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This case study concerns enterprise with multiple years of experiences in knowledge management. Through tracking for five consecutive years the annual evaluation of knowledge innovation units withi...

In this study, a DANP approach to multi-criteria decision making is applied using the DEMATEL (Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory Model) technique, which is integrated into the ANP (Analytic Network Process) to know the links between the factors influencing the understanding of French university courses of Chinese students and thus to find the order of importance and weighting of the predominant factors and criteria associates. This is the first time that this DANP approach has been integrated into the teaching of the French Foreign Language (FLE). Thus, it can be seen that teacher strongly influence the other two factors; this result stands out from the other studies carried out on the subject.

In this study, a DANP approach to multi-criteria decision making is applied using the DEMATEL (Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory Model) technique, which is integrated into the ANP (Analytic Network Process) to know the links between the factors influencing the understanding of French university courses of Chinese students and thus to find the order of importance and weighting of the predominant factors and criteria associates. This is the first time that this DANP approach has been integrated into the teaching of the French Foreign Language (FLE). Thus, it can be seen that teacher strongly influence the other two factors; this result stands out from the other studies carried out on the subject.

The therapeutic effects of ultrasonic microbubble transfection (UMT)-based vascular endothelial growth factor 165 (VEGF165) gene delivery on young and senescent endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) were investigated. By UMT, plasmid DNA (pDNA) can be delivered into both young EPCs and senescent EPCs. In the UMT groups, higher pDNA-derived protein expression was found in senescent EPCs than in young EPCs. Consistent with this finding, a higher intracellular level of pDNA copy number was detected in senescent EPCs, with a peak at the 2-h time point post UMT. Ultrasonic microbubble delivery with or without VEGF improved the angiogenic properties, including the proliferation and/or migration activities, of senescent EPCs. Supernatants from young and senescent EPCs subjected to UMT-mediated VEGF transfection enhanced the proliferation and migration of human aortic endothelial cells (HAECs), and the supernatant of senescent EPCs enhanced proliferation more strongly than the supernatant from young EPCs. In the UMT groups, the stronger enhancing effect of the supernatant from senescent cells on HAEC proliferation was consistent with the higher intracellular VEGF pDNA copy number and level of protein production per cell in the supernatant from senescent cells in comparison to the supernatant from young EPCs. Given that limitations for cell therapies are the inadequate number of transplanted cells and/or insufficient cell angiogenesis, these findings provide a foundation for enhancing the therapeutic angiogenic effect of cell therapy with senescent EPCs in ischaemic cardiovascular diseases.

With the further development of economic globalization, China has built cooperative relationship with other countries around the world. Therefore, foreign language talents in China play an essential role in cultural and trade exchanges. Training language talents to effectively adapt to foreign exchange policy also becomes important to China. Researching motivation change in learning enables the government to scientifically improve teaching quality. It is one of the most efficient and effective methods to cultivate high-quality talents. This study aims to find out the critical factors influencing students' motivational change. Based on Keller's ARCS model of motivation and Dornyei's Three-level motivational theory, we divided influencing factors into 14 elements. After factor analysis, it showed group-specific motivational components, course-specific components and teacher-specific components are the most critical factors affecting motivation level in language learning. In 2018, National Standard for Teaching Quality of Foreign Language and Literature was published, to adjust course setting and strengthen teachers team building to improve teaching quality. However, even after two years of the above modification, the author found out there are still problems in higher education which badly influence student's learning motivation. This study helps improving teaching quality, promoting foreign language learning and cultivating language talents.

Senescence reduces the circulating number and angiogenic activity of endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs), and is associated with aging-related vascular diseases. However, it is very time-consuming to obtain aged cells (~1 month of repeated replication) or animals (~2 years) for senescence studies. Here, we established an accelerated senescence model by treating EPCs with deferoxamine (DFO), an FDA-approved iron chelator. Four days of low-dose (3 μM) DFO induced senescent phenotypes in EPCs, including a senescent pattern of protein expression, impaired mitochondrial bioenergetics, altered mitochondrial protein levels and compromised angiogenic activity. DFO-treated early EPCs from young and old donors (< 35 vs. > 70 years old) displayed similar senescent phenotypes, including elevated senescence-associated β-galactosidase activity and reduced relative telomere lengths, colony-forming units and adenosine triphosphate levels. To validate this accelerated senescence model in vivo, we intraperitoneally injected Sprague-Dawley rats with DFO for 4 weeks. Early EPCs from DFO-treated rats displayed profoundly senescent phenotypes compared to those from control rats. Additionally, in hind-limb ischemic mice, DFO pretreatment compromised EPC angiogenesis by reducing both blood perfusion and capillary density. DFO thus accelerates EPC senescence and appears to hasten model development for cellular senescence studies.

