Using a longitudinal sample of young Chinese students (fall and spring in grades 1 and 2: times 1–4, respectively) and growth curve analysis, this study examined whether the initial status and growth rates of compounding awareness from time 1 to time 4 uniquely contribute to reading comprehension at time 4 and whether word‐reading efficiency at time 4 mediates the association between initial status and growth in compounding awareness and reading comprehension at time 4. The results indicated that initial status and growth rates of compounding awareness made a significant direct contribution to reading comprehension at the end of second grade after controlling for IQ, phonological awareness, and vocabulary knowledge. The relationship between initial status and growth rates of compounding awareness and reading comprehension were fully mediated by word‐reading efficiency. The findings underscore the importance of growth in compounding awareness for reading comprehension and add to the literature about the nature of the morphological awareness and reading comprehension relationship in Chinese.

Aims:  To determine the incidence and severity of infection by ochratoxin A (OA)‐producing fungi in Vietnamese green coffee beans. Methods and Results:  Aspergillus carbonarius, A. niger and yellow Aspergilli (A. ochraceus and related species in section Circumdati) were isolated by direct plating of surface‐disinfected Robusta (65 samples) and Arabica (11 samples) coffee beans from southern and central Vietnam. Significantly, more Robusta than Arabica beans were infected by fungi. Aspergillus niger infected 89% of Robusta beans, whereas A. carbonarius and yellow Aspergilli each infected 12–14% of beans. OA was not produced by A. niger (98 isolates) or A. ochraceus (77 isolates), but was detected in 110 of 113 isolates of A. carbonarius, 10 isolates of A. westerdijkiae and one isolate of A. steynii. The maximum OA observed in samples severely infected with toxigenic species was 1·8 μg kg−1; however, no relationship between extent of infection and OA contamination was observed. Conclusions:  Aspergillus niger is the dominant species infecting Vietnamese coffee beans, yet A. carbonarius is the likely source of OA contamination. Significance and Impact of Study:  Vietnamese green coffee beans were more severely infected with fungi than the levels reported for beans from other parts of the world, yet OA contamination appears to be infrequent.

Sacbrood virus (SBV) is one of the most common viral infections of honeybees. The entire genome sequence for nine SBV infecting honeybees, Apis cerana and Apis mellifera, in Vietnam, namely AcSBV-Viet1, AcSBV-Viet2, AcSBV-Viet3, AmSBV-Viet4, AcSBV-Viet5, AmSBV-Viet6, AcSBV-Viet7, AcSBV-Viet8, and AcSBV-Viet9, was determined. These sequences were aligned with seven previously reported complete genome sequences of SBV from other countries, and various genomic regions were compared. The Vietnamese SBVs (VN-SBVs) shared 91–99% identity with each other, and shared 89–94% identity with strains from other countries. The open reading frames (ORFs) of the VN-SBV genomes differed greatly from those of SBVs from other countries, especially in their VP1 sequences. The AmSBV-Viet6 and AcSBV-Viet9 genome encodes 17 more amino acids within this region than the other VN-SBVs. In a phylogenetic analysis, the strains AmSBV-Viet4, AcSBV-Viet2, and AcSBV-Viet3 were clustered in group with AmSBV-UK, AmSBV-Kor21, and AmSBV-Kor19 strains. Whereas, the strains AmSBV-Viet6 and AcSBV-Viet7 clustered separately with the AcSBV strains from Korea and AcSBV-VietSBM2. And the strains AcSBV-Viet8, AcSBV-Viet1, AcSBV-Viet5, and AcSBV-Viet9 clustered with the AcSBV-India, AcSBV-Kor and AcSBV-VietSBM2. In a Simplot graph, the VN-SBVs diverged stronger in their ORF regions than in their 5′ or 3′ untranslated regions. The VN-SBVs possess genetic characteristics which are more similar to the Asian AcSBV strains than to AmSBV-UK strain. Taken together, our data indicate that host specificity, geographic distance, and viral cross-infections between different bee species may explain the genetic diversity among the VN-SBVs in A. cerana and A. mellifera and other SBV strains.

