National Image Construction from the Perspective of Multimodal Metaphor-A Case Study of the Opening Ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics

The national image is a comprehensive concept with a distinct political feature,including the international image presented to the outside world,and also encompassing the national identity of the people.With the development of globalization,international cultural communication has become a crucial part of shaping the national image,and the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics has become an important opportunity for China to showcase its national image to the world in the post-pandemic era.Based on Forceville’s multimodal metaphor theory,this paper examines the metaphorical phenomena contained in the performance and their functions,effects,and purposes in the construction of the national image.It is found that there are many scenes,images,and narratives in the opening ceremony,including war metaphor,competition metaphor,personification metaphor,and other conceptual metaphors.The focus of this paper is on multimodal metaphor in a broad sense,mainly encompassing auditory and visual modes.Through the use of these multimodal metaphors,the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics builds an image of a vibrant,peace-loving,and responsible country,which not only demonstrates China’s cultural self-confidence,but also expresses the Chinese people’s beautiful vision for the early reunification of the motherland.

FURTHER OPENING- UP IS KEY FOR CHINA’S HIGH-QUALITY DEVELOPMENT

The Central Economic Work Conference was held in Beijing from December 11 to 12.The conference discussed the plans,prospects and challenges for China’s economy heading into 2024,as well as evaluating the events of this year.It goes without saying that 2023 has been a challenging year for countries around the world as the global context has been unsatisfactory.Various geopolitical tensions have created a rise in uncertainties which have led to reduced growth worldwide and sent many economies into stagnation.In light of the critical factors affecting the stability of the global economy,China’s primary economic goal corresponds with the promotion and sustaining of free trade.

Effect of fence opening configurations on dune development

Fences have been widely used in coastal protection engineering for their low cost,simple deployment,and easy integration with ecosystems.The effects of fence porosity and height on dune development have been investigated while not much attention has been paid to the effects of fence opening configurations,such as opening size and geometry,and porosity distributions.In this study,we deployed eight fences with same height and similar porosity,but different opening configurations on a sandy beach in Pingtan,Fujian Province.Results indicate that there is a similar two-dune-one-trough pattern for all fences at the beginning of dune development,and opening size,orientation,and geometry,and porosity distribution control the leeward dune peak locations.Fences with small openings and non-uniform porosity have high trapping efficiency,and upper denser porosity may be the optimal design as these fences have the highest trapping efficiency and capacity.The conclusions from this study can provide guidance on practical fence design.

MdDGK3-like as a negative regulator participates in ALA-induced PP2AC to promote stomatal opening in apple leaves

5-Aminolevulinic acid(ALA)can inhibit abscisic acid(ABA)-induced stomatal closure.However,the molecular mechanism is unclear.In this study,we found that ALA upregulated the MdPP2AC expression and PP2A activity in the apple(Malus domestica Borkh.cv.‘Fuji’)leaves.With the promoter of MdPP2AC as bait,a diacylglycerol kinase MdDGK3-like was selected by the Yeast One Hybrid(Y1H)from the cDNA library of the epidermis of apple leaves treated by exogenous ALA.Additional to binding the promoter of MdPP2AC,MdDGK3-like was found to inhibit the transcription activity of MdPP2AC promoter,while ALA significantly eliminated the role of MdDGK3-like.In tobacco leaves,MdDGK3-like was localized in the nucleus of stomatal guard cells.Therefore,MdDGK3-like might act as a transcription factor negatively regulating MdPP2AC expression and causing stomatal closure.To further identify MdDGK3-like functions,several transiently transgenic apple leaves(including overexpression and interference)were established.The results revealed that overexpression of MdDGK3-like promoted stomatal closure by increasing Ca^(2+)and H_(2)O_(2)and decreasing flavonol levels in the guard cells.Conversely,MdDGK3-like(i)led the stomatal opening with lower levels of Ca^(2+)and H_(2)O_(2)but higher flavonols.Based on these,we proposed a new hypothesis that ALA up-regulated MdPP2AC expression via negatively regulating the expression of MdDGK3-like to up-regulate PP2A expression and the enzyme activity,which improved the stomatal aperture.Since it was the first time that MdDGK3-like was showed to act as a transcription factor,the proposed model provided a new insight onto the mechanisms of ALA-induced stomatal opening.

