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This volume explores Chinese reading development, focusing on children in Chinese societies and bilingual Chinese-speaking children in Western societies. The book is structured around four themes: psycholinguistic study of reading, reading disability, bilingual and biliteracy development, and Chinese children's literature. It discusses issues that are pertinent to improving language and literacy development, and complex cognitive, linguistic, and socio-cultural factors that underlie language and literacy development. In addition, the book identifies instructional practices that can enhance literacy development and academic achievement. This volume offers an integrative framework of Chinese reading, and deepens our understanding of the intricate processes that underlie Chinese children's literacy development. It promotes research in reading Chinese and celebrates the distinguished and longstanding career of Richard C. Anderson.

We introduce a general framework to study moiré structures of two-dimensional Van der Waals magnets using continuum field theory. The formalism eliminates quasiperiodicity and allows a full understanding of magnetic structures and their excitations. In particular, we analyze in detail twisted bilayers of Néel antiferromagnets on the honeycomb lattice. A rich phase diagram with noncollinear twisted phases is obtained, and spin waves are further calculated. Direct extensions to zigzag antiferromagnets and ferromagnets are also presented. We anticipate the results and formalism demonstrated to lead to a broad range of applications to both fundamental research and experiments.

A bstract We study the entanglement entropy in 1+1 dimensional conformal field theories in the presence of interfaces from a holographic perspective. Compared with the well-known case of boundary conformal field theories, interfaces allow for several interesting new observables. Depending on how the interface is located within the entangling region, the entanglement entropies differ and exhibit surprising new patterns and universal relations. While our analysis is performed within the framework of holography, we expect our results to hold more generally.

Evolution of the earliest mammals shows successive episodes of diversification. Lineage-splitting in Mesozoic mammals is coupled with many independent evolutionary experiments and ecological specializations. Classic scenarios of mammalian morphological evolution tend to posit an orderly acquisition of key evolutionary innovations leading to adaptive diversification, but newly discovered fossils show that evolution of such key characters as the middle ear and the tribosphenic teeth is far more labile among Mesozoic mammals. Successive diversifications of Mesozoic mammal groups multiplied the opportunities for many dead-end lineages to iteratively evolve developmental homoplasies and convergent ecological specializations, parallel to those in modern mammal groups.

Chiral metal‐organic frameworks (MOFs) are usually endowed by chiral linkers and/or guests. The strategy using chiral secondary building units in MOFs for solving the trade‐off of circularly polarized luminescence (CPL)‐active materials, high photoluminescence quantum yields (PLQYs) and high dissymmetry factors (|glum|) has not been demonstrated. This work directionally assembles predesigned chiral silver clusters with ACQ linkers through reticular chemistry. The nanoscale chirality of the cluster transmits through MOF's framework, where the linkers are arranged in a quasi‐parallel manner and are efficiently isolated and rigidified. Consequently, this backbone of chiral cluster‐based MOFs demonstrates superb CPL, high PLQYs of 50.3%, and |glum| of 1.2 × 10−2. Crystallographic analyses and DFT calculations show the quasi‐parallel arrangement manners of emitting linkers leading to a large angle between the electric and magnetic transition dipole moments, boosting CPL response. As compared, an ion‐pair‐direct assembly without interactions between linkers induces one‐ninth |glum| and one‐sixth PLQY values, further highlighting the merits of directional arrangement in reticular nets. In addition, a prototype CPL switching fabricated by a chiral framework is controlled through alternating ultraviolet and visible light. This work is expected to inspire the development of reticular chemistry for high‐performance chiroptical materials. Chiral transfer and circularly polarized luminescence activity are successfully achieved by assembling ACQ molecules with chiral Ag clusters in chiral silver cluster‐based assembled materials. The chiral reticular self‐assembly exhibits markedly enhanced luminescence efficiency and glum values compared to those of the ion‐pair‐direct assembly through a well‐defined spatial arrangement and highly efficient synergy.

Background Sarcopenia, the age‐related loss of muscle mass and function, brings multiple adverse outcomes including disability and death. Several sarcopenia consensuses have newly introduced the premorbid concept of possible sarcopenia and recommended early lifestyle interventions. Bidirectional transitions of premorbid states have been revealed in several chronic diseases yet not clarified in sarcopenia. This study aims to investigate the underlying transition patterns of sarcopenia states. Methods The study utilized three waves of data from a nationally representative survey, the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), and included community‐dwelling individuals aged 60 years and older with at least two sarcopenia states assessments based on the Asian Working Group for Sarcopenia criteria 2019 (AWGS2019) between 2011 and 2015. The estimated transition intensity and probability between non‐sarcopenia, possible sarcopenia, sarcopenia, and death were investigated using multi‐stage Markov (MSM) models. Results The study comprised 4395 individuals (49.2% female, median age 67 years) with a total of 10 778 records of sarcopenia state assessment, and the mean follow‐up period was 3.29 years. A total of 24.5% of individuals with a current state of possible sarcopenia returned to non‐sarcopenia, 60.3% remained possible sarcopenia, 6.7% progressed to sarcopenia, and 8.5% died by the next follow‐up. The transition intensity of recovery to non‐sarcopenia (0.252, 95% CI 0.231–0.275) was 2.8 times greater than the deterioration to sarcopenia (0.090, 95% CI 0.080–0.100) for individuals with possible sarcopenia. For individuals with possible sarcopenia, the estimated probabilities of recovering to non‐sarcopenia, progressing to sarcopenia, and transitioning to death within a 1‐year observation were 0.181, 0.066, and 0.035, respectively. For individuals with sarcopenia, the estimated probabilities of recovering to non‐sarcopenia, recovering to possible sarcopenia, and transitioning to death within 1‐year observation were 0.016, 0.125, and 0.075, respectively. In covariables analysis, age, sex, body mass index, physical function impairment, smoking, hypertension, and diabetes are important factors influencing bidirectional transitions. Conclusions The findings highlight the bidirectional transitions of sarcopenia states among older adults and reveal a notable proportion of possible sarcopenia show potential for recovery in the natural course. Screening and intensifying interventions based on risk factors may facilitate a recovery transition.

