Public perceptions towards MOOCs on social media: an alternative perspective to understand personal learning experiences of MOOCs

This study attempted to assess public perceptions of and interest in MOOCs by examining how Weibo increases public discussion of MOOCs as well as by interpreting how individual learners talk about their learning experiences. Over 4,000 microblog posts were collected and analysed between 2013 and 2018. The findings showed that Weibo is used as a public service medium to augment the publicity of the MOOC movement and increase the accessibility of MOOC portals. The results also demonstrated that Weibo acts as a space for learners to share their personal learning experiences, which reflect aspects of autonomous, self-regulated, interactive and cooperative learning. By posting on Weibo, close peer connections and learning groups were established to encourage MOOC learning. This study’s findings further the scholarly understanding of how MOOCs are discussed on social media and address an important gap around what is known in one of the largest and most under-researched sites of informal online learning

Nitrogen-enriched hierarchically porous carbon materials fabricated by graphene aerogel templated Schiff-base chemistry for high performance electrochemical capacitors

This article presents a facile and effective approach for synthesizing three-dimensional (3D) graphenecoupled Schiff-base hierarchically porous polymers (GS-HPPs). The method involves the polymerization of melamine and 1,4-phthalaldehyde, yielding Schiff-base porous polymers on the interconnected macroporous frameworks of 3D graphene aerogels. The as-synthesized GS-HPPs possess hierarchically porous structures containing macro-/meso-/micropores, along with large specific surface areas up to 776 m² g⁻¹ and high nitrogen contents up to 36.8 wt%. Consequently, 3D nitrogen-enriched hierarchically porous carbon (N-HPC) materials with macro-/meso-/micropores were obtained by the pyrolysis of the GS-HPPs at a high temperature of 800 °C under a nitrogen atmosphere. With a hierarchically porous structure, good thermal stability and a high nitrogen-doping content up to 7.2 wt%, the N-HPC samples show a high specific capacitance of 335 F g⁻¹ at 0.1 A g⁻¹ in 6 M KOH, a good capacitance retention with increasing current density, and an outstanding cycling stability. The superior electrochemical performance means that the N-HPC materials have great potential as electrode materials for supercapacitors

A high-throughput phenotyping assay for precisely determining stalk crushing strength in large-scale sugarcane germplasm

Sugarcane is a major industrial crop around the world. Lodging due to weak mechanical strength is one of the main problems leading to huge yield losses in sugarcane. However, due to the lack of high efficiency phenotyping methods for stalk mechanical strength characterization, genetic approaches for lodging-resistant improvement are severely restricted. This study attempted to apply near-infrared spectroscopy high-throughput assays for the first time to estimate the crushing strength of sugarcane stalks. A total of 335 sugarcane samples with huge variation in stalk crushing strength were collected for online NIRS modeling. A comprehensive analysis demonstrated that the calibration and validation sets were comparable. By applying a modified partial least squares method, we obtained high-performance equations that had large coefficients of determination (R2 > 0.80) and high ratio performance deviations (RPD > 2.4). Particularly, when the calibration and external validation sets combined for an integrative modeling, we obtained the final equation with a coefficient of determination (R2) and ratio performance deviation (RPD) above 0.9 and 3.0, respectively, demonstrating excellent prediction capacity. Additionally, the obtained model was applied for characterization of stalk crushing strength in large-scale sugarcane germplasm. In a three-year study, the genetic characteristics of stalk crushing strength were found to remain stable, and the optimal sugarcane genotypes were screened out consistently. In conclusion, this study offers a feasible option for a high-throughput analysis of sugarcane mechanical strength, which can be used for the breeding of lodging resistant sugarcane and beyond

Several Critical Cell Types, Tissues, and Pathways Are Implicated in Genome-Wide Association Studies for Systemic Lupus Erythematosus

