Estudantes universitários chineses de Português Língua Estrangeira : Percursos de estudo, escolhas e desafios no mercado de trabalho

Nas últimas décadas, devido ao desenvolvimento do mercado dos negócios sinolusófonos, as relações de cooperação mútua têm vindo a ficar cada vez mais estreitas entre a China e os países lusófonos, o que provoca uma grande procura de pessoas que falem simultaneamente mandarim e português. Neste contexto, o curso de português tem se tornado a escolha de cada vez mais alunos universitários, por isso, atualmente, todos os anos muitos finalistas de PLE entram no mercado. Além disso, a China está a desenvolver a política “Uma faixa e uma rota1”, nome simplificado da “iniciativa da faixa económica da rota da seda e da rota da seda marítima do século XXI”, o que trará muitas novas oportunidades no desenvolvimento económico de Macau e oferecerá inúmeras oportunidades de trabalho aos alunos de PLE da China. Com o aumento do número de alunos de PLE, em comparação com antes, os alunos atuais têm de se tornar cada vez mais competitivos no mercado de trabalho de Português. Por outro lado, cada vez mais universidades celebraram protocolos com universidades da China, como, por exemplo, a Universidade das Línguas Estrangeiras de Dalian (ULED) e a Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas da Universidade Nova de Lisboa, e há cada vez mais alunos universitários que querem estudar em Portugal. A presente dissertação destina-se a conhecer o percurso de “aprendentes internacionais chineses2” de PLE da ULED desde o início dos seus estudos na China, analisando as motivações da sua vinda para Portugal, os percursos de estudo em Portugal, os desafios que enfrentaram na estadia em Portugal, as vantagens das experiências de estudo internacional, os percursos da procura de trabalho pós-licenciatura, a integração no mercado de trabalho, os desafios na procura de trabalho e as suas expectativas sobre o futuro. Uma vez que existem muitas universidades com o curso de português na China, os resultados da análise da ULED não podem ser representativos do universo dos aprendentes internacionais chineses de PLE, mas acreditamos que os resultados da nossa análise podem prestar algumas informações úteis para uma investigação mais ampla.Over the last decades, due to the Sino-Portuguese business’ market development, the mutual cooperative relationship between China and the Portuguese speaking countries has been getting closer. This creates a great demand for Mandarin and Portuguese bilingual speakers. In this context, the Portuguese course has increasingly become many university students’ choice. Consequently, nowadays, every year many “Portuguese as a Second Language” graduates enter the job market. In addition, China is developing the “The Belt and Road” policy, a short name for “the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road”, which will bring several new opportunities for Macao economic development and, consequently, for PSL students to find a job. With the increasing PSL students number, compared to before, the students now have to become increasingly more competitive in the Portuguese language job market. On the other side, a growing number of universities sign agreements with Chinese universities, such as Dalian University of Foreign Languages (DUFL) and the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences of NOVA University of Lisbon, and there is also an increasingly number of university students who want to study in Portugal. The present dissertation aims to analyse the journey of PSL “international Chinese learners” of DUFL since the beginning of their studies in China, analysing their motivations to come to Portugal to study, their study journey, the challenges they face in their stay in the country, the advantages of international exchange experiences, their post-graduation job seeking challenges and journey, their integration in the job market and their future expectations. Since there are many universities with Portuguese courses in China, perhaps the DUFL analysis results cannot be representative of the PSL international Chinese students’ universe, but we believe that our analysis’ results can provide some useful information for a more comprehensive research in the future

A Reliable Web Services Selection Method for Concurrent Requests

Current methods of service selection based on quality of service (QoS) usually focus on a single service request at a time, or let the users in a waiting queue wait for Web services when the same functional Web service has more than one requests, and then choose the Web service with the best QoS for the current request according to its own needs. However, there are multiple service requests for the same functional web service at a time in practice and we cannot choose the best service for users every time because of the service’s load. This paper aims at solving the Web Services selection for concurrent requests and developing a global optimal selection method for multiple similar service requesters to optimize the system resources. It proposes the improved social cognitive (ISCO) algorithm which uses genetic algorithm for observational learning and uses deviating degree to evaluate the solution. Furthermore, to enhance the efficiency of ISCO, the elite strategy is used in ISCO algorithm. We evaluate performance of the ISCO algorithm and the selection method through simulations. The simulation results demonstrate that the ISCO is valid for optimization problems with discrete data and more effective than ACO and GA

