This paper will discuss the findings of students＇ needs for an EL （English language） programme at the SDE （School of Distance Education）, USM （Universiti Sains Malaysia）, Penang. English is offered as a compuls...This paper will discuss the findings of students＇ needs for an EL （English language） programme at the SDE （School of Distance Education）, USM （Universiti Sains Malaysia）, Penang. English is offered as a compulsory subject for all its students since the School＇s inception in 1971, and the subject has not moved beyond that status quo. However, in the new millennium, with USM having been selected as a research university with an apex status, the expectation of its stakeholders has increased. SDE needs to keep abreast with what is on and what is up in distance education teaching and learning so that its programmes remain relevant. It cannot remain complacent with its present courses Taking into consideration the current needs of its stakeholders within the realm of distance teaching and learning, the researchers carried out a research on the need for an EL programme. Findings show that the students agree that an English programme will help them improve their language and their upward mobility. Majority of the students will sign up for the course if it is offered. This research will provide insights for curriculum developers and lecturers at the SDE to design a new English programme tailored towards meeting the needs of their adult students展开更多
Feminist criticism, an off-shoot of the Women Liberation Movement of the 1960s, is a gender-based discourse that considers, in some details, the significance of images of women constructed by literature as derogatory ...Feminist criticism, an off-shoot of the Women Liberation Movement of the 1960s, is a gender-based discourse that considers, in some details, the significance of images of women constructed by literature as derogatory and biased; hence, the need to reconstruct womanhood in literary works. From time immemorial and according to historical facts, the Nigerian woman is seen as the bolt of a repressive patriarchal structure that persistently reduced her dignity and human essence and compelled her submission to the whims and caprices of the man. Woman, therefore over the years, has been so long conditioned in the environment of masculine dominance. With the advent of modernization however the world-view of woman and man starts to experience a radical change that calls for a reconstruction of the place of woman round the globe. The enlightenment leads to the feminist criticism among others. Tanure Ojaide represents this world-view in his collection： God＇s Medicine-Men and Other Stories. The fiction is a collection of 10 short stories out of which, however, this paper studies only the first story, ＂Come Back When You Are Ready to Die＂ with a view to exposing how well Tanure Ojaide responded to feminist＇s aspiration for a non-sexiest literary representation of the woman.展开更多
This paper describes a design of an educational platform for a mobile learning architecture, which is a state of the an topic in distance education. The product will allow users to interact in an efficient, flexible, ...This paper describes a design of an educational platform for a mobile learning architecture, which is a state of the an topic in distance education. The product will allow users to interact in an efficient, flexible, and transparent fashion with a web-based education environment, in this case Module Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment （Moodle）, using Android mobile devices. In order to provide a strong and lasting architecture, the Service Oriented Architecture （SOA） methodology is used given that it allows easy software re-utilization as well as integration of heterogeneous services. The architecture is based on web services implemented with Representational State Transfer （REST）, as it has been demonstrated to be lighter and less consuming than other protocols, for devices with limited resources such as mobile devices. Web services provide the communication means between the server side and the client side of the architecture, whereas agents are used to deliver the services itself. The authors propose the development of an environment that facilitates the integration of various educational resources to support m-learning. An important aspect of the proposal is the offering of a tool to provide customized alerts for students and teachers, enabling them to remain updated about activities taking place in the courses.展开更多
Objective In an earlier interim report of the Chinese Cardiac Study (CCS-1) trial, 15 000 patients up to 36 hours after the onset of suspected acute myocardial infarction (AMI) were randomized to receive either oral ...Objective In an earlier interim report of the Chinese Cardiac Study (CCS-1) trial, 15 000 patients up to 36 hours after the onset of suspected acute myocardial infarction (AMI) were randomized to receive either oral captopril or matching placebo for one month. Results showed that captopril was associated with a non-significant reduction in 4-week mortality (681 ［9.1%］ captopril-allocated vs 730 ［9.7%］ placebo-allocated deaths; 2P=0.19), but the long-term effects remained uncertain. The present study reports on the long-term effect of early captopril treatment on mortality and other major events in AMI patients of the earlier CCS-1 trial.Methods Long-term follow-up was carried out in those hospitals which had recruited more than 20 cases in the CCS-1 trial. 8000 patients with MI were thus selected for long-term follow-up. Data on 6749 patients (84.4%) were available. Results Patient characteristics were comparable between the treatment group (n=3391) and the placebo group (n=3358). Average follow-up time was 23.4±16.9 months; average age was 63.6±10.6 years, and 76.2% were male. At the end of the follow-up time, cardiac function of NYHA Ⅲ-Ⅳ was 9.0% in the treatment group and 9.8% in the placebo group; the reinfarction rate was 5.6% vs. 6.0%; total cardiovascular events were 32.9% vs. 34.3%. Total mortality was 11.9% (n=404) vs 13.8% (n=463), with a 13.8% reduction in the captopril group (P=0.03). Cardiovascular mortality was 10.0% vs. 11.8% (P=0.01), death due to heart failure was 4.1% vs. 5.5% (P=0.01). From the above results, it is estimated that early treatment with captopril can save 19 lives per 1000 patients treated; patients with systolic blood pressure (SBP)≥100 mm Hg at entry would have a long-term mortality 12.4% in the treatment group vs. 13.8% in the placebo group (P=0.04) and patients with a heart rate (HR)≥60/minute at entry would have a long term mortality 12.0% in captopril groups vs. 14.5% in the placebo group (P=0.01). Conclusion Early treatment with captopril during AMI for 4 weeks can significantly reduce long-term total mortality.展开更多
