A long-term experiment to investigate the relationships between high school students’ perceptions of mobile learning and peer interaction and higher-order thinking tendencies

In this study, a one-year program was conducted to investigate the relationships between students’ perceptions of mobile learning and their tendencies of peer interaction and higher-order thinking in issue-based mobile learning activities. To achieve the research objective, a survey consisting of eight scales, namely, usability, continuity, adaptive content, collaboration, communication, problem-solving, critical thinking and creativity, was developed. A total of 658 students from 38 high schools in Taiwan filled in the questionnaire after experiencing issue-based mobile learning activities. From the exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, it was found that the questionnaire had high reliability and validity. The structural equation model further revealed that the provision of adaptive content in the mobile learning had positive impacts on the students’ tendency to interact with peers (i.e., collaboration and communication), which further affected their tendency to engage in higher-order thinking (i.e., problem-solving, critical thinking, and creativity). The findings of this study provide a good reference for researchers and school teachers who intend to promote mobile learning in school settings.     

Between two Advisors: Interconnecting Academic and Workplace Settings in an Emerging Field

This article examines a new training design for continuing professional development that aims to support the learning of the novel knowledge and skills needed in emerging professional fields by interconnecting academic and workplace settings. The training design is based on using two advisors, one from working life and the other from an academic context. The article examined whether participants’ personal orientation to adaptive expertise predicts the success of a guidance process. The interconnection of workplace and academic contexts was expected to occur through guidance practices. In addition, the features underlying the most successful guidance relationships were analysed. Data were collected by conducting repeated semi-structured interviews with 18 course participants, eight academic advisors and eight workplace advisors in the context of a 1-year energy efficiency training programme. The results indicated that a trainee’s personal orientation towards adaptive expertise is a significant component in successful guidance processes. An interconnection of workplace and academic knowledge and practices was hardly found in the guidance provided by each participant’s academic and workplace advisors. The feature underlying the most successful guidance relationships are related at the personal, dyad and context levels. An excellent match between the expert profiles of the learner and the advisor appears to be especially critical for successful guidance and powerful knowledge exchange in emerging fields. However, finding matching advisors is often challenging. Many problems are presumably solved if these ‘right persons’ can be found and if the trainees are themselves oriented to utilise the novel resources provided to them by the advisors.     

Students’ Development of Representational Competence Through the Sense of Touch

Electromagnetism is an umbrella encapsulating several different concepts like electric current, electric fields and forces, and magnetic fields and forces, among other topics. However, a number of studies in the past have highlighted the poor conceptual understanding of electromagnetism concepts by students even after instruction. This study aims to identify novel forms of “hands-on” instruction that can result in representational competence and conceptual gain. Specifically, this study aimed to identify if the use of visuohaptic simulations can have an effect on student representations of electromagnetic-related concepts. The guiding questions is How do visuohaptic simulations influence undergraduate students’ representations of electric forces? Participants included nine undergraduate students from science, technology, or engineering backgrounds who participated in a think-aloud procedure while interacting with a visuohaptic simulation. The think-aloud procedure was divided in three stages, a prediction stage, a minimally visual haptic stage, and a visually enhanced haptic stage. The results of this study suggest that students’ accurately characterized and represented the forces felt around a particle, line, and ring charges either in the prediction stage, a minimally visual haptic stage or the visually enhanced haptic stage. Also, some students accurately depicted the three-dimensional nature of the field for each configuration in the two stages that included a tactile mode, where the point charge was the most challenging one.     

How fast can we read in the mind? Developmental trajectories of silent reading fluency

The silent reading fluency is not an observable behaviour and, therefore, its evaluation is perceived as more challenging and less reliable than oral reading fluency. The present research is aimed to measure the silent reading speed in a sample of proficient students, assessed by an original silent reading fluency task, based on behavioural indicators of the silent reading speed. A total of 325 high school and university skilled students (age range 14–23 years) have been assessed using 3 tasks aimed to evaluate the oral reading speed (lists of words, lists of pseudowords and narrative text) and one task aimed to measure the silent reading speed. The average silent reading speed in our sample was around 12.5 syll/sec, almost double than the oral reading speed rate. The silent reading speed had an increase from 9.13 to 12.38 syll/sec from the first year of high school (ninth grade) to the fifth year of University. Conversely, the oral reading speed remained substantially unchanged for the entire academic course. Our results showed that the reading fluency in silent mode tends to increase up to the last years of University and it may be considered the most rapid and efficient reading mode. This study highlights the importance of including both silent and oral reading modes in the assessment of the older students and young adults, since silent reading is the main reading mode for proficient readers.     

