The Functions Of Cultural Schemata In The Chinese Reading Comprehension And Reading Time Of College Students In Taiwan

The study examined the effects of cultural familiarity with a text on Chinese students’ reading comprehension performance and reading time. In the first phase of the study, participants were required to read a culturally familiar text, write down the time they spent reading the passage, and immediately complete a cloze test without referring back to the culturally-embedded text. In the second phase, they went through the same procedure for a culturally unfamiliar text. Upon completion of the reading tasks, a topic familiarity questionnaire was distributed to them to complete in order to screen out those who were culturally familiar with both reading texts. A survey about their attitudes toward the role that background knowledge played in their reading process was administered to them following the topic familiarity questionnaire. The results showed that the students’ reading comprehension performance and reading time were both significantly affected by their familiarity with the target culture. They spent less time on and comprehended better the culturally-embedded text they were familiar with. Analysis of the survey also substantiated the claim that they relied on the facilitative role of background knowledge in reading so as to read in a faster and more efficient way. The findings suggest that a reader’s cultural schemata impacts memory, reading comprehension, interpretation and reading time. Pedagogical implications of the study and suggestions for future research are also discussed in the article

Gromov-Witten invariants of blow-ups along submanifolds with convex normal bundles

Given a submanifold Z inside X, let Y be the blow-up of X along Z. When the normal bundle of Z in X is convex with a minor assumption, we prove that genus-zero GW-invariants of Y with cohomology insertions from X, are identical to GW-invariants of X. Under the same hypothesis, a vanishing theorem is also proved. An example to which these two theorems apply is when the normal bundle is generated by global sections. These two main theorems do not hold for arbitrary blow-ups, and counter-examples are included.Comment: 34 page

In situ structures of the genome and genome-delivery apparatus in a single-stranded RNA virus.

Packaging of the genome into a protein capsid and its subsequent delivery into a host cell are two fundamental processes in the life cycle of a virus. Unlike double-stranded DNA viruses, which pump their genome into a preformed capsid, single-stranded RNA (ssRNA) viruses, such as bacteriophage MS2, co-assemble their capsid with the genome; however, the structural basis of this co-assembly is poorly understood. MS2 infects Escherichia coli via the host 'sex pilus' (F-pilus); it was the first fully sequenced organism and is a model system for studies of translational gene regulation, RNA-protein interactions, and RNA virus assembly. Its positive-sense ssRNA genome of 3,569 bases is enclosed in a capsid with one maturation protein monomer and 89 coat protein dimers arranged in a T = 3 icosahedral lattice. The maturation protein is responsible for attaching the virus to an F-pilus and delivering the viral genome into the host during infection, but how the genome is organized and delivered is not known. Here we describe the MS2 structure at 3.6 Å resolution, determined by electron-counting cryo-electron microscopy (cryoEM) and asymmetric reconstruction. We traced approximately 80% of the backbone of the viral genome, built atomic models for 16 RNA stem-loops, and identified three conserved motifs of RNA-coat protein interactions among 15 of these stem-loops with diverse sequences. The stem-loop at the 3' end of the genome interacts extensively with the maturation protein, which, with just a six-helix bundle and a six-stranded β-sheet, forms a genome-delivery apparatus and joins 89 coat protein dimers to form a capsid. This atomic description of genome-capsid interactions in a spherical ssRNA virus provides insight into genome delivery via the host sex pilus and mechanisms underlying ssRNA-capsid co-assembly, and inspires speculation about the links between nucleoprotein complexes and the origins of viruses

Neural activity dissociation between thought-based and perception-based response conflict

Based on the idea that intentions have different penetrability to perception and thought (Fodor, 1983), four Stroop-like tasks, AA, AW, WA, and WW are used, where the A represents an arrow and the CPPR (closest processing prior to response) is perception, and the W represents a word and the CPPR is thought. Event-related brain potentials were recorded as participants completed these tasks, and sLORETA (standardized low resolution brain electromagnetic tomography) was used to localize the sources at specific time points. These results showed that there is an interference effect in the AA and WA tasks, but not in the AW or WW tasks. The activated brain areas related to the interference effect in the AA task were the PFC and ACC, and PFC activation took place prior to ACC activation; but only PFC in WA task. Combined with previous results, a new neural mechanism of cognitive control is proposed

Parameterization of a Convolutional Autoencoder for Reconstruction of Small Images

The following topics are dealt with: mobile robots; control system synthesis; learning (artificial intelligence); feature extraction; robot vision; autonomous aerial vehicles; feedback; feedforward neural nets; nonlinear control systems; multi-robot systems

Strategically Smart Or Proficiency-Driven? An Investigation Of Reading Strategy Use Of EFL College Students In Relation To Language Proficiency

Reading strategy use has long been considered an important factor in the evaluation of effective second language (L2) reading. It is generally believed that proficient and less-proficient readers differ in their reading process and strategy use. The purpose of this study was to examine the reading strategy use of high- and low-proficiency level college students in Taiwan and the reading problems that might arise in their reading process. A General English Proficiency Test (GEPT) and a modified reading strategy questionnaire, based on Carrell (1989), were administered to 45 Taiwanese college students. The results show that language proficiency has a significant effect on strategy choice and use, and high achievers and low achievers are different in the quality and quantity of their reading strategy use. More proficient learners in the study were found to utilize more top-down and context-related strategies, while less-proficient learners tended to focus on bottom-up and lexical-related strategies. Also, limited vocabulary knowledge is the most important reader factor of Taiwanese college students’ reading problems. The study concludes with a discussion of implications for L2 reading instruction and learning in the classroom setting

Characterization of removable elements with respect to having k disjoint bases in a matroid

AbstractThe well-known spanning tree packing theorem of Nash-Williams and Tutte characterizes graphs with k edge-disjoint spanning trees. Edmonds generalizes this theorem to matroids with k disjoint bases. For any graph G that may not have k-edge-disjoint spanning trees, the problem of determining what edges should be added to G so that the resulting graph has k edge-disjoint spanning trees has been studied by Haas (2002) [11] and Liu et al. (2009) [17], among others. This paper aims to determine, for a matroid M that has k disjoint bases, the set Ek(M) of elements in M such that for any e∈Ek(M), M−e also has k disjoint bases. Using the matroid strength defined by Catlin et al. (1992) [4], we present a characterization of Ek(M) in terms of the strength of M. Consequently, this yields a characterization of edge sets Ek(G) in a graph G with at least k edge-disjoint spanning trees such that ∀e∈Ek(G), G−e also has k edge-disjoint spanning trees. Polynomial algorithms are also discussed for identifying the set Ek(M) in a matroid M, or the edge subset Ek(G) for a connected graph G