Examining the Effectiveness of Family Involvement on English Learners’ Academic and Socioemotional Outcomes: A Systematic Literature Review, Hierarchical Linear Models, and a Structural Equation Model

This dissertation focuses on examining the association between family involvement, school support, and English learners’ (ELs) socioemotional and academic outcomes at the early childhood stage. Through the systematic literature review and two empirical studies, this dissertation provides unique evidence in understanding how family involvement associates with children’s academic and socioemotional well-being during early childhood among the ELs. In first study, I used a systematic review to examine how spontaneous and interventional family involvement in children’s education can influence EL children’s socioemotional, behavioral and academic outcomes. The results from the 23 included studies suggest that, with parent-directed or educators-guided practices, children’s performance in the corresponding academic area and competencies improved or was significantly better than children without parental interventions. However, the effects on socioemotional or behavioral competencies are inconclusive. In the second and third studies, I utilized Early Childhood Longitudinal Study: Kindergarten-2011 (ECLS-K: 20111) data among kindergarteners for statistical analysis. In the second study, I utilized 15 hierarchical linear models to analyze the different levels of family involvement among English learners (ELs) and non-EL families. In addition, these models serve to reveal the association between family involvement, school outreach and children’s self-control and interpersonal skills, and if ELs and non-ELs show differentiated performance in these two skills. Overall, ELs and non-ELs did not show a statistical difference in self-control, and non-ELs had better personal interaction skills. EL families had higher educational expectation on children, and non-EL families involved more in home and school activities. Furthermore, family involvement in school had negative effects on both self-control and personal interaction, and school support to families had positive associations on both socioemotional outcomes. In the third study, I used a structural equation model among 1,569 EL kindergarteners. Through this model, I examined the effects of family involvement at home, parents/caregivers’ expectations, and school support on academic and socioemotional performance. The results showed that family involvement in home did not have significant effects on socioemotional or academic outcomes. On the other hand, parents/caregivers’ expectations had significant positive association with both outcome constructs, and school support to EL families only showed positive effects on socioemotional performance

Soft Sediment Deformation Structures Triggered by the Earthquakes: Response to the High Frequent Tectonic Events during the Main Tectonic Movements

Typical cases of the soft-sediment deformation structures (SSDSs), triggered by the modern earthquakes to the oldest of paleo-earthquakes in the Mesoproterozoic, have been observed in China. These deformation structures have various geometry morphology, different interior structural architectures and sediment compositions, in centimetre to metre-scales. They are intercalated with the undeformed layers, which are composed of similar sediments of lithology and sedimentary environments. SSDSs are formed during sediments deposited but incompletely consolidated. And they exist in different periods and are closely related to the active or paleo-active faults. They occur nearby the faults and usually have the characteristics nearer to the faults and more. And they distribute parallel to the trending of the active faults and have the characters of the vertical duplication. They have responded to the high-frequency activity of different faults in tectonic movement and are the perfect records of the paleo-active faults

Studying the Learning Environment of EL Newcomer Students in the Schooling Process

In this study, we examined the schooling process of newcomer students in secondary urban schools involving survey research with newcomers and other ELs (n=268). Additionally, we conducted focus groups with students (n=10) and educators (n=12). Through qualitative measures, we examined: (a) grade level placement, (b) content area placement, and (c) academic challenges confounded by L1 proficiency, previous academic experiences, and socio-cultural experiences among newcomers. We employed quantitative methods (e.g., Descriptive, Chi Square, Factor Analysis) to detect group differences in regard to perceptions of the classroom learning environment as a function of time in the United States. In general, the Principal Component Factor analysis yielded ten factors that accounted for 66.8% of the variance. These factors provide insight into key components for the development of effective classroom learning environments in order to serve EL newcomers in the schooling process. The implications for teaching and learning practices within the classroom and school learning environments of EL newcomers are discussed

BigDataBench: a Big Data Benchmark Suite from Internet Services

As architecture, systems, and data management communities pay greater attention to innovative big data systems and architectures, the pressure of benchmarking and evaluating these systems rises. Considering the broad use of big data systems, big data benchmarks must include diversity of data and workloads. Most of the state-of-the-art big data benchmarking efforts target evaluating specific types of applications or system software stacks, and hence they are not qualified for serving the purposes mentioned above. This paper presents our joint research efforts on this issue with several industrial partners. Our big data benchmark suite BigDataBench not only covers broad application scenarios, but also includes diverse and representative data sets. BigDataBench is publicly available from http://prof.ict.ac.cn/BigDataBench . Also, we comprehensively characterize 19 big data workloads included in BigDataBench with varying data inputs. On a typical state-of-practice processor, Intel Xeon E5645, we have the following observations: First, in comparison with the traditional benchmarks: including PARSEC, HPCC, and SPECCPU, big data applications have very low operation intensity; Second, the volume of data input has non-negligible impact on micro-architecture characteristics, which may impose challenges for simulation-based big data architecture research; Last but not least, corroborating the observations in CloudSuite and DCBench (which use smaller data inputs), we find that the numbers of L1 instruction cache misses per 1000 instructions of the big data applications are higher than in the traditional benchmarks; also, we find that L3 caches are effective for the big data applications, corroborating the observation in DCBench.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures, The 20th IEEE International Symposium On High Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA-2014), February 15-19, 2014, Orlando, Florida, US

Highly-stable P2-Na 0.67 MnO 2 electrode enabled by lattice tailoring and surface engineering

