Teachers’ Use of Multiple Instructional Strategies: A Comparison of Reading Performance of Third Grade English Language Learners in ESL/Bilingual Programs

The purposes of this dissertation are three-fold. The first purpose is to identify the effects of four different English as a Second Language/English as a Foreign Language (ESL/EFL) instructional strategies (graphic organizers, scaffolding, interactive read aloud, and leveled questions) on reading performance of English language learners (ELLs) across grade level, intervention duration, ESL/EFL environment, and sample size. The second purpose is to ascertain how frequently teachers should use these four strategies to enhance third-grade ELLs’ reading performance. The third purpose is to discuss how Project English Language and Literacy Acquisition (Project ELLA) curriculum can be modified to fit Taiwan’s English-language planning and education policy. To respond to the first purpose, a meta-analysis for quantitative synthesis was adopted to review and examine the effectiveness of the four instructional strategies on ELLs’ reading performance. For the second purpose, a multilevel path analysis using structural equation modeling was adopted to examine if teachers’ frequency of using these four instructional strategies moderates the relationship between ELLs’ reading performance on pretest and on posttest. For the third purpose, a case study was conducted to discuss incorporating Project ELLA into Taiwan’s English-language planning and education policy. The overall findings supported an educational belief that explicit instruction coupled with multiple instructional strategies is essential for enhancing ELLs’ reading performance. The findings further indicated that higher frequency of using multiple instructional strategies had a significant interaction effect on the relationship between ELLs’ reading performance on the pretest and the posttest. To conclude, the use of multiple instructional strategies is a key factor in predicting successful reading performance. To enhance ELLs’ performance in reading, teachers are strongly suggested to adopt multiple instructional strategies. When using these strategies, teachers should pay special attention to the frequency of use. A more frequent use of multiple instructional strategies should help improve ELLs’ reading performance. The four strategies combined with the curriculum of Project ELLA should strengthen Taiwan’s English-language planning and education policy

Teachers’ Use of Multiple Instructional Strategies: A Comparison of Reading Performance of Third Grade English Language Learners in ESL/Bilingual Programs

The purposes of this dissertation are three-fold. The first purpose is to identify the effects of four different English as a Second Language/English as a Foreign Language (ESL/EFL) instructional strategies (graphic organizers, scaffolding, interactive read aloud, and leveled questions) on reading performance of English language learners (ELLs) across grade level, intervention duration, ESL/EFL environment, and sample size. The second purpose is to ascertain how frequently teachers should use these four strategies to enhance third-grade ELLs’ reading performance. The third purpose is to discuss how Project English Language and Literacy Acquisition (Project ELLA) curriculum can be modified to fit Taiwan’s English-language planning and education policy. To respond to the first purpose, a meta-analysis for quantitative synthesis was adopted to review and examine the effectiveness of the four instructional strategies on ELLs’ reading performance. For the second purpose, a multilevel path analysis using structural equation modeling was adopted to examine if teachers’ frequency of using these four instructional strategies moderates the relationship between ELLs’ reading performance on pretest and on posttest. For the third purpose, a case study was conducted to discuss incorporating Project ELLA into Taiwan’s English-language planning and education policy. The overall findings supported an educational belief that explicit instruction coupled with multiple instructional strategies is essential for enhancing ELLs’ reading performance. The findings further indicated that higher frequency of using multiple instructional strategies had a significant interaction effect on the relationship between ELLs’ reading performance on the pretest and the posttest. To conclude, the use of multiple instructional strategies is a key factor in predicting successful reading performance. To enhance ELLs’ performance in reading, teachers are strongly suggested to adopt multiple instructional strategies. When using these strategies, teachers should pay special attention to the frequency of use. A more frequent use of multiple instructional strategies should help improve ELLs’ reading performance. The four strategies combined with the curriculum of Project ELLA should strengthen Taiwan’s English-language planning and education policy

Campus Visits as Predictors of Postsecondary Enrollment in Low-Income, Rural School Districts

