction (PCO2RR) relies on the semiconductor photocatalysts that suffer from high recombination rate of the photo-generated carriers, low light harvesting capability, and low stability. This review explores the recent discoveries on the novel semiconductors for PCO2RR, focusing on the rational catalyst design strategies (such as surface engineering, band engineering, hierarchical structure construction, single-atom catalysts, and biohybrid catalysts) that promote the catalytic performance of semiconductor catalysts on PCO2RR. The advanced characterization techniques that contribute to understanding the intrinsic properties of the photocatalysts are also discussed. Lastly, the perspectives on future challenges and possible solutions for PCO2RR are presented.
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Most natural-language-processing (NLP) tasks suffer performance degradation when encountering long complex sentences, such as semantic parsing, syntactic parsing, machine translation, and text ...summarization. Previous works addressed the issue with the intuition of decomposing complex sentences and linking simple ones, such as rhetorical-structure-theory (RST)-style discourse parsing, split-and-rephrase (SPRP), text simplification (TS), simple sentence decomposition (SSD), etc. However, these works are not applicable for semantic parsing such as abstract meaning representation (AMR) parsing and semantic dependency parsing due to misalignments with semantic relations and unavailabilities to preserve the original semantics. Following the same intuition and avoiding the deficiencies of previous works, we propose a novel framework, hierarchical clause annotation (HCA), for capturing clausal structures of complex sentences, based on the linguistic research of clause hierarchy. With the HCA framework, we annotated a large HCA corpus to explore the potentialities of integrating HCA structural features into semantic parsing with complex sentences. Moreover, we decomposed HCA into two subtasks, i.e., clause segmentation and clause parsing, and provide neural baseline models for more-silver annotations. In evaluating the proposed models on our manually annotated HCA dataset, the performances of clause segmentation and parsing resulted in 91.3% F1-scores and 88.5% Parseval scores, respectively. Due to the same model architectures employed, the performance differences of the clause/discourse segmentation and parsing subtasks was reflected in our HCA corpus and compared discourse corpora, where our sentences contained more segment units and fewer interrelations than those in the compared corpora.
Verb conjugation is essential in learning Japanese as a second or foreign language (JSL/JFL). Previous studies showed that Chinese JSL/JFL beginners behaved differently in acquiring Japanese verb ...conjugations, but the results were obtained from offline tests (e.g., writing examination without time limitation), hard to reflect the real perception. On this background, the current study adopted a time-controlled lexical decision task (real-time automatic processing) to explore how Chinese intermediate JSL/JFL learners processed four types of verb conjugations (i.e., masu/tai form, te/ta form, nai form and yoo form). Based on the error rates and RTs collected form 27 Chinese intermediate JSL/JFL learners, the results showed that the JSL/JFL learners processed better in masu/tai form and te/ta form, followed by nai form and yoo form. The discrepant processing of the four types of Japanese verb conjugations suggests that the JSL/JFL learners do have difficulties in Japanese acquisition. Finally, a general discussion is offered from the perspective of verb conjugations' frequency, JSL/JFL learners' learning strategy and Japanese teaching method.
Background and Aims
Protein S‐sulfhydration mediated by H2S has been shown to play important roles in several diseases. However, its precise role in liver disease and the related mechanism remain ...unclear.
Approach and Results
We showed that in streptozotocin (STZ)–treated and high‐fat diet (HFD)–treated low‐density lipoprotein receptor–negative (LDLr−/−) mice, the H2S donor GYY4137 ameliorated liver injury, decreased serum alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and aspartate aminotransferase (AST) levels, mitigated lipid deposition, and reduced hepatocyte death. Strikingly, S‐sulfhydration of Kelch‐like ECH‐associated protein 1 (Keap1) was decreased in the livers of patients with fatty liver under diabetic conditions. In STZ+HFD‐treated LDLr−/− mice and in high glucose–treated and oxidized low‐density lipoprotein (ox‐LDL)–treated primary mouse hepatocytes, the GYY4137‐mediated increase in Keap1 S‐sulfhydration induced nuclear erythroid 2‐related factor 2 (Nrf2) dissociation from Keap1, which enhanced the nuclear translocation of Nrf2 itself and the consequent expression of antioxidant proteins. Keap1 Cys151 mutation significantly reduced Keap1 S‐sulfhydration and abolished the hepatoprotective effects of H2S both in vivo and in vitro. Nrf2 deficiency inhibited the H2S‐induced beneficial impacts in Nrf2−/− mice. Similarly, in CCl4‐stimulated mice, GYY4137 increased Keap1 S‐sulfhydration, improved liver function, alleviated liver fibrosis, decreased hepatic oxidative stress, and activated the Nrf2 signaling pathway; and these effects were abrogated after Keap1 Cys151 mutation. Moreover, H2S increased the binding of Nrf2 to the promoter region of LDLr‐related protein 1 (Lrp1) and consequently up‐regulated LRP1 expression, but these effects were disrupted by Keap1 Cys151 mutation.
