Heritage Language Maintenance and Biliteracy Development for Immigrants' Children: A Study of Chinese Immigrants' Family Language Policy and Biliteracy Practices

This study reports on research that examines the family language policy (FLP) and biliteracy practices of middle-class Chinese immigrant families in a metropolitan area in the southwest of the U.S. by exploring language practices pattern among family members, language and literacy environment at home, parents’ language management, parents’ language attitudes and ideologies, and biliteracy practices. In this study, I employed mixed methods, including survey and interviews, to investigate Chinese immigrant parents’ FLP, biliteracy practices, their life stories, and their experience of raising and nurturing children in an English-dominant society. Survey questionnaires were distributed to 55 Chinese immigrant parents and interviews were conducted with five families, including mothers and children. One finding from this study is that the language practices pattern at home shows the trend of language shift among the Chinese immigrants’ children. Children prefer speaking English with parents, siblings, and peers, and home literacy environment for children manifests an English-dominant trend. Chinese immigrant parents’ language attitudes and ideologies are largely influenced by English-only ideology. The priority for learning English surpasses the importance of Chinese learning, which is demonstrated by the English-dominant home literacy practices and an English-dominant language policy. Parents invest more in English literacy activities and materials for children, and very few parents implement Chinese-only policy for their children. A second finding from this study is that a multitude of factors from different sources shape and influence Chinese immigrants’ FLP and biliteracy practices. The factors consist of family-related factors, social factors, linguistic factors, and individual factors. A third finding from this study is that a wide variety of strategies are adopted by Chinese immigrant families, which have raised quite balanced bilingual children, to help children maintain Chinese heritage language (HL) and develop both English and Chinese literacy. The close examination and comparison of different families with English monolingual children, with children who have limited knowledge of HL, and with quite balanced bilingual children, this study discovers that immigrant parents, especially mothers, play a fundamental and irreplaceable role in their children’s HL maintenance and biliteracy development and it recommends to immigrant parents in how to implement the findings of this study to nurture their children to become bilingual and biliterate. Due to the limited number and restricted area and group of participant sampling, the results of this study may not be generalized to other groups in different contexts

Geochemical Evidence for Hydration and Dehydration of Crustal Rocks During Continental Rifting

To understand the temporal sequence of geological processes such as magmatism, water‐rock interaction, and metamorphism in fossil continental rifts, a combined study of petrography, mineral geochemistry, in situ garnet O isotopes, in situ zircon U‐Pb ages and O isotopes, and pseudosection calculations was conducted for metagranites from a Neoproterozoic continental rift generated during the Rodinia breakup. The results provide insights into the operation of hydration and dehydration during continental rifting. In the metagranites from the northern margin of South China, three types of garnet (Garnet‐I to ‐III) are distinguished. They were sequentially produced by hydrothermal alteration, metamorphic dehydration, and fluid metasomatism. All of these garnets show negative δ18O values of −19.3‰ to −14.5‰, in contrast to mantle‐like δ18O values for magmatic zircon. The extremely negative δ18O values of hydrothermal Garnet‐I require infiltration of the continental deglacial meltwater during the continental rifting, and before that zircon crystallized from normal δ18O magmas. Once the rocks were hydrothermally altered, the extreme 18O depletion was retained in all later products such as metamorphic Garnet‐II and metasomatic Garnet‐III. Pseudosection calculations indicate that the metamorphic dehydration occurred at 1.0–3.0 kbar and 630–690 °C during a reheating stage, corresponding to high thermal gradients of >60 °C/km. The high‐temperature/low‐pressure metamorphic rocks produced by such high thermal gradients are indicative of the continental rift setting. The mineral geochemistry records not only the temporal sequence of rift magmatism, water‐rock interaction, and rift metamorphism but also the evolution of temperature and water action in the crust during the continental rifting

护理分层管理的现状与发展趋势

Through implementing hierarchical management and monitor, improving and perfecting the hospital nurse training mechanism, implementing wages and labor outcomes in association with mechanism, further cultivating high-quality and high-level nursing management personnel, constantly improving quality, which maximize all the nursing staff 's enthusiasm and creativity, enhance the cohesion of nursing team, and improve the quality of hospital care.通过实施分层管理，逐层监控，完善和健全医院护士培训机制，实现工资待遇与劳动成果挂钩机制，进一步培养高素质、高层次的护理管理人才，持续质量改进，从而最大限度地发挥了全体护理人员的积极性和创造性，提升了护理队伍的凝聚力，提高了医院的护理质量

