Hong Kong Polytechnic University

About: Hong Kong Polytechnic University is a education organization based out in Hong Kong, China. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Tourism & Population. The organization has 29633 authors who have published 72136 publications receiving 1956312 citations. The organization is also known as: HKPU & PolyU.

Lecturers’ Approaches to Teaching and their Relationship to Conceptions of Good Teaching

Abstract: Previous research has established a close link between students'conceptions of learning, approaches to study and learning outcomes.Until recently, there have been few studies of lecturers' approaches toteaching in higher education and their relationship with conceptions ofteaching. This study aimed to characterise the alternative approaches toteaching of university lecturers, and to examine the relationshipbetween lecturers' approaches to teaching and their conceptions of goodteaching. This study adopted an open naturalistic approach. Seventeenlecturers in three departments in a university were selected forinterview based on their rank, years of teaching and industrial orprofessional experience. Lecturers were interviewed individually abouttheir conceptions of good teaching, motivational strategies andeffective teaching. The interview records were then content analysed bythe two researchers of the study. The study found that (a) it waspossible to characterise lecturers' approaches to teaching with onemotivation and five strategy dimensions; (b) the conceptions of teachingof the lecturers were best described by two main orientations oftransmissive and facilitative teaching; (c) lecturers who conceivedteaching as transmitting knowledge were more likely to usecontent-centred approaches to teaching, while those who conceivedteaching as facilitative tended to use learning-centred approaches. Thestudy concludes by suggesting that fundamental changes to the quality ofteaching and learning are unlikely to happen without changes tolecturers' conception of teaching.

A vaccine targeting the RBD of the S protein of SARS-CoV-2 induces protective immunity.

Abstract: Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) causes a respiratory disease called coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), the spread of which has led to a pandemic. An effective preventive vaccine against this virus is urgently needed. As an essential step during infection, SARS-CoV-2 uses the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of the spike protein to engage with the receptor angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) on host cells1,2. Here we show that a recombinant vaccine that comprises residues 319-545 of the RBD of the spike protein induces a potent functional antibody response in immunized mice, rabbits and non-human primates (Macaca mulatta) as early as 7 or 14 days after the injection of a single vaccine dose. The sera from the immunized animals blocked the binding of the RBD to ACE2, which is expressed on the cell surface, and neutralized infection with a SARS-CoV-2 pseudovirus and live SARS-CoV-2 in vitro. Notably, vaccination also provided protection in non-human primates to an in vivo challenge with SARS-CoV-2. We found increased levels of RBD-specific antibodies in the sera of patients with COVID-19. We show that several immune pathways and CD4 T lymphocytes are involved in the induction of the vaccine antibody response. Our findings highlight the importance of the RBD domain in the design of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines and provide a rationale for the development of a protective vaccine through the induction of antibodies against the RBD domain.

Development of a Questionnaire to Measure the Level of Reflective Thinking

Abstract: Many courses aim to promote reflective thinking or reflection upon practice, but there is a scarcity of readily usable instruments to determine whether students engage in reflective thinking and, if so, to what extent. This paper reports the development and testing of such an instrument. To ensure validity, the constructs measured were derived from the extensive literature on reflective thinking, particularly the writing of Mezirow. A combination of the literature review and initial testing led to the development of a four-scale instrument measuring four constructs; habitual action, understanding, reflection and critical reflection. The final version of the instrument was tested with a sample of 303 students from eight classes of a health science faculty. The reliability of the scales was established by acceptable Cronbach alpha values. Confirmatory factor analysis showed a good fit to the proposed four-factor structure. Comparison of mean scores between the eight classes showed predicted significant diff...

Exceptional Tunability of Band Energy in a Compressively Strained Trilayer MoS2 Sheet

Abstract: Tuning band energies of semiconductors through strain engineering can significantly enhance their electronic, photonic, and spintronic performances Although low-dimensional nanostructures are rela

Semi-coupled dictionary learning with applications to image super-resolution and photo-sketch synthesis

Abstract: In various computer vision applications, often we need to convert an image in one style into another style for better visualization, interpretation and recognition; for examples, up-convert a low resolution image to a high resolution one, and convert a face sketch into a photo for matching, etc. A semi-coupled dictionary learning (SCDL) model is proposed in this paper to solve such cross-style image synthesis problems. Under SCDL, a pair of dictionaries and a mapping function will be simultaneously learned. The dictionary pair can well characterize the structural domains of the two styles of images, while the mapping function can reveal the intrinsic relationship between the two styles' domains. In SCDL, the two dictionaries will not be fully coupled, and hence much flexibility can be given to the mapping function for an accurate conversion across styles. Moreover, clustering and image nonlocal redundancy are introduced to enhance the robustness of SCDL. The proposed SCDL model is applied to image super-resolution and photo-sketch synthesis, and the experimental results validated its generality and effectiveness in cross-style image synthesis.