Search results for: Thai english
Commenced in January 2007
Frequency: Monthly
Edition: International
Paper Count: 2294

Search results for: Thai english

854 Effect of Burdock Root Extract Concentration on Physiochemical Property of Coated Jasmine Rice by Using Top-Spay Fluidized Bed Coating Technique

Authors: Donludee Jaisut, Norihisa Kato, Thanutchaporn Kumrungsee, Kiyoshi Kawai, Somkiat Prachayawarakorn, Patchalee Tungtrakul

Abstract:

Jasmine Rice is a principle food of Thai people. However, glycemic index of jasmine rice is in high level, risk of type II diabetes after consuming. Burdock root is a good source of non-starch polysaccharides such as inulin. Inulin acts as prebiotic and helps reduce blood-sugar level. The purpose of this research was to reduce digestion rate of jasmine rice by coating burdock root extract on rice surface, using top-spay fluidized bed coating technique. Coating experiments were performed by spraying burdock root solution onto Jasmine rice kernels (Khao Dawk Mali-105; KDML), which had an initial moisture content of 11.6% wet basis, suspended in the fluidized bed. The experimental conditions were: solution spray rates of 31.7 mL/min, atomization pressure of 1.5 bar, spray time of 10 min, time of drying after spraying of 30 s, superficial air velocity of 3.2 m/s and drying temperatures of 60°C. The coated rice quality was evaluated in terms of the moisture content, texture, whiteness and digestion rate. The results showed that initial and final moisture contents of samples were the same in concentration 8% (v/v) and 10% (v/v). The texture was insignificantly changed from that of uncoated sample. The whiteness values were varied on concentration of burdock root extract. Coated samples were slower digested.

Keywords: burdock root, digestion, drying, rice

Procedia PDF Downloads 278
853 The Operating Results of the English General Music Course on the Education Platform

Authors: Shan-Ken Chine

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This research aims to a one-year course run of String Music Appreciation, an international online course launched on the British open education platform. It explains how to present music teaching videos with three main features. They are music lesson explanations, instrumental playing demonstrations, and live music performances. The plan of this course is with four major themes and a total of 97 steps. In addition, the paper also uses the testing data provided by the education platform to analyze the performance of learners and to understand the operation of the course. It contains three test data in the statistics dashboard. They are course-run measures, total statistics, and statistics by week. The paper ends with a review of the course's star rating in this one-year run. The result of this course run will be adjusted when it starts again in the future.

Keywords: music online courses, MOOCs, ubiquitous learning, string music, general music education

Procedia PDF Downloads 23
852 Anti-Inflammatory, Analgesic and Antipyretic Activity of Terminalia arjuna Roxb. Extract in Animal Models

Authors: Linda Chularojmontri, Seewaboon Sireeratawong, Suvara Wattanapitayakul

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Terminalia arjuna Roxb. (family Combretaceae) is commonly known as ‘Sa maw thet’ in Thai. The fruit is used in traditional medicine as natural mild laxatives, carminative and expectorant. Aim of the study: This research aims to study the anti-inflammatory, analgesic and antipyretic activities of Terminalia arjuna extract by using animal models in comparison to the reference drugs. Materials and Methods: The anti-inflammatory study was conducted by two experimental animal models namely ethyl phenylpropionate (EPP)-induced ear edema and carrageenan-induced paw edema. The study of analgesic activity used two methods of pain induction including acetic acid and heat-induced pain. In addition, the antipyretic activity study was performed by induced hyperthermia with yeast. Results: The results showed that the oral administration of Terminalia arjuna extract possessed acute anti-inflammatory effect in carrageenan-induced paw edema. Terminalia arjuna extract showed the analgesic activity in acetic acid-induced writhing response and heat-induced pain. This indicates its peripheral effect by inhibiting the biosynthesis and/or release of some pain mediators and some mechanism through Central nervous system. Moreover, Terminalia arjuna extract at the dose of 1000 and 1500 mg/kg body weight showed the antipyretic activity, which might be because of the inhibition of prostaglandins. Conclusion: The findings of this study indicated that the Terminalia arjuna extract possesses the anti-inflammatory, analgesic and antipyretic activities in animals.

Keywords: analgesic activity, anti-inflammatory activity, antipyretic activity, Terminalia arjuna extract

Procedia PDF Downloads 253
851 Comparing Deep Architectures for Selecting Optimal Machine Translation