CsIPT1b and CsUGT85A2 delay female corolla opening in cucumber by regulating the content of cytokinins

Corolla opening is essential for the propagation of unisexual flowering plants,meanwhile commodity fruits with opening corolla have higher commodity value in cucumber fresh food market.Until now,there is little research on the mechanism of corolla opening in cucumber.In a previous paper,we identified a unique cucumber(Cucumis sativus)line(‘6457’)that possesses super ovaries and shows delayed corolla opening when nutrient supplies are abundant.We also previously showed that the expression of CsIPT1b(isopentenyl transferase)and CsUGT85A2(cytokinin glycosyltransferase)is correlated with the delayed opening of the female corolla.Here,we investigated the mechanism of delayed female corolla opening in cucumber by conducting transgenic experiments,hormone assays,and yeast one-hybrid assays.CsIPT1b and CsUGT85A2 positively and negatively regulated delayed female corolla opening,respectively.In CsIPT1b-overexpressing plants and CsUGT85A2 knockout plants,the content of the trans-zeatin riboside,trans-zeatin,and N6-isopentenyladenosine was increased.Overall,our findings indicate that CsIPT1b and CsUGT85A2 were important regulators of the timing of female corolla opening.These genes could thus be targets to cucumber molecular breeding of fruit with flowers remaining on the tip.

Postdoctoral Openings in Wenzhou University(China)for Chemistry,Chemical Engineering and Materials Science

About us:The Clige of Cemistry and Materials Engineering(CME)in Wenzhou University(Zhejing Province,China)is looking for postdoctoral candidates(up to 25) specialized in Chemistry Chemical Engineering and Materials Secence. The college has is Chemistry program ranking ESI Top 6‰ worldwide.

Has China-ASEAN Trade opening increased China’ s carbon emissions?

This study uses carbon emission data at the provincial level in China between 1998-2018 and the proportion of the total import and export trade between provinces and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations(ASEAN)in GDP to measure the level of China-ASEAN trade openness.It examines the impact of China ASEAN trade openness on carbon emissions and its transmission mechanism,and selects the RMB/USD exchange rate as an instrumental variable to address the endogeneity of China-ASEAN trade openness variables.The impact of China-ASEAN trade openness on China’s environment is estimated within a two-stage least squares framework.The results show that trade openness between China and ASEAN positively impacts China’s environment and can facilitate carbon emission reduction.The scale,structural,and technology effects brought by China-ASEAN trade liberalization jointly promote China’s carbon dioxide emission reduction.An inverted“U”relationship is found between economic growth and environmental quality in China,and some provinces and municipalities have now crossed the inflection point of the curve,in which carbon emi ssions decrease with an increase in per capita wealth.

Application of Opening and Closing Morphology in Deep Learning-Based Brain Image Registration

In order to improve the registration accuracy of brain magnetic resonance images(MRI),some deep learning registration methods use segmentation images for training model.How-ever,the segmentation values are constant for each label,which leads to the gradient variation con-centrating on the boundary.Thus,the dense deformation field(DDF)is gathered on the boundary and there even appears folding phenomenon.In order to fully leverage the label information,the morphological opening and closing information maps are introduced to enlarge the non-zero gradi-ent regions and improve the accuracy of DDF estimation.The opening information maps supervise the registration model to focus on smaller,narrow brain regions.The closing information maps supervise the registration model to pay more attention to the complex boundary region.Then,opening and closing morphology networks(OC_Net)are designed to automatically generate open-ing and closing information maps to realize the end-to-end training process.Finally,a new registra-tion architecture,VM_(seg+oc),is proposed by combining OC_Net and VoxelMorph.Experimental results show that the registration accuracy of VM_(seg+oc) is significantly improved on LPBA40 and OASIS1 datasets.Especially,VM_(seg+oc) can well improve registration accuracy in smaller brain regions and narrow regions.