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between visits to college campuses by middle school and high school students and postsecondary enrollment rates, where campus visits are classified as both formal college visits and also informal campus visits. Specifically, Traditional Campus Visits and Educational Campus Field Trips are categorized as two distinct service types sponsored by the GEAR UP (Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs) grant program in 11 rural, western North Carolina school districts. The participants were 2,274 students who started the GEAR UP program in 7th grade and remained enrolled at a participating GEAR UP school through high school graduation. Using logistic regression analyses to estimate the effects of two different campus visit types, and the year in which the visits occurred, the results indicated that both informal (Educational Campus Field Trip) and formal (Traditional College Visit) campus visits had an association with postsecondary enrollment rates, with formal campus visits collectively having a stronger impact than informal campus visits. We also found that visits taken earlier in a student’s academic career had an important association with postsecondary enrollment rates

Clonal spread of multidrug-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii in eastern Taiwan

Background and PurposeThis study was conducted to investigate the molecular epidemiology and antimicrobial susceptibility of multidrug-resistant (MDR) Acinetobacter baumannii to three types of antibiotics.MethodsOne hundred and thirty-four specimens of MDR A baumannii were collected from three branches (Taipei, Dalin, and Hualien branches) of Buddhist Tzu Chi Hospital, which are located in northern, southern, and eastern Taiwan, during 2007. Genotyping was performed by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis. Antibiotic susceptibilities to colistin, rifampicin, and tigecycline were determined. The synergistic effects of rifampin and colistin were also evaluated.ResultsAntibiotic susceptibility testing showed that 10.4%, 47.8% and 45.5% of the MDR A baumannii isolates are resistant to colistin, rifampicin, and tigecycline, respectively. A majority of the rifampicin-resistant isolates (62.7%) were found in the Haulien branch, whereas 62.2% of tigecycline-resistant isolates were found in the Taipei branch. The combination of colistin and rifampicin had a synergistic effect on all of the isolates. Genotyping by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis identified 17, 23, and 11 pulsotypes in the Taipei, Dalin, and Haulien branches, respectively. Furthermore, 74.5% of isolates in the Haulien branch were identified as one of three pulsotypes. Among 37 rifampicin-resistant and 22 tigecycline-resistant MDR A baumannii isolates found in the Haulien branch, 51.3% (19/37) and 50% (11/22) of the isolates belonged to the same clone, respectively.ConclusionThis study confirms the high prevalence of resistance to rifampicin and tigecycline in MDR A baumannii in the three hospitals that were studied, and the high proportion of identical strains that exist in eastern Taiwan

Liver angiosarcoma, a rare liver malignancy, presented with intraabdominal bleeding due to rupture- a case report

Liver angiosarcoma is a rare disease, however it still ranks as the third of most common primary liver maligancies. The prognosis of liver angiosarcoma is very poor with almost all patients with this kind of disease die within 2 years after diagnosis. No specific symptoms and signs are closely associated with this disease. Here, we report a case presenting shock status at first due to rupture of liver angiosarcoma- induced internal bleeding. After emergent transarterial embolization (TAE), she received partial hepatectomy two weeks later. 4 months after operation, she is still with a good performance status without obvious recurrence or metastasis identified

Taiwan Oscillation Network

The Taiwan Oscillation Network (TON) is a ground-based network to measure solar intensity oscillations to study the internal structure of the Sun. K-line full-disk images of 1000 pixels diameter are taken at a rate of one image per minute. Such data would provide information onp-modes withl as high as 1000. The TON will consist of six identical telescope systems at proper longitudes around the world. Three telescope systems have been installed at Teide Observatory (Tenerife), Huairou Solar Observing Station (near Beijing), and Big Bear Solar Observatory (California). The telescopes at these three sites have been taking data simultaneously since October of 1994. Anl – v diagram derived from 512 images is included to show the quality of the data

Induction of Bcl-2 Expression by Hepatitis B Virus Pre-S2 Mutant Large Surface Protein Resistance to 5-Fluorouracil Treatment in Huh-7 Cells

