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The author examines whether gains of learning of Asian students are the same or different if they are from (a) East Asia, (b) South and Central Asia, or (c) Southeast Asia at undergraduate and graduate levels. Results indicated that East Asian students' gains of learning in personal development, science and development, general education, vocational preparation, and intellectual skills were statistically different from other students from South and Central Asia and Southeast Asia. Graduate Asian students' gains of learning in all domains were found higher than undergraduate Asian students' gains of learning. Based on these findings, the author offers implications and recommendations for educators and practitioners to improve international students' support and their college experience.

The International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL) began in 2004, constituted by 67 scholars, mostly from English-speaking countries located in the Western hemisphere. Since then, the world has become increasingly global and borderless, and students' movements across continents in search a good education have meant that today's classrooms are, in varying degrees, heterogeneous. Yet SoTL discourse--the metaphors employed, the issues identified, and SoTL methods or approaches to classroom practice--have remained largely Western in orientation. This paper describes three types of exclusions of Asian participants and perspectives in mainstream discourse on the SoTL: geographical isolation, methodological solipsism, and ideological exclusion. Through a review of the dominant scholarship, we argue that an international association like ISSOTL must take active steps to consciously acknowledge the need for alternative voices that are located outside its immediate realm and that the differences in practice, participants, and the politics of culture in locations outside the West need to be taken into consideration, or ISSOTL will risk losing relevance for a greater part of world. Or to put it more positively, ISSOTL has much to gain by paying attention to and not denying the existence of such enriching, if less familiar, perspectives.

This paper examines one of the traditional technologies of distance education, radio, and presents examples of educational and community radio usage in Asia and Africa. Instead of merely transposing western approaches to distance education in developing countries, it is suggested that the developed world can learn from uses of radio in developing countries, and that the medium deserves greater attention as a means of giving educational opportunity to rural, isolated peoples worldwide. (Contains 1 table.)

The Panax bipinnatifidus species complex ( P. bipinnatifidus and its close relatives) in the Sino-Himalayan region has been taxonomically difficult. Evolutionary analyses using amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) markers were carried out on 125 individuals representing 11 populations of the P. bipinnatifidus species complex and one population of P. stipuleanatus Tsai & Feng as an outgroup. The populations from the eastern Himalayan region, sampled from Nepal and eastern Tibet, formed two main groups in the neighbor-joining and split network analyses. The Pailong population (Tibet-PL) in eastern Tibet showed a highly distinct AFLP profile and was placed as the most basally branched group in the neighbor-joining tree. The remaining Himalayan populations showed three subgroups: the Nepal-HB and Nepal-HS subgroup, the Nepal HH subgroup, and the Tibet-BY subgroup. The three Himalayan subgroups had very limited gene flow among them and showed subtle morphological differences. The populations in eastern, central, and western China showed clear geographic patterns and can be sorted into several geographical groups. Each major group in the species complex has strong bootstrap support, but relationships among them are poorly resolved, which is consistent with a pattern of evolutionary radiation. The strong geographic grouping, high Nei's population differentiation index, and limited gene flow among populations in different regions support the importance of geographic isolation in the diversification of the P. bipinnatifidus species complex in the Sino-Himalayan region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Because chloroplast (cp) genome has more conserved structures than nuclear genome and mitochondrial genome, it is a useful tool in estimating the phylogenetic relationships of plants. With a series of researches for cp genomes, there have been comprehensive understandings about the cp genome features. The genus Bulbophyllum widely distributed in Asia, South America, Australia and other places. Therefore, it is an excellent type genus for studying the effects of geographic isolation., Results: In this study, the cp genomes of nine Bulbophyllum orchids were newly sequenced and assembled using the next-generation sequencing technology. Based on 19 Asian (AN) and eight South American (SA) Bulbophyllum orchids, the cp genome features of AN clade and SA clade were compared. Comparative analysis showed that there were considerable differences in overall cp genome features between two clades in three aspects, including basic cp genome features, SSC/IR B junctions (J SB s) and mutational hotspots. The phylogenetic analysis and divergence time estimation results showed that the AN clade has diverged from the SA clade in the late Oligocene (21.50-30.12 mya). After estimating the occurrence rates of the insertions and deletions (InDels), we found that the change trends of cp genome structures between two clades were different under geographic isolation. Finally, we compared selective pressures on cp genes and found that long-term geographic isolation made AN and SA Bulbophyllum cp genes evolved variably., Conclusion: The results revealed that the overall structural characteristics of Bulbophyllum cp genomes diverged during the long-term geographic isolation, and the crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM) pathway may play an important role in the Bulbophyllum species evolution., (© 2022. The Author(s).)