This article theorizes China’s Charity Law as a staged legal architecture that institutionalizes symbolic governance through sequenced design: from normative logic, to operational mechanism, to statutory codification. Based on comparative ethnographic fieldwork in Shanghai and Chongqing (2021–2023), this article develops a three-part model of interface legality. First, it conceptualizes legality as a symbolic infrastructure of legitimacy budgeting—the institutional logic through which symbolic control is organized without procedural closure. Second, it analyzes triadic discretion as the operational logic of this system, where codified law, bureaucratic modulation, and organizational alignment interact as a choreography of relational governance. Third, it traces how this discretionary system, developed in practice after the 2016 enactment, was codified into law as structured unfulfillability—embedding impossibility into legal form to sustain reputational suspense. These mechanisms are not pathologies of implementation but institutional features of symbolic governance. By connecting the Charity Law’s expressive design to its affective operations and strategic incompletion, this article contributes to sociolegal scholarship on staged legality by revealing how institutional logic, operational rhythm, and statutory design interlock to codify symbolic governance in contemporary lawmaking.

The whitefly Bemisia tabaci (Hemiptera: Aleyrodidae) is economically one of the most threatening pests in tomato cultivation, which not only causes direct damage but also transmits many viruses. Breeding whitefly-resistant tomato varieties is a promising and environmentally friendly method to control whitefly populations in the field. Accumulating evidence from tomato and other model systems demonstrates that flavonoids contribute to plant resistance to herbivorous insects. Previously, we found that high flavonoid-producing tomato line deterred whitefly oviposition and settling behaviours, and was more resistant to whiteflies compared to the near-isogenic low flavonoid-producing tomato line. The objective of the current work is to describe in detail different aspects of the interaction between the whitefly and two tomato lines, including biochemical processes involved. Electrical penetration graph recordings showed that high flavonoid-producing tomato reduced whitefly probing and phloem-feeding efficiency. We also studied constitutive and induced plant defence responses and found that whitefly induced stronger reactive oxygen species accumulation through NADPH oxidase in high flavonoid-producing tomato than in low flavonoid-producing tomato. Moreover, whitefly feeding induced the expression of callose synthase genes and resulted in callose deposition in the sieve elements in high flavonoid-producing tomato but not in low flavonoid-producing tomato. As a consequence, whitefly feeding on high flavonoid-producing tomato significantly decreased uptake of phloem and reduced its performance when compared to low flavonoid-producing tomato. These results indicate that high flavonoid-producing tomato provides phloem-based resistance against whitefly infestation and that the breeding of such resistance in new varieties could enhance whitefly management.

This paper provides an overview of the current status of ultrafast and ultra-intense lasers with peak powers exceeding 100 TW and examines the research activities in high-energy-density physics within China. Currently, 10 high-intensity lasers with powers over 100 TW are operational, and about 10 additional lasers are being constructed at various institutes and universities. These facilities operate either independently or are combined with one another, thereby offering substantial support for both Chinese and international research and development efforts in high-energy-density physics.

For a continuous-time phase-type (PH) distribution, starting with its Laplace–Stieltjes transform, we obtain a necessary and sufficient condition for its minimal PH representation to have the same order as its algebraic degree. To facilitate finding this minimal representation, we transform this condition equivalently into a non-convex optimization problem, which can be effectively addressed using an alternating minimization algorithm. The algorithm convergence is also proved. Moreover, the method we develop for the continuous-time PH distributions can be used directly for the discrete-time PH distributions after establishing an equivalence between the minimal representation problems for continuous-time and discrete-time PH distributions.

Thin-film beam combining technology is an effective approach to improve output power while maintaining beam quality. However, the lack of comprehensive research into the key factors affecting the beam quality in systems makes it challenging to achieve a practical combined beam source with high brightness. This paper clearly established that the temperature rise of dichroic mirrors (DMs) and sub-beam overlapping precision are the main factors affecting the beam quality of the system, with quantified effects. Based on this understanding, a combined light source of four channels of 3 kW fiber lasers was achieved, and an output power of 11.4 kW with a beam quality of M2x = 1.601 and M2y = 1.558, using three high-steepness low-absorption DMs and the active control technique. To the best of our knowledge, this is the best beam quality for a 10 kW light source. This study offers a solution for practical high-power laser sources in the tens of kilowatts range.

The gastrointestinal microbiota plays a crucial role in host nutrition and health. While culture-independent techniques have advanced microbial research, they often overlook low-abundance bacteria in the microbial community. Furthermore, empirical studies and mechanistic research rely on bacterial isolates obtained through culturing. The introduction of culturomics in 2012 significantly advanced culture-dependent techniques, contributing to microbial research. However, these methods remain labor-intensive, time-consuming, and costly, similar to traditional culture methods. This review provides an overview of the contributions of culturomics, summarizes procedures for optimizing sample and culture processes, and offers guidance on utilizing metagenomic data to enhance culturomics workflows. By collating and synthesizing these developments, this review aims to provide valuable insights into improving the practicality and productivity of culturomics for capturing gastrointestinal bacterial communities.

