Bringing extensive reading and reading strategies into the Taiwanese junior college classroom

An intact 10th grade English as a Foreign Language vocational business junior college reading intervention class (n = 52) received 16 weeks of integrated reading strategy instruction with extensive reading while an intact traditional class (n = 48) received traditional intensive reading instruction with extensive reading. The intervention class showed reading proficiency improvements and increased use of reading strategies, especially strategies activating background knowledge. Furthermore, reading proficiency could be differentiated by learners’ use/disuse of context to aid reading comprehension. Outcomes shed light on English reading instruction in Taiwan and offer language teachers an alternative to the traditional approach. Guidelines helpful in designing quality instructional procedures to improve vocational school students’ reading proficiency and pedagogical implications for reading strategy instruction in the global language classroom are discussed

Optimizing Vancomycin Dosing in Chronic Kidney Disease by Deriving and Implementing a Web-Based Tool Using a Population Pharmacokinetics Analysis.

Background: Chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients requiring intravenous vancomycin bear considerable risks of adverse outcomes both from the infection and vancomycin therapy itself, necessitating especially precise dosing to avoid sub- and supratherapeutic vancomycin exposure. Methods: In this retrospective study, we performed a population pharmacokinetic analysis to construct a vancomycin dose prediction model for CKD patients who do not require renal replacement therapy. The model was externally validated on an independent cohort of patients to assess its prediction accuracy. The pharmacokinetic parameter estimates and the equations were productized into a Web application (VancApp) subsequently implemented in routine care. The association between VancApp-based dosing and time-to-target concentration attainment, 30-day mortality, and nephrotoxicity were assessed postimplementation. Results: The model constructed from an initial cohort (n = 80) revealed a population clearance and volume of distribution of 1.30 L/h and 1.23 L/kg, respectively. External model validation (n = 112) demonstrated a mean absolute prediction error of 1.25 mg/L. Following 4 months of clinical implementation of VancApp as an optional alternative to usual care [VancApp (n = 22) vs. usual care (n = 21)], patients who had received VancApp-based dosing took a shorter time to reach target concentrations (median: 66 vs. 102 h, p = 0.187) and had fewer 30-day mortalities (14% vs. 24%, p = 0.457) compared to usual care. While statistical significance was not achieved, the clinical significance of these findings appear promising. Conclusion: Clinical implementation of a population pharmacokinetic model for vancomycin in CKD can potentially improve dosing precision in CKD and could serve as a practical means to improve vital clinical outcomes

Effects of orthographic consistency and homophone density on Chinese spoken word recognition

Studies of alphabetic language have shown that orthographic knowledge influences phonological processing during spoken word recognition. This study utilized the Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) to differentiate two types of phonology-to-orthography (P-to-O) mapping consistencies in Chinese, namely homophone density and orthographic consistency. The ERP data revealed an orthographic consistency effect in the frontal-centrally distributed N400, and a homophone density effect in central-posteriorly distributed late positive component (LPC). Further source analyses using the standardized low-resolution electromagnetic tomography (sLORETA) demonstrated that the orthographic effect was not only localized in the frontal and temporal-parietal regions for phonological processing, but also in the posterior visual cortex for orthographic processing, while the homophone density effect was found in middle temporal gyrus for lexical-semantic selection, and in the temporal-occipital junction for orthographic processing. These results suggest that orthographic information not only shapes the nature of phonological representations, but may also be activated during on-line spoken word recognition

The feedback consistency effect in Chinese character recognition:evidence from a psycholinguistic norm