A Model of China’s Opening-up and Development

Over the past decade,China’s free trade zones have progressively formed a high-level innovation pattern of reform and opening-up in areas that extend from coastal regions to border provinces.They have become a leading force of high-level opening-up,a pioneer of in-depth reform,and a major platform that serves the national strategy.As pilot platforms for comprehensive reform and opening-up,they are now taking on a more arduous mission.

Showcasing Chengdu to the World 2023 Opening Ceremony of Culture City of East Asia: Year of Chengdu Events in China

On June 29,2023 Opening Ceremony of Culture City of East Asia:Year of Chengdu Events in China,took place in Chengdu,which was co-sponsored by the Sichuan Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism and the Chengdu Municipal People's Government.

New Blueprint for China’s Opening-up The country seeks a broader agenda of opening-up across more areas and in greater depth

The first session of the 14th National People’s Congress(NPC)of China held a press conference on March 13,wherein Chinese Premier Li Qiang met Chinese and foreign reporters and answered their questions.When asked about the priorities of the new government,Premier Li stressed that reform and opening-up has been a crucial move that transformed China into what it is today.He also said that China would promote highlevel opening-up and inject stronger vitality into national development by deepening reform.

Diversity of Flower Opening Time and Duration in Rice (Oryza sativa ssp. indica) Landraces of South and Southeast Asia in Different Cultivation Seasons

Different cultivars of rice(Oryza sativa)open at different times of the day,and the overlap of anthesis time in rice between the neighbouring cultivars is of crucial importance to the degree of cross pollination in rice.Nevertheless,none of the past experiments with cross pollination between different rice cultivars ever reported the respective flower opening time(FOT)and flower exposure duration(FED)of the parent cultivars,until recently.The authors present here the first record of FOT and FED of 1114 indica rice landraces of South and Southeast Asia,growing during sum-mer and winter seasons in three consecutive years.The authors also present an analysis of the influences of the grow-ing season on the anthesis behaviour,and present the first records of the FOT and FED variability on sunny and cloudy days of a large number of landraces.The data show that rice florets tend to open later in the morning(that is,take longer time to anthesis after sunrise)on sunny days than on cloudy days,and also significantly later during long day seasons(spring and summer)than during short day season(winter);and that FED is inversely related to both FOT and the length of duration from sunrise to first flower opening.The wide ranges of FOT(8:50 a.m.to 12:40 p.m.)and FED(15 to 194 minutes)also suggest the ample time window for receiving pollen from neighbouring cultivars with differ-ent FOT,enhancing the chances of cross pollination between hundreds of rice landraces with FOT and FED overlaps.

Hydrodynamic Characteristics of Square Heaving Plates with Opening Under Forced Oscillation

The existence of the heaving plates can improve the heaving motion performance of an offshore structure significantly by providing both extra added mass and damping.In the current research,numerical investigation is carried out on the hydrodynamic characteristics of both isolated square heaving plate and double square heaving plates with opening by an immersed boundary-lattice Boltzmann method.The effects on hydrodynamic performance of plates due to Keulegan-Carpenter(KC)number,frequency number,opening ratio,opening distribution and spacing of plates are examined.It is found that the heaving plates with optimized opening ratio can provide additional damping compared with the plates without opening.Better hydrodynamic characteristics of double plates can be obtained with the increase of plate spacing.

OPENING TO THE CHALLENGE --An economy thrives in openness and withers in seclusion

pening-up has always been a hot topic at the China International Import Expo(CIIE),the world's first import expo held at the national level.During the sixth CIIE,the Hongqiao International Economic Forum held on November 6 attracted many participants from government departments,academia,and the business sector to conduct in-depth discussions on global trade and the challenges it faces.Participants agreed that multi-party dialogue is key to the issue.

RIDING ON OPENING-UP

Forty-five years on,China’s opening-up drive has raked in an accumulated foreign investment of US$2.9 trillion with more than 1 million foreign-funded firms established in the country.A raft of policies and measures have been rolled out for greater integration in globalization.China’s first pilot free trade zone(FTZ)in Shanghai’s Pudong New Area,established to undertake transformative reforms on a trial basis that could later be applied across the country,is also celebrating its 10th year.From that single pioneer,China today has 22 FTZs,and the Hainan Free Trade Port,which are all testbeds for advancing reform and opening-up.

