ESL/EFL Instructors’ Beliefs about Assessment and Evaluation

The beliefs of 95 ESL/EFL instructors in Canada, 44 in Hong Kong, and 124 in Beijing about assessment and evaluation were examined with 32 questionnaire items. While the results revealed more similarities than the differences, among the instructors in the three contexts, the beliefs expressed by the instructors in the three contexts were somewhat mixed and, at times, contradictory. While the beliefs that assessment and evaluation were important for instruction and help improve student learning and the actual purposes of and uses of assessment and evaluation held by the instructors were positively related. The instructors’ beliefs about how they conducted their assessments and evaluations, the time required for assessments and evaluations, and their understanding of and preparation for assessment and evaluation were only somewhat related to their actual assessment practices. Nous avons examiné les convictions sur les jugements et les évaluations de 95 instructeurs ELS/ELE au Canada, 44 à Hong Kong, et 124 à Pékin avec un questionnaire de 32 points. Alors que les résultats font apparaître plus de similarités que de différences parmi les instructeurs dans les trois milieux, la confiance exprimée par les instructeurs est plus ou moins mélangée et parfois contradictoire dans ces trois milieux. Pour ces instructeurs, il y a une corelation positive entre leur confiance que les évaluations et les jugements sont importants pour l\u27enseignement et aident les élèves à améliorer leur apprentissage et leur confiance sur le but réel et l\u27utilisation des jugements et des évaluations. Mais la conviction sur la façon avec laquelle ils conduisent les jugements et les évaluations, le temps nécessaire pour les conduire et leur compréhension comme leur préparation des jugements et évaluations n\u27ont qu\u27une relation assez vague avec leurs pratiques des évaluations

Compensation of Beer-Lambert attenuation using non-diffracting Bessel beams

We report on a versatile method to compensate the linear attenuation in a medium, independently of its microscopic origin. The method exploits diffraction-limited Bessel beams and tailored on-axis intensity profiles which are generated using a phase-only spatial light modulator. This technique for compensating one of the most fundamental limiting processes in linear optics is shown to be efficient for a wide range of experimental conditions (modifying the refractive index and the attenuation coefficient). Finally, we explain how this method can be advantageously exploited in applications ranging from bio-imaging light sheet microscopy to quantum memories for future quantum communication networks

An exploratory study of paper sharing in Mendeley's public groups

Mendeley website is a representative academic social networking service. We aim to study how papers are shared in the public groups in Mendeley. The results show that 61.58% of the public groups were extremely small in size, containing only one member (the creator of the group). When it comes to paper sharing, 26.88% of the groups had no papers added to them. Large groups did exist, i.e. the groups having more than 1,170 members. Groups with large amount of papers also existed, i.e. groups having as many as 90,458 papers. On the other hand, there are top groups with high averages of paper readership; interestingly, these groups had small numbers of members and papers, both below 20. From the results of this research, the truth of online ecology on Mendeley website could be revealed. Taking an insight into the current condition helps group owners activate their groups, and also helps operators of Mendeley make decisions on improving services. Those improvements would make Mendeley a more advanced social platform for scholarly knowledge communication.ye

Quantitative Correlation between Thermal Cycling and the Microstructures of X100 Pipeline Steel Laser-Welded Joints

Due to the limitations of the energy density and penetration ability of arc welding technology for long-distance pipelines, the deterioration of the microstructures in the coarse-grained heat-affected zone (HAZ) in welded joints in large-diameter, thick-walled pipeline steel leads to insufficient strength and toughness in these joints, which strongly affect the service reliability and durability of oil and gas pipelines. Therefore, high-energy-beam welding is introduced for pipeline steel welding to reduce pipeline construction costs and improve the efficiency and safety of oil and gas transportation. In the present work, two pieces of X100 pipeline steel plates with thicknesses of 12.8 mm were welded by a high-power robot laser-welding platform. The quantitative correlation between thermal cycling and the microstructure of the welded joint was studied using numerical simulation of the welding temperature field, optical microscopy (OM), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) with energy-dispersive spectroscopy (EDS). The results show that the heat-source model of a Gaussian-distributed rotating body and the austenitization degree parameters are highly accurate in simulating the welding temperature field and characterizing the austenitization degree. The effects of austenitization are more significant than those of the cooling rate on the final microstructures of the laser-welded joint. The microstructure of the X100 pipeline steel in the HAZ is mainly composed of acicular ferrite (AF), granular bainite (GB), and bainitic ferrite (BF). However, small amounts of lath martensite (LM), upper bainite (UB), and the bulk microstructure are found in the columnar zone of the weld. The aim of this paper is to provide scientific guidance and a reference for the simulation of the temperature field during high-energy-beam laser welding and to study and formulate the laser-welding process for X100 pipeline steel. Document type: Articl

Variation detection based on next-generation sequencing of type Chinese 1 strains of Toxoplasma gondii with different virulence from China

A: Summary of annotation for SNPs; B: Summary of annotation for indels; C: Summary of annotation for SVs; D: Summary of annotation for CNVs. (DOCX 18 kb

Automatic Search Model for Related-Tweakey Impossible Differential Cryptanalysis

The design and analysis of dedicated tweakable block ciphers constitute a dynamic and relatively recent research field in symmetric cryptanalysis. The assessment of security in the related-tweakey model is of utmost importance owing to the existence of a public tweak. This paper proposes an automatic search model for identifying related-tweakey impossible differentials based on the propagation of states under specific constraints, which is inspired by the research of Hu et al. in ASIACRYPT 2020. Our model is universally applicable to block ciphers, but its search efficiency may be limited in some cases. To address this issue, we introduce the Locality Constraint Analysis (LCA) technique to impossible differential cryptanalysis and propose a generalized automatic search model. Technically, we transform our models into Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT) problems and solve them using the STP solver. We have applied our tools to several tweakable block ciphers, such as Joltik-BC, SKINNY, QARMA, and CRAFT, to evaluate their effectiveness and practicality. Specifically, we have discovered 7-round related-tweakey impossible differentials for Joltik-BC-192, and 12-round related-tweak impossible differentials, as well as 15-round related-tweakey impossible differentials for CRAFT for the first time. Based on the search results, we demonstrate that the LCA technique can be effectively performed when searching and determining the contradictory positions for the distinguisher with long trails or ciphers with large sizes in impossible differential cryptanalysis

The EU and the Catalan Crisis

List of all differentially expressed proteins (n = 45) identified in the study. (XLSX 11 kb