Few studies have examined the role of cognitive control in processing ambiguity, let alone the roles of different components of cognitive control. In the current study, the English (L2) Sentence ...Processing Task and a series of cognitive control tasks were administered among 111 young adult Chinese–English bilinguals to investigate the influence of different components of cognitive control on garden path sentence comprehension, with other factors such as age, socio-economic status, and language proficiency strictly matched. Data analysis results showed a significant garden path effect on response times (RTs) and accuracy among all the participants. The results of independent
t
-test analyses revealed that the high working memory (WM) group was faster in ambiguity resolution, and so was the high monitoring group. However, there were no differences between the high and low inhibition and shifting groups in ambiguity resolution. These findings reveal that only certain aspects of cognitive control influence garden path sentence comprehension.
This article aims to study the dynamic change of teachers’ beliefs among pre-service teachers. A longitudinal design was adopted to investigate English language teaching (ELT) pre-service teachers’ ...belief change after a 3-month teaching practicum by administering pretest and posttest questionnaires, semistructured interviews, and reflective journals. Repeated measures and paired sample t-test analyses showed significant differences across different aspects of beliefs in all the participants, but belief changes were significant after the practicum only within the experimental group, particularly in the aspects of student management, teaching evaluation, and student learning. In contrast, belief changes were not significant within the control group. Further inductive content analyses of semistructured interviews and reflective journals from the experimental group confirmed these changes and conclusively revealed some potential factors contributing to the changes. The results shed light on how pre-service teachers evolve in their career development and help educators adjust appropriate education policies to improve the quality of English teacher education, particularly in the Chinese context.
Tomato (Solanum lycopersicon) is a widely produced and consumed fruit vegetable worldwide. Silicon (Si) and selenium (Se) can promote crop growth and development. However, the effects of these ...elements on tomato fruit quality have not been investigated comprehensively, nor are their combined effects on yield and quality clear. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of foliar application of Si and Se on tomato growth, yield and fruit quality. The tomato plants were foliarly applied with 1 mM Si and 25 μM Se individually or in combination, and the experiment was carried out in a plastic arch shed at Yangling in spring. Our results demonstrated improved plant growth by application of Si and Se, with the effect of combined treatment being more obvious. Application of Si individually or in combination with Se increased the yield. Se addition increased the concentrations of soluble sugars, vitamin C, phenols, anthocyanin, lycopene, carotenoids, Se and protein, and decreased the nitrate level, but did not affect the concentration of total organic acids in the fruit. Si application induced similar changes to Se addition in the levels of sucrose and protein in the fruit, but had no effect on other quality traits. The combined Si and Se treatment did not show significant superior effects on the fruit quality over their individual applications. Our results suggest that Si and Se application improved the tomato plant growth. Si and Se application, respectively, had obvious effects in the yield increase and quality improvement, and the combined treatment had positive effects on both aspects. The study may provide a theoretical base for the application of Se and Si fertilizers in tomato production.
By comparing two unbalanced Chinese–English bilingual groups, this study explored whether differences in second-language (L2) proficiency and language use influenced mental set shifting in cognitive ...control, through language switch (which tested participants’ language control) and task switch (which tested participants’ mental set shifting in cognitive control). The ANOVA results showed that the higher L2 proficiency group and the lower L2 proficiency group did not differ in language switch, and the two groups did not differ either in the task switch. Further correlation and regression analyses showed that L2 proficiency did not contribute to task-switching performance; however, language-switching frequency and L2 use significantly contributed to the performance of task switch. These results suggest a weak relation between L2 proficiency and mental set shifting, and indicate that language-switching frequency and L2 use may be important factors influencing mental set shifting and should therefore be included as crucial variables in future studies.
The study investigates whether learners' demographics (e.g., age, education, and intelligence-IQ), language learning experience, and cognitive control predict Chinese (L2) reading comprehension in ...young adults. Thirty-four international students who studied mandarin Chinese in mainland China (10 females, 24 males) from Bangladesh, Burundi, Congo, Madagascar, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, and Zimbabwe were tested on a series of measures including demographic questionnaires, IQ test, two cognitive control tasks Flanker Task measuring inhibition and Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) measuring mental set shifting, and a Chinese reading comprehension test (HSK level 4). The results of correlation analyses showed that education, L2 learning history, L2 proficiency, and previous category errors of the WCST were significantly correlated with Chinese reading comprehension. Further multiple regression analyses indicated that Chinese learning history, IQ, and previous category errors of the WCST significantly predicted Chinese reading comprehension. These findings reveal that aside from IQ and the time spent on L2 learning, the component mental set shifting of cognitive control also predicts reading outcomes, which suggests that cognitive control has a place in reading comprehension models over and above traditional predictors of language learning experience.
