Taiwanese cultural content in English-as-a-foreign-language elementary education

Teaching culture is an essential part of teaching language. This project focuses on cross-cultural teaching, comparing Taiwanese and Western cultural content such as folktales. This comparison is based on presenting Taiwanese cultural content

Consistent picture for the electronic structure around a vortex core in iron-based superconductors

Based on a two-orbital model and taking into account the presence of the impurity, we studied theoretically the electronic structure in the vortex core of the iron-Pnictide superconducting materials. The vortex is pinned when the impurity is close to the vortex core. The bound states shows up for the unpinned vortex and are wiped out by a impurity. Our results are in good agreement with recent experiments and present a consistent explanation for the different electronic structure of vortex core revealed by experiments on different materials.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Heartthrob in Cyberspace - The Characteristics of the Popular Online Daters

Online dating websites are currently popular application for Internet users to make new friends and find their partners. An interesting observation is that some people are more popular than others in online dating websites. The current study focus on the personal profile characteristics which make one a popular dater. By two field surveys, this study discusses the relationship between online daters\u27 personal profiles and their popularity

Party ideology and clientelistic linkage

How does parties' ideology affect their linkage strategies? While scholars maintain that economically right wing parties are more clientelistic, there has been no systematic study testing this argument. We examine the conservative ideology-clientelism nexus with multi-level quantitative analyses of parties' clientelistic appeals. Our analysis reveals a robust, yet nuanced relationship between ideology and clientelism. Specifically, right wing parties are more clientelistic than left wing parties, but only with regard to providing broad economic rents to clients. In contrast, economically conservative parties are not more likely to engage in individual targeted clientelism. Moreover, parties' ties with economic interests mediate the relationship between ideology and clientelism. Finally, the association between parties' linkage to business interests and rents clientelism is attenuated by country-level economic liberalism

A note on eigenvalues of random block Toeplitz matrices with slowly growing bandwidth

This paper can be thought of as a remark of \cite{llw}, where the authors studied the eigenvalue distribution $\mu_{X_N}$ of random block Toeplitz band matrices with given block order $m$. In this note we will give explicit density functions of $\lim\limits_{N\to\infty}\mu_{X_N}$ when the bandwidth grows slowly. In fact, these densities are exactly the normalized one-point correlation functions of $m\times m$ Gaussian unitary ensemble (GUE for short). The series $\{\lim\limits_{N\to\infty}\mu_{X_N}|m\in\mathbb{N}\}$ can be seen as a transition from the standard normal distribution to semicircle distribution. We also show a similar relationship between GOE and block Toeplitz band matrices with symmetric blocks.Comment: 6 page

Implementing the 3E assessment model of sustainable development to investigate coastal pollution management: using PET recycling (bottle-to-fiber) as a case study

Recently, plastic pollution of the ocean has been garnering increasing attention. The United Nations considers the problem as a major issue, and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) has launched a global "Clean Ocean" campaign. An estimated 51 trillion plastic particles can be found in our oceans, and the pollution has caused plastics to enter the food chain. This study investigates the life cycle of recycling waste PET (polyethylene terephthalate) bottles in the ocean to the regeneration of recycled raw materials in the process of producing blankets made from such materials. First, the activity data of the relevant literature was collected, and the life cycle assessment software Open LCA was used as the assessment tool. We assume that the functional unit is 1 kg of recycled PET bottles. Secondly, with the ILCD 2011 Midpoint impact assessment method for environmental impact analysis, we identify the impact of pollutants generated during the recycling process on the environment as follows: Photochemical ozone formation 7872256.41218/ kg NMVOC eq; Fresh-water ecotoxicity 240566129.10051/ CTUe; Human toxicity, cancer effects 120.28305/ CTUh; Human toxicity, non-cancer effects 1.53496/ CTUh. Finally, we conduct risk assessment using the 3E (Engineering, Environment and Economic) assessment model, and propose an overall recovery treatment optimization assessment model

The Role of Ubiquitin System in Autophagy

Autophagy is a highly conserved lysosomal degradation pathway, which has been shown to play a pivotal role during normal physiological and pathological conditions. Many proteins and signaling pathways have been shown to regulate autophagy during different stages of the process. Modifying autophagy-related proteins (Atg) by posttranslational modification (PTM) is an important way to control proper autophagic activity. Ubiquitination is one of the PTM that has a crucial role in controlling protein stability and functions. Proteins can be conjugated with ubiquitin chains with different topologies that are associated with different outcomes. Many autophagy regulators are found to be substrates for ubiquitin E3 ligases or deubiquitinating enzymes (DUBs). Ubiquitination modifications of these autophagy regulators result in autophagy induction or termination. Moreover, ubiquitin is also involved in selective autophagy by acting as a degradation signal. Here, we are going to review how E3 ligases and DUBs function in autophagy regulation and discuss the recent findings about ubiquitination regulation in autophagy-related processes and diseases