Suchergebnisse

There are 56 ethnic groups in China, more than 91% of Han majority group and 55 ethnic minority groups constituting less than 9% of total Chinese population. These 55 minority groups widely distributes throughout China except five Autonomous Regions (Xinjiang Uygur, Ningxia Hui, Tibetan, Inner Mongolia and Guangxi Zhuang), of which Ningxia is where I was born and received K-12 education while Xinjiang is the place where I attended college and taught English at the Alma Mater University after my graduation from college until I came to U.S. to pursue my doctoral studies in Ed. D. in Curriculum Studies program at Georgia Southern University. In China I, a Han Chinese, was a marginalized "visible majority" (Li, 2005, p.1) like a grain of sand in a northwest rural county while my potential participants were advantaged minorities not in terms of ethnic heritage maintenance but in terms of formal education they received in cities where they had more access to advanced educational and academic resources as well as job opportunities, although their ethnicity derogated through the process of acculturation (Schumann, 1986; Conle, 1993; He, 1998, 1999, 2003; He, Phillion & Connelly, 2005; Phillion, 2002 & 2010). On the other hand, regarding national policy I was prestigious while my potential participants were disadvantaged, as Belle and Ward (1994) argued that "minority students are disadvantaged in schools because of conflicts between mainstream ideologies and the home cultures of these students" (cited in Phillion, J; Hue, M. T& Wang, Y. X. (2011, p.25). All my ethnic minority participants were born and received education in cities in China but never benefited from National Preferential Policy for Minorities Education (guo jia shao shu min zu you hui zheng ce国家少数民族优惠政策), which bears resemblance to the Affirmative Action taken in U. S. in 1960s. The original policy in China was initiated and implemented in early 50s and revised many times to be more fitting for ethnic minority groups. The current policy significantly responds to the Article 37th of the Regulation for Higher Education Admission in 1987 (Pu tong gao deng xue xiao zhao sheng zan xing tiao li di san shi qi tiao《普通高等学校招生暂行条例》第三十七条) in consonance, which legislated that all children for ethnic minorities and Han majority children living in minority regions were required lower scores to enter undergraduate and graduate programs in Chinese universities. However, my potential participants who were all born and received education in cities never benefited from this policy. On the contrary, I, as a Han, benefited from the policy. Therefore, in China who benefited more politically, economically, educationally, linguistically and socially? I as a marginalized and beneficiary majority or my potential participants as dis/advantaged minorities?

Purpose
The multiple goals make social enterprises vulnerable to mission drift, which hurts the sustainability of these hybrid organizations. As initiators, the relationship between social entrepreneurs and the mission drift of social enterprises needs to be further explored. This study aims to explore how entrepreneurs' education and age impact social enterprise mission drift and examine the potential moderating effects of social enterprise legitimacy.


Design/methodology/approach
This study uses the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor data set to obtain the required samples, and further regression analysis is used to test the hypotheses.


Findings
The results showed that the more educated the entrepreneur, the lower the social enterprise mission drift. There is an inverted U-shaped relationship between social entrepreneurs' age and mission drift. Finally, the inverted U-shaped relationship between age and mission drift was more pronounced in contexts with lower social enterprise legitimacy than high legitimacy levels.


Originality/value
This study highlights the significance of founders' characteristics on the mission robustness of the social enterprises they create. At the same time, the role of social enterprise legitimacy is demonstrated in the context of this study. The findings of this research have implications for social entrepreneurs, social enterprises and policymakers.

Central to the aims of the Paris Agreement, an integrated carbon market could potentially be a practical bottom-up option for effective and efficient mitigation. This paper quantifies the welfare effects of integration of Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) between the European Union (EU) and China. Using the European version of the computable general equilibrium model GEMINI-E3, our assessment reveals that integrating trading markets benefits both regions through the decrease welfare costs from abatements. China's welfare improves through net gain of selling the allowance, while the EU experiences lower deadweight loss. This effect is stronger to some notable countries in the EU, with high energy-intensive industries such as Poland and the Czech Republic. While a few others, such as Netherlands and Ireland, face higher welfare costs from negative trade gain. Limiting the trade quotas to 40% captures most of the EU welfare gain coming from CO2 trading. Further analysis at the sectoral level reveals that market integration significantly minimizes the loss of competitiveness of European energy-intensive industries and reduces international leakage. Our finding thus confirms the potential of the emissions trading market as an effective instrument to facilitate multilateral coordination in global mitigation.

Abstract. Field investigations and back analyses were conducted on a rockfall hazard. The flexible barrier protection system constructed along the roadside was damaged by the rockfall impact and lost its mitigation ability. Vital physical characteristics such as rockfall trajectory and kinetic energy were presumed based on the data from the aerial survey and the slope digital model. A numerical model, including slope, rockfalls, and flexible barrier, was created and thus the impacting process was reproduced. It demonstrates that the impact kinetic energy of the rockfall is only around 40 % of its design protection energy. The improper connections of members are the leading causes of damage, which prevent the flexible barrier from producing significant deformation and reduce its capacity to absorb impact force. The damage can be avoided by changing the connections of the members to improve the ability of the nets and ropes to slide and deform. The calculation results indicate that the impact resistance of the optimized model is 3 times better than the actual project. The findings can be used as a guide when designing a flexible protection system that performs better.

