Introduction
This mixed methods study examines the effects of AI-mediated language instruction on English learning achievement, L2 motivation, and self-regulated learning among English as a Foreign ...Language (EFL) learners. It addresses the increasing interest in AI-driven educational technologies and their potential to revolutionize language instruction.
Methods
Two intact classes, consisting of a total of 60 university students, participated in this study. The experimental group received AI-mediated instruction, while the control group received traditional language instruction. Pre-tests and post-tests were administered to evaluate English learning achievement across various domains, including grammar, vocabulary, reading comprehension, and writing skills. Additionally, self-report questionnaires were employed to assess L2 motivation and self-regulated learning.
Results
Quantitative analysis revealed that the experimental group achieved significantly higher English learning outcomes in all assessed areas compared to the control group. Furthermore, they exhibited greater L2 motivation and more extensive utilization of self-regulated learning strategies. These results suggest that AI-mediated instruction positively impacts English learning achievement, L2 motivation, and self-regulated learning.
Discussion
Qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews with 14 students from the experimental group shed light on the transformative effects of the AI platform. It was found to enhance engagement and offer personalized learning experiences, ultimately boosting motivation and fostering self-regulated learning. These findings emphasize the potential of AI-mediated language instruction to improve language learning outcomes, motivate learners, and promote autonomy.
Conclusion
This study contributes to evidence-based language pedagogy, offering valuable insights to educators and researchers interested in incorporating AI-powered platforms into language classrooms. The results support the notion that AI-mediated language instruction holds promise in revolutionizing language learning, and it highlights the positive impact of AI-driven educational technologies in the realm of language education.
Since the doctrine of 'keeping a low profile (KLP), attaining some achievement (ASA)' was developed, there has been much attention and study of the KLP, but little discussion of the ASA. However, it ...is exactly how the ASA has been observed that can well reflect Chinese perception of its global role. In the paper, the ASA is treated as a continuum or a fluid concept with changing values. There have been significant adjustments in the official expression of the ASA doctrine since the 2008 global financial crisis, from the original 'attaining some achievement' to 'proactively attaining achievement' around 2011, 'striving for achievement' in 2013, and 'striving for achievement in a new era' in 2017. Along with these changes, there have been roughly three rounds of debates on the ASA among Chinese scholars. While they generally agree on more proactive diplomacy in attaining achievement, scholars have debated on what achievements to attain and how to attain these achievements. While the ultimate goal is defined officially as Chinese rejuvenation, specific and interim goals of 'striving for achievement' in scholarly debates have targeted mainly China's strategic capability, institutional power and normative power. Chinese scholars have also debated on the general principles, diplomatic style and tactics that China should follow by focusing on three relationships: the relationship between the KLP and the ASA, the Sino-US relationship, and the relationship between China and the international system. The author provides an analytical framework and thorough examination of the development of the ASA doctrine, and presents the scholarly debates along its development path, in the hope that this study may facilitate the understanding of the outside world on how China perceives its global role.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Photocatalytic oxidation of organic pollutants using the solar energy is environmentally and economically attractive for developing an energy sustainable organic wastewater treatment process. Here, ...we employed the impregnation-thermal method to prepare novel carbon dot (CD) dispersed graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) (GCN)/pyromellitic dianhydride (PDI) (CD/GCN/PDI) composites for photocatalytic H2O-to-H2O2 and on-site oxidation of organic pollutants in contaminated or waste water. After a 5-h visible-light irradiation, 252 μM of H2O2 can be yielded by the CD/GCN/PDI composites. The CD, serving as an electron reservoir, dispersed on the GCN/PDI composite (i.e., CD0.003/GCN/PDI) facilitates the separation of photo-excited electrons to promote the two-electron reduction O2-to-H2O2 (O2→˙O2−→H2O2). Most importantly, it also on-site activates H2O2 to form ·OH radicals (H2O2→·OH) to enhance oxidation of organic pollutants (e.g., methylene blue and bisphenol A). The ·OH, ∙O2−, and photogenerated h+ account for 4–5%, 14–18%, and 20–25% oxidation of organic pollutants under visible-light irradiation for 3 h, respectively. The CD0.003/GCN/PDI composite was also tested for photocatalytic oxidation of the organic pollutant under visible-light irradiation for at least 12 h to demonstrate its photostability and reusability. This visible-light photocatalytic H2O-to-H2O2 for the enhanced oxidation of organic pollutants by the low-cost and metal-free CD/GCN/PDI composites using solar energy was developed to demonstrate the feasibility of an energy self-sufficient organic wastewater treatment process.