Abstract(#br)One of the key challenges of sodium ion batteries is to develop sustainable, low-cost and high capacity cathodes, and this is the reason that layered sodium manganese oxides have attracted so much attention. However, the undesired phase transitions and poor electrolyte-electrode interfacial stability facilitate their capacity decay and limit their practical applications. Herein, we design a novel Al 2 O 3 @Na 0.67 Zn 0.1 Mn 0.9 O 2 electrode to mitigate these problems, by taking the advantages of both structural stabilization and surface passivation via Zn 2+ substitution and Al 2 O 3 atomic layered deposition (ALD), respectively. Long-range and local structural analyses during charging/discharging processes indicate that P2-P2’ phase transformation can be suppressed by substituting proper amount of Mn 3+ Jahn-Teller centers with Zn 2+ , whereas excessive Zn 2+ leads to P2-OP4 structure transition at low sodium contents and facilitates the electrode degradations. Furthermore, the homogeneous and robust cathode electrolyte interphase (CEI) layers formed on the Al 2 O 3 -coated electrodes effectively hinder the organic electrolytes from further decomposition. Therefore, our synergetic strategy of Zn 2+ substitution and ALD surface engineering remarkably boosts the cycling performance of P2-Na 0.67 MnO 2 and provides some new insights into the designing of highly stable cathode electrodes for sustainable sodium ion batteries

Assessment on the coupling effects of drip irrigation and organic fertilization based on entropy weight coefficient model

Water and fertilizer are two important factors influencing crop growth, development and yield formation. To investigate their combined effects on the soil-plant system, and to find out the optimal water and organic fertilizer coupling strategy for tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L), an experiment was carried out from May to October in 2016 in the south of China. The experiment consisted of three drip irrigation quotas (150, 180, 210 m3/ha) and three organic fertilizer application amounts (2,800, 3,600, 4,400 kg/ha). A water-fertilizer treatment (abbreviated as CK) that is in line with local practice was used for comparison. The tomato marketable yield, sugar/acid ratio (SAR) and irrigation water use efficiency (IWUE), as well as the soil salinity and available nutrient concentrations were measured. The results showed that the marketable yield was highly significantly (p < 0.01) affected by irrigation or fertilization. The SAR of tomato were significantly (p < 0.05) affected by irrigation or/and fertilization. The fertilization had an highly significant (p < 0.01) effect on the concentrations of soil nutrients (N, P, K), while the coupling effect of irrigation and fertilization was not pronounced. According to the multi-index analysis and the computed result by the entropy weight coefficient model, a 180 m3/ha irrigation quota in combination with 4,400 kg/ha organic fertilizer application amount was the optimal water-fertilizer coupling strategy which owned the most satisfactory comprehensive benefits. The marketable yield, SAR and IWUE under this optimal strategy were 122.4 t/ha, 9.2, 32.4 kg/m3, respectively, and by 28.0%, 29.6% and 28.1% higher compared to that under CK

Palaeo-earthquake events during the late Early Palaeozoic in the central Tarim Basin (NW China): evidence from deep drilling cores

Various millimetre-, centimetre- and metre-scale soft-sediment deformation structures (SSDS) have been identified in the Upper Ordovician and Lower-Middle Silurian from deep drilling cores in the Tarim Basin (NW China). These structures include liquefied-sand veins, liquefaction-induced breccias, boudinage-like structures, load and diapir- or flame-like structures, dish and mixed-layer structures, hydroplastic convolutions and seismic unconformities. The deformed layers are intercalated by undeformed layers of varying thicknesses that are petrologically and sedimentologically similar to the deformed layers

Palaeo-earthquake events during the late Early Palaeozoic in the central Tarim Basin (NW China): evidence from deep drilling cores

Various millimetre-, centimetre- and metre-scale soft-sediment deformation structures (SSDS) have been identified in the Upper Ordovician and Lower-Middle Silurian from deep drilling cores in the Tarim Basin (NW China). These struc -tures include liquefied-sand veins, liquefaction-induced breccias, boudinage-like structures, load and diapir- or flame --like structures, dish and mixed-layer structures, hydroplastic convolutions and seismic unconformities. The deformed layers are intercalated by undeformed layers of varying thicknesses that are petrologically and sedimentologically similar to the deformed layers. The SSDS developed in a shelf environment during the early Late Ordovician and formed initially under shear tensile stress conditions, as indicated by boudinage-like structures; during the latest Ordovician, SSDS formed under a com -pressional regime. The SSDS in the Lower-Middle Silurian consist mainly of mixed layers and sand veins; they formed in shoreline and tidal-flat settings with liquefaction features indicating an origin under a compressional stress regime. By Silurian times, the centre of tectonic activity had shifted to the south-eastern part of the basin. The SSDS occur at different depths in wells that are close to the syn-sedimentary Tazhong 1 Fault (TZ1F) and associated reversed-thrust secondary faults. Based on their characteristics, the inferred formation mechanism and the spatial asso -ciation with faults, the SSDS are interpreted as seismites. The Tazhong 1 fault was a seismogenic fault during the later Ordovician, whereas the reversed-direction secondary faults became active in the Early-Middle Silurian. Multiple palaeo-earthquake records reflect pulses and cyclicity, which supports secondary tectonic activity within the main tectonic movement. The range of SSDS structures reflects different developments of tectonic activity with time for the various tectonic units of the centralbasin. The effects of the strong palaeo-earthquake activity coincide with uplift, fault activity and syn-tectonic sedimentation in the study area during the Late Ordovician to Middle Silurian