This study aimed to evaluate the association between dietary carotenoid intake and periodontitis in diabetic patients. Data on diabetic patients were collected from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2009–2014 for this cross-sectional study. Dietary intake of carotenoids was assessed through the first 24-hour dietary recall interview. Full-mouth periodontal examinations were conducted by trained dental examiners. Subgroup analysis was conducted in terms of age, gender, the number of missing teeth, cardiovascular disease, smoking, and anti-diabetic drugs. Totally 1914 diabetic patients were included, with 1281 (66.93%) in the periodontitis group. After adjusting for age, gender, race, education, smoking, dental implants, hepatitis, and the number of missing teeth, α-carotene intake ≥55.82 mcg was associated with lower odds of periodontitis than α-carotene intake <55.82 mcg [OR = 0.70, 95% CI: 0.53–0.91, P = 0.010]; lutein and zeaxanthin intake ≥795.95 mcg was associated with decreased odds of periodontitis than lutein and zeaxanthin intake <795.95 mcg (OR = 0.75, 95%CI: 0.57–0.98, P = 0.039). The association between carotenoid intake and periodontitis varied across different subpopulations. In diabetes, dietary intake of α-carotene and lutein and zeaxanthin was inversely associated with the odds of periodontitis, which may facilitate clinical periodontitis management.

A new integration of the acquisition and tracking modes is proposed for the integration of a Celestial Navigation System (CNS) and a Strapdown Inertial Navigation System (SINS). After the integration converges in the acquisition mode, it switches to the tracking mode. In the tracking mode, star pattern recognition is unnecessary and the integration is implemented in a cascaded filter scheme. A pre-filter is designed for each identified star and the output of the pre-filter is fused with the attitude of the SINS in the cascaded navigation filter. Both the pre-filter and the navigation filter are designed in detail. The measurements of the pre-filter are the positions on the image plane of one identified star. Both the starlight direction and its error are estimated in the pre-filter. The estimated starlight directions of all identified stars are the measurements of the navigation filter. The simulation results show that both the reliability and accuracy of the integration are improved and the integration is effective when only one star is identified in a period.

Phase-field methods with a degenerate mobility have been widely used to simulate surface diffusion motion. However, apart from the motion induced by surface diffusion, adverse effects such as shrinkage, coarsening and false merging have been observed in the results obtained from the current phase-field methods, which largely affect the accuracy and numerical stability of these methods. In this paper, a flux-corrected phase-field method is proposed to improve the performance of phase-field methods for simulating surface diffusion. The three effects were numerically studied for the proposed method and compared with those observed in the two existing methods, the original phase-field method and the profile-corrected phase-field method. Results show that compared to the original phase-field method, the shrinkage effect in the profile-corrected phase-field method has been significantly reduced. However, coarsening and false merging effects still present and can be significant in some cases. The flux-corrected phase field performs the best in terms of eliminating the shrinkage and coarsening effects. The false merging effect still exists when the diffuse regions of different interfaces overlap with each other. But it has been much reduced as compared to that in the other two methods.

In the present study, three primiparous lactating Holstein cows (260–285 d in lactation) were used in a 3 × 3 Latin square design to assess the effects of three doses (0·0, 0·4 and 0·8 μg/kg body weight) of lipopolysaccharide (LPS, Escherichia coli 0111:B4) on changes in ruminal microbiota and ruminal fermentation. Ruminal pH was linearly decreased (P< 0·001) by LPS challenge, and the concentrations of acetate, propionate, butyrate, total volatile fatty acids and amino N increased linearly (P< 0·001) according to the LPS dose. LPS infusion linearly decreased (P< 0·001) the organic matter degradability of alfalfa hay and soyabean meal in the rumen, but did not affect (P>0·10) the gene expression of Na + /K +-ATPase and monocarboxylic acid transporter-1, -2 and -4. A plot of principal coordinate analysis based on unweighted UniFrac values and analysis of molecular variance revealed that the structure of ruminal bacterial communities in the control was distinct from that of the ruminal microbiota in the cattle exposed to LPS. At the phylum level, when compared with the control group, LPS infusion in the tested cows linearly increased (P< 0·05) the abundance of Firmicutes, and linearly decreased (P< 0·05) the percentage of Bacteroidetes, Tenericutes, Spirochaetes, Chlorobi and Lentisphaerae. To our knowledge, this is the first study to report that intravenously LPS challenge altered the ruminal bacterial microbiota and fermentation profiles. The present data suggest that systemic LPS could alter ruminal environment and ruminal microbiota composition, leading to a general decrease in fermentative activity.

In this paper, we study the global attractivity of the zero solution of a particular impulsive delay differential equation. Some sufficient conditions that guarantee every solution of the equation converges to zero are obtained.

One of the key issues in spoken-language translation is how to deal with unrestricted expressions in spontaneous utterances. We have developed a paraphraser for use as part of a translation system, and in this paper we describe the implementation of a Chinese paraphraser for a Chinese-Japanese spoken-language translation system. When an input sentence cannot be translated by the transfer engine, the paraphraser automatically transforms the sentence into alternative expressions until one of these alternatives can be translated by the transfer engine. Two primary issues must be dealt with in paraphrasing: how to determine new expressions, and how to retain the meaning of the input sentence. We use a pattern-based approach in which the meaning is retained to the greatest possible extent without deep parsing. The paraphrase patterns are acquired from a paraphrase corpus and human experience. The paraphrase instances are automatically extracted and then generalized into paraphrase patterns. A total of 1719 paraphrase patterns obtained using this method and an implemented paraphraser were used in a paraphrasing experiment. The results showed that the implemented paraphraser generated 1.7 paraphrases on average for each test sentence and achieved an accuracy of 88%.