Phonetic accommodation is the process in which a speaker becomes more phonetically similar to his or her interlocutor over the course of a conversation. This experiment investigates phonetic accommodation in the English speech of Mandarin speakers after exposure to a model speaker who shares their language background. The results show that when including phones, tasks, and conditions as dependent variables, there are statistically significant differences across tasks and phones. Phonetic accommodation is observed in all shadowing tasks and the effect remains in post-shadow task in some dependent variables. The social manipulation of this study is only statistically significant in formant durations and word-final consonant clusters durations and the pattern suggests that subjects who were in the condition that encouraged speakers to achieve a closer social distance with the interlocutor accommodated more than subjects in the condition that were encouraged to be native-English like. This experiment thus contributes to the understanding of phonetic accommodation in second language English speakers under different conditions.

Sepsis, a systemic inflammatory response, caused by pathogenic factors including microorganisms, has high mortality and limited therapeutic approaches. Herein, a new soluble epoxide hydrolase (sEH) inhibitor series comprising a phenyl ring connected to a memantyl moiety via a urea or amide linkage has been designed. A preferential urea pharmacophore that improved the binding properties of the compounds was identified for those series via biochemical assay in vitro and in vivo studies. Molecular docking displayed that 3,5-dimethyl on the adamantyl group in B401 could make van der Waals interactions with residues at a hydrophobic pocket of sEH active site, which might indirectly explain the subnanomolar level activities of memantyl urea derivatives in vitro better than AR-9281. Among them, compound B401 significantly improved the inhibition potency with human and murine sEH IC₅₀ values as 0.4 nM and 0.5 nM, respectively. Although the median survival time of C57BL/6 mice in LPS-induced sepsis model was slightly increased, the survival rate did not reach significant efficacy. Based on safety profile, metabolic stability, pharmacokinetic and in vivo efficacy, B401 demonstrated the proof of potential for this class of memantyl urea-based sEH inhibitors as therapeutic agents in sepsis.