BACKGROUND: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common malignancies worldwide with poor prognosis due to resistance to conventional chemotherapy and limited efficacy of radiotherapy. Our previous studies have indicated that expression of Hepatitis B virus pre-S2 large mutant surface antigen (HBV pre-S2Δ) is associated with a significant risk of developing HCC. However, the relationship between HBV pre-S2Δ protein and the resistance of chemotherapeutic drug treatment is still unclear. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Here, we show that the expression of HBV pre-S2Δ mutant surface protein in Huh-7 cell significantly promoted cell growth and colony formation. Furthermore, HBV pre-S2Δ protein increased both mRNA (2.7±0.5-fold vs. vehicle, p=0.05) and protein (3.2±0.3-fold vs. vehicle, p=0.01) levels of Bcl-2 in Huh-7 cells. HBV pre-S2Δ protein also enhances Bcl-2 family, Bcl-xL and Mcl-1, expression in Huh-7 cells. Meanwhile, induction of NF-κB p65, ERK, and Akt phosphorylation, and GRP78 expression, an unfolded protein response chaperone, were observed in HBV pre-S2Δ and HBV pre-S-expressing cells. Induction of Bcl-2 expression by HBV pre-S2Δ protein resulted in resistance to 5-fluorouracil treatment in colony formation, caspase-3 assay, and cell apoptosis, and can enhance cell death by co-incubation with Bcl-2 inhibitor. Similarly, transgenic mice showed higher expression of Bcl-2 in liver tissue expressing HBV pre-S2Δ large surface protein in vivo. CONCLUSION/SIGNIFICANCE: Our result demonstrates that HBV pre-S2Δ increased Bcl-2 expression which plays an important role in resistance to 5-fluorouracil-caused cell death. Therefore, these data provide an important chemotherapeutic strategy in HBV pre-S2Δ-associated tumor

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Non-Native Conformational Isomers of the Catalytic Domain of PCSK9 Induce an Immune Response, Reduce Lipids and Increase LDL Receptor Levels

PCSK9 (Proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 9) increases plasma cholesterol levels by promoting LDL receptor degradation. Current antibody inhibitors block the interaction between PCSK9 and LDL receptors, significantly decrease plasma cholesterol levels, and provide beneficial clinical outcomes. To reduce the action of PCSK9 in plasma, a novel strategy that will produce a panel of non-native, conformationally-altered isomers of PCSK9 (X-PCSK9) to develop active immunotherapy targeting of native PCSK9 and inhibiting/blocking the interaction of PCSK9 with LDL receptor, thus decreasing plasma cholesterol levels is proposed. The authors used the scrambled disulfide bond technique to generate conformationally-altered isomers of the catalytic domain of mouse PCSK9. The focus was on the immune response of four X-isomers and their effects on plasma cholesterol and triglyceride levels in both C57BL/6J and Apoe−/− mice. The authors showed that the four immunogens produced significant immunogenicity against native PCSK9 to day 120 after immunization of C57BL/6J and Apoe−/− mice. This resulted in significantly decreased plasma cholesterol levels in C57BL/6J mice, and to a lesser degree in Apoe−/− mice. The X-PCSK9-B1 treated mice had increased LDL receptor mRNA and protein levels at day 120 after treatment. Thus, this study provides a new, potentially promising approach that uses long-term immunotherapy for a treatment of hypercholesterolemia

Positron Emission Tomography/Computed Tomography False Positivity for Xanthogranulomatous Inflammation in an Adolescent with Hodgkin's Lymphoma

Although positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) is a sensitive tool for Hodgkin's lymphoma (HL) staging and response evaluation, its role in early detection of disease relapse remains controversial. A high false positivity of routine PET/CT during follow-up may result in unnecessary treatment of HL patients who are in complete remission. Here we report a 15-year-old boy who had a false positive PET/CT result during his follow-up. Debulking surgery was performed for the suspicious lesion, which showed xanthogranulomatous inflammation, fibrosis, old hemorrhage and fibrous adhesion of thymic tissue and pleura, but no residual tumor cells. One year after the surgery, this patient remained well without any evidence of disease relapse. Our case shows that PET/CT could provide false positive imaging in HL patients who are in complete remission after treatment. Tissue biopsy remains the really necessary tool of confirming disease relapse in patients with HL