The pressure relief of coal pillars in close-distance multi-coal seam goaf is a complex engineering problem with the characteristics of “dynamic mine pressure”. Hence, this paper studies such problems. First, the influence factors of the coal pillar in the goaf on the mine pressure of the mining face of the lower coal seam under this condition were theoretically analyzed, and it was concluded that vertical stress is the most important element, followed by horizontal stress. Next, a physical similarity simulation experiment was designed to study the stress distribution law of the coal pillar floor in the goaf before and after pressure release and the damage depth. Finally, a technology and monitoring method for coal pillar blasting pressure alleviation in goaf were introduced and implemented in engineering practice. After the pressure is alleviated, the surrounding rock stress of the lower coal seam mining face is redistributed, and the vertical stress is decreased by 20%. The adjacent rock’s deformation is improved. This technology’s cost and safety advantages are extraordinary and helpful for mining coal seams over close distances.

This article investigated the English research article (RA) titles across different disciplines and cultures. To this end, 600 RA titles in the Chinese context and 600 RA titles in the international context were collected from six disciplines, which are grouped as social and natural sciences. The frequency of title types, their subtypes, and title length are calculated in terms of cultural and disciplinary factors. The result showed a significant difference in title types and subtypes along two dimensions. It suggested that Chinese culture and language and the discourse practice of academic publication are responsible for the salient features of English titles by Chinese scholars. The suggestion for further study is to collect more titles from other disciplines and cultural contexts to verify the results.

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Places at the crossroad of streets are signs. These signs can be analyzed from a semiological point of view. By means of semiological framework broadened from Saussure by Roland Barthes (1967), I examined the places at the crossroad of streets from the perspective of the binary opposition of signs: langue/parole, signifier/signified, syntagm/system, and denotation and connotation. Then, the perspective was adopted to analyze the real situation in Weinan City, one of the ordinary cities in China. The examination of places as signs will benefit linguistic and semiotic study in a particular culture.

as a promotional genre has been an increasing interest in recent years, leading to an intriguing debate on the objectivity of scientific writing. The present study investigated the promotion and caution in research article abstracts through the use of positive, negative and hedge words across disciplines and rankings based on a large and principled dataset (more than 12.6 million words). The corpus was designed and built with full consideration of representativeness, structure, balance, and size in terms of discipline and ranking. The results showed that positive words were more frequently used than negative words in terms of both discipline and ranking, positive and negative words were more frequently used in hard sciences than those in soft sciences and high ranking journals than those in low ranking journals, and hedge words were more frequently used in high ranking journals and soft sciences. Further investigation also found a complexity of frequency patterns when two disciplines were broken down into specific categories. The more frequent use of positive words in abstracts to promote scientific research was discussed from the perspective of disciplinary knowledge construction in addition to the publication bias, the outcome reporting bias, and universal linguistic positivity bias.