Comic Book Project as a Tool for Teaching Multimodal Argument and Fostering Critical Thinking Skills: Implications for the L2 Writing Classroom

One of my major responsibilities as Director of ESL Writing Program at Case Western Reserve University was to place incoming international students in the appropriate writing class based on their placement essay each fall. Overseeing the placement of 150-170 second language (L2) students in a few days was overwhelming and daunting at times, but it gave me a better sense of L2 students’ challenges in academic writing. The placement essay prompt aimed to gauge students’ academic reading and writing skills by asking them to make an argument based on a reading excerpt. Incoming freshmen were asked to summarize, respond to an excerpt and support their argument using their own experience, content from the passage or their general knowledge. It was not easy for native-English speaking students to respond to the essay prompt, but L2 students in particular struggled at various stages of the writing process. While some had trouble understanding the text, others had difficulty writing a coherent and well-organized essay. Many students engaged the text to some extent and incorporated interesting ideas into their essays, but most relied heavily on personal experiences and failed to produce well-developed arguments supported by effective evidence

Critical Discourse Analysis of Student Responses to Teacher Feedback on Student Writing

This study explores the genre of ‘student response to teacher feedback’ and analyzes students’ responses through the framework of critical discourse analysis (CDA). Drawing on CDA as a theoretical framework, we examined the structural, interactional, and interdiscursive features of the students’ comments and investigated relations between the text, interaction, and context. The structural analysis indicates that the students’ comments demonstrate their emerging academic literacy skills. Our interactional analysis shows that most students took on an active role as a good student and a hard-working writer, but some students exerted their agency by taking an opportunity to resist the authority of the teacher while others rejected it altogether. Our interdiscursive analysis illustrates that students used not only language from the teacher’s comments, but also metalanguage of the composition classroom to formulate their responses. Based on our findings, we discuss implications for teaching practices and future research on students’ responses to teacher feedback

Factors Influencing on Sexual Assertiveness of College Students

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to identify the factors influencing sexual assertiveness in dating college students. METHODS: With a cross-sectional survey design, 468 college students who have had dating experiences were recruited and answered questionnaires. Data were analyzed using t-test, ANOVA with Scheffe? test, Pearson's correlation coefficients, and multiple regression. RESULTS: The sexual assertiveness of college students showed significant results: positive correlations with self-assertiveness and negative correlations with traditional sexual attitude, gender role stereotypes. Significant predictors of sexual assertiveness were traditional sexual attitude, gender role stereotypes, and self-assertiveness. These variables explained 37% of the variance in sexual assertiveness. CONCLUSION: Findings suggest that it is important to identify and improve communication patterns in relation to sexual assertiveness. There is a need for sex education programs for college students that are relevant and effective

Consensus of Corporate E-Learning System Stakeholders Regarding the Satisfaction of End-Users

The purpose of this study is to call attention to the consensus of stakeholders of corporate e-Learning system regarding success. We identified the critical success factors (contents, technical features, management, and organizational support) as major components of corporate eLearning systems and questioned whether stakeholders’ consensus on the importance of these components facilitates the implementation of these components to achieve good quality or well. We also questioned whether the influence of these components on user satisfaction could be moderated by contextual factors. Based on empirical testing of 18 eLearning user companies, we verified that the consensus of stakeholders regarding the importance of content, technological features, and organizational support has a positive influence on the perceived quality of these factors in their e-Learning systems, which in turn is positively related to user satisfaction. The learning subjects and learning style did significantly moderate the influences of these perceived qualities on user satisfaction

Effects of surface ligands on the charge memory characteristics of CdSe/ZnS nanocrystals in TiO2 thin film

harge memory characteristics have been systematically studied based on colloidal CdSe/ZnS nanocrystal quantum dots (QDs) embedded in similar to 50 nm-thick TiO2 film. Ligand-capped QDs showed negligible electron charging effect, implying that the electron affinity of QDs was significantly decreased by surface dipole layer surrounding QDs. In contrast, the hole charging was affected by the carrier injection blocking effect of the surface ligands. Efficient electron and hole charging characteristics were realized by removing the surface ligands via H-2 plasma treatment.open4

Efficacy of Scrambler Therapy in Patients With Painful Diabetic Peripheral Neuropathy: a Single-arm, Prospective, Pilot Study

