Language learners' perceptions of having two interactional contexts in eTandem

The aim of this study was to gain insights into how language learners perceive two online interactional contexts and how these perceptions impact the learners’ participation in eTandem learning. This study incorporated pair work with group discussion as interactional contexts, connecting Korean language learners with English language learners. Pair work included online chatting and personal blog writing where each pair exchanged feedback on one another’s L2 writing. Group discussion included interaction among all the participants in a group blog where they discussed weekly topics. The study found that individual participants differently perceived the effectiveness of the two interactional contexts: some thought that both contexts were helpful together for developing L2 skills and for acquiring cultural knowledge, while others thought that these two contexts together were not as effective as expected. These perceptions affected not only the participant’s own participation in the project, but also others’ participation. This study offers pedagogical implications for ways in which researchers can further improve the design of eTandem learning

Affordances and Challenges of Telecollaboration for Pre-service Teachers

Telecollaboration has received growing interest in second language teacher education, due to the link between knowledge and practice in telecollaboration. The current research examined affordances and challenges of telecollaboration in teacher education by connecting American pre-service teachers to Korean pre-service teachers. The data for this paper focused on pre-and post-questionnaires, reflective journals, blog posts, and interviews from nineteen American pre-service teachers. This study provides an empirical account of how pre-service teachers benefit from interacting with international partners for improving ICC, teaching skills, and digital literacy skills. The study also presents some challenges of implementing telecollaboration. By presenting the affordances and challenges of telecollaboration in a teacher training program, the study provides implications for educators about how to better assist preservice teachers while using telecollaboration

Modelling the optics of high resolution liquid crystal devices by the finite differences in the frequency domain method

A procedure combining accurate liquid crystal and electromagnetic modelling is developed for the analysis of wave propagation through liquid crystal devices. This is required to study the optics of high resolution liquid crystal cells or cells containing very small features, where diffraction effects occur. It is also necessary for the study of optical waveguiding devices using liquid crystal as variable permittivity substrates. An accurate finite element modelling program is used to find the permittivity tensor distribution, which is then used to find the response of the device to an excitation electromagnetic field by means of a finite difference in the frequency domain (FDFD) approach

Improving Adaptability and Generalizability of Efficient Transfer Learning for Vision-Language Models

Vision-Language Models (VLMs) like CLIP have demonstrated remarkable applicability across a variety of downstream tasks, including zero-shot image classification. Recently, the use of prompts or adapters for efficient transfer learning has gained significant attention for effectively adapting to downstream tasks. However, the roles of vision and text prompts, as well as adapters in terms of generalization and transfer difficulty, have been overlooked, limiting performance on unseen tasks. In this paper, we empirically analyze how VLMs behave when using vision and text prompts, adapters, and a combination of these components, marking a novel exploration by our study. Our observations find that utilizing vision prompts for class separability and text adapters for task adaptation is crucial for adaptability and generalizability. Moreover, to improve generalization across every domain, we propose an adaptive ensemble method that effectively combines the general knowledge of VLMs with task-specific knowledge according to transfer difficulty. Upon experimenting with extensive benchmarks, our method consistently outperforms all baselines, particularly on unseen tasks, demonstrating the effectiveness of our proposed approach.Comment: 11 pages (19 pages including supplementary), 10 figures (12 figures including supplementary), 6 tables (17 tables including supplementary

Differential effects of cigarette smoke on oxidative stress and proinflammatory cytokine release in primary human airway epithelial cells and in a variety of transformed alveolar epithelial cells

BACKGROUND: Cigarette smoke mediated oxidative stress and inflammatory events in the airway and alveolar epithelium are important processes in the pathogenesis of smoking related pulmonary diseases. Previously, individual cell lines were used to assess the oxidative and proinflammatory effects of cigarette smoke with confounding results. In this study, a panel of human and rodent transformed epithelial cell lines were used to determine the effects of cigarette smoke extract (CSE) on oxidative stress markers, cell toxicity and proinflammatory cytokine release and compared the effects with that of primary human small airway epithelial cells (SAEC). METHODS: Primary human SAEC, transformed human (A549, H1299, H441), and rodent (murine MLE-15, rat L2) alveolar epithelial cells were treated with different concentrations of CSE (0.2–10%) ranging from 20 min to 24 hr. Cytotoxicity was assessed by lactate dehydrogenase release assay, trypan blue exclusion method and double staining with acridine orange and ethidium bromide. Glutathione concentration was measured by enzymatic recycling assay and 4-hydroxy-2-nonenal levels by using lipid peroxidation assay kit. The levels of proinflammatory cytokines (e.g. IL-8 and IL-6) were measured by ELISA. Nuclear translocation of the transcription factor, NF-κB was assessed by immunocytochemistry and immunoblotting. RESULTS: Cigarette smoke extract dose-dependently depleted glutathione concentration, increased 4-hydroxy-2-nonenal (4-HNE) levels, and caused necrosis in the transformed cell lines as well as in SAEC. None of the transformed cell lines showed any significant release of cytokines in response to CSE. CSE, however, induced IL-8 and IL-6 release in primary cell lines in a dose-dependent manner, which was associated with the nuclear translocation of NF-κB in SAEC. CONCLUSION: This study suggests that primary, but not transformed, lung epithelial cells are an appropriate model to study the inflammatory mechanisms in response to cigarette smoke

3D Modelling of Twist Wall at the Electrode Edge of Liquid Crystal Cells

Q-tensor simulation of the liquid crystal structure at the edge of electrodes has been carried out. The modeling shows a twist wall, which reverses direction to form a zig-zag structure. The results are compared with experiment. Also a defect loop is found in micro-lenses formed using a hole electrode structure