Empirical Study on the Coordinated Development of Energy-Economy-Environment in Henan Province

This article establishes a comprehensive development index system of energy-economy-environment, and studies the 18 cities’ 3E system in Henan province through principal component analysis. The results show that 3E system of each city in Henan province exists in lager discordance, which has become the bottleneck to restrain economic development. Based on the analysis results, this paper puts forward countermeasures and suggestions to promote energy, economy and environment systems’ coordinated development

Un approccio integrato per facilitare la formazione di competenze metodologiche in un programma di formazione degli insegnanti

Despite the increasingly recognized importance of research skills of teachers, teacher trainees are often dread of discrete research curricula and deem them as uninteresting and disengaging. This paper presents a model that enables teacher trainees in the Master’s program of Education in Classroom Technology at a Mid-western university in the United States to acquire methodologicalskills in task-based real learning environments. This model employs an escalating process of four phases: Generating Initial Project Ideas, Proposing Research Plans, Collecting and Analyzing Data, and Completing Master’s Project and Reporting Findings. Through these four phases, the model aims to streamline core courses and strengthen faculty mentorship to support students’ scholarship and creative endeavors. The program evaluation suggests that themodel was well received by teacher trainees. Teacher trainees reported positive program experience and highly regarded the academic challenges encountered and the support received in the program. Limitations of the study were discussed and future studies were suggested.Nonostante l’importanza sempre più riconosciuta delle competenze di ricerca degli insegnanti, gli insegnanti tirocinanti hanno spesso paura dei curricula di ricerca discreta e li considerano come disinteressanti e disinteressati. Questo documento presenta un modello che consente agli insegnanti che insegnano nel programma di Master in Educazione in Tecnologie in aula in una università del Midwest, negli Stati Uniti, di acquisire abilità metodologiche negli ambientidi apprendimento reali basati su compiti. Questo modello impiega un processo in quattro fasi: generazione di idee di progetto iniziali, proposizione di piani di ricerca, raccolta e analisi dei dati e completamento del progetto del master e risultati dei rapporti. Attraverso queste quattro fasi, il modello mira a semplificare i corsi di base e rafforzare la tutorato delle facoltà persostenere la borsa di studio degli studenti e gli sforzi creativi. La valutazione del programma suggerisce che il modello è stato ben accolto dai tirocinanti degli insegnanti. I tirocinanti degli insegnanti hanno riportato un’esperienza positiva sul programma e hanno considerato molto le sfide accademiche incontrate e il supporto ricevuto nel programma. Sono state discusse le limitazioni dello studio e sono stati suggeriti studi futuri

American K-12 CFL Teachers’ Expected Competence, Actual Qualifications, and Needs for Professional Training: A Concurrent Mixed-method Study

In recent years, there has been a growing demand in the global labor market for proficiency in Chinese as a foreign or second language. Yet not much is known regarding how Chinese language education is provided by the U.S. schools in order to meet this demand. The present study investigated the competence that a Chinese teacher is expected to have as well as the qualification that currently in-service K-12 teachers of Chinese are actually possess. In addition, this research explored teaching philosophies, attitudes, pedagogy, challenges and needs for professional training among the Chinese teachers who are currently hired by U.S. K-12 schools. A concurrent mixed method design was employed in this study to collect both quantitative and qualitative data with a questionnaire from a sample of 45 Chinese teachers. Result showed that most U.S. K-12 schools have minimum and preferred qualifications specified for a long-term Chinese teaching position, however there is a gap between the preferred qualification from the perspective of employers and the actual qualifications that current K-12 Chinese teachers possess. Teachers’ attitudes and beliefs about Chinese teaching competency are consistent with the expectations of their employers to some extent. Main finding suggests that K-12 Chinese teachers’ teaching philosophies are influence by both traditional Chinese culture and modern western culture. Lastly but not least, the majority of the participants rated classroom management and pedagogy as the two areas where professional training is needed the most

