International students’ language socialization in an English-medium university

This article investigates second language socialization of three international students in a tertiary institute in New Zealand. To understand the experiences of international students, the article draws on the theoretical framework of the production of space to examine how the students experienced their new social space. The article uses multiple sources of data including video/audio recordings of the classroom interaction, field notes, interviews with the focal students/teachers/tutors/lecturers, diaries, and institutional documents to provide a thick description of students’ participation, language socialization, and identities. It does a within and across case analysis of the students’ experience to situate the learning experiences but at the same time to highlight the role of space as a participating social being in the socialization process. The concepts of language socialization and identities are reconceptualized as ever-evolving and ever-changing phenomena, whose production depends on the social conditions and relationships in the social space.

Connotation and Construction of “Lancang-Mekong Community of Shared Future” through Sports Cooperation

In essence, the community with a shared future for mankind is a community of values, which has entered the stage of strategic implementation. The Lancang Mekong River Basin countries share the same river water, which has already bred the community concept of "relatives, neighbors and friends", and is the priority area of "building a community with a shared future for mankind". As an important channel to expand international cooperation space, the sports field should constantly promote practical cooperation and help the construction of "Lancang Mekong community of common destiny". Based on the Lancang Mekong cooperation mechanism and regional characteristics, this paper holds the connection and maintenance functions of "easy" and "regular" contained in sports, and puts forward the following ideas: make a top-level design of policies, actively incorporate into the policy system of regional cooperation mechanism; connect with national strategies, declare various special funds to provide financial support; deepen sports tourism cooperation and promote the Lancang Mekong nationality Traditional sports games and cultural festivals create the brand of Lancang Mekong events, enhance the consciousness of Lancang Mekong, and form the Lancang Mekong sports culture; play the role of "non-state actors" such as overseas Chinese, industry associations and Universities, expand the "individual" interaction field, and provide internal driving force for the construction of "Lancang Mekong Community of Shared future".

Trypanosoma cruzi Affects Rhodnius prolixus Lipid Metabolism During Acute Infection

The interaction between Rhodnius prolixus and Trypanosoma cruzi has huge medical importance because it responds to the transmission of Chagas disease, a neglected tropical disease that affects about eight million people worldwide. It is known that trypanosomatid pathogens depend on active lipid endocytosis from the insect host to meet growth and differentiation requirements. However, until now, knowledge on how the parasite affects the lipid physiology of individual insect organs was largely unknown. Herein, the biochemical and molecular dynamics of the triatomine R. prolixus lipid metabolism in response to T. cruzi acute infection were investigated. A qRT-PCR approach was used to determine the expression profile of 12 protein-coding genes involved in R. prolixus lipid physiology. In addition, microscopic and biochemical assays revealed the lipid droplet profile and the levels of the different identified lipid classes. Finally, spectrometry analyses were used to determine fatty acid and sterol composition and their modulation towards the infection. T. cruzi infection downregulated the transcript levels of protein-coding genes for lipid biosynthetic and degrading pathways in individual triatomine organs. On the other hand, upregulation of lipid receptor transcripts indicates an attempt to capture more lipids from hemolymphatic lipoproteins. Consequently, several lipid classes (such as monoacylglycerol, diacylglycerol, triacylglycerol, cholesteryl ester, phosphatidylcholine, and phosphatidylethanolamine) were involved in the response to the parasite challenge, although modulating only the insect fat body. T. cruzi never leaves the insect gut and yet it modulates non-infected tissues, suggesting that the association between the parasite and the vector organs is reached by cell signaling molecules. This hypothesis raises several intriguing issues to inspire future studies in the parasite-vector interaction field.

Improving Human–Robot Interaction by Enhancing NAO Robot Awareness of Human Facial Expression

An intriguing challenge in the human–robot interaction field is the prospect of endowing robots with emotional intelligence to make the interaction more genuine, intuitive, and natural. A crucial aspect in achieving this goal is the robot’s capability to infer and interpret human emotions. Thanks to its design and open programming platform, the NAO humanoid robot is one of the most widely used agents for human interaction. As with person-to-person communication, facial expressions are the privileged channel for recognizing the interlocutor’s emotional expressions. Although NAO is equipped with a facial expression recognition module, specific use cases may require additional features and affective computing capabilities that are not currently available. This study proposes a highly accurate convolutional-neural-network-based facial expression recognition model that is able to further enhance the NAO robot’ awareness of human facial expressions and provide the robot with an interlocutor’s arousal level detection capability. Indeed, the model tested during human–robot interactions was 91% and 90% accurate in recognizing happy and sad facial expressions, respectively; 75% accurate in recognizing surprised and scared expressions; and less accurate in recognizing neutral and angry expressions. Finally, the model was successfully integrated into the NAO SDK, thus allowing for high-performing facial expression classification with an inference time of 0.34 ± 0.04 s.

Cancer-Nano-Interaction: From Cellular Uptake to Mechanobiological Responses

With the advancement of nanotechnology, the nano-bio-interaction field has emerged. It is essential to enhance our understanding of nano-bio-interaction in different aspects to design nanomedicines and improve their efficacy for therapeutic and diagnostic applications. Many researchers have extensively studied the toxicological responses of cancer cells to nano-bio-interaction, while their mechanobiological responses have been less investigated. The mechanobiological properties of cells such as elasticity and adhesion play vital roles in cellular functions and cancer progression. Many studies have noticed the impacts of cellular uptake on the structural organization of cells and, in return, the mechanobiology of human cells. Mechanobiological changes induced by the interactions of nanomaterials and cells could alter cellular functions and influence cancer progression. Hence, in addition to biological responses, the possible mechanobiological responses of treated cells should be monitored as a standard methodology to evaluate the efficiency of nanomedicines. Studying the cancer-nano-interaction in the context of cell mechanics takes our knowledge one step closer to designing safe and intelligent nanomedicines. In this review, we briefly discuss how the characteristic properties of nanoparticles influence cellular uptake. Then, we provide insight into the mechanobiological responses that may occur during the nano-bio-interactions, and finally, the important measurement techniques for the mechanobiological characterizations of cells are summarized and compared. Understanding the unknown mechanobiological responses to nano-bio-interaction will help with developing the application of nanoparticles to modulate cell mechanics for controlling cancer progression.

