In an e-learning environment that emphasizes learner-centered activity and system interactivity, remote learners can outperform traditional classroom students.

Blockchain has become a new frontier of venture capitals that has attracted the attention of banks, governments, and other business corporations. The recent blockchain related attempts included legal blockchains by Fadada.com and Microsoft and pork tracking blockchains by Walmart and IBM. Blockchain is poised to become the most exciting invention after the Internet; while the latter connects the world to enable new business models based on online business processes, the former will help resolve the trust issue more efficiently via network computing. In this paper, we give an overview on blockchain research and development as well as introduce the papers in this special issue. We show that while blockchain has enabled Bitcoin, the most successful digital currency, its widespread adoption in finance and other business sectors will lead to many business innovations as well as many research opportunities.

Quantity and quality of home language use as well as home literacy resources are positively related to vocabulary knowledge among children growing up monolingually (De Temple & Snow, 2003; Juel, 1988; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998; Stanovich, 1986). While the presence of interactive features associated with good vocabulary outcomes have been reported in Latino families (Jiménez, Filippini, & Gerber, 2006; Teale, 1986) no prospective studies relating those features to vocabulary outcomes in either Spanish or English have been carried out with Latino children. In particular, it is unclear whether interactions facilitate vocabulary across languages, or only for the language in which they occur. In this study, home factors (immigration history, home language use, home literacy resources) and the interactive language of 50 mother—child dyads sharing a picture-book were analyzed as predictors of the children’s vocabulary outcomes. The children were aged 4—5 and all were attending a Head Start program at the time of the study. Frequency of reading to the child by an adult other than the

The era of big data and analytics is upon us and is changing the world dramatically. The field of Information Systems should be at the forefront of understanding and interpreting the impact of both technologies and management so as to lead the efforts of business research in the big data era. We need to prepare ourselves and our students for this changing world of business. In this discussion, we focus on exploring the technical and managerial issues of business transformation resulting from the insightful adoption and innovative applications of data sciences in business. We end by providing an overview of the papers included in this special issue and outline future research directions.

The influence of home and community factors in predicting ethnic or heritage language vocabulary were examined among 282 Singaporean children whose ethnic languages (or mother tongues) were Chinese, Malay, or Tamil, and who were also learning English. The results indicated that (1) parents speaking ethnic language to children had a strong positive effect on children’s ethnic language vocabulary, whereas parents speaking only English had a negative effect; (2) language community had an effect on children’s ethnic language vocabulary, which may reflect community support for the language among the broader community; (3) family income worked differently depending on the language community; and (4) watching television in English mostly/only had a negative effect on children’s ethnic language vocabulary. These findings lend support to other studies among language-minority children indicating that maintaining an ethnic or heritage language requires home support when schooling is through a societally dominant language.

We derive the proper motions, membership probabilities, and velocity dispersions of stars in the regions of the young ($2-4 Myr old) open clusters NGC 2244 (the central cluster in the Monoceros R2 association) and NGC 6530 (the dominant cluster in the Sgr OB1 association) from photographic plate material obtained at Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, with time baselines of 34 and 87 yr, respectively. Both clusters show clear evidence of mass segregation, but they do not exhibit any significant velocity-mass (or, equivalently, velocity-luminosity) dependence. This provides strong support for the suggestion that the observed mass segregation is at least partially due to the way in which star formation has proceeded in these complex star-forming regions (''primordial'' mass segregation). Based on arguments related to the clusters' published initial mass functions, in conjunction with our new measurements of their internal velocity dispersions ($35 and 8 km s À1 for NGC 2244 and NGC 6530, respectively), we provide strong arguments in favor of the dissolution of NGC 2244 on very short timescales, while we speculate that NGC 6530 may be more stable against the effects of internal two-body relaxation. However, this latter object may well be destroyed by the strong tidal field prevalent at its location in the Galactic plane in the direction of the Galactic center.

Educational policies that impact second language (L2) learners—a rapidly-growing group—are often enacted without consulting relevant research. This review synthesized research regarding optimal conditions for L2 acquisition, facilitative L2 learner and teacher characteristics, and speed of L2 acquisition, from four bodies of work—foreign language education, child language research, sociocultural studies, and psycholinguistics—often overlooked by educators. Seventy-one peer-reviewed journal articles studying PK-12 L2 learners met inclusion criteria. Findings included: 1) Optimal conditions for L2 learners immersed in a majority-L2 society include strong home literacy practices, opportunities to use the L2 informally, well-implemented specially-designed L2 educational programs, and sufficient time devoted to L2 literacy instruction, whereas L2 learners with little L2 exposure require explicit instruction to master grammar; 2) L2 learners with strong L2 aptitude, motivation, and first language (L1) skills are more successful; 3) Effective L2 teachers demonstrate sufficient L2 proficiency, strong instructional skills, and proficiency in their students’ L1; 4) L2 learners require 3-7 years to reach L2 proficiency, with younger learners typically taking longer but more likely to achieve close-to-native results. These findings, even those most relevant to education, are not reflected in current US policy. Additional research is needed on the characteristics of successful or unsuccessful L2 learners and L2 teachers. Such research should attend systematically to the differences between L2 learning in maximal versus minimal input settings; whereas the psycholinguistic challenges of L2 learning might be common across settings, the sociocultural and interactional challenges and opportunities differ in ways that can massively impact outcomes.

Abstract. -Relative proper motions and membership probabilities for 333 stars within an area of 1.• 6 by 1.• 8 centred on the Orion Nebula M 42 are determined using plates taken over a period of 83 years with the double astrograph of Shanghai Observatory (scale of 30 /mm). The plates were measured with the ASTROSCAN automatic platemeasuring machine of Leiden Observatory. The average proper motion accuracy obtained for stars in the photographic magnitude range 7 to 14 is 0.3 mas/yr. Errors are somewhat larger towards fainter and brighter magnitude, but the majority lie well below 1 mas/yr. 64% of the stars have been measured successfully on at least 13 out of 18 plates. The number of stars with membership probabilities higher than 0.7 is 184. It is shown by a detailed discussion that the proper motions and membership probabilities of the stars determined in this paper are in good agreement with the results presented recently by other authors. Although there is a clear concentration in the proper motion diagram, both the remaining dispersion of the internal motions and the distribution of "members" as projected on the sky indicate that the stars in this region are not bound as one system, but do have a common origin. A similar conclusion can be drawn from a comparison with spectroscopic and radial velocity data.