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In this study we proposed a web-based programming assisted system for cooperation (WPASC) and we also designed one learning activity for facilitating students' cooperative programming learning. The aim of this study was to investigate cooperative programming learning behavior of students and its relationship with learning performance. Students' opinions and perceptions toward learning activity and the WPASC were also investigated. The results of this study revealed that most of students perceived that learning activity and the WPASC were useful for cooperative programming learning. Students' learning behavior during cooperative programming learning activity was classified into six different categories and we found that learning behavior has relationship with learning performance. Students from "completely independent," "self-improving using assistance," "confident after enlightenment" and "imitating" categories performed well due to their effective and motivated learning behavior. However, students from "performing poorly without assistance" and "plagiarizing" categories performed the worse; the former could not get assistance at all and the later had no learning motivation. The results also showed that students' learning behavior may have "increasing," "decreasing" and "no transition" during problems solving. Therefore, "performing poorly without assistance" and "plagiarizing learning behavior" and "decreasing transition" or "no transition" in learning behavior should be identified right after completing a programming problem. Then the instructor should intervene into learning behavior in order to change it into more effective for learning. Besides, more incentives need to be given for increasing students' learning motivation and posting solutions and feedback by students at the early stage of a problem solving period. (Contains 4 figures and 6 tables.)

Web-based learning has become an important way to enhance learning and teaching, offering many learning opportunities. A limitation of current Web-based learning is the restricted ability of students to personalize and annotate the learning materials. Providing personalized tools and analyzing some types of learning behavior, such as students' annotation, has attracted attention as a means to enhance Web-based learning. We describe a Web-based tool for creating and sharing annotations and investigate the effect on learning of its use with college students. First, an annotation tool was designed and implemented for the research. Second, learning support mechanisms, including full and group annotation sharing, were developed to promote students' motivation for annotation. Lastly, experiments with individual and shared annotation were conducted and the results show that the influence of annotation on learning performance becomes stronger with the use of sharing mechanisms. We conclude that there is value in further study of collaborative learning through shared annotation.

This research makes use of learning time intensity, burst evaluating equations, and state denotation approaches to evaluate the learning time characteristics of students. Through comparing learning time intensity, six burst styles and three diligence styles are categorized. From the statistical results and interaction content analysis, some pedagogical phenomena were found. The first finding is that the more diligent learners were, the higher the quality and quantity of their interaction. The second is that learners whose learning time intensity was mainly located in the early period of the course and whose interaction content included many complaints were suspected to be possible dropouts. The third finding is that learners whose learning time intensity was mainly located in the later period had achievements that were significantly different from those of the regular periodical reading learners whose learning time intensity was distributed in all periods of the course. The above findings raise some issues and suggestions for those concerned with proposing asynchronous courses. As students can pace their own learning in an asynchronous learning environment, it is hard to avoid getting used to intermittent intensive reading. Instructors should consider seriously how to guide students to learn in a proper sequence through a well-scheduled instructional programme. It is necessary to encourage students to exercise self-discipline in regular on-line reading for better learning outcomes.

Because of low temperatures and oxygen in cold water, fish will die when cold currents arrive. This will cause tremendous loss of money. In order reduce the cooling of the pond, an automatic thermal detecting and cold-roofing system using a wind-proofing device, heaters, and thermal detectors is proposed. To reduce heat loss due to thermal convection above the pond surface, a motor-driven wind-proofing device automatically controlled by a PLC controller is adopted. Here, the wind-proofing device, thermal detectors, and heating system are connected to the PLC controller. The PLC will also be connected to the PC interface. The temperature thresholds used to trigger the heater and the wind proofing device can be set at the PC interface. Two options for manipulating the heating and the automatic heating can be selected. The related wind-proofing area and the number of heaters will be determined according to the current temperature. Moreover, the PLC can be wirelessly connected to the server PC in the control room. The pond keeper can monitor everything online and control the pond water's temperature. With this, the problem of fish dying in a cold wave can be solved. Consequently, to reduce the electrical exhaust when heating up the pond water, green energy, solar energy and wind energy, is used.

The traditional structure of dual mode bandpass filter is formed by a circular or rectangular resonator, which causes excessive circuit areas to be occupied. A 5.2 GHz bandpass filter, based on the triple-branch self-coupled ring resonator, is designed to achieve most essential features such as low insertion loss, compact size, and wide stopband. The coupling of each coupled branch introduces the even- and odd-mode perturbation, which produce sharp bandpass and wide stopband responses due to the generation of band-edge transmission zeros. The simulation and measurement in this paper are respectively verified by using IE3D electromagnetic simulator and Agilent's HP8722C network analyzer. Experimental results show that the filter has 19.2% bandwidth centered at 5.2 GHz, 1.2 dB insertion loss, 25 dB stopband rejection from 6 to 9 GHz. Moreover, the circuit size in this paper has been down to 9×6 mm2 and can be applied to communication of microwave applications.

A 915 MHz printed radio-frequency-identification (RFID) antennas with the characteristics of good gain and omnidirectional beam wave is constructed and evaluated in this study. The objective is to find out their best reading rates for providing effective wireless communications among RFID antenna during the library book inventory process. And an optimal library inventory system which is based on electromagnetic identification (EMID) technology is proposed, which is constructed to find the optimal tag location for a book, test the tag readability for bookshelves, and connect a couple of multi-layer bookshelves with multiplexers and updat the tag reading status in the database of the computer terminal. The fabricated antenna reader and the proposed system are embedded into different locations of bookshelves and tested at the library of Cheng Shiu University in Taiwan. According to the experimental results, the designed prototype of the antenna reader has the characteristics of the directional radiation pattern, good gain, simple shape, low cost and is easy to be integrated into the bookshelf. And the designed library inventory system can authenticate the location of a book automatically. They can benefit administrating librarians with the capabilities of decreasing the library inventory processing time and reducing the possibility of the books being misplaced.

We developed a DNA aptamer, Ap52, against the shared tumor-specific MAGE-A3111-125 peptide antigen that was used to target multiple types of cancer cells. Here we report the in vivo study of mice implanted with pancreatic tumor cells AsPC-1, which demonstrates accumulation of phosphorothioate-modified Ap52 (ThioAp52) at the xenograft tumor following either intravenous or in situ injection. When complexed with antitumor drug doxorubicin (Dox), ThioAp52 achieves targeted delivery to four types of cancer cells, including breast, oral, pancreatic, and skin. Image analysis shows that ThioAp52-Dox complex selectively enters cancer cells, while free Dox is taken up by all cell lines. The cytotoxicity of ThioAp52-Dox for cancer cells is enhanced as compared to that for the corresponding normal/noncancerous cells. These results indicate that this aptamer against shared tumor-specific antigen can be a potential delivery vehicle for therapeutics to treat multiple cancers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]