Exploring the Cultural Content in Chinese ELT Textbooks from Intercultural Perspectives

Beibei Song 아시아테플 2019 The Journal of Asia TEFL Vol.16 No.1

In EFL contexts like mainland China, many researchers made efforts to investigate the cultural content of Chinese government-authorized textbooks used in both public secondary schools and universities. However, few people pay attention to textbooks used in cram schools. This study aims to explore the cultural content in New Concept English (NCE), an extensively used textbook in Chinese cram schools for nearly 30 years. Meanwhile, it attempts to analyze its strengths and weaknesses of the cultural content from intercultural perspectives. Adopting content analysis under the guidance of two coding schemes, the results reveal that general culture (68%) has the largest percentage while source culture (2%) is significantly ignored in stark contrast to target culture (46%). Based on the findings, the prominent strength lies in the great deal of general culture (68%), which helps student understand culture from an etic view and makes them realize the cultural differences for cross-cultural comparison. The two weaknesses are the severely neglected source culture (2%) compared to target culture (46%) and the unbalanced distribution in international cultures. Findings of this study intend to raise teachers’ awareness of the intercultural teaching and learning in cram schools.

A Motivation Filter Scheme for Behavior Sequence Learning in Virtual Environment

Wei Song,Beibei Zhang,Kyungeun Cho,Kyhyun Um 한국멀티미디어학회 2009 한국멀티미디어학회 국제학술대회 Vol.2009 No.-

This paper proposes a motivation filter scheme for behavior sequence learning system which does not require predefined probability of the states' transition. When interacting with unknown environments, a virtual agent needs to learn how to generate a behavior sequence to achieve a goal and determine the transition probability based on the current state and the action taken. In a sequence learning process, the sensed states are grouped by a set of proposed motivation filters in order to reduce the learning computation of the large state space. The proposed motivation filters work motivated by the change in the agent's internal variables. We simulate a virtual environment to elucidate the process of the system.

MD2 blockade prevents modified LDL-induced retinal injury in diabetes by suppressing NADPH oxidase-4 interaction with Toll-like receptor-4

Chen Huaicheng,Yan Tao,Song Zongming,Ying Shilong,Wu Beibei,Ju Xin,Yang Xi,Qu Jia,Wu Wencan,Zhang Zongduan,Wang Yi 생화학분자생물학회 2021 Experimental and molecular medicine Vol.53 No.-

Modified LDL-induced inflammation and oxidative stress are involved in the pathogenesis of diabetic retinopathy. Recent studies have also shown that modified LDL activates Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) to mediate retinal injury. However, the mechanism by which modified LDL activates TLR4 and the potential role of the TLR4 coreceptor myeloid differentiation protein 2 (MD2) are not known. In this study, we inhibited MD2 with the chalcone derivatives L2H17 and L6H21 and showed that MD2 blockade protected retinal Müller cells against highly oxidized glycated-LDL (HOG-LDL)-induced oxidative stress, inflammation, and apoptosis. MD2 inhibition reduced oxidative stress by suppressing NADPH oxidase-4 (NOX4). Importantly, HOG-LDL activated TLR4 and increased the interaction between NOX4 and TLR4. MD2 was required for the activation of these pathways, as inhibiting MD2 prevented the association of NOX4 with TLR4 and reduced NOX4-mediated reactive oxygen species production and TLR4-mediated inflammatory factor production. Furthermore, treatment of diabetic mice with L2H17 significantly reduced LDL extravasation in the retina and prevented retinal dysfunction and apoptosis by suppressing the TLR4/MD2 pathway. Our findings provide evidence that MD2 plays a critical role in mediating modified LDL-induced cell injury in the retina and suggest that targeting MD2 may be a potential therapeutic strategy.

Screening and production of dsRNA molecules for protecting Cucumis sativus against Cucumber mosaic virus through foliar application

Mo Qin,Lv Beibei,Sun Yu,Wu Xiao,Song Lili,Cai Run,Tang Xueming 한국식물생명공학회 2022 Plant biotechnology reports Vol.16 No.4

Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV), which is one of the most prevalent plant viruses, harms many crops around the word. Although CMV causes severe economic losses to agriculture, successful prevention and treatment strategies are lacking. RNA interference (RNAi) is a promising strategy for the control of CMV because of its impressive specificity and sustain- ability. Here, a bacterial expression approach was conducted to produce hairpin RNA, and the best expression conditions to produce a high yield of dsRNA were explored. The highest expression of dsRNA in Escherichia coli HT115 was achieved at 37 °C using 2 mM IPTG and 17 h post-induction. For resistance analysis, six dsRNA molecules were constructed for CMV 1a, 2a, 3a and coat protein (CP). In cucumber (Cucumis sativus), foliar application of dsRNA preparations derived from CMV-1a and CMV-2a proteins conferred efficient protection against CMV. Our findings confirm that the exogenous application of dsRNA with a bacterial prokaryotic expression system could be a powerful biotechnological tool to protect plants against virus infections.

