Student engagement as an important predictor of peer interaction and academic achievement has received considerable attention in second language classes. Despite its significance, how study groups ...engage in online writing activities in collaborative learning settings remains underexplored. To fill this gap, the present study explored how a group of four engaged in an 8-week computer-mediated collaborative writing (CMCW) project in a Chinese university English as a foreign language (EFL) context. Data were collected from multiple sources such as a pre-survey, audio-recorded discussions, and retrospective interviews. Findings identify three developmental periods of group engagement through task completion, namely breaking-in, growth, and proficiency periods. During each period, the four dimensions of group engagement (i.e., behavioral, cognitive, emotional, and social engagement) were ongoing and salient to varying extents and mutually influenced among the participants. Also, the learners utilized certain collaborative strategies to promote meaning negotiation and care for the quality of interactions. The study highlights the great potential of CMCW to form a sociocognitive learning community where the students can actively engage in learning, construct new knowledge, and promote language skills through not only cognitive processing but also mutual interaction between peers and instructors.
Plain language summary
Purpose: Student engagement has received fast-growing attention in second language education in recent decades. In this study, the researcher attempted to address the research gap that little attention was paid to group engagement in computer-mediated collaborative writing (CMCW) over time. Methods: This design-based case study took place at a Chinese public university in North China. Multiple data sources were used, including a survey, audio-recorded discussions, and interviews with the students. Conclusions: The study identifies three developmental periods of group engagement in CMCW, namely breaking-in, growth, and proficiency periods, in which the facets of group engagement were ongoing and salient to varying extents. Besides, CMCW showed great potential to form a learning community where the students can construct language knowledge and promote writing skills. Implications: Since group engagement may change across timescales, instructors had better design their teaching according to the features of different periods. Learners need to be encouraged to apply collaborative strategies appropriately for promoting group engagement in all respects. Limitations: Due to the small number of participants in the study, the findings may be hard to be used to explain the learners’ group engagement in other contexts. Also, long-term academic outcome is impossibly observable due to the short duration of the study.
The accurate recognition of speech is beneficial to the fields of machine translation and intelligent human–computer interaction. After briefly introducing speech recognition algorithms, this study ...proposed to recognize speech with a recurrent neural network (RNN) and adopted the connectionist temporal classification (CTC) algorithm to align input speech sequences and output text sequences forcibly. Simulation experiments compared the RNN-CTC algorithm with the Gaussian mixture model–hidden Markov model and convolutional neural network-CTC algorithms. The results demonstrated that the more training samples the speech recognition algorithm had, the higher the recognition accuracy of the trained algorithm was, but the training time consumption increased gradually; the more samples a trained speech recognition algorithm had to test, the lower the recognition accuracy and the longer the testing time. The proposed RNN-CTC speech recognition algorithm always had the highest accuracy and the lowest training and testing time among the three algorithms when the number of training and testing samples was the same.
This is an open access book. It draws from relevant theories and approaches to teachers’ professional development (TPD) and innovative and inspiring TPD practices in higher education. It first lays a ...solid foundation for the rest of the book, through critiquing prevalent theories, approaches, and teaching competency frameworks guiding TPD in higher education, and defining the key concepts related to TPD. The book then develops a standard framework and assessment instrument of teaching competencies as well as ways of using this framework by institutions, departments at different levels, and individual teachers. It also proposes strategies for improving teachers’ teaching competencies by reviewing what has been achieved to date in TPD in terms of national-level policies and strategies, institutional-level interventions, and teachers’ self-directed professional development. Finally, it also presents case studies of typical practices in TPD in different countries.
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•Hydrodynamic characteristics of cyclones are simulated using CFD-DEM.•The impact of inlet angle on flow behavior is studied.•Reynolds stress turbulence model is used to capture gas ...turbulence.•The effect of particle size on the performance of a cyclone separator is analyzed.
