The Life and Works of George Carter Stent

Many English-Chinese dictionaries have been compiled since the publication of Robert Morison\u27s A Dictionary of the Chinese Language. Among these dictionaries, George Carter Stent\u27s A Chinese and English Vocabulary in The Pekinese Dialect stands out with a number of unique features. G. C. Stent came to China in the 1860s as a guard for the new British Legation. He translated many works of Chinese literature into English, and published three dictionaries. Unfortunately, at the present very little research about Stent\u27s life and work has been undertaken. There are many questions still to be answered, such as Stent\u27s family and educational background, his motivation for learning Chinese, and his experience studying the language and so on. This paper investigates Stent\u27s life, then looks at the influence of his life experiences on his understanding of Chinese

Flavonoids and its derivatives from Callistephus chinensis flowers and their inhibitory activities against alpha-glucosidase

Inhibitors of carbohydrate-hydrolysing enzymes play an important role for the treatment of diabetes. One of the therapeutic methods for decreasing of postprandial hyperglycemia is to retard absorption of glucose by the inhibition of carbohydrate-hydrolysing enzymes, such as α-glucosidase, in the digestive organs. To investigate the therapeutic potential of compounds from natural sources, Callistephus chinensis flowers (CCF) were tested for inhibition of α-glucosidase, and acarboes was used as the positive control. The 70 % ethanol extract of CCF exhibited significant α-glucosidase inhibitory activities with IC50 value of 8.14 μg/ml. The stepwise polarity fractions of CCF were tested further for in vitro inhibition of α-glucosidase. The ethyl acetate (EtOAc) fraction exhibited the most significant inhibitory activity. Eight pure compounds, apigenin, apigenin-7-O-β-D-glucoside, kaempferol, hyperin, naringenin, quercetin, luteolin, and kaempferol-7-O-β-D-glucoside, were isolated (using enzyme assay-guide fractionation method) from the EtOAc fraction. Among these, quercetin was the most active one (IC50 values 2.04 μg/ml), and it appears that the inhibiting percentages are close to acarbose (IC50 values 2.24 μg/ml), the positive control, on α-glucosidase inhibition. HPLC/UV analysis indicated that the major components of CCF are kaempferol, hyperin and quercetin. The presented results revealed that CCF containing these eight flavonoids could be a useful natural source in the development of a novel α-glucosidase inhibitory agent against diabetic complications

Knowledge-Guided Robust MRI Brain Extraction for Diverse Large-Scale Neuroimaging Studies on Humans and Non-Human Primates

Accurate and robust brain extraction is a critical step in most neuroimaging analysis pipelines. In particular, for the large-scale multi-site neuroimaging studies involving a significant number of subjects with diverse age and diagnostic groups, accurate and robust extraction of the brain automatically and consistently is highly desirable. In this paper, we introduce population-specific probability maps to guide the brain extraction of diverse subject groups, including both healthy and diseased adult human populations, both developing and aging human populations, as well as non-human primates. Specifically, the proposed method combines an atlas-based approach, for coarse skull-stripping, with a deformable-surface-based approach that is guided by local intensity information and population-specific prior information learned from a set of real brain images for more localized refinement. Comprehensive quantitative evaluations were performed on the diverse large-scale populations of ADNI dataset with over 800 subjects (55 approximately 90 years of age, multi-site, various diagnosis groups), OASIS dataset with over 400 subjects (18 approximately 96 years of age, wide age range, various diagnosis groups), and NIH pediatrics dataset with 150 subjects (5 approximately 18 years of age, multi-site, wide age range as a complementary age group to the adult dataset). The results demonstrate that our method consistently yields the best overall results across almost the entire human life span, with only a single set of parameters. To demonstrate its capability to work on non-human primates, the proposed method is further evaluated using a rhesus macaque dataset with 20 subjects. Quantitative comparisons with popularly used state-of-the-art methods, including BET, Two-pass BET, BET-B, BSE, HWA, ROBEX and AFNI, demonstrate that the proposed method performs favorably with superior performance on all testing datasets, indicating its robustness and effectiveness.published_or_final_versio

A novel approach to computer-aided configuration design based on constraint satisfaction paradigm

The trend in today’s manufacturing industry is changing from mass production to mass customization. The companies which win the markets are those which can deliver highly customized products at the fastest rate and allow for life-cycle participation of customers regardless of where they are and when they participate. One of the strategies for implementing the mass customization paradigm is to implement the product development according to the assemble-to-order (ATO) pattern. Under the ATO pattern, the design of a product becomes the determination of a configuration which contains a set of pre-developed components – configuration design for short. The configuration design problem can be well treated as a constraint satisfaction problem (CSP). The mature methods are available for CSP, but there are several limitations with CSP for configuration design. This thesis proposes a novel approach to configuration design. This approach is based on a CSP but adds a wrapper (product data model, PDM for short) over the CSP model. Consequently, both the customer and the other life cycle development programs only communicate with the PDM, and a more intelligent and user-friendly computer system for configuration design can then be implemented. Both the conceptual design and implementation of such a wrapper are discussed in this thesis. A computer prototype system for elevator design is developed for demonstrating the effectiveness of this approach

A Review of Log Grapples Used in China

The history and development of log grapples used in China and their working parameters are given. An analysis is made of the main technical features. Results show that the electro-mechanical log grapple, driven by an electric drum, is the most suitable for the special working conditions found in Chinese forestry at the present time

Becoming a Teacher: A Case Study on Student Teacher Professional Identity Construction During the Education Practicum in a Normal University in China

Previous studies have presented a clear link between teachers’ professional identity construction and teacher effectiveness and have considered the teacher professional identity as a pivotal factor to teachers’ effectiveness, decision-making about their career, commitment to the profession, as well as engagement in professional development (Beijaard et al., 2004; Day et al., 2005; Lasky, 2005; H. Y. Wang, 2020). Positive experiences in terms of teacher professional identity construction during education practicum holds potential to promote student teachers’ professional commitment, specifically, their belief in the value of the teaching profession (Hong, 2010; M. R. Zhao, 2013). This case study examined teacher professional identity construction among student teachers of a normal university in China during their education practicum. Guided by a synthesized theoretical framework of three sociocultural theories for understanding teacher professional identity construction (Davies & Harre, 1990; Engeström, 2015; Lave & Wenger, 1991), this study focuses on two overarching research questions: 1. What is the status of the Chinese student teachers’ professional identity construction during the education practicum?, and 2. How do the Chinese student teachers construct their teacher professional identity during the education practicum? This case study adopted a mixed-methods sequential explanatory design (Creswell, 2012) to explore the process of Chinese student teachers’ professional identity construction through examining their education practicum experiences. The participants were senior students who were completing 12-week education practicum at the assigned placement schools. The data included responses from 275 questionnaires, six focus group interview transcripts, and 51 student-generated education practicum reports. The findings from this study showed that within the placement school context, student teachers constructed a high level of student teacher professional identity during education practicum. Student teachers constructed teacher professional identity by forming an understanding of the teaching profession, gaining teacher knowledge, interacting with people, and acting as role models and classroom managers. This study addresses the need of adjusting the ratio of theoretical curriculum and practicum curriculum in curriculum design, and providing opportunities in which student teachers can participate in classroom teaching and prepare to be a teacher