Examining Factors Influencing Behavioral Intentions to Use Asynchronous Web-Based Language Learning

Over the past few years, the prevalence of web-based applications in school and at home makes learning and teaching through the Internet become an inevitable way in education. With great potentials for enriching all kinds of educational applications, web-based instruction is becoming an impressive apparatus for learning resource delivering. In this study, an asynchronous web-based language learning (AWBLL) system is employed in a vocational-technical college in Taiwan to support undergraduate English as a foreign language (EFL) learning. Drawing on the concepts from theory of reasoned action, technology acceptance model and social cognitive theory, this study proposed a comprehensive model and developed an instrument for measuring students’ intentions to use AWBLL Systems. The research findings indicate that students in EFL show great readiness to and positive intentions towards the system for EFL courses and exposed a possible benefit from its use in the long run. However, they also convey some negative opinions of the AWBLL system, suggesting additional improvement of the relative underlying factors of AWBLL technology. The results can proffer useful suggestions for web-based language learning, as well as serve as instrumental guidelines for web-based system to be effectively implemented with care to avoid attenuating students’ interests and activations

IS HEALTH LITERACY EQUAL WITH E-HEALTH LITERACY AMONG LEPROSY STAFF AT PUBLIC HEALTH CENTER PEKALONGAN DISTRICT, INDONESIA

1,2), Ming-Chin Lin1), 3), 1), Anis Fuad1

Method-specific suicide rates and accessibility of means:a small-area analysis in Taipei City, Taiwan

Abstract. Background: Few studies have investigated whether means accessibility is related to the spatial distribution of suicide. Aims: To examine the hypothesis that indicators of the accessibility to specific suicide methods were associated with method-specific suicide rates in Taipei City, Taiwan. Method: Smoothed standardized mortality ratios for method-specific suicide rates across 432 neighborhoods and their associations with means accessibility indicators were estimated using Bayesian hierarchical models. Results: The proportion of single-person households, indicating the ease of burning charcoal in the home, was associated with charcoal-burning suicide rates (adjusted rate ratio [aRR] = 1.13, 95% credible interval [CrI] = 1.03–1.25). The proportion of households living on the sixth floor or above, indicating easy access to high places, was associated with jumping suicide rates (aRR = 1.16, 95% CrI, 1.04–1.29). Neighborhoods’ adjacency to rivers, indicating easy access to water, showed no statistical evidence of an association with drowning suicide rates (aRR = 1.27, 95% CrI = 0.92–1.69). Hanging and overall suicide rates showed no associations with any of these three accessibility indicators. Limitations: This is an ecological study; associations between means accessibility and suicide cannot be directly inferred as causal. Conclusion: The findings have implications for identifying high-risk groups for charcoal-burning suicide (e.g., vulnerable individuals living alone) and preventing jumping suicides by increasing the safety of high buildings

Differential Gene Expression in Response to Papayaringspot virus Infection in Cucumis metuliferus UsingcDNA- Amplified Fragment Length PolymorphismAnalysis

A better understanding of virus resistance mechanisms can offer more effective strategies to control virus diseases. Papayaringspot virus (PRSV), Potyviridae, causes severe economical losses in papaya and cucurbit production worldwide. However,no resistance gene against PRSV has been identified to date. This study aimed to identify candidate PRSV resistance genesusing cDNA-AFLP analysis and offered an open architecture and transcriptomic method to study those transcriptsdifferentially expressed after virus inoculation. The whole genome expression profile of Cucumis metuliferus inoculated withPRSV was generated using cDNA-amplified fragment length polymorphism (cDNA-AFLP) method. Transcript derivedfragments (TDFs) identified from the resistant line PI 292190 may represent genes involved in the mechanism of PRSVresistance. C. metuliferus susceptible Acc. 2459 and resistant PI 292190 lines were inoculated with PRSV and subsequentlytotal RNA was isolated for cDNA-AFLP analysis. More than 400 TDFs were expressed specifically in resistant line PI 292190. Atotal of 116 TDFs were cloned and their expression patterns and putative functions in the PRSV-resistance mechanism werefurther characterized. Subsequently, 28 out of 116 candidates which showed two-fold higher expression levels in resistant PI292190 than those in susceptible Acc. 2459 after virus inoculation were selected from the reverse northern blot andbioinformatic analysis. Furthermore, the time point expression profiles of these candidates by northern blot analysissuggested that they might play roles in resistance against PRSV and could potentially provide valuable information forcontrolling PRSV disease in the future