“You are too out!”: a mixed methods approach to the study of “digital divides” in three Chinese senior secondary schools

This sequential mixed methods study investigates the differences in adolescent engagement with Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) such as computers, mobile phones, and the Internet. The multi-case project involves 698 second year high school students from three socioeconomically, ethnoculturally, and geographically specific schools in China. It examines the ways in which social factors, such as ethnicity and rurality/urbanity, shape technology access and use before analysing social and educational consequences of youth interaction with ICT. While the quantitative strand lends its power to reveal structural inequalities in the levels of access and use, the qualitative interviewing sheds light on the diversities in use and gives voice to individuals as they encode technology with values and meanings. The research finds that urban students in Shenzhen have the highest level of access to technology and support, use ICT for the widest range of activities, and are most likely to treat them as “life” and “thought” companions for psychosocial, emotional, and intellectual gains. On average, Tibetans are disadvantaged; but the most digitally marginalised teenagers are mainstream Han students with parents having no more than six years of education. Nonetheless, the return to parental education is by far greater for Han students than it is for Tibetans. While the probability of students reporting underachievement decreases as parental education increases, Tibetans are significantly less likely to report “Below average” or “Bottom 10%” in class. The study also discovers that access to ICT strongly correlates with socioeconomic status, but use of them articulates ways of learning and living, which are often resistant to change. As the global and fast-changing ICT become more prevalent, oftentimes adults highlight what they might do to students, while teenagers emphasise what they can do for them. So technology and culture regularly clash. When ICT are introduced to schools by adults, they rarely satisfy the needs of adolescents; and when they have any effect on learning, usually it is not because of what students have in school, it is because of what they do elsewhere — at home or in Internet cafés

What Can Help Pedestrian Detection?

Aggregating extra features has been considered as an effective approach to boost traditional pedestrian detection methods. However, there is still a lack of studies on whether and how CNN-based pedestrian detectors can benefit from these extra features. The first contribution of this paper is exploring this issue by aggregating extra features into CNN-based pedestrian detection framework. Through extensive experiments, we evaluate the effects of different kinds of extra features quantitatively. Moreover, we propose a novel network architecture, namely HyperLearner, to jointly learn pedestrian detection as well as the given extra feature. By multi-task training, HyperLearner is able to utilize the information of given features and improve detection performance without extra inputs in inference. The experimental results on multiple pedestrian benchmarks validate the effectiveness of the proposed HyperLearner.Comment: Accepted to IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 201

Lactulose: an effective preventive and therapeutic option for ischemic stroke by production of hydrogen

Lactulose, a synthetic sugar not able to be digested and absorbed by human beings, is widely used to treat constipation and hepatic encephalopathy clinically. Through fermentation by the bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract, lactulose can produce considerable amount of hydrogen, which is protective for ischemic stroke as a unique antioxidant. We propose that lactulose can induce the production of endogenous hydrogen that in turn reduces oxidative stress and ameliorate the stroke damage in human beings

The Multiplication Formulas of Weighted Quantum Cluster Functions

By applying the property of Ext-symmetry and the affine space structure of certain fibers, we introduce the notion of weighted quantum cluster functions and prove their multiplication formulas associated to abelian categories with Ext-symmetry and 2-Calabi-Yau triangulated categories with cluster-tilting objects

‘You Are Too Out!’: A mixed methods study of the ways in which digital divides articulate status and power in China

This study investigates the differences in adolescent engagement with Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), such as computers, the Internet, and mobile phones. Involving 698 second-year high school students from urban, rural, and ethnic Tibetan regions of China, it finds that patterns of access and use indicate status and power, and the meanings teenagers pour into the technologies articulate social and educational differences. On average, Tibetans are disadvantaged in access, and the return on parental education is greater for the mainstream Han than it is for Tibetans. However, state ‘preferential policies’ have mitigated Tibetans’ plight in use, which makes the least privileged to be Han students with parents having no more than six years of education

“Struggling like fish out of water”: a qualitative case study of Chinese international students’ acculturative stress in the UK