Photocatalytic H2O-to-H2O2 synchronized oxidation of an organic pollutant (R) by the CD/GCN/PDI composites. The CD, serving as an electron reservoir, dispersed on the GCN/PDI composite (i.e., CD0.003/GCN/PDI) facilitates the separation of photo-excited electrons to increase the two-electron reduction O2-to-H2O2 (O2→˙O2−→H2O2). Most importantly, it also on-site activates H2O2 to form ·OH radicals (H2O2→·OH) to enhance oxidation of organic pollutants (e.g., methylene blue and bisphenol A). Other on-site activated highly reactive species such as ∙O2− and photogenerated h+ also contribute to oxidation of organic pollutants in wastewater. Display omitted
•The novel CD/GCN/PDI can retard charge recombination for a high yield of H2O2.•The CD/GCN/PDI can induce highly reactive species to enhance organic pollutant oxidation.•The solar-driven H2O-to-H2O2 by CD/GCN/PDI shows energy self-sufficient water clean-up.
Nanoparticles (NPs) have emerged as an effective means to deliver therapeutic drugs for cancer treatment, as they can preferentially accumulate at tumor site through the enhanced permeability and ...retention effect. Various forms of NPs including liposomes, polymeric micelles, and inorganic particles have been used for therapeutic applications. However, the therapeutic benefits of nanomedicines are suboptimal. Although many possible reasons may account for the compromised therapeutic efficacy, the inefficient tumor penetration can be a vital obstacle. Tumor develops characteristic pathological environment, such as abnormal vasculature, elevated interstitial fluid pressure, and dense extracellular matrix, which intrinsically hinder the transport of nanomedicines in the tumor parenchyma. The physicochemical properties of the NPs such as size, shape, and surface charge have profound effect on tumor penetration. In this review, we will highlight the factors that affect the transport of NPs in solid tumor, and then elaborate on designing strategies to improve NPs' penetration and uniform distribution inside the tumor interstitium.
This article is categorized under:
Therapeutic Approaches and Drug Discovery > Nanomedicine for Oncologic Disease
Advanced designing strategies can be exploited to improve tumor penetration and therapeutic efficacy of cancer nanomedicines.
The magnetocaloric effect （MCE） in many rare earth （RE） based intermetallic compounds has been extensively in- vestigated during the last two decades, not only due to their potential applications for ...magnetic refrigeration but also for better understanding of the fundamental problems of the materials. This paper reviews our recent progress on studying the magnetic properties and MCE in some binary or ternary intermetallic compounds of RE with low boiling point metal（s） （Zn, Mg, and Cd）. Some of them exhibit promising MCE properties, which make them attractive for low temperature magnetic refrigeration. Characteristics of the magnetic transition, origin of large MCE, as well as the potential application of these compounds are thoroughly discussed. Additionally, a brief review of the magnetic and magnetocaloric properties in the quaternary rare earth nickel boroncarbides RENi2B2C superconductors is also presented.
