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Hong Kong’s ‘trilingual and biliterate’ language policy (TaB, 三語兩文) is almost as old as the special administrative region (SAR) itself. Through free education and language support measures in school, students are expected to be conversant in English and Putonghua in addition to Cantonese, and be able to read and understand written Chinese and English. After being implemented for over two decades, however, there are signs that most students’ language standards in Chinese and English fall short of the TaB target, as measured by the public examination results of successive generations of secondary school leavers. Designed with essentially Cantonese-dominant Hongkongers in mind, the TaB policy consists of many measures, with the ‘medium of instruction streaming policy’ introduced since September 1998 being the most controversial. Driven by the twin principles of monolingual English-medium instruction (EMI) and ‘no language mixing allowed’, secondary schools are divided into two streams. Stringent requirements must be met before a school could claim to be an EMI school. According to this ‘late immersion’ model for students aged 11–12 at secondary level, every year about 30 percent of the primary school leavers are allocated to an EMI school. Following Li (Multilingual Hong Kong: languages, literacies and identities. Springer, Cham, 2017), this paper will first discuss why the TaB target is such a tall order for Cantonese-dominant students by reviewing the relevant literature along five inter-related dimensions: contrastive linguistics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, cognitive neuroscience, and instructional strategies and bilingual pedagogies. I will then examine the SAR government’s language support measures to assess their effectiveness and explore possible alternatives. The paper will end with a number of recommendations, which together constitute an LPP (language policy and planning) roadmap for improving the chance with which the TaB policy is likely to produce more positive outcomes. (i) To re-prioritize the investment and extent of language support by strengthening the quality of language input at the key stages of learning from age 3–9, which in curriculum terms correspond with K1–P3; (ii) To use Cantonese as the medium of instruction for teaching all subjects except English and Putonghua as separate subjects at preschool (K1–K3, age 3–6); (iii) To explore the possibility of implementing total immersion in Putonghua for three years at lower primary level (P1–P3, age 6–9); (iv) To abandon the ‘maximum exposure, no mixing’ dogma in secondary education and to encourage basic and action research in bilingual pedagogies and instructional strategies informed by Content-and-language integrated learning (CLIL); (v) To attract academically bright and linguistically gifted students to receive professional training and be prepared and committed for a career in language teaching; and (vi) To encourage civil servants of various government offices, schoolteachers, and university staff to initiate a ‘speak English/Putonghua where we can’ campaign. For these policy measures to be successfully implemented and bear fruit, apart from careful planning, there ought to be strong leadership from within the government and the education sector, plus mechanisms for coordinating concerted actions on the part of various groups of stakeholders, notably teachers, school principals, educationalists, and experts of language teaching and learning in academia.

With the largest number of English learners in the world, the influence of the English language teaching (ELT) reform in China cannot be underestimated. This article explores the implications of the actual use of English in China’s workplace for ELT reform in the context of English as a lingua franca (ELF). On the basis of cross-validated data (questionnaire survey and focused interview) collected from 2495 participants, we argue that ELT reform in China should be geared towards using English communicatively in ELF settings –that is, firstly, ELT curriculum and pedagogies should focus more broadly on improving students’ communication skills instead of narrowly measuring whether they have successfully adhered to lexico-grammatical accuracy pertaining to Standard English norms. Secondly, the native-speaker-based pedagogical model of ELT in China should be enriched with judiciously selected indigenized variants as long as meaning is not adversely affected. Last but not least, for ELT reforms to bear fruit, it is absolutely crucial to ensure a steady supply of properly trained and resourceful ELT teachers.

