The Relationship between Language and Thought in Motion Event Cognition in Second Language Acquisition

This study aims to investigate the relationship between language and thought in motion events encoding (linguistic perspective) and the perception (non-linguistic perspective) of Korean learners of English. The purpose is to determine whether L2 learners will shift toward L2-based conceptual representations when they can switch the linguistic behavior of encoding motion from their L1 (Korean) to L2 (English). A verbal description task to test linguistic switch and a similarity rating task to test conceptual change are used with animations that describe motion events. Results show that although the linguistic switch to the L2 canonical type of description occurs, the switch does not result in cognitive restructuring by L2 learners when language is not involved. The results will be discussed with respect to thinking for speaking and the linguistic relativity dubbed the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2017S1A5A2A01026703)

Clinical outcomes of balloon-occluded retrograde transvenous obliteration for the treatment of gastric variceal hemorrhage in Korean patients with liver cirrhosis: a retrospective multicenter study

Background/AimsThis study evaluated the clinical outcomes of balloon-occluded retrograde transvenous obliteration (BRTO) for the treatment of hemorrhage from gastric varices (GV) in Korean patients with liver cirrhosis (LC).MethodsWe retrospectively analyzed data from 183 LC patients who underwent BRTO for GV bleeding in 6 university-based hospitals between January 2001 and December 2010.ResultsOf the 183 enrolled patients, 49 patients had Child-Pugh (CP) class A LC, 105 had CP class B, and 30 had CP class C at the time of BRTO. BRTO was successfully performed in 177 patients (96.7%). Procedure-related complications (e.g., pulmonary thromboembolism and renal infarction) occurred in eight patients (4.4%). Among 151 patients who underwent follow-up examinations of GV, 79 patients (52.3%) achieved eradication of GV, and 110 patients (72.8%) exhibited marked shrinkage of the treated GV to grade 0 or I. Meanwhile, new-appearance or aggravation of esophageal varices (EV) occurred in 54 out of 136 patients who underwent follow-up endoscopy (41.2%). During the 36.0±29.2 months (mean±SD) of follow-up, 39 patients rebled (hemorrhage from GV in 7, EV in 18, nonvariceal origin in 4, and unknown in 10 patients). The estimated 3-year rebleeding-free rate was 74.8%, and multivariate analysis showed that CP class C was associated with rebleeding (odds ratio, 2.404; 95% confidence-interval, 1.013-5.704; P=0.047).ConclusionsBRTO can be performed safely and effectively for the treatment of GV bleeding. However, aggravation of EV or bleeding from EV is not uncommon after BRTO; thus, periodic endoscopy to follow-up of EV with or without prophylactic treatment might be necessary in LC patients undergoing BRTO

Combining Asian and European genome-wide association studies of colorectal cancer improves risk prediction across racial and ethnic populations

Polygenic risk scores (PRS) have great potential to guide precision colorectal cancer (CRC) prevention by identifying those at higher risk to undertake targeted screening. However, current PRS using European ancestry data have sub-optimal performance in non-European ancestry populations, limiting their utility among these populations. Towards addressing this deficiency, we expand PRS development for CRC by incorporating Asian ancestry data (21,731 cases; 47,444 controls) into European ancestry training datasets (78,473 cases; 107,143 controls). The AUC estimates (95% CI) of PRS are 0.63(0.62-0.64), 0.59(0.57-0.61), 0.62(0.60-0.63), and 0.65(0.63-0.66) in independent datasets including 1681-3651 cases and 8696-115,105 controls of Asian, Black/African American, Latinx/Hispanic, and non-Hispanic White, respectively. They are significantly better than the European-centric PRS in all four major US racial and ethnic groups (p-values < 0.05). Further inclusion of non-European ancestry populations, especially Black/African American and Latinx/Hispanic, is needed to improve the risk prediction and enhance equity in applying PRS in clinical practice

Deciphering colorectal cancer genetics through multi-omic analysis of 100,204 cases and 154,587 controls of European and east Asian ancestries

In the version of this article initially published, the author affiliations incorrectly listed “Candiolo Cancer Institute FPO-IRCCS, Candiolo (TO), Italy” as “Candiolo Cancer Institute, Candiolo, Italy.” The change has been made to the HTML and PDF versions of the article

Fine-mapping analysis including over 254,000 East Asian and European descendants identifies 136 putative colorectal cancer susceptibility genes

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified more than 200 common genetic variants independently associated with colorectal cancer (CRC) risk, but the causal variants and target genes are mostly unknown. We sought to fine-map all known CRC risk loci using GWAS data from 100,204 cases and 154,587 controls of East Asian and European ancestry. Our stepwise conditional analyses revealed 238 independent association signals of CRC risk, each with a set of credible causal variants (CCVs), of which 28 signals had a single CCV. Our cis-eQTL/mQTL and colocalization analyses using colorectal tissue-specific transcriptome and methylome data separately from 1299 and 321 individuals, along with functional genomic investigation, uncovered 136 putative CRC susceptibility genes, including 56 genes not previously reported. Analyses of single-cell RNA-seq data from colorectal tissues revealed 17 putative CRC susceptibility genes with distinct expression patterns in specific cell types. Analyses of whole exome sequencing data provided additional support for several target genes identified in this study as CRC susceptibility genes. Enrichment analyses of the 136 genes uncover pathways not previously linked to CRC risk. Our study substantially expanded association signals for CRC and provided additional insight into the biological mechanisms underlying CRC development

Using Literature in a University EFL Flipped Classroom in Korea

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Future directions of EMI at Korean science and engineering schools

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The Effects of Flipped Learning through Using English Novels for EFL College Students

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The Contraction Phenomenon and L2 Acquisition : An Experimental Study by Korean Learners of English

In English, as is well known, want to can be contracted to wanna, but not invariably. The following examples illustrate the contrast of contraction possibility. Contraction of want to to wanna is pennitted in Ob), Object Extraction Question (OEQ), but not in (2b), Subject Extraction Question (SEQ). (1) Object Extraction Question (OEQ) a. Who do you want PRO to kiss t? b. Who do you wanna kiss t? (2) Subject Extraction Question (SEQ) a. Who do you want Lto kiss Bill? b. *Who do you wanna kiss Bill? (3) Declaratives a. I want to kiss Bill. b. I wanna kiss Bill. There are numerous proposals for resolving this question. Traditionally, the trace theory of movement rules has been the dominant account(Chomsky 1976, 1977; Lightfoot 1976, 1977, 1980; Chomsky and Lasnik 1977, 1978; Rotenberg 1978; Chomsky 1980; Fiengo 1980; Jaeggli 1980, Aoun and Lightfoot 1984; Barss 1995; Uriagereka 1998). Although detailed accounts are slightly different among the authors, they substantially share the assumption that the intervening trace blocks contraction and that structural adjacency is sufficient to trigger contraction. Jaeggli (1980) proposed, perhaps in the most well-known analysis, that only PRO intervenes in (la) and that since PRO is not Case-marked it does not interfere with the application of the rule. In (2a), on the other hand, the presence of the Case-marked trace of who means that the verb and to are not adjacent, so contraction is blocked. In declaratives like (3), there are no traces of wh-movement. The constraint is therefore irrelevant and contraction is not inhibited