Hydrodynamic characteristics in a cyclone separator are simulated by means of DEM-CFD. Reynolds stress turbulence model (RSM) is used to capture gas turbulence. By changing the inlet angle, the distributions of pressure drop, tangential and axial velocity of gas phase are obtained within the cyclone. Simulated results indicate that the flow pattern consists of two regions: loss-free vortex region and forced vortex region. The negative inlet angle brings about a larger pressure drop comparing to positive inlet angle. The separation efficiency and trajectory of particles from simulation are obtained. The effects of inlet angle and particle size on separation efficiency are quantified. The separation efficiency is increased with an increase of particle size, while the separation efficiency firstly increases and then declined as inlet angle changes from negative to positive. An agreement between the numerical simulation and experimental results has been achieved in a cyclone separator.
The standard chemotherapy for squamous NSCLC (sqNSCLC) includes platinum plus gemcitabine. Sintilimab, an anti–programmed cell death protein 1 antibody, plus platinum and gemcitabine (GP) has ...revealed encouraging efficacy as first-line therapy for sqNSCLC in a phase 1b study. We conducted a randomized, double-blind, phase 3 study to further compare the efficacy and safety of sintilimab with placebo, both in combination with GP.
ORIENT-12, a randomized, double-blind, phase 3 study, was conducted at 42 centers in the People’s Republic of China (ClinicalTrials.gov, number NCT03629925). Patients with locally advanced or metastatic sqNSCLC and without EGFR-sensitive mutations or ALK rearrangements were enrolled in the study. The stratification factors included clinical stage, choice of platinum, and programmed death-ligand 1 tumor proportion score. The patients, investigators, research staff, and sponsor team were masked to treatment assignment. Eligible patients were randomized 1:1, using an integrated web-response system, to receive sintilimab 200 mg or placebo plus GP every 3 weeks for four or six cycles, followed by sintilimab or placebo as maintenance therapy until disease progression or 2 years. The primary end point was progression-free survival (PFS), assessed by an independent radiographic review committee.
Between September 25, 2018 and July 26, 2019, a total of 543 patients were screened, of whom 357 patients were randomized to the sintilimab-GP group (n = 179) and the placebo-GP group (n = 178). After a median follow-up period of 12.9 months, sintilimab-GP continued to reveal a meaningful improvement in PFS than placebo-GP (hazard ratio = 0.536 95% confidence interval: 0.422–0.681, p < 0.00001). Treatment-emergent adverse events of grade 3 or worse occurred in 86.6% patients in the sintilimab-GP group and in 83.1% in the placebo-GP group. The incidence of treatment-emergent adverse event leading to death was 4.5% and 6.7% in the two treatment groups, respectively.
Regarding PFS, sintilimab plus GP reveals clinical benefit than GP alone as first-line therapy in patients with locally advanced or metastatic sqNSCLC. The toxicity was acceptable, and no new unexpected safety signals were observed.
The reduction of relative velocity of the gas phase and the solids phase and granular temperature promotes the aggregation of particles. The increasing relative velocity and granular temperature ...restrains the formation of clusters.
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•The criterion distinguishing homogeneous flow from heterogeneous flow is proposed.•The gas viscous energy dissipation rate is low and even negligible.•The influence of dissipative drag mechanism is critical on formation of clusters.•The reduction of granular temperature leads to enhancing occurrence of clusters.
In present study, a model of the criterion for cluster heterogeneous flow is presented in terms of the rates of hydrodynamic and collisional energy dissipations of the occurrence of particle clusters. The dynamic threshold distinguishes homogeneous flow from heterogeneous flow according to the collisional and hydrodynamic energy dissipations. Computation simulations indicate that the gas viscous energy dissipation rate is low about one to two order of magnitudes in comparison to hydrodynamic and collision energy dissipation rates. The energy dissipation of interface interaction is large in comparison to the energy dissipations of the dilute and dense phases. The dilute and dense collisional energy dissipations play different roles at the low and high solids volume fractions. As the relative velocity of gas and particles decreases, particle clusters are formed because the hydrodynamic energy dissipation becomes dominant. With the decrease of granular temperature, the formation of particle clusters is induced by collisional energy dissipation.