Authors: Despoina Mouratidis, Katia Lida Kermanidis

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Machine translation (MT) is a very important task in Natural Language Processing (NLP). MT evaluation is crucial in MT development, as it constitutes the means to assess the success of an MT system, and also helps improve its performance. Several methods have been proposed for the evaluation of (MT) systems. Some of the most popular ones in automatic MT evaluation are score-based, such as the BLEU score, and others are based on lexical similarity or syntactic similarity between the MT outputs and the reference involving higher-level information like part of speech tagging (POS). This paper presents a language-independent machine learning framework for classifying pairwise translations. This framework uses vector representations of two machine-produced translations, one from a statistical machine translation model (SMT) and one from a neural machine translation model (NMT). The vector representations consist of automatically extracted word embeddings and string-like language-independent features. These vector representations used as an input to a multi-layer neural network (NN) that models the similarity between each MT output and the reference, as well as between the two MT outputs. To evaluate the proposed approach, a professional translation and a "ground-truth" annotation are used. The parallel corpora used are English-Greek (EN-GR) and English-Italian (EN-IT), in the educational domain and of informal genres (video lecture subtitles, course forum text, etc.) that are difficult to be reliably translated. They have tested three basic deep learning (DL) architectures to this schema: (i) fully-connected dense, (ii) Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), and (iii) Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM). Experiments show that all tested architectures achieved better results when compared against those of some of the well-known basic approaches, such as Random Forest (RF) and Support Vector Machine (SVM). Better accuracy results are obtained when LSTM layers are used in our schema. In terms of a balance between the results, better accuracy results are obtained when dense layers are used. The reason for this is that the model correctly classifies more sentences of the minority class (SMT). For a more integrated analysis of the accuracy results, a qualitative linguistic analysis is carried out. In this context, problems have been identified about some figures of speech, as the metaphors, or about certain linguistic phenomena, such as per etymology: paronyms. It is quite interesting to find out why all the classifiers led to worse accuracy results in Italian as compared to Greek, taking into account that the linguistic features employed are language independent.

Keywords: machine learning, machine translation evaluation, neural network architecture, pairwise classification

Procedia PDF Downloads 114
850 Psycholinguistic Analysis on Stuttering Treatment through Systemic Functional Grammar in Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech

Authors: Nurvita Wijayanti

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The movie titled The King’s Speech is based on a true story telling an English king suffers from stuttering and how he gets the treatment from the therapist, so that he can reduce the high frequency on stuttering. The treatment uses the unique approach implying the linguistic principles. This study shows how the language works significantly in order to treat the stuttering sufferer using psychological approach. Therefore, the linguistic study is done to analyze the treatment activity. Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar is used as the main approach in this study along with qualitative descriptive method. The study finds that the therapist though using the orthodox approach applies the psycholinguistic method to overcome the king’s stuttering.

Keywords: psycholinguistics, stuttering, systemic functional grammar, treatment

Procedia PDF Downloads 235
849 The Study of Customer Satisfaction towards the Services of Baan Bueng Resort in Nongprue Subdistrict, Baanlamung District, Chonburi Province

Authors: Witthaya Mekhum, Jinjutha Srihera

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This research aims to study customer satisfaction towards the services of Baan Bueng Resort in Nongprue Subdistrict, Baanlamung District, Chonburi Province. 108 sample were drawn by random sampling from Thai and foreign tourists at Baan Bueng Resort. Questionnaires were distributed. Data were analyzed using frequency, percentage, mean (X) and standard deviation (S.D.). The tool used in this research was questionnaire on satisfaction towards the services of Baan Bueng Resort in Nongprue Subdistrict, Baanlamung District, Chonburi Province. The questionnaire can be divided into 3 parts; i.e. Part 1: General information i.e. gender, age, educational level, occupation, income, and nationality, Part 2: Customer satisfaction towards the services of Baan Bueng Resort; and Part 3: Suggestions of respondents. It can be concluded that most of the respondents are male, aged between 25 – 35 years old with bachelor degree. Most of them are private company employees with income 10,000–20,000 Baht per month. The majority of customers are satisfied with the services at Baan Beung Resort. Overall satisfaction is at good level. Considering each item, the item with the highest satisfaction level is personality and manner of employees and promptness and accuracy of cashier staff. Overall satisfaction towards the cleanliness of the rooms is at very good level. When considering each item, the item with the highest satisfaction level is that the guest room is cleaned everyday, while the satisfaction towards the quality of food and beverages at Baan Bueng Resort in Nongprue Subdistrict, Baanlamung District, Chonburi Province is at very good level. The item with the highest satisfaction is hotel facilities.

Keywords: satisfaction study, service, hotel, customer

Procedia PDF Downloads 316
848 Digital Storytelling in the ELL Classroom: A Literature Review

Authors: Nicholas Jobe

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English Language Learners (ELLs) often struggle in a classroom setting, too embarrassed at their skill level to write or speak in front of peers and too lacking in confidence to practice. Storytelling is an age-old method of teaching that allows learners to remember important details while listening or sharing a narrative. In the modern world, digital storytelling through the use of technological tools such as podcasts and videos allow students to safely interact with each other to build skills in a fun and engaging way that also works as a confidence booster. Specifically using a constructionist approach to learning, digital storytelling allows ELL students to grow and build new and prior knowledge by creating stories via these technological means. Research herein suggests, through the use of case studies and mixed methodologies, that digital storytelling mainly yields positive results for effective learning in an ELL classroom setting.