Closely connected with other language skills, listening plays an essential role in language acquisition that is why perception of authentic speech is one of the most important aspects of language teaching and development of learners listening strategies is substantial in language teaching. In this paper, we examine French and English literature on this topic. We conduct our study by means of a questionnaire among 21 Chinese and 21 Russian university students who achieved at least Intermediate level in French L2. The data analysis allows us to show how difficult listening is for the students and also to demonstrate which metacognitive listening strategies they use. Finally, we draw some trends in L2 listening among interviewed Chinese and Russian students.

Cellular senescence is the progressive impairment of function and proliferation in response to various regulators. Dihydrolipoic acid-coated gold nanoclusters (DHLA-Au NCs), which are molecular clusters with covalently linked dihydroxyl lipoic acid, preserve cellular activities for long-term incubation. DHLA-Au NC delivery was characterized, and we determined the role of growth supplements on internalization, allowing the optimization of DHLA-Au NC bioactivity. In the optimized medium, DHLA-Au NCs attenuated the levels of the senescence-associated phenotype. Molecular mechanism analysis further indicated that during DHLA-Au NC treatment, the activation of the stress signal JNK and its downstream c-Jun were impaired under LPS induction, which led to a decline in AP-1-mediated TNF-α transactivation. Confocal microscopy and subcellular fractionation analysis suggested that DHLA-Au NCs interacted with mitochondria through their lipid moiety and attenuated mitochondria-derived reactive oxygen species. With adequate treatment, DHLA-Au NCs show protection against cellular senescence and inflammation in vitro and in vivo.

Conformance proportion is a useful index in agricultural, biological, and environmental applications, which is defined as the proportion that a characteristic of interest falls in an acceptance region of a specification. In practice, however, the acceptance region may not be available when employing the regular conformance proportion. In this article, we propose a new index in which the acceptance region is obtained from a reference population. Furthermore, we develop approaches to constructing confidence limits for the proposed conformance proportion using the concept of a fiducial generalized pivotal quantity. We first consider the simple situation that the characteristic is assumed to be a univariate normal random variable. Then we extend it to the one-way random effects model. The proposed method is evaluated through simulation study and real data analysis. It is shown that our proposed new index and its statistical inference are easy to implement and reasonably satisfactory for most applications. Supplementary materials accompanying this paper appear on-line.

Knowledge creation has been attracting academic attention for over 15 years, but existing theories are insufficient for explaining the output of knowledge conversion and seldom explore behavioural development of the employees after knowledge conversion. This study uses social learning theory to explore the social practice in the organization, so as to achieve knowledge conversion and the creation of behavioural competency. Cases from four different industries were chosen to analyse activities of different professional groups in the process of training new entrants. Research results show that interactions and practices in a combination of multiple situations were needed to generate the required behavioural competency of their employees. Furthermore, the Social Learning-Based Knowledge Conversion Model (SL-KCM) explains more clearly the relations between knowledge conversion and behavioural development. SL-KCM complements existing theoretical explanations of knowledge conversion outcome and is applicable to developing training models with enhanced behavioural effects.

Conformance proportion is the proportion of a performance characteristic of interest that falls within a prespecified acceptance region, which has been used in various applications. In this article, a simple closed-form interval estimation, based on Student’s t statistic, is proposed for unilateral conformance proportions in balanced and unbalanced random-effects models. Two real datasets are analyzed to illustrate the proposed method, whose performance is also evaluated through detailed simulation studies. The simulation results reveal that the empirical coverage probabilities for upper confidence limits of the method are sufficiently close to the nominal values, but those for lower confidence limits appear to be slightly less than the nominal level. Furthermore, a bootstrap-based calibration for both upper and lower confidence limits is provided to have empirical coverage probabilities closer to the nominal level. This article has supplementary material online.

We have recently demonstrated that a 4-in-1 gene therapy strategy that contains two anti-angiogenic genes [endostatin and pigment epithelium-derived factor] and two cytokine genes [granulocyte macrophage colony-stimulating factor and interleukin 12] has a considerable antitumor effect on large tumors in a woodchuck hepatoma model. The current study further investigates the underlying mechanisms for the antitumor effect observed by using small rodent models. We found that immunotherapy alone increased immunosuppressive cells in large tumors over time, whereas the anti-angiogenic therapy contained in the 4-in-1 strategy alleviated immunosuppression and made tumors vulnerable to immunotherapy, thus resulting in a synergistic antitumor effect.