Effects of the Pinggan Qianyang Recipe on MicroRNA Gene Expression in the Aortic Tissue of Spontaneously Hypertensive Rats

The present study aimed to investigate the relationship between miRNAs and in spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) vascular remodeling and analyze the impact of the Pinggan Qianyang recipe (PQR) on miRNAs. Mammalian miRNA microarrays containing 509 miRNA genes were employed to analyze the differentially expressed miRNAs in the three groups. MiRNAs were considered to be up- or downregulated when the fluorescent intensity ratio between the two groups was over 4-fold. Validation of those miRNAs changed in SHR after PQR treatment was used by real-time quantitative RT-PCR (qRT-PCR). Compared with the normal group, a total of 32 miRNAs were differentially expressed by more than twofold; among these, 18 were upregulated and 14 were downregulated in the model group. Compared with the normal group, there were a number of 17 miRNAs which were significantly expressed by more than twofold in the different expressions of 32 miRNAs; among these, 10 were downregulated and 7 were upregulated in the PQR group. qRT-PCR verified that miR-20a, miR-145, miR-30, and miR-98 were significantly expressed in the three groups. These data show that PQR could exert its antihypertensive effect through deterioration of the vascular remodeling process. The mechanism might be associated with regulating differentially expressed miRNAs in aorta tissue

Higher-order accurate two-sample network inference and network hashing

Two-sample hypothesis testing for comparing two networks is an important yet difficult problem. Major challenges include: potentially different sizes and sparsity levels; non-repeated observations of adjacency matrices; computational scalability; and theoretical investigations, especially on finite-sample accuracy and minimax optimality. In this article, we propose the first provably higher-order accurate two-sample inference method by comparing network moments. Our method extends the classical two-sample t-test to the network setting. We make weak modeling assumptions and can effectively handle networks of different sizes and sparsity levels. We establish strong finite-sample theoretical guarantees, including rate-optimality properties. Our method is easy to implement and computes fast. We also devise a novel nonparametric framework of offline hashing and fast querying particularly effective for maintaining and querying very large network databases. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method by comprehensive simulations. We apply our method to two real-world data sets and discover interesting novel structures

Block of mouse Slo1 and Slo3 K+ channels by CTX, IbTX, TEA, 4-AP and quinidine

pH-regulated Slo3 channels, perhaps exclusively expressed in mammalian sperm, may play a role in alkalization-mediated K(+) fluxes associated with sperm capacitation. The Slo3 channel shares extensive homology with Ca(2+)- and voltage-regulated BK-type Slo1 K(+) channels. Here, using heterologous expression in oocytes, we define distinctive differences in pharmacological properties of Slo3 and Slo1 currents, examine blockade in terms of distinct blocking models, and, for some blockers, use mutated constructs to evaluate determinants of block. Slo3 is resistant to block by the standard Slo1 blockers, iberiotoxin, charybdotoxin and extracellular TEA. Slo3 is relatively insensitive to extracellular 4-AP up to 100 mM, while Slo1 is blocked in a voltage-dependent fashion consistent with block on the extracellular side of the channel. Block of both Slo1 and Slo3 by cytosolic 4-AP can be described by open channel block, with Slo3 being ~10–15-fold more sensitive, but exhibiting weaker voltage-dependence of block. The cytosolic concentrations of 4-AP required to block Slo3 make it unlikely that the effects of 4-AP on volume regulation in mammalian sperm is mediated by Slo3. Quinidine was more effective in blocking Slo3 than Slo1. For Slo1, quinidine block was favored by depolarization, irrespective of the side of application. For Slo3, quinidine block was relieved by depolarization, irrespective of the side of application, with strong block by less than 10 μM quinidine at potentials near 0 mV. The unusual voltage-dependence of block of Slo3 by quinidine may result from preferential binding of quinidine to closed Slo3 channels. The quinidine concentrations effective in blocking Slo3 suggest, that in experiments that have examined quinidine effects on sperm, any Slo3 currents would be almost completely inhibited