the interactive effects of adjacent buildings on their seismic performance are not frequently considered in seismic design. the adjacent buildings, however, are interrelated through the soil during seismic ground motions. the seismic energy is redistributed in the neighboring buildings through multiple structure-soil-structure interactions (sssi). for example, in an area congested with many nea...

This paper presents an innovative software platform OpenSTEP intended to build advanced distributed integrated systems and to conduct multidisciplinary collaborative projects in both academy and industry. The paper discusses an open system architecture, methodology, component library and CASE toolkit enabling the developers to build a wide range of interoperable applications and systems complia...

Background: Predicated on Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development (ZPD), dynamic assessment (DA) integrates teaching with assessment in a single activity by providing mediation to help learners perform beyond their independent functioning and simultaneously promote learner development. It advantages over traditional psychometric tests in that DA can not only reveal the learners’ actual level of...

The study examines interactions associated with foreignerdirected speech (FDS) within EFL triadic conversation exam where learners differ in outspokenness. The results showed that learners’ outspokenness affected foreign examiners’ vowel articulation. More vowels underwent distinct change across learners’ positive-coded utterances in F2, whereas in F1 the vowel change in the high-communicative ...

Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in Taiwan often use an outdated lecture-memorization methodology resulting in low motivation, confidence, and ability on the part of students. Innovative educators are exploring use of technology, such as videoconferences with native speakers, to enrich the classroom; however few guidelines have been developed for effective videoconference instruc...

This paper reports the results of a study that examined an online discussion group established for a computer-assisted language learning (CALL) course and investigated patterns of interactions generated through the online discussion and participants’ attitudes toward the computer-mediated communication (CMC) activity. The participants in the study were 24 English as a second/foreign language (E...

In this global era, critical thinking has become crucial for educators and learners. The purpose of this research was to explore how modifying a dialogical strategy in asynchronous online discussion forums impacted Chinese learners’ critical thinking. Due to the Chinese cultural impact of social harmony, the majority of learners tend to maintain silent and avoid critical discussions in instruct...

Microbial fuel cell is a bio-electrochemical system that drives a current by using bacteria and mimicking bacterial interactions found in nature. The electricigens and its activity have important influence on the power generation capacity and organic matter degradation ability of MFC system. The common types of electricigens and their application situation in microbial fuel cell are summarized ...

Neurobiology and neuropsychology interpret the Prefrontal Cortex as a key region, in connection with others, for behavioural planning, i.e. for the generation and evaluation of goal oriented complex courses of actions, without actually executing them. We illustrate an abstract reward-based computational model of planning and its possible neural counterparts. We then focus on how the Dorsolatera...

It is, thus, not surprising that English education has gained more attention than ever and there also has been a growing amount of interest in learning English online. Although there are a good number of ESL/EFL E-learning websites available, many of them are poorly designed technologically and/or pedagogically. It is true that technology, such as human-computer interaction (HCI) and computer-m...