University students’ strategies and criteria during self-assessment: instructor’s feedback,rubrics, and year level effects

European Journal of Psychology of Education - This study explores the effects of feedback type, feedback occasion, and year level on student self-assessments in higher education. In total, 126...     

Evaluating the feasibility of remotely administered curriculum-based measurement for students with autism: A pilot study

Students with autism may struggle to develop the academic skills necessary for success in school and beyond. Understanding and improving academic skills performance requires appropriate measurement approaches. One such option that has been minimally studied with students with autism is curriculum-based measurement (CBM). Coinciding with the need to study different approaches to academic skills measurement for students with autism was the global pandemic which forced a shift to remote service delivery with little warning. While some autistic students struggled with this shift, others thrived, raising questions about how to further support students with autism in virtual formats. The purpose of this study was to examine the feasibility of using remotely administered CBM for autistic students by studying both the practicality and acceptability of this approach. Five students with autism (Grades 2–5) participated in this pilot study, completing reading, math, and writing CBMs at three time points. Student behavior and assessor fidelity were collected to examine practicality; assessor ratings of usability provided insight regarding the acceptability of the approach. Results indicated that remotely administered CBM is feasible for some students with autism: all participants completed the study tasks with minimal behavioral difficulties, and assessor ratings of acceptability were high.     

Revisiting Cross-document Structure Theory for multi-document discourse parsing

Multi-document discourse parsing aims to automatically identify the relations among textual spans from different texts on the same topic. Recently, with the growing amount of information and the emergence of new technologies that deal with many sources of information, more precise and efficient parsing techniques are required. The most relevant theory to multi-document relationship, Cross-document Structure Theory (CST), has been used for parsing purposes before, though the results had not been satisfactory. CST has received many critics because of its subjectivity, which may lead to low annotation agreement and, consequently, to poor parsing performance. In this work, we propose a refinement of the original CST, which consists in (i) formalizing the relationship definitions, (ii) pruning and combining some relations based on their meaning, and (iii) organizing the relations in a hierarchical structure. The hypothesis for this refinement is that it will lead to better agreement in the annotation and consequently to better parsing results. For this aim, it was built an annotated corpus according to this refinement and it was observed an improvement in the annotation agreement. Based on this corpus, a parser was developed using machine learning techniques and hand-crafted rules. Specifically, hierarchical techniques were used to capture the hierarchical organization of the relations according to the proposed refinement of CST. These two approaches were used to identify the relations among texts spans and to generate multi-document annotation structure. Results outperformed other CST parsers, showing the adequacy of the proposed refinement in the theory.     

A deep vein thrombosis caused by 20209C>T mutation in homozygosis of the prothrombin gene in a Caucasian patient

Introduction:

Additional nucleotide substitutions in the 3′-untranslated region of prothrombin gene could explain some thrombotic events and also adverse pregnancy outcomes. We describe the first case of a homozygous 20209C>T mutation as the cause of deep vein thrombosis in a Spanish patient.

Case and methods:

The 56-year-old male patient with a partial tear of the Achilles tendon developed calf (tibial) deep vein thrombosis after immobilization and was treated with an anticoagulant. To determine if the deep vein thrombosis was of genetic origin, a peripheral blood DNA sample was analysed for the presence of the three most frequent mutations associated with thrombotic events: factor V Leiden (1691G>A), prothrombin (20210G>A) and methylene tetrahydrofolate reductase (677C>T). The presence or absence of the normal allele of prothrombin could not be determined using the PTH-FV-MTHFR StripAssay (Vienna Lab).

Results:

Comprehensive analysis showed that the patient had a variant interfering with the polymerase chain reaction product, we sequenced the entire prothrombin gene and found that the patient had a homozygous C>T mutation at position 20209; this interfered with the polymerase chain reaction product, which needs a C at this position to be able to bind to the wild-type probe present in the test strip.

Conclusion:

The homozygous 20209C>T mutation and the presence of the mutation 677C>T in heterozygosity explained the patient’s deep vein thrombosis because the combination of mutations would increase the risk of thrombosis. Suitable genetic counselling should be provided to the patient and first-degree relatives as it important to detect prothrombin gene variants that could increase risk for thrombotic events.     

Globalisation in Foreign Language Teaching: Establishing Transatlantic Links in Higher Education

This article makes an explicit comparison between the reconfiguration of tertiary language education in Europe, the USA and Canada. It argues that, despite certain minor differences between continents, the same trends are operative across the Atlantic. It then examines each of them, illustrating how similar forces are at work in shaping higher education language teaching, how analogous policy frameworks are being employed to channel them and how parallel challenges and responses can be detected transatlantically. The conclusion is that unifying efforts and connecting initiatives has highly beneficial effects for advancing the application of higher education language policy worldwide.     

欲望·狂欢·迷失——试论莫言小说中的欲望化书写

本文从总体上论述了莫言小说的思想及其相应的叙事特征,指出作者偏离主流意识形态和知识分子书写,运用寓言化的叙事文体对民间历史进行欲望化的书写,揭开了遮盖于生存景观之上的诗性面纱,探寻民间与人性的真实面貌。同时,也指出了莫言在创作中表现出的对永恒性关怀的缺失及对人物内心深度透视等方面的不足。     

大运动量训练时自由式摔跤运动员应激激素变化的探讨

观察了大运动量训练期8名自由式摔跤运动员应激激素、焦虑水平及主观强度感的变化。研究过程中,每周安排11次大运动量训练,共进行2次实验,每次3个取样点(运动前、即刻和次日晨)。结果显示,两次取样时期次日晨ACTH水平较运动后即刻明显降低;C水平在第二次取样运动后即刻水平和次日晨水平明显高于运动前的,并且该时期运动后即刻C水平也明显高于第一次取样时期运动后即刻水平;E水平在第二次取样运动后即刻水平明显高于第一次取样运动后即刻的,且次日晨该激素水平也明显高于第一次取样次日晨的;血浆β-END水平在第二次取样运动后即刻水平明显高于运动前,也高于第一次取样运动后即刻,第二次取样次日晨该激素水平均低于运动前和运动后即刻水平,同时低于第一次取样次日晨的;血清NE水平变化与β-END水平变化类似;而RPE等级和焦虑水平在两次测试中呈现出运动后即刻水平高于运动前和次日晨的趋势,但不明显;RPE等级与诸多应激激素之间存在着弱相关关系。这预示着,在运动员身体机能评定工作中欲采用简单易行的显示身体机能的外部指标来表现不易测到的内部变化还需努力。     

科技期刊社会效果评价指标初探

为评价科技期刊的社会效果,提出了一个数量化的指标体系。对科技期刊的相对利用量、相对发行量、相对回收量、活跃度、综合社会效益值以及政治标准系数等六项评价指标,根据调查统计数据,分别用公式列表计算,进行综合评价,最后根据计算结果即可提出社会效果最佳科技期刊的排列名次。     

著名语言学家邢公畹治学答问录

著名语言学家邢公畹先生在汉藏语系发生学研究和汉语研究方面成绩卓著，耄耋之年仍孜孜不息地进行着深入的研究，而且关注当前语言文字的应用状况，并发表了精辟的见解。