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In cross-cultural and interlanguage pragmatics, constructive feedback (CF), defined as “the identification of a problematic action and advice on how to change or correct the problem” (Nguyen & Basturkmen, 2010, p. 125), has received little attention. To fill this gap, similarities and differences between native Chinese speakers, native American speakers, and high-proficiency Chinese EFL learners’ CF are explored in this study. In particular, how these learners’ strategy applications in CF differ from those of American and Chinese speakers is examined. Data were collected through discourse completion tests (DCTs) owing to their advantages in controlling social variables and their efficiency in eliciting rich data within a limited time (Leech, 2014). In total, 42 participants were randomly selected from three groups: 14 native Chinese speakers, 14 native American speakers, and 14 high-proficiency Chinese EFL learners. The results revealed significant differences in strategy employment in CF among the three groups, with the highest disparity elicited in hedge strategies. Here, EFL learners resembled American speakers in six of the eight hedge strategies. However, they had the same percentage in terms of compliments as the Chinese speakers. With regard to supportive moves, there were no significant differences among the three groups. As a pioneering investigation, the aim of this study is to call for further research on CF.

An Improved Whale Optimization Algorithm (IWOA) is proposed to solve the problem of poor accuracy and stability in optimizing the locating and sizing of nonconvex and nonlinear electric vehicle (EV) charging stations (CSs). The variability index of convergence factor, the differential evolution operator, and the antibody affinity are introduced in the algorithm framework. Twelve classical test functions show that IWOA significantly improves the algorithm accuracy and convergence speed compared to WOA. Finally. The Voronoi diagram based on Floyd’s shortest path is adopted to decide the service area of charging stations. With the goal of delivering cost optimization, IWOA is applied to a 45-node transportation network for case study analysis, and the results show that both the proposed model and algorithm can be effectively applied to the locating and sizing and help reduce the cost for the whole society.

Background: The pathologic features and potential predictive biomarkers for recurrence of antrochoanal polyps (ACPs) in children are not fully understood.Objectives: To identify the pathologic differences between recurrent and nonrecurrent group and to explore potential clinical markers which predict recurrence of ACPs in children.Material and Methods: A total of 11 recurrent and 21 nonrecurrent ACPs children were enrolled into this retrospect study. Clinical basic information was collected before the first surgery. The counts of vessels were evaluated by hematoxylin–eosin (HE) staining, and CD34 was detected by immunohistochemistry. Meanwhile, the percentage of each tissue inflammatory cells (eosinophils, neutrophils, lymphocytes, and plasma cells) was assessed by HE staining.Results: No statistical significance was observed between the 2 groups in the basic clinical features. Moreover, both the counts of blood vessels and the tissue neutrophils percentage were enhanced significantly in group with ACPs recurrence (P< .05). According to the receiver operating characteristic curves, the area under the curve for the counts of blood vessels and tissue neutrophils percentage in the prediction of ACPs’ recurrence was 0.779 (P= .0105) and 0.989 (P< .0001) respectively.Conclusions and Significance: It was concluded that the counts of blood vessels and the percentage of tissue neutrophils appeared to be potential excellent predictors of ACPs recurrence in children.

Seismic inverse problems aim to infer the properties of subsurface geology, such as elastic and petrophysical properties. Existing seismic inversion methods for the joint estimation of these properties are mainly based either on Gassmann theory for prestack seismic data processed with stochastic optimisation techniques or on the Wyllie formula for poststack seismic data processed by deterministic optimisation techniques. The purpose of this study is to develop a strategy for the joint estimation of elastic and petrophysical properties from prestack seismic data based on Gassmann equations with deterministic optimisation techniques. Given poor-quality prestack seismic data, two regularisation parameters are introduced to control the trade-off between fidelity to the data and the smoothness of the solution. An appropriate linearised system of equations for the joint model update is derived from Newton’s method, which fits seismic data, the description of the rock physics medium and prior information, simultaneously. We show the preliminary results obtained with the proposed framework for synthetic and real data examples.

