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Owing to the rapid expansion and development of newly upgraded undergraduate colleges and universities in China, the Ministry of Education implemented the College English Language Teaching Reform (CELTR) to improve College English language teaching and learning at higher institutions. This reform aims to improve the quality of teaching and learning of English as a Foreign Language (EFL). The present study aims to identify potential factors influencing the EFL teachers' professional development in the context of the College English language curriculum reform in mainland China. In total, 92 EFL college teachers from a newly upgraded university located in Nanyang City, Central China participated in this study, and data were collected using a survey questionnaire. Overall, the findings indicate that the EFL teachers' professional development improved during the implementation process of CELTR and the potential factors that contributed to their professional development were teachers' understanding, self-reflection, and teaching practice.

Objective Bibliometric analysis is one of the profound instruments to measure the research output quantitatively based on geometrical and statistical evaluation. The objective of the current study is to provide structural overview of the voluminous research work done so far via bibliometric analysis to access the significance of this tool in academic research. Methods A bibliometric analysis is performed by extracting 842 documents from Scopus database in CSV form from 2000 till April 5, 2021. The retrieved data analyzed via Vos viewer reveals about the significantly contributing authors, countries, author keywords, cited references, total link strength, and co-occurrence of author keywords using bibliographic coupling and co-citation analysis. Results In year 2009, publication of bibliometric articles reached its apex with a publication count of 34 articles. China has published maximum number of bibliometric documents (37.76%) and has produced 114 collaborative documents with 38 countries with a citation count of 2018. Recent bibliometric articles included keywords such as Vos viewer, Covid 19, Co-authorship, and Co-occurrence analysis. Conclusion Data presented in the study can be useful for comparing the use of bibliometric analysis in diverse subject areas and also focusses on the subject areas that are not yet explored through bibliometric analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has showed high transmission across the continents due to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) with total infected cases of around ~ 44 million people. This communicable virus that initiated from the Wuhan city of China in the month of December 2020 has now spread to 189 different countries with 1.1 million fatalities worldwide (till 28 Oct, 2020). The World Health Organization (WHO) declared this outbreak as Public Health Emergency of International Concern in January, 2020. The infection spreads mainly due to contact with infected droplets or fomites, highlighting flu like symptoms initially, which may further progress into severe pneumonia and respiratory failure, often observed in elderly patients with prehistory of other diseases. The diagnosis is based on detection of viral antigen, human antibody and viral gene (RT-PCR). Further, various other diagnostic tools including X-ray, CT-scan are used for imaging purpose, recently artificial intelligence based imaging (contactless scanning) gained popularity. Generally testing of existing drugs (repurposing) and development of new molecules are the main strategies adopted by researchers. However, as per initial findings, various drugs, monoclonal antibody and plasma therapy were found to show effectiveness against COVID-19. Further, many vaccine candidates have entered or will soon enter phase III clinical testing. This disease has further challenged the global economy. Thus, this review uniquely compares the strategies adopted by developed and developing countries worldwide including protective measures like lockdown, continuous testing, utilizing latest tools (artificial intelligence) in curbing this infection spread. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) comprise more than 4,000 anthropogenically manufactured compounds with widescale consumer and industrial applications. This critical review compiles the latest information on the worldwide distribution of PFAS and evaluates their fate in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). A large proportion (>30%) of monitoring studies in WWTPs were conducted in China, followed by Europe (30%) and North America (16%), whereas information is generally lacking for other parts of the world, including most of the developing countries. Short and long-chain perfluoroalkyl acids (PFAAs) were widely detected in both the influents (up to 1,000 ng/L) and effluents (15 to >1,500 ng/L) of WWTPs. To date, limited data is available regarding levels of PFAS precursors and ultra-short chain PFAS in WWTPs. Most WWTPs exhibited low removal efficiencies for PFAS, and many studies reported an increase in the levels of PFAAs after wastewater treatment. The analysis of the fate of various classes of PFAS at different wastewater treatment stages (aerobic and/aerobic biodegradation, photodegradation, and chemical degradation) revealed biodegradation as the primary mechanism responsible for the transformation of PFAS precursors to PFAAs in WWTPs. Remediation studies at full scale and laboratory scale suggest advanced processes such as adsorption using ion exchange resins, electrochemical degradation, and nanofiltration are more effective in removing PFAS (~95-100%) than conventional processes. However, the applicability of such treatments for real-world WWTPs faces significant challenges due to the scaling-up requirements, mass-transfer limitations, and management of treatment by-products and wastes. Combining more than one technique for effective removal of PFAS, while addressing limitations of the individual treatments, could be beneficial. Considering environmental concentrations of PFAS, cost-effectiveness, and ease of operation, nanofiltration followed by adsorption using wood-derived biochar and/or activated carbons could be a viable option if introduced to conventional treatment systems. However, the large-scale applicability of the same needs to be further verified., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2021. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)

The world health organization (WHO) formally proclaimed the novel coronavirus, called COVID-19, a worldwide pandemic on March 11 2020. In December 2019, COVID-19 was first identified in Wuhan city, China, and now coronavirus has spread across various nations infecting more than 198 countries. As the cities around China started getting contaminated, the number of cases increased exponentially. As of March 18 2020, the number of confirmed cases worldwide was more than 250,000, and Asia alone had more than 81,000 cases. The proposed model uses time series analysis to forecast the outbreak of COVID-19 around the world in the upcoming days by using an autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA). We analyze data from February 1 2020 to April 1 2020. The result shows that 120,000 confirmed fatal cases are forecasted using ARIMA by April 1 2020. Moreover, we have also evaluated the total confirmed cases, the total fatal cases, autocorrelation function, and white noise time-series for both confirmed cases and fatalities in the COVID-19 outbreak., (Copyright © 2020 Dansana, Kumar, Das Adhikari, Mohapatra, Sharma, Priyadarshini and Le.)