During gene transformation, selection makers are important for efficient screening of the transgenic lines. The commonly used selection marker genes in plants such as neo, bar and hpt confer antibiotics resistance or herbicide resistance to the transgenic lines, which may have uncertain effects on environment and biosafety. Other selection marker genes with non-toxic products such as xylose isomerase, phosphomannose isomerase and β-glucuronidase are exogenous genes and may also have side effects on transgenic plants. Hence, endogenous and safe marker genes are desirable. Here, a new vector designated pCAMBIA2300-35S-OCS-AhFAD2B was constructed, in which the NeoR gene was replaced by AhFAD2B gene as a reporter gene. FAD2B catalyzes the formation of linoleic acid from oleic acid. High oleic acid peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.) (oleic acid content is >70% of the total fatty acids) variety Kainong1715 was used for transformation by Agrobacterium tumefaciens injection through peanut calyx tube. A total of 688 seeds were harvested, and the oleic acid content of each seed was measured using near infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS). The oleic acid content of 93 seeds was found to be less than 70% indicating that these seeds had been transformed. Further validation by PCR amplification demonstrated that these seeds were true transgenic seeds. AhFAD2B as a reporter gene in peanut could greatly improve screening efficiency of transgenic seeds using NIRS. In addition, linoleic acid, the catalytic product of AhFAD2B, is the essential fatty acid for human health. This is the first report on the development of marker using endogenous gene in peanut.

In Western societies, speaking is construed as an interactive social activity while writing is widely perceived as a solo or private endeavor. Such a functional dichotomy did not apply to the “Sinographic Cosmopolis” in premodern East Asia, however. Based on selected documented examples of writing-mediated cross-border communication spanning over a thousand years from the Sui dynasty to the late Ming dynasty, this paper demonstrates that Hanzi 漢字, a morphographic, non-phonographic script, was commonly used by literati of classical Chinese or Literary Sinitic to engage in “silent conversation” as a substitute for speech. Except for a “drifting” record co-constructed by Korean maritime officials and Chinese “boat people,” all the other examples featured Chinese–Japanese interaction. While synchronous cross-border communication in written Chinese has been reported in scholarly works in East Asian studies (published more commonly in East Asian languages than in English or other Western languages), to our knowledge no attempt has been made to examine such writing-mediated interaction from a linguistic or discourse-pragmatic point of view. Writing-mediated interaction enacted through Sinitic brushtalk (漢文筆談) is compatible with transactional and interactional language functions as in speech. In premodern and early modern East Asia, it was most commonly conducted using brush, ink, and paper, but it could also take place using a pointed object and a flat surface covered with a fluid substance like sand, finger-drawing using water or tea on a table, and so forth. Such an interactional pattern appears to be unparalleled in other regional lingua francas written with a phonographic script such as Latin and Arabic. To facilitate research into the extent to which this interactional pattern is script-specific to morphographic sinograms, a “morphographic hypothesis” is proposed. The theoretical significance of writing-mediated interaction as a third or even fourth known modality of synchronous communication—after speech and (tactile) sign language—will be briefly discussed.

The finite element model of a tubular member under the combined action of axial compression, creep, and axial impact was constructed with the numerical analysis software, to evaluate the core concrete creep effect on the dynamic responses of a steel tubular member in axial compression. In the model, the creep effect of core concrete of different age is equivalent to the change of its elastic modulus. Then, the dynamic responses of a tubular member in axial compression and impact were simulated considering the creep effect, time-history curves of impact load, contact time, axial deformation, stress and strain were plotted, and the effect of creep on them was discussed. The impact load peak decreases with the development of the core concrete creep, and the most is about 51%; the contact time and axial deformation increase; the concrete stress decreases, but the concrete strain increases greatly. The minimum and maximum principal concrete strains after 30 years exceeded those after 28 days by 6.35 and 8.6 times, respectively. The core concrete creep has a less effects on the stress and strain of the steel tube. The fruits provide a scientific help for the impact resistance design of a concrete-filled steel tubular member in axial compression.

MgB2 bulks with graphene doping were synthesized by high energy ball milling process. The effect of high energy ball milling and graphene doping on the microstructure and critical current density of MgB2 was studied systematically. The samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and physical property measurement system (PPMS), respectively. The densities of ball-milled graphene-doped samples were larger than those of pure samples. The superconducting properties of MgB2 could be increased by the high energy ball milling process, in comparison with the sample prepared by grinding process. Moreover, the significant improvement of superconducting properties for ball-milled MgB2 samples could be achieved with the addition of graphene. The combination of graphene doping and suitable ball milling could refine the grain and improve the inter-grain connectivity of MgB2. MgB2 with 3 at% graphene doping prepared by high energy ball milling with 2 h exhibited very high critical current density of 6.4 × 105 A/cm2 at 20 K and 0 T.