Keywords: digital storytelling, ELL, narrative, podcast

Procedia PDF Downloads 123
847 Artificial Intelligence in Duolingo

Authors: Jwana Khateeb, Lamar Bawazeer, Hayat Sharbatly, Mozoun Alghamdi

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This research paper explores the idea of learning new languages through an innovative-mobile based learning technology. Throughout this paper we will discuss and examine a mobile-based application called Duolingo. Duolingo is a college standard application for learning foreign languages such as Spanish and English. It is a smart application where it uses smart adaptive technologies to advance the level of their students at each period of time by offering new tasks. Furthermore, we will discuss the history of the application and the methodology used within it. We have conducted a study in which we surveyed ten people about their experience using Duolingo. The results are examined and analyzed in which it indicates the effectiveness on Duolingo students who are seeking to learn new languages. Thus, the research paper will furthermore discuss the diverse methods and approaches in learning new languages through this mobile-based application.

Keywords: Duolingo, AI, personalized, customized

Procedia PDF Downloads 268
846 An Acerbate Psychotics Symptoms, Social Support, Stressful Life Events, Medication Use Self-Efficacy Impact on Social Dysfunction: A Cross Sectional Self-Rated Study of Persons with Schizophrenia Patient and Misusing Methamphetamines

Authors: Ek-Uma Imkome, Jintana Yunibhand, Waraporn Chaiyawat

Abstract:

Background: Persons with schizophrenia patient and misusing methamphetamines suffering from social dysfunction that impact on their quality of life. Knowledge of factors related to social dysfunction will guide the effective intervention. Objectives: To determine the direct effect, indirect effect and total effect of an acerbate Psychotics’ Symptoms, Social Support, Stressful life events, Medication use self-efficacy impact on social dysfunction in Thai schizophrenic patient and methamphetamine misuse. Methods: Data were collected from schizophrenic and methamphetamine misuse patient by self report. A linear structural relationship was used to test the hypothesized path model. Results: The hypothesized model was found to fit the empirical data and explained 54% of the variance of the psychotic symptoms (X2 = 114.35, df = 92, p-value = 0.05, X2 /df = 1.24, GFI = 0.96, AGFI = 0.92, CFI = 1.00, NFI = 0.99, NNFI = 0.99, RMSEA = 0.02). The highest total effect on social dysfunction was psychotic symptoms (0.67, p<0.05). Medication use self-efficacy had a direct effect on psychotic symptoms (-0.25, p<0.01), and social support had direct effect on medication use self efficacy (0.36, p <0.01). Conclusions: Psychotic symptoms and stressful life events were the significance factors that influenced direct on social dysfunctioning. Therefore, interventions that are designed to manage these factors are crucial in order to enhance social functioning in this population.

Keywords: psychotic symptoms, methamphetamine, schizophrenia, stressful life events, social dysfunction, social support, medication use self efficacy

Procedia PDF Downloads 192
845 Antioxidant Activity of Probiotic Lactic Acid Bacteria and Their Application in Fermented Milk Products

Authors: Vitheejongjaroen P., Jaisin Y., Pachekrepapol U., Taweechotipatr M.

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Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) are the most common type of microorganisms that had been used as probiotics also known for many beneficial health effects. The antioxidant activity of LAB is associated with numerous health-protective effects. This research aimed to investigate the antioxidant activity of lactic acid bacteria isolated from Thai sour pork sausage for their application in fermented milk products. Antioxidant activity determined by DPPH (2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl) radical scavenging assay showed that the isolate FN33-7, as 1 of 8 isolated exhibited scavenging activity in intact cell 5-7%, and supernatant 13-16%, intracellular cell free extract 42-48% respectively. This isolate was identified using 16S ribosomal DNA sequence analysis as Lactobacillus plantarum. The effect of milk fermented with L. plantarum FN33-7 on microbial count, pH and syneresis was assessed during refrigerated storage period of 28 days. The strain showed increased viability, pH level decreased, while syneresis increased. These results are similar to dairy products fermented with commercial starter cultures. Additionally, microstructure analysis of fermented milk by fluorescent microscopy showed that curd structure appeared to be dense and less porous in this fermented milk than commercial yogurt. The results of this study indicated that L. plantarum FN33-7 was a good probiotic candidate to be used in cultured milk products to reduce the risk of diseases caused by oxidative stress.

Keywords: Lactobacillus plantarum, probiotics, free radical, antioxidant, oxidative stress, fermented milk products

Procedia PDF Downloads 115
844 The Role of Validity and Reliability in the Development of Online Testing

Authors: Ani Demetrashvili

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The purpose of this paper is to show how students trust online tests and determine validity and reliability in the development of online testing. The pandemic situation changed every field in the world, and it changed education as well. Educational institutions moved into the online space, which was the only decision they were able to make at that time. Online assessment through online proctoring was a totally new challenge for educational institutions, and they needed to deal with it successfully. Participants were chosen from the English language center. The validity of the questionnaire was identified according to the Likert scale and Cronbach’s alpha; later, data from the participants was analyzed as well. The article summarizes literature that is available about online assessment and is interesting for people who are interested in this kind of assessment. Based on the research findings, students favor in-person testing over online assessment due to their lack of experience and skills in the latter.

