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This quasi-experimental study investigated whether a strategy-oriented media-based reading program could improve English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students' reading comprehension. Eighty-five students who were registered for English Reading at a university were recruited through convenience sampling to take part in the study. In this study, a web-based Strategy-oriented Multimedia-Assisted Reading Training (SMART) program was designed and implemented. On the basis of a literature review, four instructional strategies were selected and implemented in this program. The SMART program was used by students in the experimental group but not by students in the control group. Students in both groups were taught by the same instructor with the same instructional materials. The experiment lasted for 10 weeks, and the effects of the SMART program on students' reading comprehension were investigated. A questionnaire on students' attitudes toward the use of the strategies was given only to the experimental group. The results show that mean score of the reading test was significantly higher for the experimental group than for the control group. Students' feedback about using the SMART program was positive and encouraging.

In this meta-analysis study, a total of thirty-one studies related to strategy use of students in Taiwan in a web-based English context were identified, collected, and analysed. Three criteria for selecting the appropriate studies are (a) they must have applied web-based instruction; (b) they must be related to English learning; and (c) they had to provide one of the following data in order to calculate effect size (ES), including means and standard deviation (SD), "F" values, or "t" values. The characteristics were divided into three groups; that is, study characteristics, methodological characteristics, and design characteristics. The findings reveal that predicting, summarizing, self-questioning and clarifying; text annotation with pictures, and glossing were strategies with higher effect size (ES greater than 0.920). Findings from the meta-analysis in this study could provide a basis for designing and developing a strategy-oriented web-based instruction. (Contains 4 tables.)

Although paternal age has been linked to certain psychiatric disorders, the nature of any causal relationship remains elusive. Here, we aimed to comprehensively assess the magnitude of a wide range of offsprings psychiatric risk conferred by paternal age, leveraging a pedigree inferred from covered-insurance relationship (accuracy >98%) in Taiwans single-payer compulsory insurance program. We also examined whether there is an independent role of paternal age and explored the potential effect of parental age difference. A total cohort of 7,264,788 individuals born between 1980 and 2018 were included; 5,572,232 with sibling(s) were selected for sibling-comparison analyses and 1,368,942 and 1,044,420 children with information of paternal-grandparents and maternal-grandparents, respectively, were selected for multi-generation analyses. Using inpatient/outpatient claims data (1997-2018), we identified schizophrenia, autism, bipolar disorder (BPD), attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), major depressive disorder (MDD), eating disorder (ED), substance use disorder (SUD), mental retardation (MR), tic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), anxiety, and somatoform disorder. We identified suicides using death certificates. Logistic regression analysis was used to estimate the paternal/maternal/grand-paternal age association with psychiatric risk in the offspring. The total cohort and sibling-comparison cohort resulted in similar estimates. Paternal age had a U-shaped relationship with offsprings MDD, ED, SUD, and anxiety. A very young maternal age (25 years) was linearly associated with offsprings schizophrenia, autism, BPD, ADHD, MDD, ED, SUD, MR, OCD, anxiety, and suicide. Older grand-paternal age was linearly associated with offsprings schizophrenia, autism, ADHD, and MR. Dissimilar parental age was positively associated with offsprings ADHD, MDD, SUD, MR, anxiety, and suicide, and negatively associated with offsprings OCD. This comprehensive assessment provides solid evidence for the independent role of paternal age in psychiatric risk in the offspring and clarifies the significance of both early parenthood and delayed paternity.

The role of allopurinol usage in colorectal cancer (CRC) has no definite conclusion. The aim of this study was to explore the correlation between allopurinol usage and CRC risk in Taiwan. Using the National Health Insurance Database, we conducted a case‐control study of cases who were ≥20 years old and had newly diagnosed CRC for the period from 2000 to 2013. The controls were matched to cases by age, sex, index year, comorbidities, and socioeconomic status using propensity scores. Odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (95%CIs) were measured by the conditional logistic regression model. We examined 4372 cases and 4372 matched controls. A statistically significant correlation was noted between allopurinol usage and CRC risk (OR, 0.79; 95%CI, 0.69‐0.90). We used the cumulative‐defined daily doses (cDDDs) in a further subgroup analysis, the ORs decreased from tertile 1 (T1; low dose, <12 cDDDs), T2 (medium dose, 12 to 88.5 cDDDs), to T3 (high dose, >88.5 cDDDs). These values were 0.85 (95%CI, 0.69‐1.06), 0.77 (95%CI, 0.62‐0.95), to 0.76 (95%CI, 0.61‐0.94). The results indicated a dose‐response relationship between allopurinol usage and CRC risk (P for trend <.001). We thus inferred that patients with medium and high doses of allopurinol (≥12 cDDDs) had a statistically significantly decreased CRC risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To explore whether newly diagnosed iron deficiency anemia (IDA) is associated with subsequent systemic autoimmune disease onset.Methods: The study identified 22,440 patients who received a diagnosis of IDA between 2000 and 2012 from a random sample of 1 million people from Taiwan's National Health Insurance Research Database. The patients with IDA were randomly matched with 89,528 patients with no IDA by age, gender, and index year. We followed the 2 groups until systemic autoimmune disease onset. Cox proportional hazards analysis was used to determine autoimmune disease risk by age, gender, and comorbidities, in terms of hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs).Results: Adjusted HR (95% CI) of autoimmune disease in the IDA group was 2.37 (1.92-2.92) compared with the non-IDA group. The subgroup analysis indicated that a patient with IDA had a significantly greater risk of autoimmune disease if they were female or had the comorbidities of hypertension, hyperlipidemia, cancer, allergic rhinitis, urticaria, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or chronic liver disease. The autoimmune disease was significantly more likely to occur within 2 years after a new diagnosis of IDA.Conclusions: IDA significantly increases autoimmune disease risk, particularly in female patients and patients with certain comorbidities. Clinicians should conduct further clinical evaluations and laboratory tests of autoimmune disease in patients with IDA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined interview accounts from thirty-one Taiwanese older adults about their inter- and intra-generational communication experiences, and perceptions of today’s young and older people. Thematic analysis showed that Taiwanese older adults tended to initiate conversation topics accommodative to young people’s lives such as their job and marriage, whereas conversation topics with their old-age peers centered on adjustment into senior years (e.g., health, exercise) and their children’s achievement. Analysis also revealed some of the Taiwanese older adults’ major perceptions of young people (e.g., less respectful towards elders) and their peers (e.g., losing status in the family). The discursive strategies used in constructing such perceptions (e.g., discourse on self exception, denial of self inclusion) demonstrated the ways in which they negotiated and managed their age identity in inter- and intra-generational communication. Results are discussed in light of Social Identity Theory, Communication Accommodation Theory, age identity, filial piety, and cultural change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined 1,631 college students’ endorsement of traditional Confucian values in four East Asian cultural contexts (i.e., China, Korea, Japan and Taiwan). Findings showed that young people endorsed values of interpersonal harmony the most, followed by the relational hierarchy and traditional conservatism respectively. Results also indicated that participants in China provided the highest ratings for interpersonal harmony and relational hierarchy among the four cultures. Finally, results demonstrated that Japanese females were more conservative than Japanese males and females in China and Taiwan. Results were discussed in the philosophical tradition of Confucianism, globalization and culture change in the East Asian cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]