Background: Understanding the genetic diversity in endangered species that occur inforest remnants is necessary to establish efficient strategies for the species conservation, restoration and management. Panax vietnamensis Ha et Grushv. is medicinally important, endemic and endangered species of Vietnam. However, genetic diversity and structure of population are unknown due to lack of efficient molecular markers. Results: In this study, we employed Illumina HiSeq™ 4000 sequencing to analyze the transcriptomes of P. vietnamensis (roots, leaves and stems). Raw reads total of 23,741,783 was obtained and then assembled, from which the generated unigenes were 89,271 (average length = 598.3191 nt). The 31,686 unigenes were annotated in different databases i.e. Gene Ontology, Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes, Nucleotide Collection (NR/NT) and Swiss-Prot for functional annotation. Further, 11,343 EST-SSRs were detected. From 7774 primer pairs, 101 were selected for polymorphism validation, in which; 20 primer pairs were successfully amplified to DNA fragments and significant amounts of polymorphism was observed within population. The nine polymorphic microsatellite loci were used for population structure and diversity analyses. The obtained results revealed high levels of genetic diversity in populations, the average observed and expected heterozygosity were H O = 0.422 and H E = 0.479, respectively. During the Bottleneck analysis using TPM and SMM models (p < 0.01) shows that targeted population is significantly heterozygote deficient. This suggests sign of the bottleneck in all populations. Genetic differentiation between populations was moderate (F ST = 0.133) and indicating slightly high level of gene flow (Nm = 1.63). Analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) showed 63.17% of variation within individuals and 12.45% among populations. Our results shows two genetic clusters related to geographical distances.

Background The aim of this longitudinal study was to examine the relationship between character reading and spelling and to explore the role of reading‐related skills in Chinese literacy. Methods A test battery that included measures of morphological awareness (homophone awareness and compound word awareness), orthographic awareness, rapid automatised naming, character reading, spelling, and IQ was administered to 127 first grade students from two primary schools in mainland China. Results Controlling for IQ and age, the results of hierarchical regressive analyses revealed that prior reading affected subsequent spelling, and character reading Time 1 predicted spelling Time 2, β value was 0.20; character reading Time 2 predicted spelling Time 3, β value was 0.40. However, prior spelling did not affect subsequent reading. In addition, compound word awareness Time 2 and orthographic awareness Time 2 were found to mediate character reading Time 1 and spelling Time 3. Conclusions This study suggests that reading influences spelling across time points from grade 1 to grade 2, and compound word awareness and orthographic awareness play important mediator roles in the process.

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This study investigates the effects of teaching semantic radicals in inferring the meanings of unfamiliar characters among nonnative Chinese speakers. A total of 54 undergraduates majoring in Chinese Language from a university in Hanoi, Vietnam, who had 1 year of learning experience in Chinese were assigned to two experimental groups that received instructional intervention, called “old-for-new” semantic radical teaching, through two counterbalanced sets of semantic radicals, with one control group. All of the students completed pre- and post-tests of a sentence cloze task where they were required to choose an appropriate character that fit the sentence context among four options. The four options shared the same phonetic radicals but had different semantic radicals. The results showed that the pre-test and post-test score increases were significant for the experimental groups, but not for the control group. Most importantly, the experimental groups successfully transferred the semantic radical strategy to figure out the meanings of unfamiliar characters containing semantic radicals that had not been taught. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of teaching semantic radicals for lexical inference in sentence reading for nonnative speakers, and highlight the ability of transfer learning to acquire semantic categories of sub-lexical units (semantic radicals) in Chinese characters among foreign language learners.

The present study examined the developmental relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension, using a 1-year longitudinal study with a sample of 439 Chinese-speaking students in Grades 1, 3, and 5, respectively. Children’s text reading and three components of morphological awareness: homophone awareness, homograph awareness and compounding awareness were measured. After controlling for word reading, vocabulary knowledge, IQ, rapid automatized naming and phonological awareness measured at the initial level, the structural equation modeling results indicated that children’s compounding awareness made a significant direct contribution to reading comprehension only from Grade 5 to 6. Children’s reading comprehension also made a unique contribution to compounding awareness from Grade 5 to 6. Thus a reciprocal relationship between compounding awareness and reading comprehension was found for Grade 5 to 6. Reading comprehension in Grades 3 and 5 predicted homophone awareness in Grades 4 and 6 were marginal significance, respectively, but initial homophone awareness did not predict later reading comprehension across grades. Furthermore, there no unique connection between homograph awareness and reading comprehension across grades. These findings suggest a dynamic relationship between different aspects of morphological awareness and reading comprehension in Chinese-speaking children across elementary school years.