Corpus-aided discovery learning: Changing the EFLgrammar classroom

[[sponsorship]]朝陽科技大學應用英語系[[conferencetype]]國內[[conferencedate]]20150529~20150529[[iscallforpapers]]Y[[conferencelocation]]Taichuang, Taiwa

Structural Analysis by Direct and Indirect Model Methods

Architectural Engineerin

PURSUING HIGHER EDUCATION CAREERS AND THE PROCESS OF MIGRATION AMONG INDONESIAN FEMALE MIGRANT WORKERS IN TAIWAN

Remittance, labor migration and the significance of the female role in the process of labor migration have recently become entrenched in many developing countries, such as Indonesia. The influential role these female migrant workers play in supporting their own families and in their self-fulfillment is of significance and worthy of being fully expounded and discussed. As breadwinners, these female migrant workers strive to pursue higher education by working their way through college. Qualitative in-depth interviews and focus group discussions were used to obtain five Indonesian female migrant workers' opinion and experiences about their experience of being a worker and a student in Taiwan. The data in this study were analyzed and evaluated with thematic analysis. This study describes the factors which cause the Indonesian female workers to become migrant workers in Taiwan. This includes getting high-paid jobs, shouldering the responsibility for supporting their own families, and pursuing self-fulfillment overseas. Besides, this study has investigated the difficulties and challenges that female Indonesian migrant workers had encountered while working and studying at the same time. On the whole, as caregivers, most of them often fail to have a flexible schedule to study due to the temporary jobs assigned by their employers. Also, some employers are unwilling to allow them to pursue higher education for feat that they would not concentrate on their own work. Above all, it is these female migrant workers that can define what their lives truly mean as migrant workers on their own, and that can align their talents and ambitions with their pursuits of higher education. This study provides a new exploration of how the female migrant workers’ gained a sense of self-fulfillment by pursuing higher education with working and studying at the same time. Facing a variety of challenges and hindrances, their persistence and perseverance can be further examined for those who are interested in studying this field deeper.   Keywords: Female migrant workers, higher education, Indonesian migrant workers, labor migration, remittance   Cite as: Bali, S., Liu, M. C., & Lin, H. H. (2019). Pursuing higher education careers and the process of migration among Indonesian female migrant workers in Taiwan.  Journal of Nusantara Studies, 4(2), 302-317. http://dx.doi.org/10.24200/jonus.vol4iss2pp302-31

The predictability of serum anti-Müllerian level in IVF/ICSI outcomes for patients of advanced reproductive age

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The role of serum anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH) as predictor of in-vitro fertilization outcomes has been much debated. The aim of the present study is to investigate the practicability of combining serum AMH level with biological age as a simple screening method for counseling IVF candidates of advanced reproductive age with potential poor outcomes prior to treatment initiation.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A total of 1,538 reference patients and 116 infertile patients aged greater than or equal to 40 years enrolled in IVF/ICSI cycles were recruited in this retrospective analysis. A reference chart of the age-related distribution of serum AMH level for Asian population was first created. IVF/ICSI patients aged greater than or equal to 40 years were then divided into three groups according to the low, middle and high tertiles the serum AMH tertiles derived from the reference population of matching age. The cycle outcomes were analyzed and compared among each individual group.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>For reference subjects aged greater than or equal to 40 years, the serum AMH of the low, middle and high tertiles were equal or lesser than 0.48, 0.49-1.22 and equal or greater than 1.23 ng/mL respectively. IVF/ICSI patients aged greater than or equal to 40 years with AMH levels in the low tertile had the highest cycle cancellation rate (47.6%) with zero clinical pregnancy. The nadir AMH level that has achieved live birth was 0.56 ng/mL, which was equivalent to the 36.4th percentile of AMH level from the age-matched reference group. The optimum cut-off levels of AMH for the prediction of nonpregnancy and cycle cancellation were 1.05 and 0.68 ng/mL, respectively.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Two criteria: (1) age greater than or equal to 40 years and (2) serum AMH level in the lowest tertile (equal or lesser than 33.3rd percentile) of the matching age group, may be used as markers of futility for counseling IVF/ICSI candidates.</p