Two approaches are proposed for constructing one- and two-sided confidence limits for conformance proportions in a normal variance components model.

Cytokine and antiangiogenic gene therapies have proved effective in implanted hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) models in which small tumor burdens were established in small rodents. These models, however, may not reflect human HCCs, which are frequently detected at a stage when tumors are large and multifocal. In addition, HCC in patients is often associated with viral hepatitis. To investigate the effectiveness of a mixture type of gene therapy strategy on large tumor burdens, we used the woodchuck model in which woodchuck hepatitis virus-induced HCCs are large and multifocal, simulating the conditions in humans. Adenoviruses encoding antiangiogenic factors (pigment epithelium-derived factor and endostatin) or cytokines (GM-CSF and IL-12) were delivered via the hepatic artery separately or in combination into woodchuck livers bearing HCCs. Our results showed that the mixture type of strategy, which contained two cytokines and two antiangiogenic factors, had better antitumor effects on large tumors as compared with monotherapy either with antiangiogenic or cytokine genes. The immunotherapy recruited significant levels of CD3 + T cells that infiltrated the tumors, whereas the antiangiogenesis-based therapy significantly reduced tumor vasculature. The mixture type of gene therapy achieved both effects. In addition, it induced high levels of natural killer cells and apoptotic cells and reduced the levels of immunosuppressive effectors in the tumor regions. Hence, antiangiogenic therapy may provide the advantage of reducing immune tolerance in large tumors, making them more vulnerable to the immune reactions. Our study implies that in the future, the combination therapy may prove effective for the treatment of patients with advanced HCC.

The number of international university students keeps rising. As a result, Chinese-speaking students come to France in increasing numbers to carry on with their studies. How do they answer when asked about the difficulties faced during their studies? The first answer often involves problems concerning language but they are not the only ones. Students will also have to deal with the adaptation to a new culture and to new university methods.In this workshop we are going to present three case studies analyzing the difficulties faced by Chinese-speaking students regarding language, culture and methodology.The first presentation focuses on the difficulties encountered by Chinese students in oral interaction and the strategies they implement to communicate in French. Using an ethnographic approach, we will analyze three exolingual communication settings: Chinese-Chinese pairs, Chinese-Korean pairs and Chinese-French pairs. Using multimodal transcripts, we try to identify the different characteristics of these exolingual interactions between Chinese students and various interlocutors.The second presentation addresses the issue of the inadequacy of Chinese students in the academic context. By observing the Master's seminar in Educational Sciences and by using the self- confrontation interview method with students, the study presents an analysis of the interactional difficulties caused by the confrontation.The difficulties met by Chinese-speaking students are not only related to their language and culture, but also to methodology. This presentation focuses on the results of a survey conducted during the academic years 2013-2015 to find out how Taiwanese students assessed their academic experience in France. Our research exposes the difficulties faced by students regarding the organization of education and the understanding of the French university system., La mobilité internationale des étudiants apparait de plus en plus importante dans l'enseignement supérieur. Suivant cette vague, un nombre croissant d'étudiants sinophones viennent en France pour poursuivre leurs études. Que disent-ils lorsqu'on les interroge sur les difficultés qu'ils rencontrent pendant leurs études ? Les problèmes langagiers sont souvent la première réponse mais ils ne sont pas les seuls. Les étudiants vont également confronter l'impact de leur culture d'origine avec celle du pays d'accueil. De plus, l'adaptation à la méthodologie universitaire soulève également des difficultés.Dans cet atelier, nous allons présenter trois études de cas analysant les difficultés rencontrées en matière langagière, culturelle et méthodologique chez les étudiants sinophones.La première présentation porte sur les difficultés en interaction orale chez les étudiants chinois et les stratégies mises en place pour réaliser la communication en langue française. Dans une perspective ethnographique, cette présentation analysera trois situations de communication exolingue entre : locuteurs chinois-chinois, locuteurs chinois-coréen et locuteurs chinois-français. À l'aide de transcriptions multimodales, cette présentation identifiera les différentes caractéristiques interactionnelles chez les apprenants chinois face à différents interlocuteurs.La deuxième présentation traite la question de l'inadaptation des étudiants chinois dans le contexte universitaire. En observant les séminaires de master en Sciences de l'éducation et en faisant des entretiens d'auto-confrontation auprès des étudiants, l'étude présentée amène à comprendre les difficultés d'interaction causées par la confrontation de la culture d'origine et la culture d'accueil entre les enseignants français et les étudiants chinois.Les difficultés rencontrées par les étudiants sinophones ne sont pas seulement linguistiques et culturelles, elles sont aussi méthodologiques. La dernière communication proposée se centre sur les résultats d'enquêtes réalisées durant deux années (2013-2015) sur le vécu universitaire en France d'un échantillon d'étudiants taiwanais de diverses disciplines. La recherche présentée montre les différents aspects des difficultés rencontrées par ces étudiants dans le domaine de l'organisation de l'enseignement et dans la compréhension du système universitaire français.

