Chinese Negation Morpheme bù in Academic Writing

Negation can be conveyed through various forms in a language. In Chinese, bù is the most common negative form, and it can also be a morpheme of a compound word which expresses negation and/or concepts closely associated with negation, e.g. modality and contrast. In order to capture most types of Chinese words carrying these concepts, we investigate Chinese words containing bù. This study first classifies bù-related words into seven categories according to the word structure and the negative connotation of bù as a morpheme retained in the word. The categorisation is then applied to the wordlists of a research article corpus and a conversational corpus. The results show that there are many fewer occurrences of bù as a negator in research articles than in conversation, and that there is greater use of four-syllable Chinese idioms (chéngyǔ) in research articles than in conversation. In addition, different sets of bù-related words are used to express contrast and modality

Thermal rectification effects of multiple semiconductor quantum dot junctions

Based on the multiple energy level Anderson model, this study theoretically examines the thermoelectric effects of semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) in the nonlinear response regime. The charge and heat currents in the sequential tunneling process are calculated by using the Keldysh Green's function technique. Results show that the thermal rectification effect can be observed in a multiple QD junction system, whereas the tunneling rate, size fluctuation, and location distribution of QD significantly influence the rectification efficiency.Comment: 5 pages, 8figure

Action to Acquisition—Boost Students’ English Learning Motivation with Filmmaking Project

In Taiwan, English is more a major subject matter for student to “study” in school rather than a language for people to use in real life situations. Under the situation, students tend to have lower learning motivation when come to English classes, especially in higher academic settings, like universities. In order to boost students’ learning motivation as well as to encourage their productivity and creativity at the same time, a preliminary action research was conducted by two researchers collaboratively whereas one researcher is the instructor simultaneously. The major focus of the action research is concerning the application of “filmmaking” as a potentially effective tool to attract students into the classroom activities as well as the lesson content. For four semesters successively, a semester project has been assigned to 10 classes. By the end of each semester, reflections from students and the instructor were collected for refining purpose. From the students’ reflection and random interviews, an interesting comment appeared repeatedly: although the filmmaking project required them much effort and time, the results brought them the excessive fun and sense of accomplishment