Researchers have demonstrated the importance of phonology in literacy acquisition and in visual word recognition. For example, the spelling-to-sound consistency effect has been observed in visual word recognition tasks, in which the naming responses are faster and more accurate for words with the same letters that also have the same pronunciation (e.g. -ean is always pronounced /in/, as in lean, dean, and bean). In addition, some studies have reported a much less intuitive feedback consistency effect when a rime can be spelled in different ways (e.g. /ip/ in heap and deep) in lexical decision tasks. Such findings suggest that, with activation flowing back and forth between orthographic and phonological units during word processing, any inconsistency in the mappings between orthography and phonology should weaken the stability of the feedback loop, and, thus, should delay recognition. However, several studies have failed to show reliable feedback consistency in printed word recognition. One possible reason for this is that the feedback consistency is naturally confounded with many other variables, such as orthographic neighborhood or bigram frequency, as these variables are difficult to tease apart. Furthermore, there are challenges in designing factorial experiments that perfectly balance lexical stimuli on all factors besides feedback consistency. This study aims to examine the feedback consistency effect in reading Chinese characters by using a normative data of 3,423 Chinese phonograms. We collected the lexical decision time from 180 college students. A linear mixed model analysis was used to examine the feedback consistency effect by taking into account additional properties that may be confounded with feedback consistency, including character frequency, number of strokes, phonetic combinability, semantic combinability, semantic ambiguity, phonetic consistency, noun-to-verb ratios, and morphological boundedness. Some typical effects were observed, such as the more frequent and familiar a character, the faster one can decide it is a real character. More importantly, the linear mixed model analysis revealed a significant feedback consistency effect while controlling for other factors, which indicated that the pronunciation of phonograms might accommodate the organization of Chinese orthographic representation. Our study disentangled the feedback consistency from the many other factors, and supports the view that phonological activation would reverberate to orthographic representation in visual word recognition

Dynamic network slicing for multitenant heterogeneous cloud radio access networks

Multitenant cellular network slicing has been gaining huge interest recently. However, it is not well-explored under the heterogeneous cloud radio access network (H-CRAN) architecture. This paper proposes a dynamic network slicing scheme for multitenant H-CRANs, which takes into account tenants' priority, baseband resources, fronthaul and backhaul capacities, quality of service (QoS) and interference. The framework of the network slicing scheme consists of an upper-level, which manages admission control, user association and baseband resource allocation; and a lower-level, which performs radio resource allocation among users. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme can achieve a higher network throughput, fairness and QoS performance compared to several baseline schemes

Perioperative Stroke Following General Surgery

AbstractPerioperative stroke is rare; however, patients undergoing cardiovascular surgery are considered to be at high risk for perioperative stroke. Here, we outline a case where perioperative stroke occurred following total hip replacement surgery. The risk factors and possible causes of the stroke in this patient are discussed. In addition, we reiterate the appropriate management approaches needed to prevent perioperative stroke. Briefly, the importance of precise preoperative evaluation and of proper intraoperative and postoperative management should not be overlooked. Finally, it is important to realize that decreasing perioperative strokes and the disabilities associated with them will lower the financial burden on families and the community

多重身份的女媧 : 造人神話與治水神話分析

由原始社會，自人類有思考能力起，就對四周環境有無數推測。然而原始人類面對很多不能解釋的自然現象的時候，礙於知識水平，他們作出就現代科學而言不甚理性的推測，這是人類對自然現象解說的初步嘗試。1本文的主題是女媧，我們對她熟知的母題是人類起源的神話，因為先民思考「我們從哪裏來？我們為何有生老病死？為何我們有別於其他動物？」等關於人類自身的問題。2一般而言，中國神話奉女媧為人類的始祖，但女媧在神話中的形象複雜多樣，除了創造神和配偶神，還有救世神的角色，所以本文內容會圍繞上述的幾個角色續一探討

A two-way linear piezoelectric vibratory conveyor actuated by a composite sinusoidal voltage input

Piezoelectric vibratory conveyors are widely used in many industrial fields such as factory automation. However, there is still a limitation for most cases that the vibratory conveyor can only feed in the designed direction. In today's multitasking intelligent machinery, how to sort different parts from the same feed source and convey them efficiently in different directions remains a challenge to be overcome. This study proposes an innovative design that uses a composite sinusoidal control signal to drive a linear two-stage piezoelectric vibratory feeder. By simply tuning the amplitude and phase of the input composite signal, the conveying velocity and direction can be altered easily. The dynamic characteristics of this feeder were both investigated by theoretical formulation and experimental measurement. It is found that the conveying performance of this feeder is better suited for using the composite signal with two sinusoidal components of double frequency. With the composite control signal synthesized by two sinusoidal components of 237.5 Hz and 475.0 Hz, which were close to the feeder’s first two resonance frequencies to increase the response gain of the structure, and the input voltage of 60 V, which corresponded to the trough’s displacement amplitude of 54.5 m, the measured conveying speeds were +30.8 mm/s and –33.3 mm/s for setting the phase angles 180° and 0°, respectively. The result demonstrates the feasibility of the proposed two-way vibratory feeder design