This research aims to explore the acculturative stressors experienced by Chinese international students in the UK and investigates their views on intercultural mentoring programs offered at UK universities. To achieve these objectives, the study utilizes primarily qualitative data gathered from 12 semi-structured interviews, exploring Chinese international students’ wellbeing and their perceptions about intercultural mentoring programs. The findings indicate that the wellbeing of Chinese international students was influenced by a range of macro and micro acculturative stressors, including academic integration, language barriers, social integration, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Contrary to expectations, the study reveals that perceived cultural differences between China and the UK, as well as homesickness, were not the main sources of stress for Chinese international students. Regarding intercultural mentoring programs, this research finds that their introduction by UK universities represents a positive effort to enhance intercultural competence and overall wellbeing of international students. Nevertheless, the research has identified four main issues requiring consideration: mentor qualifications, limited mentor availability, effective mentor-mentee pairing, and ethical challenges

Risk factors for surgical site infection of pilon fractures

OBJECTIVES: Pilon fracture is a complex injury that is often associated with severe soft tissue damage and high rates of surgical site infection. The goal of this study was to analyze and identify independent risk factors for surgical site infection among patients undergoing surgical fixation of a pilon fracture. METHODS: The medical records of all pilon fracture patients who underwent surgical fixation from January 2010 to October 2012 were reviewed to identify those who developed a surgical site infection. Then, we constructed univariate and multivariate logistic regressions to evaluate the independent associations of potential risk factors with surgical site infection in patients undergoing surgical fixation of a pilon fracture. RESULTS: A total of 519 patients were enrolled in the study from January 2010 to October 2012. A total of 12 of the 519 patients developed a surgical site infection, for an incidence of 2.3%. These patients were followed for 12 to 29 months, with an average follow-up period of 19.1 months. In the final regression model, open fracture, elevated postoperative glucose levels (≥125 mg/dL), and a surgery duration of more than 150 minutes were significant risk factors for surgical site infection following surgical fixation of a pilon fracture. CONCLUSIONS: Open fractures, elevated postoperative glucose levels (≥125 mg/dL), and a surgery duration of more than 150 minutes were related to an increased risk for surgical site infection following surgical fixation of a pilon fracture. Patients exhibiting the risk factors identified in this study should be counseled regarding the possible surgical site infection that may develop after surgical fixation

Characteristics and practices of school-based cluster randomised controlled trials for improving health outcomes in pupils in the United Kingdom: a methodological systematic review.

BACKGROUND: Cluster randomised trials (CRTs) are increasingly used to evaluate non-pharmacological interventions for improving child health. Although methodological challenges of CRTs are well documented, the characteristics of school-based CRTs with pupil health outcomes have not been systematically described. Our objective was to describe methodological characteristics of these studies in the United Kingdom (UK). METHODS: MEDLINE was systematically searched from inception to 30th June 2020. Included studies used the CRT design in schools and measured primary outcomes on pupils. Study characteristics were described using descriptive statistics. RESULTS: Of 3138 articles identified, 64 were included. CRTs with pupil health outcomes have been increasingly used in the UK school setting since the earliest included paper was published in 1993; 37 (58%) studies were published after 2010. Of the 44 studies that reported information, 93% included state-funded schools. Thirty six (56%) were exclusively in primary schools and 24 (38%) exclusively in secondary schools. Schools were randomised in 56 studies, classrooms in 6 studies, and year groups in 2 studies. Eighty percent of studies used restricted randomisation to balance cluster-level characteristics between trial arms, but few provided justification for their choice of balancing factors. Interventions covered 11 different health areas; 53 (83%) included components that were necessarily administered to entire clusters. The median (interquartile range) number of clusters and pupils recruited was 31.5 (21 to 50) and 1308 (604 to 3201), respectively. In half the studies, at least one cluster dropped out. Only 26 (41%) studies reported the intra-cluster correlation coefficient (ICC) of the primary outcome from the analysis; this was often markedly different to the assumed ICC in the sample size calculation. The median (range) ICC for school clusters was 0.028 (0.0005 to 0.21). CONCLUSIONS: The increasing pool of school-based CRTs examining pupil health outcomes provides methodological knowledge and highlights design challenges. Data from these studies should be used to identify the best school-level characteristics for balancing the randomisation. Better information on the ICC of pupil health outcomes is required to aid the planning of future CRTs. Improved reporting of the recruitment process will help to identify barriers to obtaining representative samples of schools