Seroprevalence of Bartonella in Eastern China and analysis of risk factors

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p><it>Bartonella </it>infections are emerging in the Zhejiang Province of China. However, there has been no effort to date to explore the epidemiology of these infections in this region, nor to identify risk factors associated with exposure to <it>Bartonella</it>. The aim of this study was to investigate the seroprevalence of <it>Bartonella </it>in both patients bitten by dogs and blood donors (for control) in Eastern China, and to identify risk factors associated with exposure to <it>Bartonella</it>. As no previous data for this region have been published, this study will provide baseline data useful for <it>Bartonella </it>infection surveillance, control, and prevention.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Blood samples were collected from industrial rabies clinic attendees and blood donors living in eight areas of the Zhejiang Province of China, between December 2005 and November 2006. An indirect immunofluorescent antibody test was used to determine the presence of <it>Bartonella </it>in these samples. Risk factors associated with <it>Bartonella </it>exposure were explored using Chi-square tests and logistic regression analysis of epidemiological data relating to the study's participants.</p> <p>Results</p> <p><it>Bartonella </it>antibodies were detected in 19.60% (109/556) of blood samples. Seroprevalence varied among the eight areas surveys, ranging from over 32% in Hangzhou to only 2% in Jiangshan (X²= 28.22, P < 0.001). We detected a significantly higher prevalence of <it>Bartonella </it>antibodies in people who had been bitten by dogs than in blood donors (X²= 13.86, P < 0.001). Seroprevalence of <it>Bartonella </it>was similar among males (18.61%, n = 317) and females (20.92%, n = 239).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p><it>Bartonella </it>antibodies were encountered in people living across Zhejiang Province and the seropositivity rate among those exposed to dog bites was significantly higher than that among blood donors, indicating that dog bites may be a risk factor for <it>Bartonella </it>infection.</p

Unprecedented Centimeter-Long Carbon Nitride Needles: Synthesis, Characterization and Applications

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Barrio, J., Lin, L., Amo‐Ochoa, P., Tzadikov, J., Peng, G., Sun, J., ... & Shalom, M. (2018). Unprecedented Centimeter‐Long Carbon Nitride Needles: Synthesis, Characterization and Applications. Small, 14(21), 1800633, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1002/smll.201800633. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived VersionsFree standing centimeter-long 1D nanostructures are highly attractive for electronic and optoelectronic devices due to their unique photophysical and electrical properties. Here a simple, large-scale synthesis of centimeter-long 1D carbon nitride (CN) needles with tunable photophysical, electric, and catalytic properties is reported. Successful growth of ultralong needles is acquired by the utilization of 1D organic crystal precursors comprised of CN monomers as reactants. Upon calcination at high temperatures, the shape of the starting crystal is fully preserved while the CN composition and porosity, and optical and electrical properties can be easily tuned by tailoring the starting elements ratio and final calcination temperature. The facile manipulation and visualization of the CN needles endow their direct electrical measurements by placing them between two conductive probes. Moreover, the CN needles exhibit good photocatalytic activity for hydrogen production owing to their improved light harvesting properties, high surface area, and advantageous energy bands position. The new growth strategy developed here may open opportunities for a rational design of CN and other metal-free materials with controllable directionality and tunable photophysical and electronic properties, toward their utilization in (photo)electronic devices.The authors thank Dr. Alex Upcher and Dr. Einat Nativ-Roth for their assistance with electronic microscopy analysis. The authors thank also the financial support from the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MAT2016-77608-C3-1-P). The authors thank Dr. Hod for fruitful discussio

HPV Infection in Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma and Its Relationship to the Prognosis of Patients in Northern China