American K-12 CFL Teachers’ Expected Competence, Actual Qualifications, and Needs for Professional Training: A Concurrent Mixed-method Study

In recent years, there has been a growing demand in the global labor market for proficiency in Chinese as a foreign or second language. Yet not much is known regarding how Chinese language education is provided by the U.S. schools in order to meet this demand. The present study investigated the competence that a Chinese teacher is expected to have as well as the qualification that currently in-service K-12 teachers of Chinese are actually possess. In addition, this research explored teaching philosophies, attitudes, pedagogy, challenges and needs for professional training among the Chinese teachers who are currently hired by U.S. K-12 schools. A concurrent mixed method design was employed in this study to collect both quantitative and qualitative data with a questionnaire from a sample of 45 Chinese teachers. Result showed that most U.S. K-12 schools have minimum and preferred qualifications specified for a long-term Chinese teaching position, however there is a gap between the preferred qualification from the perspective of employers and the actual qualifications that current K-12 Chinese teachers possess. Teachers’ attitudes and beliefs about Chinese teaching competency are consistent with the expectations of their employers to some extent. Main finding suggests that K-12 Chinese teachers’ teaching philosophies are influence by both traditional Chinese culture and modern western culture. Lastly but not least, the majority of the participants rated classroom management and pedagogy as the two areas where professional training is needed the most

An ontology-aided, natural language-based approach for multi-constraint BIM model querying

Being able to efficiently retrieve the required building information is critical for construction project stakeholders to carry out their engineering and management activities. Natural language interface (NLI) systems are emerging as a time and cost-effective way to query Building Information Models (BIMs). However, the existing methods cannot logically combine different constraints to perform fine-grained queries, dampening the usability of natural language (NL)-based BIM queries. This paper presents a novel ontology-aided semantic parser to automatically map natural language queries (NLQs) that contain different attribute and relational constraints into computer-readable codes for querying complex BIM models. First, a modular ontology was developed to represent NL expressions of Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) concepts and relationships, and was then populated with entities from target BIM models to assimilate project-specific information. Hereafter, the ontology-aided semantic parser progressively extracts concepts, relationships, and value restrictions from NLQs to fully identify constraint conditions, resulting in standard SPARQL queries with reasoning rules to successfully retrieve IFC-based BIM models. The approach was evaluated based on 225 NLQs collected from BIM users, with a 91% accuracy rate. Finally, a case study about the design-checking of a real-world residential building demonstrates the practical value of the proposed approach in the construction industry

An Integrated Approach to Facilitate the Training of Methodological Competencies in a Teacher Education Program

Despite the increasingly recognized importance of research skills of teachers, teacher trainees are often dread of discrete research curricula and deem them as uninteresting and disengaging. This paper presents a model that enables teacher trainees in the Master’s program of Education in Classroom Technology at a Mid-western university in the United States to acquire methodological skills in task-based real learning environments. This model employs an escalating process of four phases: Generating Initial Project Ideas, Proposing Research Plans, Collecting and Analyzing Data, and Completing Master’s Project and Reporting Findings. Through these four phases, the model aims to streamline core courses and strengthen faculty mentorship to support students’ scholarship and creative endeavors. The program evaluation suggests that the model was well received by teacher trainees. Teacher trainees reported positive program experience and highly regarded the academic challenges encountered and the support received in the program. Limitations of the study were discussed and future studies were suggested