With the rapid development of space exploration and new energy vehicles, it is urgent to build ultra-wide temperature multilayer ceramic capacitors (UWT MLCCs) to match electronic circuits that can withstand harsh environmental conditions. Relaxor ferroelectrics with diffuse phase transition feature are potential dielectrics for the construction of UWT MLCCs. However, how to ensure high dielectric constant together with low dielectric loss in the wide temperature region is still a big challenge. Here, the above difficulties are addressed by tailoring the combination types of polar nanoregions (PNRs) in the (1-x) (0.8Na0.5Bi0.5TiO3-0.2K0.5Bi0.5TiO3)-xNaTaO3(NBT-KBT-xNT) system. Compared with PNRs types of P4bm + R3cand P4bm + Pbnm, the combination type of P4bm + Pbnm + R3cPNRs in NBT-KBT-0.31NT is the most beneficial to obtain comprehensive excellent dielectric performance because it can balance the relationship between high dielectric constant and temperature stability over a wide temperature region. Further, by optimizing the laminating pressure and co-firing temperature to realize a tight interfacial structure between the dielectric layer and the Pt inner electrode, a record-high dielectric constant (εr = (907 ± 15)%) together with low dielectric loss (tanδ≤ 0.025) is achieved over an ultra-wide range from −61 °C to 306 °C for NBT-KBT-0.31NT MLCC, demonstrating that tailoring the combination types of PNRs is a powerful strategy in designing UWT MLCC dielectrics.

The optimization problem for finding the global minimum energy structure is one of the main problems of protein structure prediction and is known to be an NP-hard problem in computational molecular biology. The low-energy conformational search problem in the hydrophobic-hydrophilic-neutral (BLN) off-lattice model is studied. We convert the problem into an unconstrained optimization problem by introducing the penalty function. By putting forward a new updating mechanism of the histogram function in the energy landscape paving (ELP) method and incorporating heuristic conformation update strategies into the ELP method, we obtain an improved ELP (IELP) method. Subsequently, by combining the IELP method with the local search (LS) based on the gradient descent method, we propose a hybrid algorithm, denoted by IELP-LS, for the conformational search of the off-lattice BLN model. Simulation results indicate that IELP-LS can find lower-energy states than other methods in the literature, showing that the proposed method is an effective tool for global optimization in the BLN off-lattice protein model.

Triple-negative breast cancer shows worse outcome compared with other subtypes of breast cancer. The discovery of dysregulated microRNAs and their roles in the progression of triple-negative breast cancer provide novel strategies for the treatment of patients with triple-negative breast cancer. In this study, we identified the significant reduction of miR-133 in triple-negative breast cancer tissues and cell lines. Ectopic overexpression of miR-133 suppressed the proliferation, colony formation, and upregulated the apoptosis of triple-negative breast cancer cells. Mechanism study revealed that the YES Proto-Oncogene 1 was a target of miR-133. miR-133 bound the 3′-untranslated region of YES Proto-Oncogene 1 and decreased the level of YES Proto-Oncogene 1 in triple-negative breast cancer cells. Consistent with miR-133 downregulation, YES1 was significantly increased in triple-negative breast cancer, which was inversely correlated with the level of miR-133. Restoration of YES Proto-Oncogene 1 attenuated the inhibitory effects of miR-133 on the proliferation and colony formation of triple-negative breast cancer cells. Consistent with the decreased expression of YES Proto-Oncogene 1, overexpression of miR-133 suppressed the phosphorylation of YAP1 in triple-negative breast cancer cells. Our results provided novel evidence for the role of miR-133/YES1 axis in the development of triple-negative breast cancer, which indicated miR-133 might be a potential therapeutic strategy for triple-negative breast cancer.

An iterated denoising and fusion method is presented to improve the image quality of wavelet-based coding. Firstly, iterated image denoising is used to reduce ringing and staircase noise along curving edges and improve edge regularity. Then, we adopt wavelet fusion method to enhance image edges, protect non-edge regions and decrease blurring artifacts during the process of denoising. Experimental results have shown that the proposed scheme is capable of improving both the subjective and the objective performance of wavelet decoders, such as JPEG2000 and SPIHT.

The paper proposes a new fusion method of visible and near infrared remote sensing images based on the multidirectional and multiscale M-band dual-tree wavelet transform(DTWT). The M-band DTWT decomposition is performed on each source image, then the high-frequency subband fusion coefficients are calculated by synthesizing modulus maxima selection and weighted average based on local coefficient matching, and average rule is adopted for low-frequency coefficients fusion. Experiment results show the proposed fusion method outperforms other typical ones, no matter in visual observation and objective evaluation criterion.