Literary Sinitic (written Chinese, hereafter Sinitic) functioned as a ‘scripta franca’ in sinographic East Asia, which broadly comprises China, Japan, South Korea and North Korea, and Vietnam today. It was widely used by East Asian literati to facilitate cross-border communication interactively face-to-face. This lingua-cultural practice is generally known asbĭtán筆談, literally ‘brushtalk’ or ‘brush conversation’. While brushtalk as a substitute for speech to conduct ‘silent conversation’ has been reported since the Sui dynasty (581–619), in this paper brushtalk data will be drawn from sources involving transcultural, cross-border communication from late Ming dynasty (1368–1644) until the 1900s. Brushtalk occurred in four recurrent contexts, comprising both interactional and transactional communication: official brushtalk (公務筆談), poetic brushtalk (詩文筆談), travelogue brushtalk (遊歷筆談), and drifting brushtalk (漂流筆談). For want of space, we will exemplify brushtalk using selected examples drawn from the first three contexts. The use of Sinitic as a ‘scripta franca’ seems to besui generisand under-researched linguistically and sociolinguistically. More research is needed to unveil the script-specific characteristics of Sinitic in cross-border communication.

Although numerous studies have investigated the individual effects of salinity, irrigation and fertilization on soil microbial communities, relatively less attention has been paid to their combined influences, especially using molecular techniques. Based on the field of orthogonal designed test and deoxyribonucleic acid sequencing technology, the effects of saline water irrigation amount, salinity level of irrigation water and nitrogen (N) fertilizer rate on soil bacterial community structure were investigated. The results showed that the irrigation amount was the most dominant factor in determining the bacterial richness and diversity, followed by the irrigation water salinity and N fertilizer rate. The values of Chao1 estimator, abundance-based coverage estimator and Shannon indices decreased with an increase in irrigation amount while increased and then decreased with an increase in irrigation water salinity and N fertilizer rate. The highest soil bacterial richness and diversity were obtained under the least irrigation amount (25 mm), medium irrigation water salinity (4.75 dS/m) and medium N fertilizer rate (350 kg/ha). However, different bacterial phyla were found to respond distinctively to these three factors: irrigation amount significantly affected the relative abundances of Proteobacteria and Chloroflexi; irrigation water salinity mostly affected the members of Actinobacteria, Gemmatimonadetes and Acidobacteria; and N fertilizer rate mainly influenced the Bacteroidetes' abundance. The results presented here revealed that the assessment of soil microbial processes under combined irrigation and fertilization treatments needed to be more careful as more variable consequences would be established by comparing with the influences based on an individual factor, such as irrigation amount or N fertilizer rate.

Correction to: European Review for Medical and Pharmacological Sciences 2020; 24 (22): 11939-11944-DOI: 10.26355/eurrev_202011_23854-PMID: 33275267, published online 30 November, 2020. The authors state that "Figures 3 and 4 were used twice due to a careless mistake during the preparation of Figures". There are amendments to this paper. The Publisher apologizes for any inconvenience this may cause. https://www.europeanreview.org/article/23854.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has become a worldwide public health emergency; unfortunately, there is currently no treatment for improving outcomes or reducing viral-clearance times in infected patients. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the efficacy of interferon (IFN) with or without lopinavir and ritonavir as antiviral therapeutic option for treating COVID-19 infection.The present study enrolled 148 patients that received either standard care, treatment with IFN alfa-2b, or IFN alfa-2b combined with lopinavir plus ritonavir. Viral testing was performed using Reverse-Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR).There was no significant difference in the viral-clearance time at 28 days after treatment between patients receiving standard care and those receiving anti-viral treatments. However, the average viral-clearance time of patients receiving standard care (14 days) was shorter than that for patients receiving IFN alfa-2b or IFN alfa-2b combined with lopinavir plus ritonavir (15.5 or 17.5 days) (p0.05). Patients treated with IFN alfa-2b within five days or IFN alfa-2b combined with lopinavir plus ritonavir after three days of symptoms exhibited shorter viral-clearance times than the other groups (p0.05). Moreover, viral-clearance times were significantly longer in patients receiving standard care or anti-viral treatment 5 days after symptoms appeared than those of patients who received these treatments within five days of symptom onset (p0.05).Early symptomatic treatment is most critical for maximizing amelioration of COVID-19 infection. Anti-viral treatment might have complicated effect on viral-clearance.