Genetically programmed chiral organoborane synthesis

Recent advances in enzyme engineering and design have expanded nature’s catalytic repertoire to functions that are new to biology. However, only a subset of these engineered enzymes can function in living systems. Finding enzymatic pathways that form chemical bonds that are not found in biology is particularly difficult in the cellular environment, as this depends on the discovery not only of new enzyme activities, but also of reagents that are both sufficiently reactive for the desired transformation and stable in vivo. Here we report the discovery, evolution and generalization of a fully genetically encoded platform for producing chiral organoboranes in bacteria. Escherichia coli cells harbouring wild-type cytochrome c from Rhodothermus marinus8 (Rma cyt c) were found to form carbon–boron bonds in the presence of borane–Lewis base complexes, through carbene insertion into boron–hydrogen bonds. Directed evolution of Rma cyt c in the bacterial catalyst provided access to 16 novel chiral organoboranes. The catalyst is suitable for gram-scale biosynthesis, providing up to 15,300 turnovers, a turnover frequency of 6,100 h^(–1), a 99:1 enantiomeric ratio and 100% chemoselectivity. The enantiopreference of the biocatalyst could also be tuned to provide either enantiomer of the organoborane products. Evolved in the context of whole-cell catalysts, the proteins were more active in the whole-cell system than in purified forms. This study establishes a DNA-encoded and readily engineered bacterial platform for borylation; engineering can be accomplished at a pace that rivals the development of chemical synthetic methods, with the ability to achieve turnovers that are two orders of magnitude (over 400-fold) greater than those of known chiral catalysts for the same class of transformation. This tunable method for manipulating boron in cells could expand the scope of boron chemistry in living systems

Cardiac CaMKIIδ and Wenxin Keli Prevents Ang II-Induced Cardiomyocyte Hypertrophy by Modulating CnA-NFATc4 and Inflammatory Signaling Pathways in H9c2 Cells

Previous studies have demonstrated that calcium-/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII) and calcineurin A-nuclear factor of activated T-cell (CnA-NFAT) signaling pathways play key roles in cardiac hypertrophy (CH). However, the interaction between CaMKII and CnA-NFAT signaling remains unclear. H9c2 cells were cultured and treated with angiotensin II (Ang II) with or without silenced CaMKIIδ (siCaMKII) and cyclosporine A (CsA, a calcineurin inhibitor) and subsequently treated with Wenxin Keli (WXKL). Patch clamp recording was conducted to assess L-type Ca2+ current (ICa-L), and the expression of proteins involved in signaling pathways was measured by western blotting. Myocardial cytoskeletal protein and nuclear translocation of target proteins were assessed by immunofluorescence. The results indicated that siCaMKII suppressed Ang II-induced CH, as evidenced by reduced cell surface area and ICa-L. Notably, siCaMKII inhibited Ang II-induced activation of CnA and NFATc4 nuclear transfer. Inflammatory signaling was inhibited by siCaMKII and WXKL. Interestingly, CsA inhibited CnA-NFAT pathway expression but activated CaMKII signaling. In conclusion, siCaMKII may improve CH, possibly by blocking CnA-NFAT and MyD88 signaling, and WXKL has a similar effect. These data suggest that inhibiting CaMKII, but not CnA, may be a promising approach to attenuate CH and arrhythmia progression

Encapsulating atomic molybdenum into hierarchical nitrogen-doped carbon nanoboxes for efficient oxygen reduction

Construction of single-atom catalysts (SACs) with maximally exposed active sites remains a challenging task mainly because of the lack of suitable host matrices. In this study, hierarchical N-doped carbon nanoboxes composed of ultrathin nanosheets with dispersed atomic Mo (denoted as hierarchical SA-Mo-C nanoboxes) were fabricated via a template-engaged multistep synthesis process. Comprehensive characterizations, including X-ray absorption fine structure analysis, reveal the formation of Mo-N atomic sites uniformly anchored on the hierarchical carbon nanoboxes. The prepared catalysts offer structural and morphological advantages, including ultrathin nanosheet units, unique hollow structures and abundant active Mo-N species, that result in excellent activity with a half-wave potential of 0.86 V vs. RHE and superb stability for the oxygen reduction reaction in 0.1 M KOH; thus, the catalysts are promising air-cathode catalysts for Zn-air batteries with a high peak power density of 157.6 mW cm