Conclusions
H2S‐mediated Keap1 S‐sulfhydration alleviates liver damage through activation of Nrf2. Hence, administration of exogenous H2S in the form of the H2S donor GYY4137 may be of therapeutic benefit in the context of concurrent hyperlipidemia and hyperglycemia–induced or CCl4‐stimulated liver dysfunction.
Highly dispersed Pt nanoclusters (<2 nm) are anchored onto MOF-derived CeO2 via atomic layer deposition technique.
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•Pt clusters are deposited on MOFs-derived CeO2 via atomic layer ...deposition.•Both AC-STEM and CO-DRIFTS confirm the existence of Pt clusters.•The porous structure and defect-rich of MOFs-derived CeO2 are responsible for the small size of Pt.•The catalyst shows excellent activity and selectivity for the hydrogenation of furfural.•The excellent performance is related to the small size of Pt and rich oxygen vacancy.
The selective hydrogenation of furfural (FAL) to furfuryl alcohol (FOL) in liquid phase has drawn tremendous attention, while designing and preparing efficient catalysts with satisfied selectivity remains a challenge due to the coexistence of two conjugated CO and CC groups within FAL molecule. This work has depicted a simple-yet-effective strategy to load small sized Pt (<2 nm) onto MOFs-derived CeO2 via atomic layer deposition (ALD) technique. Special aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy (AC-STEM) confirmed the dominant presence of Pt nanoclusters. Physicochemical properties of Pt/M-CeO2 were investigated by a various of characterizations, inclusive of XRD, SEM, TEM, BET, XPS, Raman, CO-DRIFTS and FAL-DRIFTS. In comparison to Pt/commercial CeO2 (Pt/C-CeO2), the Pt/M-CeO2 one displayed the superior catalytic activity, yielding 100% conversion of FAL and 98% selectivity to FOL. The high catalytic activity of Pt/M-CeO2 can be reasonably assigned to Pt clusters with clean surface, strongly interacting between Pt and M-CeO2, and rich oxygen vacancy/porous structure of the M-CeO2 support. This work highlights an effective approach towards deposition of noble metal clusters onto MOFs-derived metal oxides, offering an alternative way to reasonable design highly efficient catalyst in selective hydrogenation reactions.
Simultaneously realizing the efficient generation of H
O
and degradation of pollutants is of great significance for environmental remediation. However, most polymeric semiconductors only show ...moderate performance in molecular oxygen (O
) activation due to the sluggish electron-hole pair dissociation and charge transfer dynamics. Herein, we develop a simple thermal shrinkage strategy to construct multi-heteroatom-doped polymeric carbon nitride (K, P, O-CN
). The resultant K, P, O-CN
not only improves the separation efficiency of charge carriers, but also improves the adsorption/activation capacity of O
. K, P, O-CN
significantly increases the production of H
O
and the degradation activity of oxcarbazepine (OXC) under visible light. K, P, O-CN
shows a high H
O
production rate (1858 μM h
g
) in water under visible light, far surpassing that of pure PCN. The apparent rate constant for OXC degradation by K, P, O-CN
increases to 0.0491 min
, which is 8.47 times that of PCN. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations show that the adsorption energy of O
near phosphorus atoms in K, P, O-CN
is the highest. This work provides a new idea for the efficient degradation of pollutants and generation of H
O
at the same time.
Simultaneously realizing the efficient generation of H
2
O
2
and degradation of pollutants is of great significance for environmental remediation. However, most polymeric semiconductors only show ...moderate performance in molecular oxygen (O
2
) activation due to the sluggish electron-hole pair dissociation and charge transfer dynamics. Herein, we develop a simple thermal shrinkage strategy to construct multi-heteroatom-doped polymeric carbon nitride (K, P, O-CN
x
). The resultant K, P, O-CN
x
not only improves the separation efficiency of charge carriers, but also improves the adsorption/activation capacity of O
2
. K, P, O-CN
x
significantly increases the production of H
2
O
2
and the degradation activity of oxcarbazepine (OXC) under visible light. K, P, O-CN
5
shows a high H
2
O
2
production rate (1858 μM h
−1
g
−1
) in water under visible light, far surpassing that of pure PCN. The apparent rate constant for OXC degradation by K, P, O-CN
5
increases to 0.0491 min
−1
, which is 8.47 times that of PCN. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations show that the adsorption energy of O
2
near phosphorus atoms in K, P, O-CN
x
is the highest. This work provides a new idea for the efficient degradation of pollutants and generation of H
2
O
2
at the same time.
We develop a simple thermal shrinkage strategy to construct multi-heteroatom-doped polymeric carbon nitride (K, P, O-CN
x
), which not only improves the charge separation efficiency, but also improves the adsorption/activation capacity of O
2
.