A New Combined Boost Converter with Improved Voltage Gain as a Battery-Powered Front-End Interface for Automotive Audio Amplifiers

High boost DC/DC voltage conversion is always indispensable in a power electronic interface of certain battery-powered electrical equipment. However, a conventional boost converter works for a wide duty cycle for such high voltage gain, which increases power consumption and has low reliability problems. In order to solve this issue, a new battery-powered combined boost converter with an interleaved structure consisting of two phases used in automotive audio amplifier is presented. The first phase uses a conventional boost converter; the second phase employs the inverted type. With this architecture, a higher boost voltage gain is able to be achieved. A derivation of the operating principles of the converter, analyses of its topology, as well as a closed-loop control designs are performed in this study. Furthermore, simulations and experiments are also performed using input voltage of 12 V for a 120Wcircuit. A reasonable duty cycle is selected to reach output voltage of 60 V, which corresponds to static voltage gain of five. The converter achieves a maximum measured conversion efficiency of 98.7% and the full load efficiency of 89.1%

CpGPAP: CpG island predictor analysis platform

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Genomic islands play an important role in medical, methylation and biological studies. To explore the region, we propose a CpG islands prediction analysis platform for genome sequence exploration (CpGPAP).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>CpGPAP is a web-based application that provides a user-friendly interface for predicting CpG islands in genome sequences or in user input sequences. The prediction algorithms supported in CpGPAP include complementary particle swarm optimization (CPSO), a complementary genetic algorithm (CGA) and other methods (CpGPlot, CpGProD and CpGIS) found in the literature. The CpGPAP platform is easy to use and has three main features (1) selection of the prediction algorithm; (2) graphic visualization of results; and (3) application of related tools and dataset downloads. These features allow the user to easily view CpG island results and download the relevant island data. CpGPAP is freely available at <url>http://bio.kuas.edu.tw/CpGPAP/</url>.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The platform's supported algorithms (CPSO and CGA) provide a higher sensitivity and a higher correlation coefficient when compared to CpGPlot, CpGProD, CpGIS, and CpGcluster over an entire chromosome.</p

Improving Conversational Passage Re-ranking with View Ensemble

This paper presents ConvRerank, a conversational passage re-ranker that employs a newly developed pseudo-labeling approach. Our proposed view-ensemble method enhances the quality of pseudo-labeled data, thus improving the fine-tuning of ConvRerank. Our experimental evaluation on benchmark datasets shows that combining ConvRerank with a conversational dense retriever in a cascaded manner achieves a good balance between effectiveness and efficiency. Compared to baseline methods, our cascaded pipeline demonstrates lower latency and higher top-ranking effectiveness. Furthermore, the in-depth analysis confirms the potential of our approach to improving the effectiveness of conversational search.Comment: SIGIR 202

Interannual Variation of Springtime Biomass Burning in Indochina: Regional Differences, Associated atmospheric dynamical changes, and downwind impacts

During March and April, widespread burning occurs across farmlands in Indochina in preparation for planting at the monsoon onset. The resultant aerosols impact the air quality downwind. In this study, we investigate the climatic aspect of the interannual variation of springtime biomass burning in Indochina and its correlation with air quality at Mt. Lulin in Taiwan using long-term (2005–2015) satellite and global reanalysis data. Based on empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis, we find that the biomass burning activities vary with two geographical regions: northern Indochina (the primary EOF mode) and southern Indochina (the secondary EOF mode). We determine that the variation of biomass burning over northern Indochina is significantly related with the change in aerosol concentrations at Mt. Lulin. This occurs following the change in the so-called India-Burma Trough in the lower and middle troposphere. When the India-Burma Trough is intensified, a stronger northwesterly wind (to the west of the trough) transports the dryer air from higher latitude into northern Indochina, and this promotes local biomass burning activities. The increase in upward motion to the east of the intensified India-Burma Trough lifts the aerosols, which are transported toward Taiwan by the increased low-level westerly jet. Further diagnoses revealed the connection between the India-Burma Trough and the South Asian jet\u27s wave train pattern as well as the previous winter\u27s El Niño–Southern Oscillation phase. This information highlights the role of the India-Burma Trough in modulating northern Indochina biomass burning and possibly predicting aerosol transport to East Asia on the interannual time scale