AN INVESTIGATION OF FACTORS AFFECTING ENGLISH TEACHING FOR YOUNG LEARNERS OF EFL STUDENTS

Currently, English is used widely in modern life, including education, business, and international relations. As a result, persons attempting to enhance their English skills have a variety of goals. The researcher's goal in this study is to investigate English major students' perspectives on teaching English to young learners. Additionally, the project exposed factors of teaching effectiveness such as teachers' manners, instructional techniques, and challenges in the classroom regularly. This research consists of 62 EFL students at Tra Vinh University who had completed teaching methodology courses and practicum experience and 8 teachers at Sunrise Center. The data were gathered through a questionnaire and interview session. The outcomes indicate that teaching techniques are a significant factor in teaching English to young learners. Moreover, teachers' manners toward students can impact students' language learning outcomes. Last but not least, this study identified several challenges that appear in English classrooms frequently, including a lack of motivation, short attention spans, and obstacles in communicating in English confidently. These findings can inform EFL teachers and curriculum designs to provide learners with quality learning outcomes.  Article visualizations

Phase transitions in Ising magnetic films and superlattices

Within the framework of mean field theory, we examine the phase transitions in Ising magnetic films and superlattices. By transfer matrix method, we derive two general nonlinear equations for phase transition temperatures of Ising magnetic films and superlattices, respectively. The equations can be applied to the films and superlattices with arbitrary exchange interaction constants and arbitrary layer number. Numerical results for phase transition temperatures as a function of exchange interaction constants are presented.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, accepted by Solid State Communication

Silicone Based Capacitive E-Skin Sensor for Soft Surgical Robots

In this extended abstract, we present a soft stretchable multi-modal capacitive skin sensor that can be used for exteroception and proprioception in soft surgical manipulators. A soft skin prototype was made using Ecoflex, embedding three conductive carbon grease terminal layers. This soft skin is capable of measuring stretch and touch simultaneously. The soft skin measures uniaxial stretches from 1 to 1.2475 within an error range of 2.6% and can also quantify as well as localize local indentation. An algorithm is developed that decouples local change, i.e., due to indentation, from global strain, due to stretch. An experimental study was conducted; results are presented

Bayesian analysis of ambulatory blood pressure dynamics with application to irregularly spaced sparse data

Ambulatory cardiovascular (CV) measurements provide valuable insights into individuals' health conditions in “real-life,” everyday settings. Current methods of modeling ambulatory CV data do not consider the dynamic characteristics of the full data set and their relationships with covariates such as caffeine use and stress. We propose a stochastic differential equation (SDE) in the form of a dual nonlinear Ornstein-Uhlenbeck (OU) model with person-specific covariates to capture the morning surge and nighttime dipping dynamics of ambulatory CV data. To circumvent the data analytic constraint that empirical measurements are typically collected at irregular and much larger time intervals than those evaluated in simulation studies of SDEs, we adopt a Bayesian approach with a regularized Brownian Bridge sampler (RBBS) and an efficient multiresolution (MR) algorithm to fit the proposed SDE. The MR algorithm can produce more efficient MCMC samples that is crucial for valid parameter estimation and inference. Using this model and algorithm to data from the Duke Behavioral Investigation of Hypertension Study, results indicate that age, caffeine intake, gender and race have effects on distinct dynamic characteristics of the participants' CV trajectories

RVSL: Robust Vehicle Similarity Learning in Real Hazy Scenes Based on Semi-supervised Learning

Recently, vehicle similarity learning, also called re-identification (ReID), has attracted significant attention in computer vision. Several algorithms have been developed and obtained considerable success. However, most existing methods have unpleasant performance in the hazy scenario due to poor visibility. Though some strategies are possible to resolve this problem, they still have room to be improved due to the limited performance in real-world scenarios and the lack of real-world clear ground truth. Thus, to resolve this problem, inspired by CycleGAN, we construct a training paradigm called \textbf{RVSL} which integrates ReID and domain transformation techniques. The network is trained on semi-supervised fashion and does not require to employ the ID labels and the corresponding clear ground truths to learn hazy vehicle ReID mission in the real-world haze scenes. To further constrain the unsupervised learning process effectively, several losses are developed. Experimental results on synthetic and real-world datasets indicate that the proposed method can achieve state-of-the-art performance on hazy vehicle ReID problems. It is worth mentioning that although the proposed method is trained without real-world label information, it can achieve competitive performance compared to existing supervised methods trained on complete label information.Comment: Accepted by ECCV 202

5-Hy­droxy-3,4′,6,7-tetra­meth­oxy­flavone

The title compound, C19H18O7 [systematic name 5-hy­droxy-3,6,7-tri­meth­­oxy-2-(4-meth­oxy­phen­yl)-4H-1-benzopyran-4-one], is a flavonoid which was isolated from the traditional Chinese medicine Laggera alata. The benzene ring of the benzopyran­one unit forms dihedral angles of 1.72 (3) and 37.39 (5)° with the pyran ring and the substituent benzene ring, respectively. The mol­ecular conformation is stabilized by an intra­molecular phenol O—H⋯Oketone hydrogen bond

Polynomial Growth Harmonic Functions on Finitely Generated Abelian Groups

In the present paper, we develop geometric analytic techniques on Cayley graphs of finitely generated abelian groups to study the polynomial growth harmonic functions. We develop a geometric analytic proof of the classical Heilbronn theorem and the recent Nayar theorem on polynomial growth harmonic functions on lattices \mathds{Z}^n that does not use a representation formula for harmonic functions. We also calculate the precise dimension of the space of polynomial growth harmonic functions on finitely generated abelian groups. While the Cayley graph not only depends on the abelian group, but also on the choice of a generating set, we find that this dimension depends only on the group itself.Comment: 15 pages, to appear in Ann. Global Anal. Geo

Effects of Multi-Surface Modification on Curie temperature of ferroelectric films

Within the framework of mean field theory, we study the effects of multi-surface modification on Curie temperature of ferroelectric films using the transverse Ising model. The general nonlinear equations for Curie temperature of multi-surface ferroelectric films with arbitrary exchange constants and transverse fields are derived by the transfer matrix method. As an example, we consider a film consisting of top surface layers, bulk layers and bottom surface layers. Two types of surface modifications, modifications of a surface exchange constant and a surface transverse field are taken into account. The dependence of Curie temperature on the surface layer numbers, bulk layer numbers, surface exchange constants, surface transverse fields and bulk transverse fields is discussed.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figure

Molecular Dynamics Simulations of the Roller Nanoimprint Process: Adhesion and Other Mechanical Characteristics

Molecular dynamics simulations using tight-binding many body potential are carried out to study the roller imprint process of a gold single crystal. The effect of the roller tooth’s taper angle, imprint depth, imprint temperature, and imprint direction on the imprint force, adhesion, stress distribution, and strain are investigated. A two-stage roller imprint process was obtained from an imprint force curve. The two-stage imprint process included the imprint forming with a rapid increase of imprint force and the unloading stage combined with the adhesion stage. The results show that the imprint force and adhesion rapidly increase with decreasing taper angle and increasing imprint depth. The magnitude of the maximum imprint force and the time at which this maximum occurs are proportional to the imprint depth, but independent of the taper angle. In a comparison of the imprint mechanisms with a vertical imprint case, while high stress and strain regions are concentrated below the mold for vertical imprint, they also occur around the mold in the case of roller imprint. The regions were only concentrated on the substrate atoms underneath the mold in vertical imprint. Plastic flow increased with increasing imprint temperature