Energy Landscape Paving with Local Search for Global Optimization of the BLN Off-lattice Model

Jingfa Liu,Weibo Huang,Wenjie Liu,Yuanyuan Sun,Beibei Song,Mao Chen 한국물리학회 2014 THE JOURNAL OF THE KOREAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY Vol.64 No.4

The optimization problem for finding the global minimum energy structure is one of the mainproblems of protein structure prediction and is known to be an NP-hard problem in computationalmolecular biology. The low-energy conformational search problem in the hydrophobic-hydrophilicneutral(BLN) off-lattice model is studied. We convert the problem into an unconstrained optimizationproblem by introducing the penalty function. By putting forward a new updating mechanismof the histogram function in the energy landscape paving (ELP) method and incorporating heuristicconformation update strategies into the ELP method, we obtain an improved ELP (IELP) method. Subsequently, by combining the IELP method with the local search (LS) based on the gradient descentmethod, we propose a hybrid algorithm, denoted by IELP-LS, for the conformational searchof the off-lattice BLN model. Simulation results indicate that IELP-LS can find lower-energy statesthan other methods in the literature, showing that the proposed method is an effective tool forglobal optimization in the BLN off-lattice protein model.

Soft High-Loading TiO2 Composite Biomaterial Film as an Efficient and Recyclable Catalyst for Removing Methylene Blue

Jinyan Hu,Dingsheng Wu,Quan Feng,Anfang Wei,Beibei Song 한국섬유공학회 2020 Fibers and polymers Vol.21 No.8

Currently, the preparation of novel efficient and recyclable photocatalysts for pollutant degradation in water hasbecome a research hotpot. In this study, a TiO2-loaded non-woven polypropylene/bacterial cellulose (TiO2-loaded NPBC)composite film was prepared by a biological culturing method. The TiO2 nanoparticles were spontaneously embedded intothe prepared composite film. Then, the composite film was used to degrade methylene blue (MB) and its degradation effectswere explored. The morphology of the composite film was investigated. It was clear that a large amount of TiO2nanoparticles were embedded into the composite membrane during the biological culturing method. The experimental resultsconfirmed that the TiO2-loaded NPBC composite film had good degradation performance and reusability. When the reactiontime was 120 min, the removal rate of MB by the film was 92.8 %. The removal rate remained above 85 % after 5degradation cycles.

Three sesquiterpene lactones suppress lung adenocarcinoma by blocking TMEM16A-mediated Ca2+-activated Cl− channels

Ruilian Xiu,Jie Jia,Qing Zhang,Fengjiao Liu,Yaxin Jia,Yuanyuan Zhang,Beibei Song,Xiaodan Liu,Jingwei Chen,Dongyang Huang,Fan Zhang,Juanjuan Ma,Honglin Li,Xuan Zhang,Yunyun Geng 대한약리학회 2023 The Korean Journal of Physiology & Pharmacology Vol.27 No.6

Transmembrane protein TMEM16A, which encodes calcium-activated chloride channel has been implicated in tumorigenesis. Overexpression of TMEM16A is associated with poor prognosis and low overall survival in multiple cancers including lung adenocarcinoma, making it a promising biomarker and therapeutic target. In this study, three structure-related sesquiterpene lactones (mecheliolide, costunolide and dehydrocostus lactone) were extracted from the traditional Chinese medicine Aucklandiae Radix and identified as novel TMEM16A inhibitors with comparable inhibitory effects. Their effects on the proliferation and migration of lung adenocarcinoma cells were examined. Whole-cell patch clamp experiments showed that these sesquiterpene lactones potently inhibited recombinant TMEM16A currents in a concentration- dependent manner. The half-maximal concentration (IC50) values for three tested sesquiterpene lactones were 29.9 ± 1.1 μM, 19.7 ± 0.4 μM, and 24.5 ± 2.1 μM, while the maximal effect (Emax) values were 100.0% ± 2.8%, 85.8% ± 0.9%, and 88.3% ± 4.6%, respectively. These sesquiterpene lactones also significantly inhibited the endogenous TMEM16A currents and proliferation, and migration of LA795 lung cancer cells. These results demonstrate that mecheliolide, costunolide and dehydrocostus lactone are novel TMEM16A inhibitors and potential candidates for lung adenocarcinoma therapy.