Keywords: online assessment, online proctoring

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843 Prediction, Production, and Comprehension: Exploring the Influence of Salience in Language Processing

Authors: Andy H. Clark

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This research looks into the relationship between language comprehension and production with a specific focus on the role of salience in shaping these processes. Salience, our most immediate perception of what is most probable out of all possible situations and outcomes strongly affects our perception and action in language production and comprehension. This study investigates the impact of geographic and emotional attachments to the target language on the differences in the learners’ comprehension and production abilities. Using quantitative research methods (Qualtrics, SPSS), this study examines preferential choices of two groups of Japanese English language learners: those residing in the United States and those in Japan. By comparing and contrasting these two groups, we hope to gain a better understanding of how salience of linguistics cues influences language processing.

Keywords: intercultural pragmatics, salience, production, comprehension, pragmatics, action, perception, cognition

Procedia PDF Downloads 51
842 Survey on Arabic Sentiment Analysis in Twitter

Authors: Sarah O. Alhumoud, Mawaheb I. Altuwaijri, Tarfa M. Albuhairi, Wejdan M. Alohaideb

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Large-scale data stream analysis has become one of the important business and research priorities lately. Social networks like Twitter and other micro-blogging platforms hold an enormous amount of data that is large in volume, velocity and variety. Extracting valuable information and trends out of these data would aid in a better understanding and decision-making. Multiple analysis techniques are deployed for English content. Moreover, one of the languages that produce a large amount of data over social networks and is least analyzed is the Arabic language. The proposed paper is a survey on the research efforts to analyze the Arabic content in Twitter focusing on the tools and methods used to extract the sentiments for the Arabic content on Twitter.

Keywords: big data, social networks, sentiment analysis, twitter

Procedia PDF Downloads 554
841 The Analysis of a Learning Media Prototype as Web Learning in Distance Education

Authors: Yudi Efendi, Hasanuddin

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Web-based learning program is the complementary of Printed Teaching Material (BMP) that serves and helps students clarify the parts that require additional explanation or illustration. This research attempts to analyze a prototype of web-based learning program. A prototype of web-based learning program which is interactive is completed with exercises and formative tests. Using qualitative descriptive method, the research presents the analysis from the content expert and media expert. Besides, the interviews from tutors of Political and Social Sciences will be presented. The research also analyzes questionnaires from the students of English and literature program in Jakarta. The questionnaire deals with the display of the content, the audio video, the usability, and the navigation. In the long run, it is expected that the program could be recommended to use by the university as an ideal program.

Keywords: web learning, prototype, content expert, media expert

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840 Rethinking of Self-Monitoring and Self-Response Roles in Teaching Grammar Knowledge to Iranian EFL Learners

Authors: Gholam Reza Parvizi, Ali Reza Kargar, Amir Arani

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In the present days, learning and teaching researchers have emphasized the role which teachers, tutors, and trainers’ constraint knowledge treat in resizing and trimming what they perform in educational atmosphere. Regarding English language as subject to teaching, although the prominence of instructor’s knowledge about grammar has also been stressed, but the lack of empirical insights into the relationship between teacher’ self-monitoring and self-response of grammar knowledge have been observed. With particular attention to the grammar this article indicates and discusses information obtained self- feedback and conversing teachers of a kind who backwash the issue. The result of the study indicates that enabling teachers to progress and maintain a logical and realistic awareness of their knowledge about grammar have to be prominent goal for teachers’ education and development programs.

Keywords: grammar knowledge, self-monitoring, self-response, teaching grammar, language teaching program

Procedia PDF Downloads 540
839 Benchmarking Bert-Based Low-Resource Language: Case Uzbek NLP Models

Authors: Jamshid Qodirov, Sirojiddin Komolov, Ravilov Mirahmad, Olimjon Mirzayev

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Nowadays, natural language processing tools play a crucial role in our daily lives, including various techniques with text processing. There are very advanced models in modern languages, such as English, Russian etc. But, in some languages, such as Uzbek, the NLP models have been developed recently. Thus, there are only a few NLP models in Uzbek language. Moreover, there is no such work that could show which Uzbek NLP model behaves in different situations and when to use them. This work tries to close this gap and compares the Uzbek NLP models existing as of the time this article was written. The authors try to compare the NLP models in two different scenarios: sentiment analysis and sentence similarity, which are the implementations of the two most common problems in the industry: classification and similarity. Another outcome from this work is two datasets for classification and sentence similarity in Uzbek language that we generated ourselves and can be useful in both industry and academia as well.