Chinese jasmine tea is a type of flower-scented tea, which is produced by mixing green tea with the
flower repeatedly. Both the total amount and composition of volatiles absorbed from the Jasminum ...sambac flower are mostly responsible for its sensory quality grade. This study aims to compare volatile organic compound (VOC) differences in authoritative jasmine tea grade samples. Automatic thermal desorption-gas-chromatography-mass spectrometry (ATD-GC-MS) and electronic nose (E-nose), followed by multivariate data analysis is conducted. Consequently, specific VOCs with a positive or negative correlation to the grades are screened out. Partial least squares-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) show a satisfactory discriminant effect on rank. It is intriguing to find that the E-nose is good at distinguishing the grade difference caused by VOC concentrations but is deficient in identifying essential aromas that attribute to the unique characteristics of excellent grade jasmine tea.
Intravascular optical coherence tomography (IVOCT) provides high-resolution, depth-resolved images of coronary arterial microstructure by acquiring backscattered light. Quantitative attenuation ...imaging is important for accurate characterization of tissue components and identification of vulnerable plaques. In this work, we proposed a deep learning method for IVOCT attenuation imaging based on the multiple scattering model of light transport. A physics-informed deep network named Quantitative OCT Network (QOCT-Net) was designed to recover pixel-level optical attenuation coefficients directly from standard IVOCT B-scan images. The network was trained and tested on simulation and in vivo datasets. Results showed superior attenuation coefficient estimates both visually and based on quantitative image metrics. The structural similarity, energy error depth and peak signal-to-noise ratio are improved by at least 7%, 5% and 12.4%, respectively, compared with the state-of-the-art non-learning methods. This method potentially enables high-precision quantitative imaging for tissue characterization and vulnerable plaque identification.
The observation of electromechanical coupling might be used as an important tool to detect pre-seismic changes associated with the preparation of earthquakes. This paper attempts to study the ...electromechanical coupling process before the large earthquakes by using the load/unload response ratio (LURR) approach in which the geo-electric data and Benioff strain of small earthquakes were adopted as the data input. The variation of Coulomb failure stress induced by earth tides on the fault surface of the mainshock is applied to differentiate the loading and unloading stages. Using this technique, we test the geo-electric data recorded at the Hotan observatory near the epicenter of 2020 Yutian M
6.4 earthquake. Results show that the LURR time sequence fluctuated around 1.0 for many years and reached significant high peaks at the beginning of 2020. More importantly, this evolution correlates well with the LURR time series calculated by using the Benioff strain of small earthquakes within the circular region of 300 km radius centered at the epicenter. The underlying physics of the changes should be caused by the fluid infiltration derived from pre-seismic rock dilatancy. The corresponding volume variations in the crust could be found in the geophysical observation time series in the same neighborhoods.
Platelets exhibit distinct surface moieties responsible for modulating their adhesion to various disease‐relevant substrates involving vascular damage, immune evasion, and pathogen interactions. Such ...broad biointerfacing capabilities of platelets have inspired the development of platelet‐mimicking drug carriers that preferentially target drug payloads to disease sites for enhanced therapeutic efficacy. Among these carriers, platelet membrane–coated nanoparticles (denoted “PNPs”) made by cloaking synthetic substrates with the plasma membrane of platelets have emerged recently. Their “top‐down” design combines the functionalities of natural platelet membrane and the engineering flexibility of synthetic nanomaterials, which together create synergy for effective drug delivery and novel therapeutics. Herein, the recent progress of engineering PNPs with different structures for targeted drug delivery is reviewed, focusing on three areas, including targeting injured blood vessels to treat vascular diseases, targeting cancer cells for cancer treatment and detection, and targeting drug‐resistant bacteria to treat infectious diseases. Overall, current studies establish PNPs as versatile nanotherapeutics for drug targeting with strong potentials to improve the treatment of various diseases.
Platelet membrane–coated nanoparticles inherit biofunctions of natural platelets and are capable of adhering to various disease‐relevant substrates. They have become drug carriers exceptionally suitable for targeted drug delivery. Herein, the recent development of platelet‐mimicking nanoparticles with different structures for drug targeting to injured blood vessels, cancer cells, and drug‐resistant bacteria is reviewed.
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