Both traditional finance and modern behavioral finance consider that the volatility of the stock market comes from the release, dissemination and absorption of information from different views. With ...the rapid growth of Chinese housing prices and the public's attention to the issue, listed firms related to Chinese real estate have come to represent one of the most important sectors in Chinese stock markets. In this study, we quantify news articles using natural language processing techniques and investigate the impact of regulatory policies and firm-specific news on real estate stocks in this active market covered by a large amount of information. Our three main findings are as follows: (1) the simple and effective quantitative measure of news emotion can be used to study the media-aware stock movements in the real estate sector of the Chinese stock market; (2) policy news leaks ahead of time, which leads to abnormal fluctuations in the stock market 14 days before the release of information, while the stock market fluctuates only slightly and briefly after the news release; and (3) news pessimism indicates downward pressure on market prices, and optimism tends to increase market prices. News-sensitive stocks perform better than other stocks, with a Sharpe ratio higher than 0.2.
By screening the core genes in lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) with bioinformatics, our study evaluated its prognosis value and role in infiltration process of immune cells.
Using GEO database, we ...screened 5 gene chips, including GSE11072, GSE32863, GSE43458, GSE115002, and GSE116959. Then, we obtained the corresponding differentially expressed genes by analyzed 5 gene chips online by GEO2R (P < 0.05, |logFC| > 1). Then, through DAVID online platform, Cytoscape 3.6.1 software and PPI network analysis, the network was visualized and obtain the final core genes. Next, we plan to use the GEPIA, UALCAN, Kaplan–Meier plotter and Time 2.0 database for corresponding analysis. The GEPIA database was used to verify the expression of core genes in LUAD and normal lung tissues, and survival analysis was used to evaluate the value of core genes in the prognosis of LUAD patients. UALCAN was used to verify the expression of the LUAD core gene and promoter methylation status, and the predictive value of core genes was evaluated in LUAD patients by the Kaplan–Meier plotter online tool. Then, we used the Time 2.0 database to identify the relationship to immune infiltration in LUAD. Finally, we used the human protein atlas (HPA) database for online immunohistochemical analysis of the expressed proteins.
The expression of CCNB2 and CDC20 in LUAD were higher than those in normal lung tissues, their increased expression was negatively correlated with the overall survival rate of LUAD, and they were involved in cell cycle signal transduction, oocyte meiosis signal transduction as well as the infiltration process of immune cells in LUAD. The expression proteins of CCNB2 and CDC20 were also different in lung cancer tissue and normal lung tissue. Therefore, CCNB2 and CDC20 were identified as the vital core genes.
CCNB2 and CDC20 are essential genes that may constitute prognostic biomarkers in LUAD, they also participate the immune infiltration process and protein expression process of LUAD, and might provides basis for clinical anti-tumor drug research.
The study examines whether L2 reading proficiency exerts influence upon cognitive control among young-adult Chinese-English bilinguals. A low L2 reading proficiency group and a high L2 reading ...proficiency group were compared on two cognitive control tasks measuring inhibition, monitoring, and mental set shifting, i.e. Number Stroop task and Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), with other confounding variables strictly matched. The results showed that the high L2 reading proficiency group had bilingual effects on conflict monitoring in the Stroop task and mental set shifting in the WCST. Further regression analyses results confirmed the significant role of L2 reading in cognitive control. The overall results suggest that L2 reading experience has a significant influence on cognitive control on the aspects of conflict monitoring and mental set shifting, but not on inhibition, revealing the specific relationship between particular linguistic context demand (L2 reading) and its potential impact on cognitive control.
This paper reports a bibliometric study of the development of computer science research in the People’s Republic of China in the 21st century, using data from the Web of Science, Journal Citation ...Reports and CORE databases. Focusing on the areas of data mining, operating systems and web design, it is shown that whilst the productivity of Chinese research has risen dramatically over the period under review, its impact is still low when compared with established scientific nations such as the USA, the UK and Japan. The publication and citation data for China are compared with corresponding data for the other three BRIC nations (Brazil, Russian and India). It is shown that China dominates the BRIC nations in terms of both publications and citations, but that Indian publications often have a greater individual impact.
Object extraction from still images is an important task in pattern recognition and computer vision. It is very hard to find a fully automatic object extraction method in practical applications. ...Therefore, a good solution is to interactively extract objects from complex background with a few simple user inputs. This paper presents an interactive object extraction method from still images. A still image is divided into many small regions by some low level segmentation methods at first. Strokes (or markers), which could be as simple as a few points, are manually input by the user to indicate the initial three types of regions, i.e., object regions, background regions and unmarked regions. A region is merged with its adjacent region if (1) both of the regions are of the same type or (2) either of them is an unmarked region and the similarity between them is among the k-global maximal ones. The region merging process completes when each initial unmarked region is identified as either object or background and the similarity between any two regions equals zero. The extensive experiments demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed method.
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