We present the creation of a lithium-cesium slow beam using a two-dimensional magneto-optical trap. The two-species atomic beam is directed to load a three-dimensional magneto-optical trap in ultrahigh vacuum. We achieve a loading rate of 1.3$\times$10$^{7}$ lithium atoms/s with the lithium oven temperature at 370~$^{\circ}$C and 2.2$\times$10$^{7}$ cesium atoms/s with the Cs oven temperature at 20~$^{\circ}$C. The maximum numbers of lithium and cesium atoms in the trap are 1.0$\times$10$^{9}$ and 1.4$\times$10$^{8}$, respectively. Our results show that the simple and compact two-dimensional magneto-optical trap is suitable for producing an atomic beam of two species that have a large mass ratio and very different volatilities., 7 pages, 7 figures

The effect of graphene (G) coated Si, Ti and Nb additions on the superconducting properties of MgB2 was systematically studied. The additives were prepared by a coating process and all introduced powders were scattered and combined with graphene. The coating process was useful for the uniform distribution of additives in MgB2 samples. The additives could effectively make the refinement of MgB2 grain size, which achieved an enhancement of surface pinning. Meanwhile, the densities of all the doped samples were larger than those of pure samples, which ensured a better intergrain connection for supercurrent. Therefore, the critical current density of MgB2 with 8 wt% G coated Nb addition got a significant enhancement due to the improvement of grain connectivity and flux pinning properties.

This paper is an update of Luke and Richards and Li on the functions and status of English in postcolonial Hong Kong. Two decades after the handover, relatively little has changed except in the edu...

A time-serial topographic change was performed using two kinds of surveying methods, including direct measurement and indirect remote sensing technology for beach topography surveillance. Compared with reference topographic data, the root mean square error was 0.169 m. From May, 2018 to March, 2019, multi-temporal beach topographic change results indicated that the distance between baseline and shoreline varied in the range of −24.82∼9.58 meter, and weekly variates are −3.16∼0.45 m. The UAV technique can be efficiently used to detect topographic change information in the coastal area.

This study evaluated the online privacy policies of business-to-consumer e-commerce firms in five industries of mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Based on the neo-institutional theory, we also tested whether the four institutional factors, (1) top management’s legal education, (2) managerial ethics, (3) rule of law in information privacy protection and (4) peer practices, had any effects on e-information and e-communication content. Results from a content analysis of 229 websites found that the privacy policy contents that complied with generally accepted privacy standards were lesser in mainland China firms than those of Taiwan and Hong Kong firms. There were also significant differences in the amount of contents among the five industries. The results of regression analyses showed the importance of all four factors on e-information content. They also showed the importance of coercive, mimetic, and normative isomorphisms on e-information content. The validation of normative isomorphism highlighted the importance of managerial ethics and legal education. Our findings supplemented extant literature which identified economic motive as the main factor in influencing privacy practice disclosures.

CeO2 films were prepared by chemical solution deposition on Ni–5 at% W substrates with special surface morphologies. The special morphologies of the NiW substrates including pores and grooves could be obtained by an electrochemical etching process. The influence of substrate surface morphologies on the nucleation and growth behaviors of cerium oxide films was investigated. The micropores had a strong influence on the random nucleation of the CeO2 films. With increasing pore size on the surface of the NiW substrates, the epitaxial nucleation mode became the dominant mode. The amount of c-axis-oriented grains increased and the in-plane FWHM values decreased. On the other hand, the grooves had a weak effect on the crystallization of the CeO2 films. Pure (00l)-oriented grains and sharp texture of the CeO2 films could be acquired on the substrate with large grooves. This reveals that the substrate surface morphology plays a vital role in the crystallization behaviors of CeO2 films.

