The role of English as a lingua franca in social integration: The case of the international students of a university in Taiwan

Globalization and the ease of mobility across nations in the last decade or so have brought some fundamental changes to the structural organization and operation of universities worldwide. To enhance global competitiveness, East Asian universities, in particular, have seen a growth in the intake of international students. A majority of the previous studies on students studying abroad were undertaken in the context of English-speaking countries such as the UK and USA; research investigating students coming from afar to study in countries which are predominantly Chinese-speaking appears to be lacking. Even scanter is the work related to how this group of students navigates through the social way-of-life at the university. This article explores the social integration of the international students of a bilingual university located in northern Taiwan. More specifically, the role English as a lingua franca plays in the integration will be examined based on the narrative accounts of 14 informants. The findings suggest that some institutional and individual obstacles need to be overcome before English can become more widely accepted as the common medium of communication.published_or_final_versio

A soft coarse-grained reconfigurable array based high-level synthesis methodology: Promoting design productivity and exploring extreme FPGA frequency

Compared to the use of a typical software development flow, the productivity of developing FPGA-based compute applications remains much lower. Although the use of high-level synthesis (HLS) tools may partly alleviate this shortcoming, the lengthy low-level FPGA implementation process remains a major obstacle to high productivity computing, limiting the number of compile-debug-edit cycles per day. Furthermore, high-level application developers often lack the intimate hardware engineering experience that is needed to achieve high performance on FPGAs, therefore undermining their usefulness as accelerators. To address the productivity and performance problems, a HLS methodology that utilizes soft coarse-grained reconfigurable arrays (SCGRAs) as an intermediate compilation step is presented. Instead of compiling high-level applications directly to circuits, the compilation process is reduced to an operation scheduling task targeting the SCGRA. © 2013 IEEE.published_or_final_versio

A model for peak matrix performance on FPGAs

Computations involving matrices form the kernel of a large spectrum of computationally demanding applications for which FPGAs have actively been utilized as accelerators. The performances of such matrix operations on FPGAs are related to underlying architectural parameters such as computational resources, memory and I/O bandwidth. A model that gives bounds on the peak performance of matrix-vector and matrix-matrix multiplication operations on FPGAs based on these parameters is presented. The architecture and efficiency of existing implementations are compared against the model. Future trends in matrix performance on FPGA devices are estimated based on the performance model and system parameters from the past decade. © 2011 IEEE.published_or_final_versio

An experimental investigation on friction characteristics of air flow in microtube with structured surface roughness

This paper was presented at the 3rd Micro and Nano Flows Conference (MNF2011), which was held at the Makedonia Palace Hotel, Thessaloniki in Greece. The conference was organised by Brunel University and supported by the Italian Union of Thermofluiddynamics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, University of Thessaly, IPEM, the Process Intensification Network, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, the Heat Transfer Society, HEXAG - the Heat Exchange Action Group, and the Energy Institute.Experiments were conducted in this research to investigate roughness effect to flow characteristics and heat transfer coefficient of air and CO2 flow in circular micro-tubes. The internal surface of tested tube included smooth, structure helical fin surfaces and random roughness surfaces. Smooth tube is a commercial S. S. 304 tube with internal diameter of 962 μm and average roughness Ra=0.8 μm, while rough circular tubes were lab made Nickel tube with diameters ranging from 926 μm to 977 μm and roughness elements from 5.3 μm to 44.6 μm in height. The experimental results indicated that f and Nu in smooth tube was predicted very well by conventional correlations both for air and CO2. In rough tubes the friction factor was significant higher than the prediction of conventional correlations both in laminar and turbulent flow. Heat transfer enhancement in laminar flow is slightly, nevertheless, in turbulent flow the heat transfer enhancement was significant and the enhancement increases with the increasing of Re. The random rough tubes revealed a higher heat transfer enhancement than the structured helical fin tubes

Photoacoustic Imaging for Noninvasive Periodontal Probing Depth Measurements.

