Cinderella and Pandora’s box – Autoethnographic Reflections on My Early Career Research Trajectory between Australia and China

In the last decade, the world has witnessed significant changes in terms of economic, educational, and cultural development both inside and outside China, creating valuable opportunities to better understand the cultural stereotypes Asians and Westerners have regarding each other. In this paper, I examine my immigrant experiences as a female, bilingual early-career researcher in multilingual and multicultural environments and my subsequent re-entry into China to work as a leading researcher within a span of ten years. My series of auto-ethnographic dialogues between a cast of characters, in which they recall experiences, perceptions, and emotions, provides readers with ample opportunities to actively respond to the text. Through this autoethnographic memoir and performance, I hope to contribute to new directions for narrative research in intercultural contexts.     &nbsp

Assessment of Language and Literacy Teachers’ Distance Teaching in COVID-19 Lockdown Time

The COVID-19 pandemic has significant influences globally. For preventing the further epidemic spreading, nationwide regulations were adopted in many countries, one of which was traditional face-to-face teaching activities shifted to distance education model. Both teachers and students faced a great challenge in teaching and learning. For children at the early learning stage, support from language and literacy teachers is not only significantly important for language development but also deeply influences their further interactions with family, school, community. However, little has been known about the preparation, difficulties and needs in digital distance education from the perspective of language and literacy teachers. As the first COVID-19 outbursting place, Wuhanese adopted the lockdown regulation in a short time. Thus, teachers in Wuhan faced the rapid teaching model shifting at the beginning of COVID-19 outbreaking in China. Their digital teaching experiences provided valuable information for the national-ranged educators in China and the global teachers. The current study was aimed to develop an instrument to assess language and literacy tearchers' distance teaching and we examined the psychometric properties in the sample of teachers in Wuhan. The results suggested three dimensions: teaching expertise, teacher-perceived learning motivation, and teacher-student connectedness. Especially, the first two dimensions were critically important from the perspective of measurement internal consistency. This research brings insights to the assessment and related improvements of language and literacy teachers' digital distance teaching

Exploring social media technologies for novice EFL school teachers to collaborate and communicate : A case in the Czech Republic

With an increasing number of international schools, traditional EFL teaching methods may not satisfy students’ needs. This study aims to investigate perceptions of social media technologies (e.g., Web 2.0) and willingness to adopt such technologies to collaborate and communicate in multicultural classrooms among novice EFL schoolteachers in the Czech Republic. The participants were 100 novice EFL schoolteachers in Prague and the South Moravian regions of the Czech Republic. The study used a mixed research method consisting of a survey (stage 1) and a semi-structured interview (stage 2). The survey examined the participants’ appraisal and concerns of using social media technologies to collaborate and to communicate as well as the level of willingness to use social media technologies. A hierarchical cluster analysis using participants’ responses regarding their attitudes and behavioural tendency towards using Web 2.0 social media technologies in language classrooms identified three clusters of teachers. The teachers who were most likely to adopt social Web 2.0 technologies were those who had the highest ratings on both appraisals and concerns regarding the use of social media in language classrooms. The results from the semi-structured interviews were consistent with those from the survey. Together, the results from the two stages demonstrated that most pre-service teachers favoured using Web 2.0 technology for collaboration and communication among colleagues and stakeholders in a broader community, but they displayed contrasting levels of appraisal of and concerns towards using social media technologies. Participants believed that this might be due to their different levels of ICT proficiency, workload, and working environment. The political and practical implications in K-12 education in the Czech context are also discussed

Language Development in Early Childhood : Quality of Teacher-Child Interaction and Children’s Receptive Vocabulary Competency

High-quality teacher-child interactions in early learning environments have been regarded as a key contributor to children’s early language and cognitive development in international scholarships. Little is known, however, about the longitudinal effects of children’s receptive vocabularies in the Chinese context. In this study, we addressed the question of such longitudinal effects by examining the predictive effect of preschool teacher-child interaction quality on children’s subsequent receptive vocabulary development in 42 kindergartens in Guangdong Province China. The results in a nested design showed that except for the factor of Emotional Support, the other two factors (Classroom Management and Instructional Support) were positive predictors to children’s vocabulary competency from K2 (T1) to K3 (T2) at preschools. Findings contribute to the growing international literature on the critical role teacher-child interaction quality plays in children’s language and literacy learning and development. Implications for enhancing communication channels between early childhood (EC) educators and decision-makers, and the strategies of the improvement of language and literacy teachers’ professional development are also discussed

