A Comparative Evaluation of Materials Selection in the Integrated Course of NHCE and NPCE

Based on the theories of textbook evaluation, this research chooses materials from the first and second volumes of the Student’s Books in New Progressive College English Integrated Course (short for NPCE, published by Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press in 2017) and New Horizon College English Reading and Writing Course (short for NHCE, published by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press in 2015) as research subjects for comparison and analysis. The paper analyses the two sets of books in terms of language, contents and exercises according to the College English Course Requirements, and tries to find out which one can better cater for the needs of students. The comparative analyses mainly includes word quantity, word difficulty, word frequency, the proportion of new words, the total number of sentences and their complexity, the genres and topics of the texts and the comprehensiveness of exercises. Results indicate that NHCE is more suitable for students in terms of language and picks passages which have different emphases from NPCE and focuses more on arousing students’ thinking, while the topics and exercises in NPCE are more comprehensive. Both sets of books have their advantages and disadvantages. It is expected that this research will provide textbook compilers with help and reference in their future work.

The Effects of Task Complexity on English Writing Performance

Based on Skehan’s Limited Attentional Capacity Model and Robinson’s Cognitive Hypothesis Model, and taking 79 sophomores from three parallel classes of English majors in Zhijiang College of Zhejiang University of Technology as subjects, this paper investigates the effects of three different types of writing tasks with different complexity on English majors’ English writing output. Three writing tasks are designed with different levels of complexity by controlling four variables: elements, reasoning demands, prior knowledge, single task. The research aims to find out the influence of writing tasks of different complexity on learners’ language performance (including accuracy, fluency and complexity), their total scores and the content of their compositions. The results show that task complexity has a significant impact on learners’ language accuracy and total writing scores; It has some but not very significant effects on learners’ lexical complexity, but it has no effect on language fluency and syntactic complexity. The study also finds that task types have a significant impact on students’ English writing content. The comprehensive writing task can measure students’ English writing ability more effectively, in that it triggers richer contents and optimized structures in students’ compositions

Acute Administration of n-3 Rich Triglyceride Emulsions Provides Cardioprotection in Murine Models after Ischemia-Reperfusion

Dietary n-3 fatty acids (FAs) may reduce cardiovascular disease risk. We questioned whether acute administration of n-3 rich triglyceride (TG) emulsions could preserve cardiac function and decrease injury after ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) insult. We used two different experimental models: in vivo, C57BL/6 mice were exposed to acute occlusion of the left anterior descending coronary artery (LAD), and ex-vivo, C57BL/6 murine hearts were perfused using Langendorff technique (LT). In the LAD model, mice treated with n-3 TG emulsion (1.5g/kg body weight), immediately after ischemia and 1h later during reperfusion, significantly reduced infarct size and maintained cardiac function (p<0.05). In the LT model, administration of n-3 TG emulsion (300mgTG/100ml) during reperfusion significantly improved functional recovery (p<0.05). In both models, lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) levels, as a marker of injury, were significantly reduced by n-3 TG emulsion. To investigate the mechanisms by which n-3 FAs protects hearts from I/R injury, we investigated changes in key pathways linked to cardioprotection. In the ex-vivo model, we showed that n-3 FAs increased phosphorylation of AKT and GSK3β proteins (p<0.05). Acute n-3 TG emulsion treatment also increased Bcl-2 protein level and reduced an autophagy marker, Beclin-1 (p<0.05). Additionally, cardioprotection by n-3 TG emulsion was linked to changes in PPARγ protein expression (p<0.05). Rosiglitazone and p-AKT inhibitor counteracted the positive effect of n-3 TG; GSK3β inhibitor plus n-3 TG significantly inhibited LDH release. We conclude that acute n-3 TG injection during reperfusion provides cardioprotection. This may prove to be a novel acute adjunctive reperfusion therapy after treating patients with myocardial infarction

Effects of high CD4 cell counts on death and attrition among HIV patients receiving antiretroviral treatment: an observational cohort study

Current WHO guidelines recommend initiating ART regardless of CD4+ cell count. In response, we conducted an observational cohort study to assess the effects of pre-ART CD4+ cell count levels on death, attrition, and death or attrition in HIV treated patients. This large HIV treatment cohort study (n = 49,155) from 2010 to 2015 was conducted in Guangxi, China. We used a Cox regression model to analyze associations between pre-ART CD4+ cell counts and death, attrition, and death or attrition. The average mortality and ART attrition rates among all treated patients were 2.63 deaths and 5.32 attritions per 100 person-years, respectively. Compared to HIV patients with 500 CD4+ cells/mm 3 at ART initiation had a significantly lower mortality rate (Adjusted hazard ratio: 0.56, 95% CI: 0.40-0.79), but significantly higher ART attrition rate (AHR: 1.17, 95% CI: 1.03-1.33). Results from this study suggest that HIV patients with high CD4+ cell counts at the time of ART initiation may be at greater risk of treatment attrition. To further reduce ART attrition, it is imperative that patient education and healthcare provider training on ART adherence be enhanced and account for CD4 levels at ART initiation

Evaluation of a Novel Biphasic Culture Medium for Recovery of Mycobacteria: A Multi-Center Study

on L-J slants. Automated liquid culture systems are expensive. A low-cost culturing medium capable of rapidly indicating the presence of mycobacteria is needed. The aim of this study was to develop and evaluate a novel biphasic culture medium for the recovery of mycobacteria from clinical sputum specimens from suspected pulmonary tuberculosis patients.<0.001).

Urban Scene Vectorized Modeling Based on Contour Deformation

Modeling urban scenes automatically is an important problem for both GIS and nonGIS specialists with applications like urban planning, autonomous driving, and virtual reality. In this paper, we present a novel contour deformation approach to generate regularized and vectorized 3D building models from the orthophoto and digital surface model (DSM).The proposed method has four major stages: dominant directions extraction, find target align direction, contour deformation, and model generation. To begin with, we extract dominant directions for each building contour in the orthophoto. Then every edge of the contour is assigned with one of the dominant directions via a Markov random field (MRF). Taking the assigned direction as target, we define a deformation energy with the Advanced Most-Isometric ParameterizationS (AMIPS) to align the contour to the dominant directions. Finally, the aligned contour is simplified and extruded to 3D models. Through the alignment deformation, we are able to straighten the contour while keeping the sharp turning corners. Our contour deformation based urban modeling approach is accurate and robust comparing with the state-of-the-arts as shown in experiments on the public dataset