The selective genotyping approach, where only individuals from the high and low extremes of the trait distribution are selected for genotyping and the remaining individuals are not genotyped, has been known as a cost-saving strategy to reduce genotyping work and can still maintain nearly equivalent efficiency to complete genotyping in QTL mapping. We propose a novel and simple statistical method based on the normal mixture model for selective genotyping when both genotyped and ungenotyped individuals are fitted in the model for QTL analysis. Compared to the existing methods, the main feature of our model is that we first provide a simple way for obtaining the distribution of QTL genotypes for the ungenotyped individuals and then use it, rather than the population distribution of QTL genotypes as in the existing methods, to fit the ungenotyped individuals in model construction. Another feature is that the proposed method is developed on the basis of a multiple-QTL model and has a simple estimation procedure similar to that for complete genotyping. As a result, the proposed method has the ability to provide better QTL resolution, analyze QTL epistasis, and tackle multiple QTL problem under selective genotyping. In addition, a truncated normal mixture model based on a multiple-QTL model is developed when only the genotyped individuals are considered in the analysis, so that the two different types of models can be compared and investigated in selective genotyping. The issue in determining threshold values for selective genotyping in QTL mapping is also discussed. Simulation studies are performed to evaluate the proposed methods, compare the different models, and study the QTL mapping properties in selective genotyping. The results show that the proposed method can provide greater QTL detection power and facilitate QTL mapping for selective genotyping. Also, selective genotyping using larger genotyping proportions may provide roughly equivalent power to complete genotyping and that using smaller genotyping proportions has difficulties doing so. The R code of our proposed method is available on http://www.stat.sinica.edu.tw/chkao/.

Tumor-induced angiogenesis has been shown to suppress immune responses. One mechanism is to suppress leukocyte-endothelial cell interaction by down-regulating the expression of adhesion molecules, such as intercellular adhesion molecule (ICAM)-1, vascular cell adhesion molecule (VCAM)-1 and E-selectin on the tumor endothelium, which enables tumor cells to escape immune surveillance. Calreticulin (CRT), a chaperone protein mainly located in the endoplasmic reticulum, has been shown to exert anti-angiogenic activity and inhibit tumor growth. Here, we demonstrate that in addition to inhibiting angiogenesis, CRT also enhances the expression of both ICAM-1 and VCAM-1 on tumor endothelial cells. This expression results in enhanced leukocyte-endothelial cell interactions and increased lymphocyte infiltration into tumors. Therefore, combining intramuscular CRT gene transfer with intratumoral cytokine gene therapies significantly improves the antitumor effects of immunotherapy by markedly increasing the levels of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes. This combined treatment increased the levels of infiltrating lymphocytes to those achieved using four times the cytokine dosage. The combined therapy also resulted in lower levels of immunosuppressive molecules and higher levels of activated T-cells in the tumor microenvironment than immunotherapy alone. In conclusion, this study describes a new antitumor mechanism of CRT that involves the up-regulation of tumor endothelial adhesion molecules and the enhanced infiltration of tumor-specific lymphocytes. Thus, CRT treatment can make tumor cells more vulnerable to immunotherapy and improve the therapeutic efficacy of immunotherapy.

We investigated distributions of angular-anisotropy parameter beta and kinetic energy of fragments after photodissociation of methanol using time-of-flight (TOF) mass spectrometry. Fragments, in particular CH(3)O and CO, were successfully detected using tunable radiation from a synchrotron for photoionization. Following O-H bond fission, a CH(3)O fragment with internal energy greater than 104 kJ mol(-1) dissociates to CH(2)O+H. Elimination of two H(2) accompanies formation of CO. The beta value of hydroxyl hydrogen is -0.26 whereas that of methyl hydrogen is zero. H(2) has two distinct components in TOF spectra; these rapid and slow components have beta values -0.30 and -0.18, respectively. The CH(3)+OH dissociation exhibits a highly anisotropic angular distribution with beta= -0.75. The beta values of fragments from CD(3)OH photolysis are addressed. From measurements of angular-anisotropy parameters of various fragments, we surmise that the transition dipole moment mu is almost perpendicular to the C-O-H plane and that n-3p(x) (2 (1)A") is the major photoexcited state at 157 nm.