We aimed to elucidate the cell types, tissues, and pathways influenced by common variants in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). We applied a nonparameter enrichment statistical approach, termed SNPsea, in 181 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that have been identified to be associated with the risk of SLE through genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in Eastern Asian and Caucasian populations, to manipulate the critical cell types, tissues, and pathways. In the two most significant cells’ findings (B lymphocytes and CD14+ monocytes), we subjected the GWAS association evidence in the Han Chinese population to an enrichment test of expression quantitative trait locus (QTL) sites and DNase I hypersensitivity, respectively. In both Eastern Asian and Caucasian populations, we observed that the expression level of SLE GWAS implicated genes was significantly elevated in xeroderma pigentosum B cells (P ≤ 1.00 × 10−6), CD14+ monocytes (P ≤ 2.74 × 10−4) and CD19+ B cells (P ≤ 2.00 × 10−6), and plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs) (P ≤ 9.00 × 10−6). We revealed that the SLE GWAS-associated variants were more likely to reside in expression QTL in B lymphocytes (q1/q0 = 2.15, P = 1.23 × 10−44) and DNase I hypersensitivity sites (DHSs) in CD14+ monocytes (q1/q0 = 1.41, P = 0.08). We observed the common variants affected the risk of SLE mostly through by regulating multiple immune system processes and immune response signaling. This study sheds light on several immune cells and responses, as well as the regulatory effect of common variants in the pathogenesis of SLE

Influence of lecithin cholesterol acyltransferase alteration during different pathophysiologic conditions: A 45 years bibliometrics analysis

Background: Lecithin cholesterol acyltransferase (LCAT) is an important enzyme responsible for free cholesterol (FC) esterification, which is critical for high density lipoprotein (HDL) maturation and the completion of the reverse cholesterol transport (RCT) process. Plasma LCAT activity and concentration showed various patterns under different physiological and pathological conditions. Research on LCAT has grown rapidly over the past 50 years, but there are no bibliometric studies summarizing this field as a whole. This study aimed to use the bibliometric analysis to demonstrate the trends in LCAT publications, thus offering a brief perspective with regard to future developments in this field.Methods: We used the Web of Science Core Collection to retrieve LCAT-related studies published from 1975 to 2020. The data were further analyzed in the number of studies, the journal which published the most LCAT-related studies, co-authorship network, co-country network, co-institute network, co-reference and the keywords burst by CiteSpace V 5.7.Results: 2584 publications contained 55,311 references were used to analyzed. The number of included articles fluctuated in each year. We found that Journal of lipid research published the most LCAT-related studies. Among all the authors who work on LCAT, they tend to collaborate with a relatively stable group of collaborators to generate several major authors clusters which Albers, J. published the most studies (n = 53). The United States of America contributed the greatest proportion (n = 1036) of LCAT-related studies. The LCAT-related studies have been focused on the vascular disease, lecithin-cholesterol acyltransferase reaction, phospholipid, cholesterol efflux, chronic kidney disease, milk fever, nephrotic syndrome, platelet-activating factor acetylhydrolase, reconstituted lpa-i, reverse cholesterol transport. Four main research frontiers in terms of burst strength for LCAT-related studies including “transgenic mice”, “oxidative stress”, “risk”, and “cholesterol metabolism “need more attention.Conclusion: This is the first study that demonstrated the trends and future development in LCAT publications. Further studies should focus on the accurate metabolic process of LCAT dependent or independent of RCT using metabolic marker tracking techniques. It was also well worth to further studying the possibility that LCAT may qualify as a biomarker for risk prediction and clinical treatment

The Research of Vibration Suppression Method for Silicon Micro-machined Gyro Driven by the Rotation Aircraft

Abstract. With the practical application of silicon micro-machined gyro driven by rotation aircraft, it is found that the rotation aircraft’s rudder surface vibration significantly influences the performance of the gyro. In this paper, as the background of the silicon micro-machined gyro, the vibration mechanism is analyzed according to the mathematics model and dynamics. Under the influence of vibration, both of the silicon pendulum's stress form and output signal are obtained. The paper proposes a reasonable installation method to suppress the vibration. The experimental result shows that the method is effective to reduce the gyro’s output signal noise. And the result is good