扁桃体鳞状细胞癌常伴颈淋巴结转移，转移淋巴结病理性质多与原发灶一致。本文描述了1例青岛市市立医院耳鼻咽喉头颈外科收治的转移淋巴结性质与原发灶具有差异——呈现出肉瘤样分化的扁桃体鳞状细胞癌患者,该表现提示了肿瘤的恶性化程度更高，更具侵袭性而预后较差。患者经手术、放化疗联合治疗，于入院5个半月后因肺转移及并发症死亡。.

Based on qualitative data obtained from 33 participants in four focus groups, two each in Putonghua (17) and English (16) respectively, this study shows that learners of Cantonese as an additional language (CAL) in Hong Kong experience a lot of difficulties. As a ‘dialect’, Cantonese has not been standardized and is not part of school literacy. A variety of romanization systems are used in commercially obtainable learning aid like Cantonese course books and bilingual dictionaries, which tend to diverge from romanized Cantonese in street signs and personal names. Independent learning is difficult while incidental learning is almost impossible. Cantonese tuition, often focusing on tones, is reportedly not so helpful. With six distinctive tonemes, the Cantonese tone system appears to be a major stumbling block. When spoken to in Cantonese, local speakers tend to switch to English or Putonghua. Inaccuracies in tone contours often trigger laughter, damaging CAL learners’ self-esteem and dampening their motivation to learn and speak Cantonese. Unlike sojourners, non-Chinese residents who see themselves as Hongkongers often get upset as their identity claims are questioned or even challenged by the mainstream Cantonese society.

Drawing on Clyne’s (

Ba-, La-, and Zr-doped CeO2−δ films and undoped CeO2−δ film with (00 l) preferred orientation have been prepared on biaxially textured Ni–W substrates by metal organic decomposition (MOD) method. The influences of valences and ionic radii of dopants on the epitaxial growth of CeO2−δ films and oxygen diffusion in the buffer layer were explored by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). The doping cations with different radii cause the change of the lattice parameter of CeO2−δ film and the mismatch between Ni–W substrate and epitaxial film, which modifies the compressive strain resulted from the elastically lattice deformation in the films. Our results show that the compressive strain is beneficial to the c-axial texture formation of CeO2−δ film. In addition, ionic radius has influence on the surface roughness and the out-of-plane texture of the film. Moreover, the oxygen diffusion results from the inherent variation of the thermodynamic factors, in particular the migration energy of oxygen ions. Meanwhile, larger radius of doping cation would lead to the decrease of the migration energies of oxygen ion due to the steric effect. So compared with the Ba- and La-doped CeO2−δ films, the Zr-doped CeO2−δ film shows slight oxygen diffusion. These results are significant to improving the properties of buffer layer for coated conductors.

Recently there has been considerable interest in the role of first language use in second/foreign language learning, especially where students share a common first language. However, most research has focused on in-class interaction between teachers and learners. Much less attention has been given to students’ out-of-class practices, for example, in collaborative project-based learning. To fill this gap, the article tracks the out-of-class activities of 16 students (four project groups) involved in project work on a course in English for science students at an English-medium university in Hong Kong. An analysis of students’ computer-mediated interactions (Facebook, WhatsApp and email) shows that these interactions are plurilingual, with students drawing on English, Chinese and mixed code to different extents as they go about their project work. Different languages are used strategically: whereas L2 is used more in the construction of the final project product, L1 is used more to promote group cohesion. The findings suggest that, in plurilingual contexts like Hong Kong, it is necessary to develop an English language pedagogy that acknowledges the need for the constructive but judicious use of translanguaging and plurilingual practices as students are engaged in L2-focused (e.g. EAP) project-based group work.