English Stories Teaching and Learners’ Attitude Towards English

The present case study intends to explore how English story learning and teaching promotes young learners’ English. Learners’ attitudes towards English and English learning were examined. Five students in Grade 4 of a primary school were involved in this case study. The participants learnt 10 short stories in 9 months. Data was collected through interviews and classroom observations. The analysis shows that there are no differences of the participants’ cognitive attitudes before and after the teaching practice. All of them show a positive attitude through the whole process of the study. The participants’ affective and behavioural attitudes towards English and English learning tend to be more positive after the English story teaching practice.

An Empirical Study of Using Stories to Promote Learners’ Motivation Towards English

Stories are often used in English teaching. The present case study intends to explore how English story learning and teaching promotes learners’ motivation towards English and English learning. Five students were involved in this case study. The participants learnt 10 short stories in 9 months. Data was collected through interviews and classroom observations. The analysis shows that all the participants have more motives in English learning after the English story teaching practice. The participants only had an instrumental or no motivation in English learning at the beginning of the study and one or two more types of motivation had been found by the end of the teaching practice

Story as a Vehicle to Promote EFL Learners’ English

With the increase of the interest in foreign language teaching at early stages over the last few years in China, more and more researchers and teachers devote to teaching English to young learners. They try to find out the most effective way or approach to teach English to young learners and English story teaching is one of them. The paper reviews previous research on English story as a vehicle to promote young learners English as a foreign language in China and the supply with the criteria of selecting a story for young English learner

Dynamics of a Stage Structure Pest Control Model with Impulsive Effects at Different Fixed Time

Many existing pest control models, which control pests by releasing natural enemies, neglect the effect that natural enemies may get killed. From this point of view, we formulate a pest control model with stage structure for the pest with constant maturation time delay (through-stage time delay) and periodic releasing natural enemies and natural enemies killed at different fixed time and perform a systematic mathematical and ecological study. By using the comparison theorem and analysis method, we obtain the conditions for the global attractivity of the pest-eradication periodic solution and permanence of the system. We also present a pest management strategy in which the pest population is kept under the economic threshold level (ETL) when the pest population is uniformly permanent. We show that maturation time delay, impulsive releasing, and killing natural enemies can bring great effects on the dynamics of the system. Numerical simulations confirm our theoretical results

Balanced Order Batching with Task-Oriented Graph Clustering

Balanced order batching problem (BOBP) arises from the process of warehouse picking in Cainiao, the largest logistics platform in China. Batching orders together in the picking process to form a single picking route, reduces travel distance. The reason for its importance is that order picking is a labor intensive process and, by using good batching methods, substantial savings can be obtained. The BOBP is a NP-hard combinational optimization problem and designing a good problem-specific heuristic under the quasi-real-time system response requirement is non-trivial. In this paper, rather than designing heuristics, we propose an end-to-end learning and optimization framework named Balanced Task-orientated Graph Clustering Network (BTOGCN) to solve the BOBP by reducing it to balanced graph clustering optimization problem. In BTOGCN, a task-oriented estimator network is introduced to guide the type-aware heterogeneous graph clustering networks to find a better clustering result related to the BOBP objective. Through comprehensive experiments on single-graph and multi-graphs, we show: 1) our balanced task-oriented graph clustering network can directly utilize the guidance of target signal and outperforms the two-stage deep embedding and deep clustering method; 2) our method obtains an average 4.57m and 0.13m picking distance ("m" is the abbreviation of the meter (the SI base unit of length)) reduction than the expert-designed algorithm on single and multi-graph set and has a good generalization ability to apply in practical scenario.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure

Genome-wide analysis of the U-box E3 ubiquitin ligase family role in drought tolerance in sesame (Sesamum indicum L.)

Plant U-box (PUB) proteins belong to a class of ubiquitin ligases essential in various biological processes. Sesame (Sesamum indicum L.) is an important and worldwide cultivated oilseed crop. However few studies have been conducted to explore the role of PUBs in drought tolerance in sesame. This study identified a total of 56 members of the sesame PUB family (SiPUB) genes distributed unevenly across all 13 chromosomes. Based on phylogenetic analysis, all 56 SiPUB genes were classified into six groups with various structures and motifs. Cis-acting element analysis suggested that the SiPUB genes are involved in response to various stresses including drought. Based on RNA-seq analysis and quantitative real-time PCR, we identified nine SiPUB genes with significantly different expression profiles under drought stress. The expression patterns of six SiPUB genes in root, leaf and stem tissues corroborated the reliability of the RNA-seq datasets. These findings underscore the importance of SiPUB genes in enhancing drought tolerance in sesame plants. Our study provides novel insights into the evolutionary patterns and variations of PUB genes in sesame and lays the foundation for comprehending the functional characteristics of SiPUB genes under drought-induced stress conditions

Baseline Characteristics from UNITE: An Observational, International, Multicentre Registry to Evaluate Hidradenitis Suppurativa (Acne Inversa) in Clinical Practice

Background: Hidradenitis suppurativa (HS), also known as acne inversa, is a recurring, painful, chronic, and sometimes disfiguring inflammatory skin disease. Objectives: Our objective was to report the baseline clinical characteristics, natural history, and associated outcomes of patients with HS from the ongoing, prospective, non-interventional UNITE registry that is collecting data regarding the natural history and associated outcomes of HS. Methods: Patients with inflammatory HS lesions were enrolled, including adolescents (aged 12 to < 18 years) and adults (aged ≥ 18 years). None had participated in previous or current originator-adalimumab studies/registries. Patients received treatment consistent with site-specific, routine clinical practice. HS disease status was assessed by HS lesions and disease flare; treatment and outcomes data were collected at e