Keywords: NLP, benchmak, bert, vectorization

Procedia PDF Downloads 35
838 Coherence and Cohesion in IELTS Academic Writing: Helping Students to Improve

Authors: Rory Patrick O'Kane

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More universities and third level institutions now require at least an IELTS Band 6 for entry into courses of study for non-native speakers of English. This presentation focuses on IELTS Academic Writing Tasks 1 and 2 and in particular on the marking criterion of Coherence and Cohesion. A requirement for candidates aiming at Band 6 and above is that they produce answers which show a clear, overall progression of information and ideas and which use cohesive devices effectively. With this in mind, the presenter will examine what exactly is meant by coherence and cohesion and various strategies which can be used to assist students in improving their scores in this area. A number of classroom teaching ideas will be introduced, and participants will have the opportunity to compare and discuss sample answers written by candidates for this examination with a specific focus on coherence and cohesion. Intended audience: Teachers of IELTS Academic Writing.

Keywords: coherence, cohesion, IELTS, strategies

Procedia PDF Downloads 251
837 Anti-Allergic Activities of Smilax Glabra Rhizome Extracts and Its Isolated Compounds

Authors: Arunporn Itharat, Kamonmas Srikwan, Srisopa Ruangnoo, Pakakrong Thongdeeying

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Background: The rhizomes of Smilax glabra (SG) has long been used in Traditional Chinese and Thai herbal medicine to treat a variety of infectious diseases and immunological disorders. Objective: To investigate the in vitro anti-allergic activities of crude extracts and pure isolated flavonoid compounds from SG by determination of inhibitory effects on antigen-induced release of β-hexosaminidase from RBL-2H3 cells. Methods: The in vitro inhibitory effects of crude aqueous and organic extracts on beta-hexosaminidase release in RBL-2H3 cells were evaluated as an in vitro indication of possible anti-allergic activity in vivo. Bioassay-guided fractionation of extracts was used to isolate flavonoid compounds from the ethanolic extracts. Results: The 95% and 50% ethanolic extracts of SG showed remarkably high anti-allergic activity, with IC50 values of 5.74 ± 2.44 and 23.54 ± 4.75 μg/ml, much higher activity than that for Ketotifen (IC50 58.90 μM). The water extract had negligible activity (IC50 > 100 μg/ml). The two isolated flavonols, Engeletin and Astilbin, showed weak anti-allergic activity, IC50 values 97.46 ± 2.04 and > 100 μg/ml, respectively. Conclusions: The 95% and 50% ethanolic extracts of SG showed strong anti-allergic activity but two flavonol constituents did not show any significant anti-allergic activity. These findings suggest that a combination of effects of various phytochemicals in crude extracts used in traditional medicine are responsible for the purported anti-allergic activity of SG herbal preparations. The plethora of constituents in crude extracts, as yet unidentified, are likely to be acting synergistically to account for the strong observed anti-allergic in vitro activity.

Keywords: Smilax glabra, anti-allergic activity, RBL-2H3 cells, flavonoid compounds

Procedia PDF Downloads 649
836 A Preliminary Outcome of the Effect of an Accumulating 10,000 Daily Steps on Blood Pressure and Diabetes in Overweight Thai Participants

Authors: Kornanong Yuenyongchaiwat, Duangnate Pepatsitipong, Panthip Sangprasert

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High blood pressure and diabetes have been suggested as being non-communicable disease (NCDs), and there is one of the components of the definition of metabolic syndrome. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of a 12-week pedometer based community walking intervention on change in resting blood pressure and blood glucose in participants with overweight in the community setting. Method: Participants were recruited both males and females who had a sedentary lifestyle aged 35-59 years (mean aged 49.67 years). A longitudinal quasi-experimental study was designed with 35 overweight participants who had body mass index ≥ 25 kg/m2. These volunteers were assigned to the 12-week pedometer-based walking program (an accumulated at least 10,000 steps a day). Blood pressure and blood glucose were measured initially before and after 12-week intervention. Results: Systolic blood pressure and heart rate were significantly lower in 30 individuals who had accumulated 10,000 steps d-1 in the intervention group at 12 week follow-up (-13.74 mmHg and 5.3 bpm, respectively). In addition, reduction in blood glucose (-14.89 mmol) in the intervention participants was statistically significant (p < .001). A regression analysis indicated that reductions in systolic blood pressure were significantly related to the increase in steps per day. Conclusion: The accumulation of least 10,000 steps d-1 resulted in decreased resting systolic blood pressure and blood glucose in overweight participants. This has also shown that an increase in physical activity in overweight participants with sedentary lifestyle by accumulating at least 10,000 steps a day can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease (e.g., hypertension and diabetes).

Keywords: blood glucose, blood pressure, diabetes, hypertension, physical activity, walking

Procedia PDF Downloads 270
835 Pros and Cons of Teaching/Learning Online during COVID-19: English Department at Tahri Muhammed University of Bechar as a Case Study

Authors: Fatiha Guessabi

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Students of the Tahri Muhammed University of Bechar shifted to the virtual platform using E-learning platforms when the lockdown started due to the Coronavirus. This paper aims to explore the advantages and inconveniences of online learning and teaching in EFL classes at Tahri Mohammed University. For this investigation, a questionnaire was addressed to EFL students and an interview was arranged with EFL teachers. Data analysis was obtained from 09 teachers and 70 students. After the investigation, the results show that some of the most applied educational technologies and applications are used to turn online EFL classes effectively exciting. Thus, EFL classes became more interactive. Although learners give positive viewpoints about online learning/teaching, they prefer to learn in the classroom.