AN APPLICATION OF THEORETICAL SOLUTIONS ABOUT CYLINDRICAL SHELLS WITH SMALL OPENINGS

Stress concentrations about thin cylindrical shells with small openings are reconsidered front a nerv angle. There is a sort of special internal relation between theoretical solutions about cylindrical shells,vith large openings and one,with small openings. Using this relation, the extent of applying the theory about small openings to engineering practice is estimated again, thus an idea of how to use this theory and a nerv appraisal of the application of theoretical solutions about cylindrical shells with small openings to engineering practice are given.

一种基于改进path opening的道路提取新方法

提出了一种基于改进path opening的高分辨率遥感影像道路提取新方法。为检测曲率较大的道路,构造了新的邻接图;为有效提取有损或有部分遮挡的道路,将path opening算法中的最大路径长度与区域的几何特征相结合,建立了道路区域的判定准则,减少了人工干预。通过多组实验结果证明,该方法对于不完整道路的提取有更好的效果。

Opening Moves Involved in Text-based Computer-Mediated-Communication (CMC) by Chinese Adults

The development of science and technology has made it not only possible but very convenient for people living in different parts of the world to communicate with each other, thus bringing forth a new form of communication: computer-mediated communication (CMC). Text-based CMC is one of the most popular forms of CMC in which people send instant messages to others in different settings. Since this mode of interaction combines features of both the written and spoken language (Greenfield & Subrahmanyam, 2003), it's of great interest whether it follows the same sequential rule as the telephone conversation. However, compared to telephone conversations, computer-mediated communication has received much less attention, let alone text-based CMC. The existing body of literature mostly focuses on content analysis and linguistic features but neglects the sequential organization of such interaction (Paolillo, 1999; Greenfield and Subrahmanyam, 2003; Herring, 1999). In light of this, this paper examines the opening moves of instant message exchanges among Chinese adults in an attempt to find out the unique features characterizing the way they open an online chat. The framework that was chosen for data analysis was the sequential model proposed by Schegloff for American telephone openings.

DEVELOPMENT THROUGH OPENING——Mr.Jiang Xingzhen on Shaanxi's Dual Opening Strategy

At the east-west economic and tradeexchange and cooperation conferencesponsored by the China Council forthe Promotion of International Trade, Shaanxi’sVice-Governor Jiang Xingzhen spoke aboutShaanxi’s investment environment and itsdual opening strategy. Firstly Mr. Jiang made a briefintroduction on Shaanxi. Shaanxi, located atthe junction of the middle and western areasof China, is one of the origins of China’ssplendid ancient civilization. Its rich mineralresources include 92 varieties of provenreserves, 28 of which, including molybdenum,rhenium, mercury, coal and natural gas havereserves ranking in the first three and 58ranking in the top ten in the country.

Study on transient aerodynamic characteristics of parachute opening process

In the research of parachute, canopy inflation process modeling is one of the most complicated tasks. As canopy often experiences the largest deformations and loa-dings during a very short time, it is of great difficulty for theoretical analysis and experimental measurements. In this paper, aerodynamic equations and structural dynamics equations were developed for describing parachute opening process, and an iterative coupling solving strategy incorpo- rating the above equations was proposed for a small-scale, flexible and flat-circular parachute. Then, analyses were carried out for canopy geometry, time-dependent pressure difference between the inside and outside of the canopy, transient vortex around the canopy and the flow field in the radial plane as a sequence in opening process. The mechanism of the canopy shape development was explained from perspective of transient flow fields during the inflation process. Experiments of the parachute opening process were conducted in a wind tunnel, in which instantaneous shape of the canopy was measured by high velocity camera and the opening loading was measured by dynamometer balance. The theoretical predictions were found in good agreement with the experimental results, validating the proposed approach. This numerical method can improve the situation of strong dependence of parachute research on wind tunnel tests, and is of significance to the understanding of the mechanics of parachute inflation process.