Achieving mutual accessibility through the coordination of multiple perspectives in open, unstructured landscapes

Whenever actors perceptually engage with the surrounding world in concert with others, they routinely attend to the degree to which their perceptions (whether visual, aural, tactile, etc.) do or do not overlap with their co-participants. In making a perception publicly accessible then, participants must not only attend to potential perceptual gaps, but have-at-hand a range of discursive and embodied practices for closing those and making what is perceived by one mutually accessible to others. In this paper, using data collected from a geological field-school, I investigate the embodied and mobile practices that participants use for coordinating perception via perspective in open, wilderness settings. I focus in particular on the visual practices that participants use for making what one “sees” in the landscape or activity “seeable" for others. These practices are in turn analyzed with regard to how they highlight the camera’s role in documenting the embodied means by which these practices work. In the analysis of data, we will see the participants’ perspective or line of sight, i.e., the axis of their gaze become a more explicit and salient feature for coordinating the interaction. Field geology provides a perspicuous setting for not just investigating how participants reconfigure themselves vis-a-vis local features in the landscape in order to perceive those features, but also for examining the relationship between the videographer’s perspective as documented on camera and that of the participants.

Visual Emotion-Aware Cloud Localization User Experience Framework Based on Mobile Location Services

<p>Recently, the study of emotional recognition models has increased in the human-computer interaction field. With high recognition accuracy of emotions’ data, we could get immediate feedback from mobile users, get a better perception of human behavior while interacting with mobile apps, and thus make the user experience design more adaptable and intelligent. The harnessing of emotional recognition in mobile apps can dramatically enhance users’ experience. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a visual emotion-aware cloud localization user experience framework based on mobile location services. An important feature of our proposed framework is to provide a personalized mobile app based on the user’s visual emotional changes. The framework captures the emotion-aware data, process them in the cloud server, and analyze them for an immediate localization process. The first stage in the framework builds a correlation between the application’s default language and the user’s visual emotional feedback. In the second stage, the localization model loads the appropriate application’s resources and adjusts the screen features based on the real-time user’s emotion obtained in the first stage and according to the location data that the app collected from the mobile device. Our experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework. The results show that our proposed framework can provide a high-quality application experience in terms of a user’s emotional levels and deliver an excellent level of usability that was before not possible.</p>

The Influence of Leading-Edge Tubercles on the Sheet Cavitation Development of a Benchmark Marine Propeller

Cavitation is an undesirable phenomenon in the maritime industry as it causes damage to the propeller, degrading hydrodynamic performance and increasing the subsequent underwater radiated noise (URN). Therefore, mitigating cavitation on marine propellers is an important area of research in order to reduce carbon emissions emitted from the shipping industry and reduce the rate at which ocean ambient noise levels are increasing. The Humpback whale has provided inspiration to research in the fluid-structure interaction field due to the presence of leading-edge (LE) tubercles on the pectoral fins that allow it to perform acrobatic maneuvers to catch prey. This paper assesses the cavitation containment capability of the LE tubercles on a benchmark marine propeller in both heavy and light cavitating conditions using commercial code STAR-CCM+, unsteady incompressible Reynolds-averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) solver and the Schnerr-Sauer cavitation model to quantify the sheet cavitation present over a range of operating conditions. In summary, in heavy-cavitating conditions, a reduction in sheet cavitation with the inclusion of LE tubercles was observed to a maximum value of 2.75% in all operating conditions considered. A maximum improvement of 3.51% and 1.07% was predicted in propulsive thrust and hydrodynamic efficiency, respectively. In light cavitating conditions, although in some conditions a reduction in cavity volume was observed, this did not result in an improvement in hydrodynamic performance.

Driving Benefits of Virtual Reality in Cerebral Palsy: a narrative review

Introduction: Chronic childhood encephalopathy (CCE),still called cerebral palsy worldwide, is defined as a set ofmotor disorders caused by non-progressive disorders of thecentral nervous system, resulting in changes in muscle toneand posture. These changes are established in the pre, peri orpostnatal period and numerous physical therapy modalitieshave been suggested for the management of these changes.Virtual reality (VR) has been used as an innovative therapeutictool, with a motor approach that involves the individualand a computerized interaction field, with the simulationof exercises capable of stimulating movements in real time,motivation and sensory feedback. Objective: To evaluate the motor benefits of VR as a therapeutic modality in childrenwith CCE. Materials and methods: A narrative review was carried out, with articles found in the Bireme database (BVS)and in the virtual library Scientific Eletronic Library Online(SciELO). The descriptors used were: physiotherapy, virtualreality, children and CCE. Results: Only five articles wereselected. Conclusion: The articles consulted suggest that theuse of VR influences the improvement mainly of the child’sbalance, helping kinesiotherapeutic treatment. However,with a small number of publications focused on the pediatricphysiotherapeutic approach through VR, further studies areneeded for better scientific proof of this tool.