Search results for: communist party of China
Commenced in January 2007
Frequency: Monthly
Edition: International
Paper Count: 1934

Search results for: communist party of China

644 The Influence of English Immersion Program on Academic Performance: Case Study at a Sino-US Cooperative University in China

Authors: Leah Li Echiverri, Haoyu Shang, Yue Li

Abstract:

Wenzhou-Kean University (WKU) is a Sino-US Cooperative University in China. It practices the English Immersion Program (EIP), where all the courses are taught in English. Class discussions and presentations are pervasively interwoven in designing students’ learning experiences. This WKU model has brought positive influences on students and is in some way ahead of traditional college English majors. However, literature to support the perceptions on the positive outcomes of this teaching and learning model remain scarce. The distinctive profile of Chinese-ESL students in an English Medium of Instruction (EMI) environment contributes further to the scarcity of literature compared to existing studies conducted among ESL learners in Western educational settings. Hence, the study investigated the students’ perceptions towards the English Immersion Program and determine how it influences Chinese-ESL students’ academic performance (AP). This research can provide empirical data that would be helpful to educators, teaching practitioners, university administrators, and other researchers in making informed decisions when developing curricular reforms, instructional and pedagogical methods, and university-wide support programs using this educational model. The purpose of the study was to establish the relationship between the English Immersion Program and Academic Performance among Chinese-ESL students enrolled at WKU for the academic year 2020-2021. Course length, immersion location, course type, and instructional design were the constructs of the English immersion program. English language learning, learning efficiency, and class participation were used to measure academic performance. Descriptive-correlational design was used in this cross-sectional research project. A quantitative approach for data analysis was applied to determine the relationship between the English immersion program and Chinese-ESL students’ academic performance. The research was conducted at WKU; a Chinese-American jointly established higher educational institution located in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province. Convenience, random, and snowball sampling of 283 students, a response rate of 10.5%, were applied to represent the WKU student population. The questionnaire was posted through the survey website named Wenjuanxing and shared to QQ or WeChat. Cronbach’s alpha was used to test the reliability of the research instrument. Findings revealed that when professors integrate technology (PowerPoint, videos, and audios) in teaching, students pay more attention. This contributes to the acquisition of more professional knowledge in their major courses. As to course immersion, students perceive WKU as a good place to study, providing them a high degree of confidence to talk with their professors in English. This also contributes to their English fluency and better pronunciation in their communication. In the construct of designing instruction, the use of pictures, video clips, and professors’ non-verbal communication, and demonstration of concern for students encouraged students to be more active in-class participation. Findings on course length and academic performance indicated that students’ perception regarding taking courses during fall and spring terms can moderately contribute to their academic performance. In conclusion, the findings revealed a significantly strong positive relationship between course type, immersion location, instructional design, and academic performance.

Keywords: class participation, English immersion program, English language learning, learning efficiency

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643 Spatially Downscaling Land Surface Temperature with a Non-Linear Model

Authors: Kai Liu

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Remote sensing-derived land surface temperature (LST) can provide an indication of the temporal and spatial patterns of surface evapotranspiration (ET). However, the spatial resolution achieved by existing commonly satellite products is ~1 km, which remains too coarse for ET estimations. This paper proposed a model that can disaggregate coarse resolution MODIS LST at 1 km scale to fine spatial resolutions at the scale of 250 m. Our approach attempted to weaken the impacts of soil moisture and growing statues on LST variations. The proposed model spatially disaggregates the coarse thermal data by using a non-linear model involving Bowen ratio, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and photochemical reflectance index (PRI). This LST disaggregation model was tested on two heterogeneous landscapes in central Iowa, USA and Heihe River, China, during the growing seasons. Statistical results demonstrated that our model achieved better than the two classical methods (DisTrad and TsHARP). Furthermore, using the surface energy balance model, it was observed that the estimated ETs using the disaggregated LST from our model were more accurate than those using the disaggregated LST from DisTrad and TsHARP.

Keywords: Bowen ration, downscaling, evapotranspiration, land surface temperature

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642 Effects of Family Socioeconomic Status and Parental Involvement on Elementary School Students’ Academic Performance

Authors: Qingli Lei

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This study investigates the impact of family socioeconomic status and parental involvement on the academic performance of elementary school students, specifically focusing on migrant students in China. The findings reveal that gender has a stronger influence on academic performance compared to local status and parental tutoring time. Female students tend to achieve higher scores than males. Parental education level does not significantly predict academic performance, while parent tutoring time does have a significant impact. Furthermore, there is a significant interaction between local status and parental education level, indicating that migrant students with lower-educated parents perform better than their local counterparts, while local children excel when their parents' education levels are higher. These results emphasize the importance of parental involvement, particularly for immigrant students, and highlight the need for interventions that enhance parental engagement in education to improve academic outcomes.