An early date for mammal divergence Almost all living mammals are placentals. A key event in mammalian evolution was the divergence between the ancestors of today's placentals and those of the marsupials. The discovery of a fossil on the placental side of the split takes that divergence back 35 million years, to around 160 million years ago, deep into the Jurassic period. The fossil, from China, shows that the earliest members of the group that includes ourselves and most familiar mammals was a small creature adapted for climbing and scampering among the trees, presumably keeping well clear of the dinosaurs below. The age of the fossil suggests that there was a higher rate of mammal evolution in the Jurassic than previously believed. Placentals are the most abundant mammals that have diversified into every niche for vertebrates and dominated the world’s terrestrial biotas in the Cenozoic. A critical event in mammalian history is the divergence of eutherians, the clade inclusive of all living placentals, from the metatherian–marsupial clade 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 . Here we report the discovery of a new eutherian of 160 Myr from the Jurassic of China, which extends the first appearance of the eutherian–placental clade by about 35 Myr from the previous record, reducing and resolving a discrepancy between the previous fossil record and the molecular estimate for the placental–marsupial divergence 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 . This mammal has scansorial forelimb features, and provides the ancestral condition for dental and other anatomical features of eutherians.

Trillions of intestinal bacteria in the human body undergo dynamic transformations in response to physiological and pathological changes. Alterations in their composition and metabolites collectively contribute to the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. The role of gut microbiota in Alzheimer’s disease is diverse and complex, evidence suggests lipid metabolism may be one of the potential pathways. However, the mechanisms that gut microbiota mediate lipid metabolism in Alzheimer’s disease pathology remain unclear, necessitating further investigation for clarification. This review highlights the current understanding of how gut microbiota disrupts lipid metabolism and discusses the implications of these discoveries in guiding strategies for the prevention or treatment of Alzheimer’s disease based on existing data.

Various methods have been exploited to replicate nacre features into artificial structural materials with impressive structural and mechanical similarity. However, it is still very challenging to produce nacre-mimetics in three-dimensional bulk form, especially for further scale-up. Herein, we demonstrate that large-sized, three-dimensional bulk artificial nacre with comprehensive mimicry of the hierarchical structures and the toughening mechanisms of natural nacre can be facilely fabricated via a bottom-up assembly process based on laminating pre-fabricated two-dimensional nacre-mimetic films. By optimizing the hierarchical architecture from molecular level to macroscopic level, the mechanical performance of the artificial nacre is superior to that of natural nacre and many engineering materials. This bottom-up strategy has no size restriction or fundamental barrier for further scale-up, and can be easily extended to other material systems, opening an avenue for mass production of high-performance bulk nacre-mimetic structural materials in an efficient and cost-effective way for practical applications. Artificial materials that replicate the mechanical properties of nacre represent important structural materials, but are difficult to produce in bulk. Here, the authors exploit the bottom-up assembly of 2D nacre-mimetic films to fabricate 3D bulk artificial nacre with an optimized architecture and excellent mechanical properties.

A bstract In this paper we propose a Hamiltonian approach to gapped topological phases on open surfaces. Our setting is an extension of the Levin-Wen model to a 2d graph on an open surface, whose boundary is part of the graph. We systematically construct a series of boundary Hamiltonians such that each of them, when combined with the usual Levin-Wen bulk Hamiltonian, gives rise to a gapped energy spectrum which is topologically protected. It is shown that the corresponding wave functions are robust under changes of the underlying graph that maintain the spatial topology of the system. We derive explicit ground-state wavefunctions of the system on a disk as well as on a cylinder. For boundary quasiparticle excitations, we are able to construct their creation, annihilation, measuring and hopping operators etc. Given a bulk string-net theory, our approach provides a classification scheme of possible types of gapped boundary conditions by Frobenius algebras (modulo Morita equivalence) of the bulk fusion category; the boundary quasiparticles are characterized by bimodules of the pertinent Frobenius algebras. Our approach also offers a set of concrete tools for computations. We illustrate our approach by a few examples.