Keywords: advantages, disadvantages, COVID19, EFL, online learning/teaching, university of Bechar

Procedia PDF Downloads 151
834 The Effect of Problem-Based Mobile-Assisted Tasks on Spoken Intelligibility of English as a Foreign Language Learners

Authors: Loghman Ansarian, Teoh Mei Lin

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In an attempt to increase oral proficiency of Iranian EFL learners, the researchers compared the effect of problem-based mobile-assisted language learning with the conventional language learning approach (Communicative Language Teaching) in Iran. The experimental group (n=37) went through PBL instruction and the control group (n=33) went through conventional instruction. The results of quantitative data analysis after 26 sessions of treatment revealed that PBL could positively affect participants' knowledge of grammar, vocabulary, spoken fluency, and pronunciation; however, in terms of task achievement, no significant effect was found. This study can have pedagogical implications for language teachers, and material developers.

Keywords: problem-based learning, spoken intelligibility, Iranian EFL context, cognitive learning

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833 Isolation and Identification of Probiotic Lactic Acid Bacteria with Cholesterol Lowering Potential and Their Use in Fermented Milk Product

Authors: Preeyarach Whisetkhan, Malai Taweechotipatr, Ulisa Pachekrepapol

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Elevated level of blood cholesterol or hypercholesterolemia may lead to atherosclerosis and poses a major risk for cardiovascular diseases. Probiotics play a crucial role in human health, and probiotic bacteria that possesses bile salt hydrolase (BSH) activity can be used to lower cholesterol level of the host. The aim of this study was to investigate whether lactic acid bacteria (LAB) isolated from traditional Thai fermented foods were able to exhibit bile salt hydrolase activity and their use in fermented milk. A total of 28 isolates were tested for BSH activity by plate method on MRS agar supplemented with 0.5% sodium salt of taurodeoxycholic acid and incubated at 37°C for 48 h under anaerobic condition. The results showed that FN1-1 and FN23-3 isolates possessed strong BSH activity. FN1-1 and FN23-3 isolates were then identified for phenotype, biochemical characteristics, and genotype (16S rRNA sequencing). FN1-1 isolate showed 99.92% similarity to Lactobacillus pentosus DSM 20314(T), while FN23-3 isolate showed 99.94% similarity to Enterococcus faecium CGMCC1.2136 (T). Lactobacillus pentosus FN1-1 and Enterococcus faecium FN23-3 were tolerant of pH 3-4 and 0.3 and 0.8% bile. Bacterial count and pH of milk fermented with Lactobacillus pentosus FN1-1 at 37°C and 43°C were investigated. The results revealed that Lactobacillus pentosus FN1-1 was able to grow in milk, which led to decrease in pH level. Fermentation at 37°C resulted in faster growth rate than at 43 °C. Lactobacillus pentosus FN1-1 was a candidate probiotic to be used in fermented milk products to reduce the risk of high-cholesterol diseases.

Keywords: probiotics, lactic acid bacteria, bile salt hydrolase, cholesterol

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832 Ads on Social Issues: A Tool for Improving Critical Thinking Skills in a Foreign Language Classroom

Authors: Fonseca Jully, Chia Maribel, Rodríguez Ilba

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This paper is a qualitative research report. A group of students form a public university in a small town in Colombia participated in this study which aimed at describing to what extend the use of social ads, published on the internet, helped to develop their critical thinking skills. Students’ productions, field notes, video recordings and direct observation were the instruments and techniques used by the researches in order to gather the data which was analyzed under the principles of grounded theory and triangulation. The implementation of social ads into the classroom evidenced a noticeable improvement in students’ ability to interpret and argue social issues, as well as, their self-improvement in oral and written production in English, as a foreign language.

Keywords: Ads, critical argumentation, critical thinking, social issues

Procedia PDF Downloads 325
831 Music as Source Domain: A Cross-Linguistic Exploration of Conceptual Metaphors