Purpose. Human papillomavirus (HPV) as a risk factor for esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) has previously been studied, but importance of HPV status in ESCC for prognosis is less clear. Methods. A total of 105 specimens with ESCC were tested by in situ hybridization for HPV 16/18 and immunohistochemistry for p16 expression. The 5-year overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival were calculated in relation to these markers and the Cox proportional hazards model was used to determine the hazard ratio (HR) of variables in univariate and multivariate analysis. Results. HPV was detected in 27.6% (29) of the 105 patients with ESCC, and all positive cases were HPV-16. Twenty-five (86.2%) of the 29 HPV-positive tumors were stained positive for p16. HPV infected patients had better 5-year rates of OS (65.9% versus 43.4% among patients with HPV-negative tumors; P = 0.002 by the log-rank test) and had a 63% reduction in the risk of death (adjusted HR = 0.37, 95% CI = 0.16 to 0.82, and P = 0.01). Conclusions. HPV infection may be one of many factors contributing to the development of ESCC and tumor HPV status is an independent prognostic factor for survival among patients with ESCC

An oxidative stress biomarkers predict prognosis in gastric cancer patients receiving immune checkpoint inhibitor

ObjectiveThe development and advance of gastric cancer are inextricably linked to oxidative and antioxidant imbalance. Although immunotherapy has been shown to be clinically effective, the link between oxidative stress and gastric cancer patients treated with immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICIs) remains unknown. This study aims at looking into the prognostic value of oxidative stress scores in gastric cancer patients treated with ICIs.MethodsBy taking the propagation to receiver operating characteristic (ROC) we got the best cut-off values, and divided 265 patients receiving ICIs and chemotherapy into high and low GC-Integrated Oxidative Stress Score (GIOSS) groups. We also used Kaplan-Meier and COX regression models to investigate the relationship between oxidative stress biomarkers and prognosis.ResultsThrough both univariate and multivariate analyses, it’s shown that GIOSS severs as an independent prognostic factor for progression-free survival (PFS) and Overall survival (OS). Based on GIOSS cutoff values, patients with high GIOSS levels, compared to those with low levels exhibited shorter PFS and OS, both in the high GIOSS group, which performed poorly in the ICIs subgroup and other subgroup analyses.ConclusionGIOSS is a biomarker that responds to systemic oxidative stress in the body and can predict prognosis in patients with gastric cancer who are taking ICIs. Additionally, it might come to medical professionals’ aid in making more effective or more suitable treatment plans for gastric cancer

Prognostic significance of the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition markers e-cadherin, vimentin and twist in bladder cancer

ObjectiveThe goal of this study was to utilize long-term patient follow-up to determine whether epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT)-related markers can predict bladder cancer patient survival and progression of disease.Materials and MethodsThis study included 121 patients with bladder cancer. Sixty-four of these patients presented with non-muscle invasive (NMI, stage T1) bladder cancer and 57 with muscle invasive (MI, stage T2, T3). The patients were diagnosed and treated between May 1998 and July 2012. The EMT markers E-cadherin, Twist, and Vimentin were detected via immunohistochemistry. Univariate and multivariate/Cox analyses were then utilized to determine whether these EMT markers could be useful prognostic markers for predicting bladder cancer patient outcomes.ResultsAnalysis of the 121 bladder cancer patients in this study revealed that the frequency of E-cadherin expression was 59.5% (72/121), Twist was 54.5% (66/121), and Vimentin was 24.8% (30/121). Twist and Vimentin were found to have statistically significant correlations with grade, recurrence, and progression but not with stage, whereas E-cadherin was associated with stage but not with the other parameters. In the univariate analysis, grade (p = 0.02) was the only significant predictor for progression-free survival (PFS). Stage, grade, and expression of E-cadherin, Vimentin and Twist were included in the multivariate analysis of predicting PFS. In this analysis, grade (p = 0.01) and Vimentin expression (p = 0.001) were found to be significant prognostic factors in predicting PFS.ConclusionsGrade and Vimentin are potential independent indicators in predicting bladder cancer progression and survival