Application of Interactive Teaching Approach to Oral English Teaching in Junior Middle Schools

There is no denying that the traditional teacher-centered teaching pattern is the main oral teaching approach of our country. We spend much time on it but with low efficiency. However, with the further reform of the new curriculum system, students are required to improve their oral English to a higher level. Under such circumstances, the teacher-centered teaching pattern shows more and more disadvantages. The interactive teaching approach originate from the communicative language teaching focusing on equally communication through interaction among teachers and students, students and students, students and materials in order to arouse their initiative and exploration. The study aims to investigate students’attitudes towards interactive activities on oral English learning, and the effects of interactive theory for oral English teaching

Meowster thesis

Meowster Thesis is a game about cats, loneliness and what it means to be alive. It is also what keeps me alive thru isolation during Covid-19 pandemic

Patterns of household food expenditures: a cluster analysis

Working PaperIn this study we use the Diary Survey component of the 2001 and 2002 Consumer Expenditure Survey to investigate patterns of household food expenditures. We identify eight constellations of food expenditures that are more and less likely to be associated with healthy eating habits. These clusters include: Balanced, Full-service-dominated, Fast-food-dominated, Meat-eater, Miscellaneous-foods-dominated, Alcohol-dominated, Beverage-dominated, and Food-at-work-dominated. Only 29% of the households are in the Balanced cluster, which is likely to represent the most healthy eating pattern. A full 40% of the households are in one of the three food-away-fromhome clusters. Exploratory multivariate analysis shows that younger households are more likely to be in the Fast-food-dominated cluster, single male-headed households more likely to be in the Alcohol-dominated cluster, and minorities more likely to be in the Meat-eater cluster. Adult work hours and income-to-needs ratios are found to be positively associated with membership in the Full-service and Fast-food clusters

Net income, gross income, and bias in child support awards in gross income-shares states

Working PaperIn this study I discuss the pros and cons of using net income vs. gross income in gross income-shares states. It is argued that the "standardized net" approach is the best approach in determining child support awards based on the combined principles of equity and accuracy. However most states use gross income approaches for the sake of simplicity. Such gross income approaches can generate biases in support awards. Using 2004 tax structures and taking into consideration Earned Income Tax Credit and child tax credit, I estimate the direction, magnitude, and distribution of such biases under three different scenarios of "gross income" approaches. Results show that these biases can be either positive or negative depending on the particular assumptions made in the gross-to-net income conversion process. In some income combination cases, the biases can be quite substantial

Disparities in healthcare utilization in China: do gender and migration status matter?

ManuscriptUsing a multi-stage cluster sampling approach, we collected healthcare and demographic data from 531migrants and 529 local urban residents aged 16-64 in Shanghai, China. Logistic regressions were used to analyze the relationship between gender-migration status and healthcare utilization while controlling for predisposing, enabling and needs factors. Other things equal, female migrants and male locals had significantly lower actual healthcare utilization rates, compared to female locals. Female migrants were more likely to report "no money" as a reason for not seeking care, while male locals were more likely to report "self-medication" as a reason. Considering established gender differences in healthcare utilization, we conclude that female migrants as a group face the most healthcare access barriers among all groups

Sociodemographic and environmental correlates of active commuting in Rural America

pre-printPurpose. This research investigated participation rates in 3 modes of active commuting (AC) and their sociodemographic and physical environmental correlates in rural America. Methods. The 2000 Census supplemented with other datasets were used to analyze AC rates in percentage of workers walking, biking, and taking public transportations to work in 14,209 nonmetropolitan rural tracts identified by RUCA codes, including 4,067 small rural and 10,142 town-micropolitan rural tracts. Sociodemographic and physical environmental variables were correlated with 3 AC modes simultaneously using Seemingly Unrelated Regression for nonmetro rural, and for small rural and town-micropolitan rural separately. Findings. The average AC rates in rural tracts were 3.63%, 0.26%, and 0.56% for walking, biking, and public transportation to work, respectively, with small rural tracts having a higher rate of walking but lower rates of biking and public transportation to work than town-micropolitan tracts. In general, better economic well-being was negatively associated with AC but percentage of college-educated was a positive correlate. Population density was positively associated with AC but greenness and proximity to parks were negative correlates. However, significant differences existed for different AC modes, and between small rural and town-micropolitan rural tracts. Conclusions. Sociodemographic factors explained more variance in AC than physical environmental factors but the detailed relationships were complex, varying by AC mode and by degree of rurality. Any strategy to promote AC in rural America needs to be sensitive to the population size of the area and assessed in a comprehensive manner to avoid a "one size fits all" approach

Application of distance field-based algorithm to adjacent spline surfaces for composite structures boundary modeling

The complex boundary modeling required for simulating composite materials was applied to a broad range of problems, including surface overlap and gap. A novel method for the simultaneous fitting of adjacent spline surfaces based on a distance field has been devised. The fitting method for spline surfaces was constructed using offline spline surface, facet simplification, and residual solid reconstruction. The distance field-based approach of simultaneous fitting of neighboring spline surfaces included producing a distance field for a spline surface and then applying that distance field to nearby spline surfaces. There would be junction and separation issues if neighboring spline surfaces were fitted individually. By simultaneously fitting the nearby spline surfaces with the aid of the equivalence surface of the distance field, it was feasible to avoid overlap and gap

A Decentralized Virtual Machine Migration Approach of Data Centers for Cloud Computing

As cloud computing offers services to lots of users worldwide, pervasive applications from customers are hosted by large-scale data centers. Upon such platforms, virtualization technology is employed to multiplex the underlying physical resources. Since the incoming loads of different application vary significantly, it is important and critical to manage the placement and resource allocation schemes of the virtual machines (VMs) in order to guarantee the quality of services. In this paper, we propose a decentralized virtual machine migration approach inside the data centers for cloud computing environments. The system models and power models are defined and described first. Then, we present the key steps of the decentralized mechanism, including the establishment of load vectors, load information collection, VM selection, and destination determination. A two-threshold decentralized migration algorithm is implemented to further save the energy consumption as well as keeping the quality of services. By examining the effect of our approach by performance evaluation experiments, the thresholds and other factors are analyzed and discussed. The results illustrate that the proposed approach can efficiently balance the loads across different physical nodes and also can lead to less power consumption of the entire system holistically