AbstractHuman behaviors are believed to be sensitive to environmental conditions. However, little is known about the role of temperature in individual daily behaviors. We examine the links between temperature and food intake using nearly one million purchasing records from China. The results show that a 1-degree Celsius increase in temperature would cause a 0.11% decrease in food intake, which amounts to 4.2 million U.S. dollars of daily food expenditures nationwide. Moreover, females appear to be more sensitive to the temperature in their food intake than males. Besides, we observe a U-shaped relationship between the temperature and the willingness to order a take-out online, and this observation is robust under multiple alternative estimations. Our results indicate that a higher temperature would reduce energy demand for body thermoregulation, resulting in less food intake. Both extreme high and low temperatures can cause disutility. Therefore, the consumers who still want to satisfy their needs for food intake feel compelled to alter their willingness to pay under the extreme temperature events. The quantitative analysis can provide helpful references for modeling the climate-consumer relationship in the IAM model. Thus, it is an interesting avenue for future research to bridge the climate and consumers to identify welfare loss and inequality due to climate change.

It is believed that weather conditions such as temperature and humidity have effects on COVID-19 transmission. However, these effects are not clear due to the limited observations and difficulties in separating impact of social distancing. COVID-19 data and social-economic features of 1236 regions in the world (1112 regions at the provincial level and 124 countries with the small land area) were collected. Large-scale satellite data was combined with these data with a regression analysis model to explore the effects of temperature and relative humidity on COVID-19 spreading, as well as the possible transmission risk by seasonal cycles. The result shows that temperature and relative humidity are negatively correlated with COVID-19 transmission throughout the world. Government intervention (e.g. lockdown policies) and lower population movement contributed to decrease the new daily case ratio. Weather conditions are not the decisive factor in COVID-19 transmission, in that government intervention as well as public awareness, could contribute to the mitigation of the spreading of the virus. So, it deserves a dynamic government policy to mitigate COVID-19 transmission in winter.

Approximately 20% of the 600 First Nations reserves across Canada are under a drinking water advisory, often due to unacceptable levels of bacteria. In this study, we detected fecal bacteria at an alarmingly high frequency in drinking water sources in a fly-in First Nations community, most notably in buckets/drums of homes without running water where Escherichia coli levels ranged from 20 to 62,000 CFU/100mL. The water leaving the water treatment plant was free of E. coli and its free residual chlorine concentration (0.67 mg/L) was within the range typically observed for treated water in Canada. Water samples from taps in homes served by cisterns, and those sampled from the water truck and community standpipe, always showed unacceptable levels of E. coli (1 to 2,100 CFU/100mL) and free residual chlorine concentrations below the 0.2 mg/L required to prevent bacterial regrowth. Samples from taps in homes served by piped water had lower levels of E. coli (0 to 2 CFU/100mL). DNA- and RNA-based 16S rRNA Illumina sequencing demonstrated that piped and cisterns water distribution systems showed an abundance of viable cells of Alphaproteobacteria indicative of biofilm formation in pipes and cisterns. The alpha diversity, based on observed OTUs and three other indices, was lowest in water truck samples that supplied water to the cistern and the low free residual chlorine concentration (0.07 mg/L) and predominance of Betaproteobacteria (63% of viable cells) that were immediately detected after the truck had filled up at the water treatment plant was indicative of contamination by particulate matter. Given these findings, First Nation residents living without running water and relying on inadequate water distribution systems are at higher risk of contracting water-born illnesses. We urge all governments in Canada to expand their investments in supporting and sustaining water as a human right in Canada's First Nations communities. ; Funding for this research was provided by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada through its Collaborative Research and Training Experience Program (grant# 432009-2013). We also gratefully thank the First Nation community for on-going collaborations.

Ting Xu, Qiang Zhang, Ya-han Fan, Ru-qing Li, Hua Lu, Shu-ming Zhao, Tian-lun Jiang Department of Transfusion Medicine, Southwest Hospital, Third Military Medical University, Chongqing, People's Republic of China Background: Accurate and reliable blood grouping is essential for safe blood transfusion. However, conventional methods are qualitative and use only single-antigen detection. We overcame these limitations by developing a simple, quantitative, and multiplexed detection method for blood grouping using quantum dots (QDs) and magnetic beads.Methods: In the QD fluorescence assay (QFA), blood group A and B antigens were quantified using QD labeling and magnetic beads, and the blood groups were identified according to the R value (the value was calculated with the fluorescence intensity from dual QD labeling) of A and B antigens. The optimized performance of QFA was established by blood typing 791 clinical samples.Results: Quantitative and multiplexed detection for blood group antigens can be completed within 35 min with more than 105 red blood cells. When conditions are optimized, the assay performance is satisfactory for weak samples. The coefficients of variation between and within days were less than 10% and the reproducibility was good. The ABO blood groups of 791 clinical samples were identified by QFA, and the accuracy obtained was 100% compared with the tube test. Receiver-operating characteristic curves revealed that the QFA has high sensitivity and specificity toward clinical samples, and the cutoff points of the R value of A and B antigens were 1.483 and 1.576, respectively.Conclusion: In this study, we reported a novel quantitative and multiplexed method for the identification of ABO blood groups and presented an effective alternative for quantitative blood typing. This method can be used as an effective tool to improve blood typing and further guarantee clinical transfusion safety. Keywords: blood typing, quantum dots, magnetic beads, blood group antigens, fluorescence detection