文摘This paper will discuss the findings of students＇ needs for an EL （English language） programme at the SDE （School of Distance Education）, USM （Universiti Sains Malaysia）, Penang. English is offered as a compulsory subject for all its students since the School＇s inception in 1971, and the subject has not moved beyond that status quo. However, in the new millennium, with USM having been selected as a research university with an apex status, the expectation of its stakeholders has increased. SDE needs to keep abreast with what is on and what is up in distance education teaching and learning so that its programmes remain relevant. It cannot remain complacent with its present courses Taking into consideration the current needs of its stakeholders within the realm of distance teaching and learning, the researchers carried out a research on the need for an EL programme. Findings show that the students agree that an English programme will help them improve their language and their upward mobility. Majority of the students will sign up for the course if it is offered. This research will provide insights for curriculum developers and lecturers at the SDE to design a new English programme tailored towards meeting the needs of their adult students
文摘Feminist criticism, an off-shoot of the Women Liberation Movement of the 1960s, is a gender-based discourse that considers, in some details, the significance of images of women constructed by literature as derogatory and biased; hence, the need to reconstruct womanhood in literary works. From time immemorial and according to historical facts, the Nigerian woman is seen as the bolt of a repressive patriarchal structure that persistently reduced her dignity and human essence and compelled her submission to the whims and caprices of the man. Woman, therefore over the years, has been so long conditioned in the environment of masculine dominance. With the advent of modernization however the world-view of woman and man starts to experience a radical change that calls for a reconstruction of the place of woman round the globe. The enlightenment leads to the feminist criticism among others. Tanure Ojaide represents this world-view in his collection： God＇s Medicine-Men and Other Stories. The fiction is a collection of 10 short stories out of which, however, this paper studies only the first story, ＂Come Back When You Are Ready to Die＂ with a view to exposing how well Tanure Ojaide responded to feminist＇s aspiration for a non-sexiest literary representation of the woman.
文摘This paper describes a design of an educational platform for a mobile learning architecture, which is a state of the an topic in distance education. The product will allow users to interact in an efficient, flexible, and transparent fashion with a web-based education environment, in this case Module Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment （Moodle）, using Android mobile devices. In order to provide a strong and lasting architecture, the Service Oriented Architecture （SOA） methodology is used given that it allows easy software re-utilization as well as integration of heterogeneous services. The architecture is based on web services implemented with Representational State Transfer （REST）, as it has been demonstrated to be lighter and less consuming than other protocols, for devices with limited resources such as mobile devices. Web services provide the communication means between the server side and the client side of the architecture, whereas agents are used to deliver the services itself. The authors propose the development of an environment that facilitates the integration of various educational resources to support m-learning. An important aspect of the proposal is the offering of a tool to provide customized alerts for students and teachers, enabling them to remain updated about activities taking place in the courses.
文摘Objective In an earlier interim report of the Chinese Cardiac Study (CCS-1) trial, 15 000 patients up to 36 hours after the onset of suspected acute myocardial infarction (AMI) were randomized to receive either oral captopril or matching placebo for one month. Results showed that captopril was associated with a non-significant reduction in 4-week mortality (681 ［9.1%］ captopril-allocated vs 730 ［9.7%］ placebo-allocated deaths; 2P=0.19), but the long-term effects remained uncertain. The present study reports on the long-term effect of early captopril treatment on mortality and other major events in AMI patients of the earlier CCS-1 trial.Methods Long-term follow-up was carried out in those hospitals which had recruited more than 20 cases in the CCS-1 trial. 8000 patients with MI were thus selected for long-term follow-up. Data on 6749 patients (84.4%) were available. Results Patient characteristics were comparable between the treatment group (n=3391) and the placebo group (n=3358). Average follow-up time was 23.4±16.9 months; average age was 63.6±10.6 years, and 76.2% were male. At the end of the follow-up time, cardiac function of NYHA Ⅲ-Ⅳ was 9.0% in the treatment group and 9.8% in the placebo group; the reinfarction rate was 5.6% vs. 6.0%; total cardiovascular events were 32.9% vs. 34.3%. Total mortality was 11.9% (n=404) vs 13.8% (n=463), with a 13.8% reduction in the captopril group (P=0.03). Cardiovascular mortality was 10.0% vs. 11.8% (P=0.01), death due to heart failure was 4.1% vs. 5.5% (P=0.01). From the above results, it is estimated that early treatment with captopril can save 19 lives per 1000 patients treated; patients with systolic blood pressure (SBP)≥100 mm Hg at entry would have a long-term mortality 12.4% in the treatment group vs. 13.8% in the placebo group (P=0.04) and patients with a heart rate (HR)≥60/minute at entry would have a long term mortality 12.0% in captopril groups vs. 14.5% in the placebo group (P=0.01). Conclusion Early treatment with captopril during AMI for 4 weeks can significantly reduce long-term total mortality.