集群式计算机系统在生物信息学中的应用

1　Introduction　SMP (symmetricmulti processing)andMPP (mas sivelyparallelprocessing)arethetwotypesofstruc tureofparallelcomputing .　Symmetricmulti processingsystemshavemultipleCPUsattachedtothesamebusandsharingRAM .Massivelyparallelprocessingisthecooperated pro cessingofaprogrambymultipleprocessorsthatworkondifferentpartsoftheprogram ,witheachprocessorusingitsownoperatingsystemandmemory .ThechoicebetweenSMPandMPPdependsonthenatureoftheproblembeingsolved .Iftheproblemcanbeeasilypartit…     

Effects of light and temperature conditions on flowering in Mat Rush

The effects of photoperiod and light intensity on flowering in Mat Rush cv. Gangshan 3 were studied. The results showed that treatments with longer day length stimulated flowering significantly and increased stem flowering percentage (SFP). Plants treated with low light intensity at early stage had substantially reduced florets per cyme, SFP, tillers per plant and stem length. At middle and late stage, low light intensity significantly reduced SFP. The principal climatic factors affecting SFP were as follows: mean temperatures (MT) of the third ten-day period (TDP) in December and of the second TDP in February, actual sunlight hours (SH) of the third TDP in February and precipitation of the third TDP in March. A nonlinear simulation model for SFP was established with experimental results and corresponding climatic data (see Eq. (2)). Simulation by the above equation yielded values the same as those observed from 1992 to 2000, indicating its accuracy in describing the relationship between flowering and light and temperature conditions. The interaction between vernalization and SH is also discussed in this paper. Project (No. 981105) supported by the Ningbo City Science Foundation, China     

Optimal restructuring strategies under various dynamic factors

Corporate restructuring was identified as a new industrial force that has great impact on economic values and that therefore has become central in daily financial decision making. This article investigates the optimal restructuring strategies under different dynamic factors and their numerous impacts on firm value. The concept of quasi-leverage is introduced and valuation models are built for corporate debt and equity under imperfect market conditions. The model＇s input variables include the quasi-leverage and other firm-specific parameters, the output variables include multiple corporate security values. The restructuring cost is formulated in the form of exponential function, which allows us to observe the sensitivity of the variation in security values. The unified model and its analytical solution developed in this research allow us to examine the continuous changes of security values by dynamically changing the coupon rates, riskless interest rate, bankruptcy cost, quasi-leverage, personal tax rate, corporate taxes rate, transaction cost, firm risk, etc., so that the solutions provide useful guidance for financing and restructuring decisions.     

东部地区CBA联赛产品的宏观市场营销环境分析

CBA联赛产品的销售实现了CBA联赛的正常运营,因此,深入了解和分析联赛产品的市场营销环境才能使CBA联赛产品的市场营销活动得以有效进行。本文通过对我国东部地区的人口、经济、科学技术、政治法律、社会文化等因素进行分析,论述了东部地区CBA联赛产品市场营销的宏观环境现状,为该地区各CBA俱乐部的市场营销活动提出了意见和建议。     

A Study of Morpheme Order of Acquisition Through Obligatory Accasion Anlysis

Much consideration has been given to the study of certain grammatical morphemes by researchers.The study of learners’ use of morphemes through obligatory analysis has important implications for both second language acquisition and the second language teaching.It suggests that some linguistic features,particularly grammatical features,are inherently easier to learn than others.For example,in this study,the fact that learners master article before 3rd person singular suggests that article in some sense easier to learn.     

英语习语中的隐喻新探——以表示“高兴”和“悲伤”的习语为例

英语习语是英语民族长期积累下来的一种约定俗成的语言形式,其中蕴含着大量的隐喻。该文以表示"高兴"和"悲伤"的习语为例,对习语中的隐喻现象进行了分析。分析表明,隐喻在习语语义的形成和抽象化过程中起着十分重要的作用,而隐喻的生成和理解正是来自于人们对社会实践的认知方式和过程,反映了语言与人类思维、认知的关系。