BACKGROUND: A variety of medications are available to manage painful diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN), but the proper treatment remains challenging. Accordingly, various neuromodulation modalities have been used. However, no prospective clinical trials have evaluated the use of scrambler therapy (ST) in painful DPN. This study aimed to explore the long-term effects of ST in managing painful DPN. METHODS: The patients received 10 consecutive STs of 45 minutes every 1 to 2 days. The primary outcome was pain score. We measured the visual analog scale (VAS) pain scores at baseline, during ST, immediately after ST, and at 1, 2, 3, and 6 months after ST. The secondary outcomes were Michigan Neuropathy Screening Instrument (MNSI), Semmes-Weinstein monofilament test, and Leeds Assessment of Neuropathic Symptoms and Signs pain scores, which were measured at baseline, immediately after ST, and at 1, 2, 3, and 6 months after ST. RESULTS: VAS scores showed significant improvement at the 8th, 9th, and 10th sessions during ST and 1 month after ST. The MNSI self-report component score was decreased 1 month after the ST. However, all other outcomes did not show significant differences compared to the baseline. CONCLUSION: ST may have short-term effects and limited long-term effects on painful DPN

Structural safety inspection of reinforced concrete structures considering failure probabilities of structural members

Regular safety inspections of existing reinforced concrete (RC) structures are required according to the regulations and criteria set by each country. In South Korea, the safety inspection regulations provided by the Korea Infrastructure Safety and Technology Corporation (KISTEC) are followed. These regulations were developed based on fuzzy theory to avoid subjective decisions, and provide standardized deterioration grades for member types, floors, and the entire structure. However, the safety inspection regulation by the KISTEC often provides unconservative evaluation results. In particular, as the importance factors of beam and slab members are set lower than those of other members, there are cases in which deteriorations occurring in beams and slabs are not properly reflected in the floor level evaluation. In this study, to overcome such limitations, case studies were carried out and modified importance factors for structural member types were proposed considering the failure probabilities of each member type based on the reliability theory. The importance modification factor was calculated based on the strength ratio of structural members so that the more dangerous the members are, the more impact they give on the evaluation. Overall, compared to the KISTEC method, the proposed method provided conservative but practical assessment results, and it was found that the proposed importance factors can be very useful to properly reflect the effects of damaged members on the deterioration status evaluation of the floors and the entire structure

Fundamental Bounds in Measurements for Estimating Quantum States

Quantum measurement unavoidably disturbs the state of a quantum system if any information about the system is extracted. Recently, the concept of reversing quantum measurement has been introduced and has attracted much attention. Numerous efforts have thus been devoted to understanding the fundamental relation of the amount of information obtained by measurement to either state disturbance or reversibility. Here, we experimentally prove the trade-off relations in quantum measurement with respect to both state disturbance and reversibility. By demonstrating the quantitative bound of the trade-off relations, we realize an optimal measurement for estimating quantum systems with minimum disturbance and maximum reversibility. Our results offer fundamental insights on quantum measurement and practical guidelines for implementing various quantum information protocols

Input of terrestrial organic matter linked to deglaciation increased mercury transport to the Svalbard fjords

Deglaciation has accelerated the transport of minerals as well as modern and ancient organic matter from land to fjord sediments in Spitsbergen, Svalbard, in the European Arctic Ocean. Consequently, such sediments may contain significant levels of total mercury (THg) bound to terrestrial organic matter. The present study compared THg contents in surface sediments from three fjord settings in Spitsbergen: Hornsund in the southern Spitsbergen, which has high annual volume of loss glacier and receives sediment from multiple tidewater glaciers, Dicksonfjorden in the central Spitsbergen, which receives sediment from glacifluvial rivers, and Wijdefjorden in the northern Spitsbergen, which receive sediments from a mixture of tidewater glaciers and glacifluvial rivers. Our results showed that the THg (52 +/- 15 ng g(-1)) bound to organic matter (OM) was the highest in the Hornsund surface sediments, where the glacier loss (0.44 km(3) yr(-1)) and organic carbon accumulation rates (9.3 similar to 49.4 g m(-2) yr(-1)) were elevated compared to other fjords. Furthermore, the delta C-13 (-27 similar to -24 parts per thousand) and delta S-34 values (-10 similar to 15 parts per thousand) of OM indicated that most of OM were originated from terrestrial sources. Thus, the temperature-driven glacial melting could release more OM originating from the meltwater or terrestrial materials, which are available for THg binding in the European Arctic fjord ecosystems.11Ysciescopu