Authors: Eleanor Sweeney, Chunyuan Di

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The metaphors people use in everyday discourse do not arise randomly; rather, they develop from our physical experiences in our social and cultural environments. Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) explains that through metaphor, we apply our embodied understanding of the physical world to non-material concepts to understand and express abstract concepts. Our most productive source domains derive from our embodied understanding and allow us to develop primary metaphors, and from primary metaphors, an elaborate, creative world of culturally constructed complex metaphors. Cognitive Linguistics researchers draw upon individual embodied experience for primary metaphors. Socioculturally embodied experience through music has long furnished linguistic expressions in diverse languages, as conceptual metaphors or everyday expressions.  Can a socially embodied experience function in the same way as an individually embodied experience in the creation of conceptual metaphors? The authors argue that since music is inherently social and embodied, musical experiences function as a richly motivated source domain. The focus of this study is socially embodied musical experience which is then reflected and expressed through metaphors. This cross-linguistic study explores music as a source domain for metaphors of social alignment in English, French, and Chinese. The authors explored two public discourse sites, Facebook and Linguée, in order to collect linguistic metaphors from three different languages. By conducting this cross-linguistic study, cross-cultural similarities and differences in metaphors for which music is the source domain can be examined. Different musical elements, such as melody, speed, rhythm and harmony, are analyzed for their possible metaphoric meanings of social alignment. Our findings suggest that the general metaphor cooperation is music is a productive metaphor with some subcases, and that correlated social behaviors can be metaphorically expressed with certain elements in music. For example, since performance is a subset of the category behavior, there is a natural mapping from performance in music to behavior in social settings: social alignment is musical performance. Musical performance entails a collective social expectation that exerts control over individual behavior.  When individual behavior does not align with the collective social expectation, music-related expressions are often used to express how the individual is violating social norms. Moreover, when individuals do align their behavior with social norms, similar musical expressions are used. Cooperation is a crucial social value in all cultures, indeed it is a key element of survival, and music provides a coherent, consistent, and rich source domain—one based upon a universal and definitive cultural practice.

Keywords: Chinese, Conceptual Metaphor Theory, cross-linguistic, culturally embodied experience, English, French, metaphor, music

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830 Mapping the Early History of Common Law Education in England, 1292-1500

Authors: Malcolm Richardson, Gabriele Richardson

Abstract:

This paper illustrates how historical problems can be studied successfully using GIS even in cases in which data, in the modern sense, is fragmentary. The overall problem under investigation is how early (1300-1500) English schools of Common Law moved from apprenticeship training in random individual London inns run in part by clerks of the royal chancery to become what is widely called 'the Third University of England,' a recognized system of independent but connected legal inns. This paper focuses on the preparatory legal inns, called the Inns of Chancery, rather than the senior (and still existing) Inns of Court. The immediate problem studied in this paper is how the junior legal inns were organized, staffed, and located from 1292 to about 1500, and what maps tell us about the role of the chancery clerks as managers of legal inns. The authors first uncovered the names of all chancery clerks of the period, most of them unrecorded in histories, from archival sources in the National Archives, Kew. Then they matched the names with London property leases. Using ArcGIS, the legal inns and their owners were plotted on a series of maps covering the period 1292 to 1500. The results show a distinct pattern of ownership of the legal inns and suggest a narrative that would help explain why the Inns of Chancery became serious centers of learning during the fifteenth century. In brief, lower-ranking chancery clerks, always looking for sources of income, discovered by 1370 that legal inns could be a source of income. Since chancery clerks were intimately involved with writs and other legal forms, and since the chancery itself had a long-standing training system, these clerks opened their own legal inns to train fledgling lawyers, estate managers, and scriveners. The maps clearly show growth patterns of ownership by the chancery clerks for both legal inns and other London properties in the areas of Holborn and The Strand between 1450 and 1417. However, the maps also show that a royal ordinance of 1417 forbidding chancery clerks to live with lawyers, law students, and other non-chancery personnel had an immediate effect, and properties in that area of London leased by chancery clerks simply stop after 1417. The long-term importance of the patterns shown in the maps is that while the presence of chancery clerks in the legal inns likely created a more coherent education system, their removal forced the legal profession, suddenly without a hostelry managerial class, to professionalize the inns and legal education themselves. Given the number and social status of members of the legal inns, the effect on English education was to free legal education from the limits of chancery clerk education (the clerks were not practicing common lawyers) and to enable it to become broader in theory and practice, in fact, a kind of 'finishing school' for the governing (if not noble) class.

Keywords: GIS, law, London, education

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829 Mimesis in William Shakespeare's Selected Sonnets

Authors: Roselyn T. Bustos

Abstract:

Literature is an imitation of life. It depicts man's culture as well as his struggles. In short, literature is a part of man's way of life- a reflection of his personal or vicarious experiences. Using the qualitative-descriptive content analysis, this study investigates the mimetic signification in the five select sonnets of William Shakespeare.An in- depth analysis of the poetic elements such as the figurative language used and the themes extracted is made to draw out the universal meaning of his works. It is found out that his select sonnets use figurative languages such as simile, metaphor, personification, and hyperbaton which becomes a potent element that allows his sonnets to convey the themes of love and perseverance. With these findings, it is concluded that William Shakespeare's sonnets are evidently written within the context of the universals and that they are worthy of wide readership not only because of him being a renowned English poet and playwright but most importantly of the realities his sonnets signify.