Synergistic enhancement of cancer therapy using a combination of docetaxel and photothermal ablation induced by single-walled carbon nanotubes

Lei Wang1, Mingyue Zhang1, Nan Zhang1, Jinjin Shi1, Hongling Zhang1, Min Li1, Chao Lu2, Zhenzhong Zhang1 1School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, People’s Republic of China; 2University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA Background: Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNT) are poorly soluble in water, so their applications are limited. Therefore, aqueous solutions of SWNT, designed by noncovalent functionalization and without toxicity, are required for biomedical applications. Methods: In this study, we conjugated docetaxel with SWNT via p-p accumulation and used a surfactant to functionalize SWNT noncovalently. The SWNT were then conjugated with docetaxel (DTX-SWNT) and linked with NGR (Asn-Gly-Arg) peptide, which targets tumor angiogenesis, to obtain a water-soluble and tumor-targeting SWNT-NGR-DTX drug delivery system. Results: SWNT-NGR-DTX showed higher efficacy than docetaxel in suppressing tumor growth in a cultured PC3 cell line in vitro and in a murine S180 cancer model. Tumor volumes in the S180 mouse model decreased considerably under near-infrared radiation compared with the control group. Conclusion: The SWNT-NGR-DTX drug delivery system may be promising for high treatment efficacy with minimal side effects in future cancer therapy. Keywords: single-walled carbon nanotubes, docetaxel, NGR peptide, tumor-targeting, near-infrared radiatio

Rheological properties and structural features of coconut milk emulsions stabilized with maize kernels and starch

peer-reviewedIn this study, maize kernels and starch with different amylose contents at the same concentration were added to coconut milk. The nonionic composite surfactants were used to prepare various types of coconut milk beverages with optimal stability, and their fluid properties were studied. The steady and dynamic rheological property tests show that the loss modulus (G″) of coconut milk is larger than the storage modulus (G′), which is suitable for the pseudoplastic fluid model and has a shear thinning effect. As the droplet size of the coconut milk fluid changed by the addition of maize kernels and starch, the color intensity, ζ-potential, interfacial tension and stability of the sample significantly improved. The addition of the maize kernels significantly reduced the size of the droplets (p < 0.05). The potential values of zeta (ζ) and the surface tension of the coconut milk increased. Based on the differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) measurement, the addition of maize kernels leads to an increase in the transition temperature, especially in samples with a high amylose content. The higher transition temperature can be attributed to the formation of some starches and lipids and the partial denaturation of proteins in coconut milk, but phase separation occurs. These results may be helpful for determining the properties of maize kernels in food-containing emulsions (such as sauces, condiments, and beverages) that achieve the goal of physical stability

Enhancing the Spin–Orbit Coupling in Fe3O4 Epitaxial Thin Films by Interface Engineering

10.1021/acsami.6b0947884027353-2735

Effect of mangrove species on removal of tetrabromobisphenol A from contaminated sediments

Abstract(#br)The increase levels of tetrabromobisphenol A (TBBPA) in mangrove wetlands is of concern due to its potential toxic impacts on ecosystem. A 93-day greenhouse pot experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of mangrove plants, A. marina and K. obovata , on TBBPA degradation in sediment and to reveal the associated contributing factor(s) for its degradation. Results show that both mangrove species could uptake, translocate, and accumulate TBBPA from mangrove sediments. Compared to the unplanted sediment, urease and dehydrogenase activity as well as total bacterial abundance increased significantly ( p < 0.05) in the sediment planted with mangrove plants, especially for K. obovata . In the mangrove-planted sediment, the Anaerolineae genus was the dominant bacteria, which has been reported to enhance TBBPA dissipation, and its abundance increased significantly in the sediment at early stage (0–35 day) of the greenhouse experiment. Compared to A. marina -planted sediment, higher enrichment of Geobater, Pseudomonas, Flavobacterium, Azoarcus , all of which could stimulate TBBPA degradation, was observed for the K. obovata -planted sediment during the 93-day growth period. Our mass balance result has suggested that plant-induced TBBPA degradation in the mangrove sediment is largely due to elevated microbial activities and total bacterial abundance in the rhizosphere, rather than plant uptake. In addition, different TBBPA removal efficiencies were observed in the sediments planted with different mangrove species. This study has demonstrated that K. obovata is a more suitable mangrove species than A. marina when used for remediation of TBBPA-contaminated sediment