Ten Basic Grammar Hurdles for Mandarin Chinese Speakers: A Contrastive Guide for the Beginning Teacher of Adult Mandarin Chinese EFL Students

This handbook is written specifically for EFL teachers of Mandarin Chinese speaking students at the high elementary and intermediate levels of study. It is intended, through contrastive analysis, to provide the teacher with: a) an understanding of why these students have particular difficulty with certain structures and sentence patterns in English; b) a tool in predicting what ten of these patterns are; and c) strategies and activities for use in the classroom that will help the student overcome these ten hurdles in learning English. The plan of this handbook rests on the belief that the more we as teachers understand of our students\u27 native language, the easier it will be to understand and deal with their problems in learning the target language, English. And more importantly, student recognition of the differences between their Ll and English will make easier the task of mastering this new code of expression. The ten items covered in this handbook are as follows: subject-verb agreement, pluralization, a, an, and the, subject-object pronouns, affirmative and interrogative statements with is, am, and are, negation with is, am and are, word order in simple sentences, prepositions in, on, and at, wh-questions, and word order in addresses

Eldercare in China: Lessons from the Trenches - One Organization\u27s Experience Planning, Training, and Consulting to Open a Continuing Care Retirement Community in Beijing

The need for not for profit organizations to develop new paradigms to care for the elderly is increasingly important, given the challenges of a rapidly aging population across the globe; and particularly in China. Concerns related to this growing age wave are compounded by political and social shifts within society. Over the past few decades, China has experienced immense demographic shifts and changes in terms of long-term care needs for older adults. For example, a recent report by the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics published that there was an estimated 185 million people over the age of 60 (Shobert, Senior Care in China: Challenges and Opportunities 2012). This qualitative, adapted case study shared the experience of one individuals’ journey of opening and implementing a consulting business in China through a Continuing Care Retirement Community paradigm. The research explored the evolution of eldercare and the present-day challenges of caring for the elderly in China. Furthermore, the study conveyed key business plan models and learning theories that aided in the process of opening facilities oversees. The experience generated numerous artifacts in the way of trainings, power point visuals, and policy and procedure manuals. Last, specific components outlining lessons learned regarding the adaption of an organizations mission, vision, and values and key practices in another culture were used to shape the recommendations in the study. Recommendations include furthering the study of memory support programs and facilities for Alzheimer’s disease in a different culture. Other recommendations for study could focus on the evolution of Assisted Living and Home Care services in China. Last recommendation could be to follow up with Taikang’s first CCRC and compare how the Chinese CCRC is similar and different from an ABHOW CCRC

Small-scale field experiments accurately scale up to predict density dependence in reef fish populations at large scales

Field experiments provide rigorous tests of ecological hypotheses but are usually limited to small spatial scales. It is thus unclear whether these findings extrapolate to larger scales relevant to conservation and management. We show that the results of experiments detecting density-dependent mortality of reef fish on small habitat patches scale up to have similar effects on much larger entire reefs that are the size of small marine reserves and approach the scale at which some reef fisheries operate. We suggest that accurate scaling is due to the type of species interaction causing local density dependence and the fact that localized events can be aggregated to describe larger-scale interactions with minimal distortion. Careful extrapolation from small-scale experiments identifying species interactions and their effects should improve our ability to predict the outcomes of alternative management strategies for coral reef fishes and their habitats

Environmental Factors Influencing Reproduction in a Temperate Marine Reef Goby, Rhinogobiops nicholsii, and Associated Behaviors

The blackeye goby is a protogynous reef fish common to the northeastern Pacific Ocean. While this ubiquitous species has been the focus of numerous studies, there are several aspects of its reproductive ecology that are unknown. By directly quantifying reproduction from digital photographs of blackeye goby nests in the field, this study aimed to determine whether reproductive patterns were linked to 1) lunar phase or 2) ambient water temperature; and 3) whether the behavior of gobies changed when a nearby conspecific had eggs in his nest. At Santa Catalina Island, California, twenty 2.25-m2 artificial reefs were established and stocked with similar numbers and size-distributions of blackeye gobies during the summers of 2012 and 2013. Photographs of nests were taken weekly for ~3 months each summer. Through analysis of photographs, incubation time was found to be more than 7 days but less than 14 days. Nests, each guarded by one male, contained an average of 8664 eggs, in an area of 43.8 cm2, with 215 eggs cm-2. Blackeye gobies laid eggs during all lunar phases and the number of eggs produced was not related to lunar phase. Reproductive output, however, was negatively correlated with water temperature, with populations on reefs that experienced cooler temperatures producing more eggs. The presence of eggs in a nest had little effect on behavior of blackeye gobies on that reef. Additional observations made outside of summer months indicated that blackeye gobies can reproduce year-round in southern California. These results suggest a reproductive strategy aimed at maximizing total reproductive output by spreading the risk of reproductive failure throughout the year rather than optimizing the timing of reproduction

Predators, Prey Refuges, and the Spatial Scaling of Density-Dependent Prey Mortality

We tested the biological cause of density-dependent mortality in the bridled goby (Coryphopterus glaucofraenum), a small coral reef fish, and evaluated whether this knowledge allowed us to detect density dependence at different spatial scales in natural habitats. To identify the biological cause of density dependence, we manipulated both population density and the availability of shelter (crevices used as refuges from predators) in small plots of continuous reef. We detected strong density-dependent mortality in plots with few refuges, but mortality was density independent in plots with abundant refuges, indicating that limited shelter causes density dependence. Predator density was unrelated to the density of gobies and refuges, suggesting that predators displayed a type III functional response in patches with few refuges. In a second experiment, we manipulated goby density within replicate plots of three sizes (4, 16, and 64 m2) that varied naturally in the availability of refuges. If refuge availability was ignored, mortality appeared to be density independent at all scales. If, however, plots were grouped by refuge availability, mortality was density dependent in plots with few refuges, but low and density independent in plots with many refuges at all spatial scales. Understanding the mechanism of density dependence (refuge shortage) was thus required to measure the strength of density dependence in natural, spatially variable, habitat. We suggest that density dependence was detectable in plots of different sizes because the relationships between the densities of gobies, refuges, and goby predators were similar across the spatial scales we studied. Our work demonstrates that identifying the biological interactions that cause density dependence, and characterizing the spatial domains at which those interactions operate, will be important to accurately assess the effects of density dependence on population dynamics

Effect of Multiple Higgs Fields on the Phase Structure of the SU(2)-Higgs Model

The SU(2)-Higgs model, with a single Higgs field in the fundamental representation and a quartic self-interaction, has a Higgs region and a confinement region which are analytically connected in the parameter space of the theory; these regions thus represent a single phase. The effect of multiple Higgs fields on this phase structure is examined via Monte Carlo lattice simulations. For the case of N>=2 identical Higgs fields, there is no remaining analytic connection between the Higgs and confinement regions, at least when Lagrangian terms that directly couple different Higgs flavours are omitted. An explanation of this result in terms of enhancement from overlapping phase transitions is explored for N=2 by introducing an asymmetry in the hopping parameters of the Higgs fields. It is found that an enhancement of the phase transitions can still occur for a moderate (10%) asymmetry in the resulting hopping parameters.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures. References updated and minor typos correcte

The ISCIP Analyst, Volume II, Issue 5

This repository item contains a single issue of The ISCIP Analyst, an analytical review journal published from 1996 to 2010 by the Boston University Institute for the Study of Conflict, Ideology, and Policy