Authorization,rationalization, and moral evaluation: legitimizing acupuncture in Hong Kong's newspapers

Hong Kong has always been regarded as a critical region of Cultural China. Surprisingly, traditional Chinese medicine has not yet been accepted as legitimate in the city. This study uses acupuncture as a case to investigate the way media texts work to organize a field of knowledge and practices about health in a post-colonial society where contrasting perspectives and hybrid ideas rooted from the East and the West intermingle. Acupuncture is conceptualized as socially constructed health knowledge that has become increasingly legitimate in media discourse. Through a mixed-method approach that combines discourse and content analysis, a total of 666 news articles related to acupuncture published in two Hong Kong newspapers over a 10-year period were analyzed. Three major forms of discursive construction of legitimation – authorization, rationalization, and moral evaluation – were identified and elaborated in association with the texts and the social contexts. This study reveals a complex process of generating legitimacy for health knowledge through news narratives.     

A hypermedia system for teaching database design task

The number of commercial object-oriented database systems and object-oriented interfaces to traditional database systems is increasing. To facilitate the process of object-oriented data modelling (OODM) for experts and end-users, a hypermedia system is designed that is able to teach and guide users in performing OODM. The system supports the full range of modelling activities, from the identification of a class and its properties, to the relationships among classes. It provides other important functions, such as error checking of the model, graphical interface and the provision of hypermedia contextual explanations. Hypermedia are effectively used in the system so that the users can learn OODM effectively, as well as perform OODM correctly and quickly. The system has been empirically evaluated to gauge its effectiveness and ease of use. The evaluation suggests that the system will be useful for a OODM training or teaching course, and it can also be an effective computer-based learning tool for selflearning     

近代中国私立大学研究综述

近代中国私立大学是近代中国高等教育的重要组成部分,近代私立大学在其产生、发展过程中积累了丰富的办学经验,在学校管理、经费筹集、课程、教材教法、师资等方面形成了自己独特的办学特色,涌现了南开大学、复旦大学、厦门大学等著名大学。新中国成立后,近代中国的私立大学消逝了,至20世纪80年代末才又悄然兴起。这些成功的私立大学在那样动荡不安的社会环境下是如何生存发展的?其办学机制和成功的奥秘又是什么?私立大学的成功、失败和经验、教训给我们留下了宝贵的财富,值得我们去深入探究。近年来,近代中国私立大学的研究日益引起学者的关注,不少学者开始对近代私立学校进行研究和反思,一些学术著作和论文陆续发表。因此,本文拟对十几年来私立大学研究的状况作一综述。     

第二语言习得中的语言迁移现象简析

在借鉴语言迁移研究成果的基础上，分析了第二语言习得过程中出现的“前摄干扰”（汉式英语）和“后摄干扰”（夹生汉语）现象，以便认识语言迁移的发展规律，从而促进外语教学工作的开展。     

Writing motivation and performance in Chinese children

Reading and Writing - This study examined the relationships between writing motivation and written composition performance in Chinese among 388 Chinese children in Grades 3 to 5 in accordance with...     

A Systematic Review of Remote Laboratory Work in Science Education with the Support of Visualizing its Structure through the <Emphasis Type="Italic">HistCite</Emphasis> and <Emphasis Type="Italic">CiteSpace</Emphasis> Software

Laboratory work, particularly the latest remote laboratories (RLs), has been assumed to have a general positive effect on science education because practical work can provide diverse learning experiences and enhance thinking skills suitable for the 21^st century. However, there has not been a synthesis of the science education research to support this assumption. The objective of this study is to systematically review the growth of educational research on laboratory work, particularly in RLs, utilizing a series of review processes with innovative software for visualizing structural relationships. The combined use and support of HistCite and CiteSpace software enabled the visualization of the citation structure and history of articles. The findings revealed that RLs were a state-of-the-art subset of laboratory work and a new way of conducting laboratory work that has gained fairly wide research attention in engineering education over the past two decades. Thus, this innovative literature review process has established a solid background for future research and development efforts on RLs in science education dealing with scientific and engineering practices.     

Comparative studies on phenotypic plasticity of two herbs,<Emphasis Type="Italic">Changium smyrnioides</Emphasis> and<Emphasis Type="Italic">Anthriscus sylvestris</Emphasis>

The endangered medicinal herb,Changium smyrnioides can only be found in deciduous forest gaps within the middle to northern subtropical broad-leaved evergreen forest zone of China. The considerable plasticity of its shoot and root structure helps it to capture light more effectively in winter and early spring, and to adapt to the soil moisture conditions in its narrow habitat. Another medicinal plant,Anthriscus sylvestris, is of similar economic importance but commonly distributed widely. In contrast toC. smyrnioides, it has low structural plasticity. It is also specialized to adapt to the moist and sunny environment, where habitat, such as the banks of creeks and rivers, is abundant. Project supported by the National Basic Research Program (973) of China (No. G2000046805) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 39970058)     

Assessing Structural Equation Models by Equivalence Testing With Adjusted Fit Indexes

Conventional null hypothesis testing (NHT) is a very important tool if the ultimate goal is to find a difference or to reject a model. However, the purpose of structural equation modeling (SEM) is to identify a model and use it to account for the relationship among substantive variables. With the setup of NHT, a nonsignificant test statistic does not necessarily imply that the model is correctly specified or the size of misspecification is properly controlled. To overcome this problem, this article proposes to replace NHT by equivalence testing, the goal of which is to endorse a model under a null hypothesis rather than to reject it. Differences and similarities between equivalence testing and NHT are discussed, and new “T-size” terminology is introduced to convey the goodness of the current model under equivalence testing. Adjusted cutoff values of root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) and comparative fit index (CFI) corresponding to those conventionally used in the literature are obtained to facilitate the understanding of T-size RMSEA and CFI. The single most notable property of equivalence testing is that it allows a researcher to confidently claim that the size of misspecification in the current model is below the T-size RMSEA or CFI, which gives SEM a desirable property to be a scientific methodology. R code for conducting equivalence testing is provided in an appendix.     

生源多元化背景下高职院校大学英语分层教学的问题与对策研究

随着高职院校招生模式的改革推进,高职院校处于生源多元化的情境之中,教育教学面临着诸多挑战。本研究以四川交通职业技术学院为例,阐述了英语分层教学的必要性,分析了高职院校实施英语分层教学的理论依据与实践方案的设计,讨论了在实际教学过程中所产生的问题,并提出了相关的优化路径,旨在为英语分层教学在高职院校的推广和实施提供参考,让"因材施教"在英语教学中更好地得以实现。