Keywords: imitation, mimesis, potent, realities

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828 Laundering vs. Blanqueo: Translating Financial Crime Metaphors From English to Spanish

Authors: Stephen Gerome

Abstract:

This study examines the translation and use of metaphors in the realm of public safety discourse and intends to shed light on a continuing problem in cross-cultural communication. Metaphors can cause problems not only within languages but also in interlingual communication. The use and misuse of metaphors may hinder the ability to adequately communicate prevention efforts and, in some cases, facilitate and allow financial crime to go undetected. The use of lexicalized metaphors in communications by political entities, journalists, and legal agents in communications regarding law, policy making, compliance monitoring and enforcement as well as in adjudication can have negative consequences if misconstrued. This study provides examples of metaphor usage in published documents in a corpus linguistic study that compares the use of lexicalized metaphors in this discourse to shed light on possible unexpected consequences as well as counterproductive ones.

Keywords: translation, legal, corpus linguistics, financial

Procedia PDF Downloads 95
827 The Value of Computerized Corpora in EFL Textbook Design: The Case of Modal Verbs

Authors: Lexi Li

Abstract:

This study aims to contribute to the field of how computer technology can be exploited to enhance EFL textbook design. Specifically, the study demonstrates how computerized native and learner corpora can be used to enhance modal verb treatment in EFL textbooks. The linguistic focus is will, would, can, could, may, might, shall, should, must. The native corpus is the spoken component of BNC2014 (hereafter BNCS2014). The spoken part is chosen because the pedagogical purpose of the textbooks is communication-oriented. Using the standard query option of CQPweb, 5% of each of the nine modals was sampled from BNCS2014. The learner corpus is the POS-tagged Ten-thousand English Compositions of Chinese Learners (TECCL). All the essays under the “secondary school” section were selected. A series of five secondary coursebooks comprise the textbook corpus. All the data in both the learner and the textbook corpora are retrieved through the concordance functions of WordSmith Tools (version, 5.0). Data analysis was divided into two parts. The first part compared the patterns of modal verbs in the textbook corpus and BNC2014 with respect to distributional features, semantic functions, and co-occurring constructions to examine whether the textbooks reflect the authentic use of English. Secondly, the learner corpus was compared with the textbook corpus in terms of the use (distributional features, semantic functions, and co-occurring constructions) in order to examine the degree of influence of the textbook on learners’ use of modal verbs. Moreover, the learner corpus was analyzed for the misuse (syntactic errors, e.g., she can sings*.) of the nine modal verbs to uncover potential difficulties that confront learners. The results indicate discrepancies between the textbook presentation of modal verbs and authentic modal use in natural discourse in terms of distributions of frequencies, semantic functions, and co-occurring structures. Furthermore, there are consistent patterns of use between the learner corpus and the textbook corpus with respect to the three above-mentioned aspects, except could, will and must, partially confirming the correlation between the frequency effects and L2 grammar acquisition. Further analysis reveals that the exceptions are caused by both positive and negative L1 transfer, indicating that the frequency effects can be intercepted by L1 interference. Besides, error analysis revealed that could, would, should and must are the most difficult for Chinese learners due to both inter-linguistic and intra-linguistic interference. The discrepancies between the textbook corpus and the native corpus point to a need to adjust the presentation of modal verbs in the textbooks in terms of frequencies, different meanings, and verb-phrase structures. Along with the adjustment of modal verb treatment based on authentic use, it is important for textbook writers to take into consideration the L1 interference as well as learners’ difficulties in their use of modal verbs. The present study is a methodological showcase of the combination both native and learner corpora in the enhancement of EFL textbook language authenticity and appropriateness for learners.

Keywords: EFL textbooks, learner corpus, modal verbs, native corpus

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826 Recovery of Damages by General Cargo Interest under Bill of Lading Carriage Contract

Authors: Eunice Chiamaka Allen-Ngbale

Abstract:

Cargo claims are brought by cargo interests against carriers when the goods are not delivered or delivered short or mis-delivered or delivered damaged. The objective of the cargo claimant is to seek recovery for the loss suffered through the award of damages against the carrier by a court of competent jurisdiction. Moreover, whether the vessel on which the goods were carried is or is not under charter, the bill of lading plays a central role in the cargo claim. Since the bill of lading is an important international transport document, this paper examines, by chronicling the progress of a cargo claim as governed by the English law of contract. It finds that other than by contract, there are other modes of recovery available to a consignee or endorsee of a bill of lading to obtain a remedy under the sui generis contract of carriage contained in or evidenced by a bill of lading.

Keywords: bill of lading, cargo interests, carriage contract, transfer of right of suit

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825 Investigating Gender Differences in M-Learning Gameplay Adoption

Authors: Chih-Ping Chen

Abstract:

Despite the increasing popularity of and interest in mobile games, there has been little research that evaluates gender differences in users’ actual preferences for mobile game content, and the factors that influence entertainment and mobile-learning habits. To fill this void, this study examines different gender users’ experience of mobile English learning game adoption in order to identify the areas of development in Taiwan, using Uses and Gratification Theory, Expectation Confirmation Theory and experiential value. The integration of these theories forms the basis of an extended research concept. Users’ responses to questions about cognitive perceptions, confirmation, gratifications and continuous use were collected and analyzed with various factors derived from the theories.

Keywords: expectation confirmation theory, experiential value, gender difference, mobile game, uses and gratification

Procedia PDF Downloads 312