Gastric cancer is the fourth most common malignancy and the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide. Advanced gastric cancer patients can notably benefit from chemotherapy including ...adriamycin, platinum drugs, 5-fluorouracil, vincristine, and paclitaxel as well as targeted therapy drugs. Nevertheless, primary drug resistance or acquisition drug resistance eventually lead to treatment failure and poor outcomes of the gastric cancer patients. The detailed mechanisms involved in gastric cancer drug resistance have been revealed. Interestingly, different noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs), such as microRNAs (miRNAs), long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) and circular RNAs (circRNAs), are critically involved in gastric cancer development. Multiple lines of evidences demonstrated that ncRNAs play a vital role in gastric cancer resistance to chemotherapy reagents and targeted therapy drugs. In this review, we systematically summarized the emerging role and detailed molecular mechanisms of ncRNAs impact drug resistance of gastric cancer. Additionally, we propose the potential clinical implications of ncRNAs as novel therapeutic targets and prognostic biomarkers for gastric cancer.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
There are over 1,000,000 publications on diet and health and over 480,000 references on inflammation in the National Library of Medicine database. In addition, there have now been over 30,000 ...peer-reviewed articles published on the relationship between diet, inflammation, and health outcomes. Based on this voluminous literature, it is now recognized that low-grade, chronic systemic inflammation is associated with most non-communicable diseases (NCDs), including diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, cancers, respiratory and musculoskeletal disorders, as well as impaired neurodevelopment and adverse mental health outcomes. Dietary components modulate inflammatory status. In recent years, the Dietary Inflammatory Index (DII
), a literature-derived dietary index, was developed to characterize the inflammatory potential of habitual diet. Subsequently, a large and rapidly growing body of research investigating associations between dietary inflammatory potential, determined by the DII, and risk of a wide range of NCDs has emerged. In this narrative review, we examine the current state of the science regarding relationships between the DII and cancer, cardiometabolic, respiratory and musculoskeletal diseases, neurodevelopment, and adverse mental health outcomes. We synthesize the findings from recent studies, discuss potential underlying mechanisms, and look to the future regarding novel applications of the adult and children's DII (C-DII) scores and new avenues of investigation in this field of nutritional research.
Live-cell microscopy is quickly becoming an indispensable technique for studying the dynamics of cellular processes. Maintaining the specimen in focus during image acquisition is crucial for ...high-throughput applications, especially for long experiments or when a large sample is being continuously scanned. Automated focus control methods are often expensive, imperfect, or ill-adapted to a specific application and are a bottleneck for widespread adoption of high-throughput, live-cell imaging. Here, we demonstrate a neural network approach for automatically maintaining focus during bright-field microscopy. Z-stacks of yeast cells growing in a microfluidic device were collected and used to train a convolutional neural network to classify images according to their z-position. We studied the effect on prediction accuracy of the various hyperparameters of the neural network, including downsampling, batch size, and z-bin resolution. The network was able to predict the z-position of an image with ±1 μm accuracy, outperforming human annotators. Finally, we used our neural network to control microscope focus in real-time during a 24 hour growth experiment. The method robustly maintained the correct focal position compensating for 40 μm of focal drift and was insensitive to changes in the field of view. About ~100 annotated z-stacks were required to train the network making our method quite practical for custom autofocus applications.
Polymer nanoparticles (NPs), due to their small size and surface functionalization potential have demonstrated effective drug transport across the blood–brain–barrier (BBB). Currently, the lack of in ...vitro BBB models that closely recapitulate complex human brain microenvironments contributes to high failure rates of neuropharmaceutical clinical trials. In this work, a previously established microfluidic 3D in vitro human BBB model, formed by the self‐assembly of human‐induced pluripotent stem cell‐derived endothelial cells, primary brain pericytes, and astrocytes in triculture within a 3D fibrin hydrogel is exploited to quantify polymer NP permeability, as a function of size and surface chemistry. Microvasculature are perfused with commercially available 100–400 nm fluorescent polystyrene (PS) NPs, and newly synthesized 100 nm rhodamine‐labeled polyurethane (PU) NPs. Confocal images are taken at different timepoints and computationally analyzed to quantify fluorescence intensity inside/outside the microvasculature, to determine NP spatial distribution and permeability in 3D. Results show similar permeability of PS and PU NPs, which increases after surface‐functionalization with brain‐associated ligand holo‐transferrin. Compared to conventional transwell models, the method enables rapid analysis of NP permeability in a physiologically relevant human BBB set‐up. Therefore, this work demonstrates a new methodology to preclinically assess NP ability to cross the human BBB.
Nanoparticles (NPs) represent a therapeutic solution to cross the near‐impenetrable blood–brain–barrier (BBB). In this article, a new method is described to assess NP permeability in a previously developed 3D in vitro human BBB microvasculature model. The quantitative method successfully captures the increase in permeability of NPs surface‐functionalized with transferrin and their 3D spatiotemporal distribution.
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