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Taiwanese Preschool Teachers' Awareness of Cultural Diversity of New Immigrant Children: Implications for Practice
This study investigated Taiwanese preschool teachers' awareness of cultural diversity of new immigrant children and how this awareness influences their educational practices. In particular, this study focused on the cultural awareness of preschool teachers who work with young Taiwanese children whose mothers are immigrants from Southeast Asia. This study used quantitative and qualitative methods. One hundred seventy-two Taiwanese preschool teachers from the different geographic areas of Taiwan participated in the study. Data were collected through the use of the Cultural Diversity Awareness Inventory (CDAI) survey and participant interviews. Research results of the study revealed: (a) most Taiwanese preschool teachers had an awareness of cultural diversity, but their perceptions of how to create a multicultural environment need to be improved; (b) Taiwanese preschool teachers' personal experiences with children from different cultures were more associated with their cultural awareness than their ages and educational levels; (c) Geographic location was the factor affecting preschool teachers' awareness of cultural diversity and educational practices. This study is informative to the understanding of Taiwanese preschool teachers' awareness of cultural diversity and the implications of this awareness for classroom practice. In addition, multicultural perspectives of the Taiwan society toward immigrant families and children can benefit from the findings of this study. Future research should include the cultural needs of new immigrant children and the implementation of practices for educating new immigrant children
Influence of culture age on exopolymeric substances from common laboratory bacterial strains: a study on yield, profile and Cu(II) biosorption
Extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) produced by laboratory strains Bacillus cereus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa were extracted from cultures incubated at various incubation periods (24, 48, 72, 96 and 120 h). At each sampling time, the EPS were analysed for yield, quality, functional groups present, and their efficacies in copper (Cu(II)) biosorption (using 30 and 50 ppm EPS). Results revealed that EPS yield was influenced by incubation period, with 48-h culture of B. cereus and 96-h culture of P. aeruginosa producing the highest yield of EPS at 8.30 mg and 6.95 mg, respectively. The EPS produced at various incubation periods have similar characteristics in solubility, quality and major functional groups (C-O, CH3, C=C, O-H) present. Efficacy of Cu(II) biosorption was influenced by the amount of EPS used and the EPS-metal incubation time. Although Cu(II) removal was higher for EPS from 24-h B. cereus (18.96%) and 48-h P. aeruginosa (19.19%) when 30 ppm was used, application of 50 ppm EPS demonstrated no distinct differences in amount of Cu(II) removed. This suggested that higher biomass of EPS used and longer EPS-metal incubation period, superseded the efficacy of EPS from various incubation periods
Supervised Collective Classification for Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing utilizes the wisdom of crowds for collective classification via
information (e.g., labels of an item) provided by labelers. Current
crowdsourcing algorithms are mainly unsupervised methods that are unaware of
the quality of crowdsourced data. In this paper, we propose a supervised
collective classification algorithm that aims to identify reliable labelers
from the training data (e.g., items with known labels). The reliability (i.e.,
weighting factor) of each labeler is determined via a saddle point algorithm.
The results on several crowdsourced data show that supervised methods can
achieve better classification accuracy than unsupervised methods, and our
proposed method outperforms other algorithms.Comment: to appear in IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM)
Workshop on Networking and Collaboration Issues for the Internet of
Everythin
Effects of System Characteristics on Adopting Web-Based Advanced Traveller Information System: Evidence from Taiwan
This study proposes a behavioural intention model that integrates information quality, response time, and system accessibility into the original technology acceptance model (TAM) to investigate whether system characteristics affect the adoption of Web-based advanced traveller information systems (ATIS). This study empirically tests the proposed model using data collected from an online survey of Web-based advanced traveller information system users. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed to examine the reliability and validity of the measurement model, and structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to evaluate the structural model. The results indicate that three system characteristics had indirect effects on the intention to use through perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and attitude toward using. Information quality was the most important system characteristic factor, followed by response time and system accessibility. This study presents implications for practitioners and researchers, and suggests directions for future research.</p
3D-PL: Domain Adaptive Depth Estimation with 3D-aware Pseudo-Labeling
For monocular depth estimation, acquiring ground truths for real data is not
easy, and thus domain adaptation methods are commonly adopted using the
supervised synthetic data. However, this may still incur a large domain gap due
to the lack of supervision from the real data. In this paper, we develop a
domain adaptation framework via generating reliable pseudo ground truths of
depth from real data to provide direct supervisions. Specifically, we propose
two mechanisms for pseudo-labeling: 1) 2D-based pseudo-labels via measuring the
consistency of depth predictions when images are with the same content but
different styles; 2) 3D-aware pseudo-labels via a point cloud completion
network that learns to complete the depth values in the 3D space, thus
providing more structural information in a scene to refine and generate more
reliable pseudo-labels. In experiments, we show that our pseudo-labeling
methods improve depth estimation in various settings, including the usage of
stereo pairs during training. Furthermore, the proposed method performs
favorably against several state-of-the-art unsupervised domain adaptation
approaches in real-world datasets.Comment: Accepted in ECCV 2022. Project page:
https://ccc870206.github.io/3D-PL
Interference-Aware Deployment for Maximizing User Satisfaction in Multi-UAV Wireless Networks
In this letter, we study the deployment of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle mounted
Base Stations (UAV-BSs) in multi-UAV cellular networks. We model the multi-UAV
deployment problem as a user satisfaction maximization problem, that is,
maximizing the proportion of served ground users (GUs) that meet a given
minimum data rate requirement. We propose an interference-aware deployment
(IAD) algorithm for serving arbitrarily distributed outdoor GUs. The proposed
algorithm can alleviate the problem of overlapping coverage between adjacent
UAV-BSs to minimize inter-cell interference. Therefore, reducing co-channel
interference between UAV-BSs will improve user satisfaction and ensure that
most GUs can achieve the minimum data rate requirement. Simulation results show
that our proposed IAD outperforms comparative methods by more than 10% in user
satisfaction in high-density environments.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, to appear in IEEE Wireless Communications Letter
FGF Induces New Feather Buds From Developing Avian Skin
Induction of skin appendages involves a cascade of molecular events. The fibroblast growth factor (FGF) family of peptide growth factors is involved in cell proliferation and morphogenesis. We explored the role of the FGFs during skin appendage induction using developing chicken feather buds as a model. FGF-1, FGF-2, or FGF-4 was added directly to the culture medium or was released from pre-soaked Affigel blue beads. Near the midline, FGFs led to fusion of developing feather buds, representing FGFs' ability to expand feather bud domains in developing skin. In lateral regions of the explant where feather placodes have not formed, FGF treatment produces a zone of condensation and a region with an increased number of feather buds. In ventral epidermis that is normally apteric (without feathers), FGFs can also induce new feather buds. Like normal feather buds, the newly induced buds express Shh. The expression of Grb, Ras, Raf, and Erk, intracellular signaling molecules known to be downstream to tyrosine kinase receptors such as the FGF receptor, was enriched in feather bud domains. Genistein, an inhibitor of tyrosine kinase, suppressed feather bud formation and the effect of FGF. These results indicate that there are varied responses to FGFs depending on epithelial competence. All the phenotypic responses, however, show that FGFs facilitate the formation of skin appendage domains
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