Background Biotechnology is a complex theme that is directly or indirectly present in our lives, from food to medicine. Despite that, the understanding about biotechnology is still difficult for most of society due to this complexity. This is worsened for Brazilian deaf community since the word Biotechnology does not exist in Brazilian Sign Language (LIBRAS), the official deaf language. This yo...

The photoluminescence of four polyoxoniobates [Nb6O19], [Nb10O28], [Ti2Nb8O28] and [H2Si4Nb16O56] was observed, and its origin was revealed in the view of molecular orbital by means of the computational method. The photoluminescence is originated from singlet transitions, and the calculated values agree well with the experimental data. The results indicate that the size of clusters and the fore...

Non-verbal signals are very subtle: they are socially learnt and can be as confusing to a foreigner as an unknown language. We watch a person's face and observe slight changes of expression in the eyes or mouth. We note the making or evasion of eye contact and whether the movement is natural or forced. We unconsciously see the embarrassed wave of a hand and hear a change in the timbre of the vo...

The major event of the 9/11 terror attacks is likely to have induced an increase in antiimmigrant and anti-foreigner sentiments, not only among US residents but also beyond US borders. Using longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and exploiting exogenous variation in interview timing throughout 2001, I find that the terror attacks in the US caused an immediate shift of around 40...

Mandarin is not simple language for foreigner. Even using Mandarin as the mother tongue, they have to spend more time to learn when they were child. The following issues are the reason why causes learning problem. First, the word is envolved by Hieroglyphic. So a character can express meanings independently, but become a word has another semantic. Second, the Mandarin's grammars have flexible r...

Clear speaking styles have been demonstrated to enhance certain acoustic-phonetic features of speech. However, previous work on speech production changes has mainly used interactions with imaginary interlocutors or read speech. In this study, two types of altered speech modes were elicited through a new combination of ‘gap’ and ‘map’ tasks, which leads to unscripted dialogues between interlocut...

Throughout the history of El Salvador, construction practices have been influenced by earthquakes happening in that region. One of the most successful attempts, developed by the Salvadorian indigenous population, was bahareque. In fact, a primitive type of bahareque was already used in El Salvador before the Spanish invasion. This first bahareque consisted of small tree branches bonded with cla...

More and more immigrant teachers have found their place in Canadian elementary secondary schools, notably francophone Ontario. Some face difficulties to integrate the profession, while those who been offered a long-term teaching contract deploy considerable efforts transform this opportunity into permanent position. Drawing from results of two qualitative studies conducted with students enrolle...