The periodontal probe is the gold standard tool for periodontal examinations, including probing depth measurements, but is limited by systematic and random errors. Here, we used photoacoustic ultrasound for high-spatial resolution imaging of probing depths. Specific contrast from dental pockets was achieved with food-grade cuttlefish ink as a contrast medium. Here, 39 porcine teeth (12 teeth with artificially deeper pockets) were treated with the contrast agent, and the probing depths were measured with novel photoacoustic imaging and a Williams periodontal probe. There were statistically significant differences between the 2 measurement approaches for distal, lingual, and buccal sites but not mesial. Bland-Altman analysis revealed that all bias values were < ±0.25 mm, and the coefficients of variation for 5 replicates were <11%. The photoacoustic imaging approach also offered 0.01-mm precision and could cover the entire pocket, as opposed to the probe-based approach, which is limited to only a few sites. This report is the first to use photoacoustic imaging for probing depth measurements with potential implications to the dental field, including tools for automated dental examinations or noninvasive examinations

Calcium isotope fractionation during microbially induced carbonate mineral precipitation

We report the calcium isotope fractionation during the microbially-induced precipitation of calcium carbonate minerals in pure cultures of the marine sulfate-reducing bacterium Desulfovibrio bizertensis. These data are used to explore how the calcium isotope fractionation factor during microbially-induced carbonate mineral precipitation differs from the better-constrained calcium isotope fractionation factors during biogenic or abiotic carbonate mineral precipitation. Bacterial growth was then modulated with antibiotics, and the evolution of δ44Ca in solution was monitored under different microbial growth rates. The faster the microbial growth rate, the larger the calcium isotope fractionation during carbonate mineral precipitation, ranging from Δ44Ca(s-f) between -1.07‰ and -0.48‰. The reported calcium isotope fractionation can help us understand the link between calcium isotope fractionation and microbial metabolism in carbonate minerals precipitated during sedimentary diagenesis.The work was supported by ERC 307582 StG (CARBONSINK) to AVT and NERC 700 NE/R013519/1 to HJ

The role of religious coping and social support on medication adherence and quality of life among the elderly with type 2 diabetes

© 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG. Purpose: Type 2 diabetes is a major public health issue particularly in the elderly. Religion may affect the Health Related Quality of Life (HRQoL) in such patients, mediated by factors such as religious coping and social support. This study aimed to investigate the impact of religiosity on medication adherence and HRQoL. Methods: 793 adults (> 65 years old, 45% females) were recruited from 4 diabetes care centers and followed for 1 year. Duke University Religion Index, Spiritual Coping Strategies, Multidimensional Perceived Social Support, Medication Adherence Report Scale, WHOQOL-BREF and Diabetes-specific Quality of Life Questionnaire Module were used for assessment, as well as HbA1c and fasting blood glucose level. Using structural equation modeling, the potential paths were tested between religiosity, medication adherence and HRQoL; social support, religious coping and medication adherence served as the mediators. Results: Religious coping and social support were recognized as the significant mediators between religiosity and medication adherence (CFI = 0.983, TLI = 0.985, and RMSEA = 0.021). The relationships between religiosity and HRQoL were considerably mediated by social support, religious coping and medication adherence and these variables explained 12% and 33% of variances of generic and specific HRQoL, respectively. There was no significant direct effect of religiosity on HRQoL. HbA1c and fasting blood glucose level were successfully loaded on the latent construct of medication adherence (factor loading = 0.51 and 0.44, respectively). Conclusions: The impact of religiosity on medication adherence and HRQoL occurs through the mediators such as religious coping and social support. Therefore, to improve the adherence to treatment and quality of life, interventions may be designed based on these mediators

A comparison of SAR image speckle filters

High quality images of Earth produced by synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems have become increasingly available, however, SAR images are difficult to interpret. Speckle reduction remains one of the major issues in SAR imaging process, although speckle has been extensively studied for decades. Many reconstruction filters have been proposed and they can be classified into two categories: multilook and/or minimum mean-square error (MMSE) despeckling using the speckle model; and maximum a posteriori (MAP) or maximum likihood (ML) despeckling using the product model. The most well known Lee, Kuan, and Frost filters belong to first category. These filters are based on conventional techniques that were originally derived for stationary signals, such as MMSE. In the second category, filters are based on the product model, such as the MAP Gaussian filter and the Gamma filter, and require knowledge of the a priori probability density function. These filters force speckle to have nonstationary Gaussian or gamma distributed intensity mean. The speckle filtering is mainly Bayesian model fitting that optimizes the MAP criteria. Scene reconstruction is performed using an inversion of the ascending chain. An objective measure is required to compare the technical merits of these filters, and Shi et al. presented a comparison 15 years ago. In this paper, a brief introduction of speckle, product, and filter models is summarized. A review of some most widely used SAR image speckle filters is given. And stationary speckle filters, like Lee, Kuan, and Frost filters, and nonstationary speckle filters like Gamma MAP filter are studied. Despeckling results on stationary and nonstationary SAR image of these speckle filters are presented. © 2009 Copyright SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering.published_or_final_versio

Acupuncture Transmitted Infections

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