Keywords: academic performance, family socioeconomic status, migrant students, parental involvement

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641 Business Incubation of SMEs in India : A Case Study

Authors: Dinesh Khanduja, Sahib Sartaj Singh

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In India, among the start ups, many new ventures fail and for the few that survive and grow, there are always numerous problems. In order to make these surviving units productive and cost effective-in today’s competitive environment, the traditional ways of supporting small enterprises and the related programs of governmental assistance need to be significantly transformed. In this context, ‘Business Incubation’ is emerging as one of the most innovative instruments to support small enterprise creation and development all over the world. Incubators, by providing on the-spot diagnosis and treatment of business problems, dramatically lower the early stage failure rate. In Europe, US and countries like China, Singapore, Thailand etc., the exceptionally fast growth of business incubators has baffled even the researchers. In this direction in India, following on the world pattern, several initiatives have been taken over the last decade to encourage the concept of business incubation. Besides profiling the existing ‘Business Incubators’ in India, the paper dwells upon a case study of SMEs in state of Punjab for exploring the relevance of business incubation for enhancing their productive capacity.

Keywords: business incubation, Technology Business Incubator (TBI), Rural Business Hub (RBH), entrepreneurship, Business Development Services (BDS), technology management

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640 Sub-Saharan Africa: Role of Global Fashion System in Turbo-Charging Growth of Apparel Industry

Authors: Rajkishore Nayak, Tarun Panwar, Majo George

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The study focuses on investigating the factors that influence the growth of fashion and textile manufacturing in the Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries. This paper endeavours to identify, analyse and evaluate the critical factors associated with the growth of fashion and textile manufacturing in SSA countries. This research has done a Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, and Threat (SWOT) analysis based on the available literature and the knowledge of authors in garment manufacturing and export. It was found that the SSA countries have shown little growth in fashion and textile manufacturing and export from the starting of the year 2000. Unlike the developing countries such as Vietnam and Bangladesh, the total export to the US, the EU and other parts of the world has declined. On the other hand, the total supply of fashion and textiles to the domestic market has been in rise. However, the local communities still need to rely on other countries to meet their demand. Availability of cheaper imported clothes from other countries such as Bangladesh, China and Vietnam have made it difficult for the local manufacturers to produce at a cheaper price.

Keywords: Sub-Saharan Africa, developing countries, apparel industry, fashion and textile, sustainable fashion

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639 The Hyundai Model: A Self-Sufficient State like Entity Masquerading as a Company

Authors: Nikita Koradia

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Hyundai Motor Company, which started off as a small fish in a big sea, paved its way out successfully and established itself as an independent group from the conglomerate. Hyundai, with its officious power across the globe and particularly in South Korea in the automobile industry, has one the most complex yet fascinating governance structure. Being the second largest contributor to the Gross Domestic Product of South Korea after Samsung and having a market share of 51.3% domestically in automobile industry, Hyundai has faced its part of criticism owing to its anti-labor union approach and owing to its internalization of supply chain management. The censure has been coming from across jurisdictions like China, India, Canada, the EU, etc. The paper focuses on the growth of Hyundai and its inward and outward investment structure. The paper questions the ability of Hyundai to become a mini-state in itself by focusing on its governance structure. The paper further elaborates on its compliance and disclosure regime in the field of Corporate social responsibility and explores how far the business structure adopted by Hyundai works in its favor to become one of the leading automobile contenders in the market.

Keywords: compliance regime, disclosure regime, Hyundai motor company, supply-chain management

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638 Enhance Engineering Pedagogy in Programming Course via Knowledge Graph-Based Recommender System

Authors: Yan Li

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Purpose: There is a lack of suitable recommendation systems to assist engineering teaching. The existing traditional engineering pedagogies lack learning interests for postgraduate students. The knowledge graph-based recommender system aims to enhance postgraduate students’ programming skills, with a focus on programming courses. Design/methodology/approach: The case study will be used as a major research method, and the two case studies will be taken in both two teaching styles of the universities (Zhejiang University and the University of Nottingham Ningbo China), followed by the interviews. Quantitative and qualitative research methods will be combined in this study. Research limitations/implications: The case studies were only focused on two teaching styles universities, which is not comprehensive enough. The subject was limited to postgraduate students. Originality/value: The study collected and analyzed the data from two teaching styles of universities’ perspectives. It explored the challenges of Engineering education and tried to seek potential enhancement.

Keywords: knowledge graph and recommender system, engineering pedagogy, programming skills, postgraduate students

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637 Markov Characteristics of the Power Line Communication Channels in China

Authors: Ming-Yue Zhai

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Due to the multipath and pulse noise nature, power line communications(PLC) channel can be modelled as a memory one with the finite states Markov model(FSMC). As the most important parameter modelling a Markov channel,the memory order in an FSMC is not solved in PLC systems yet. In the paper, the mutual information is used as a measure of the dependence between the different symbols, treated as the received SNA or amplitude of the current channel symbol or that of previous symbols. The joint distribution probabilities of the envelopes in PLC systems are computed based on the multi-path channel model, which is commonly used in PLC. we confirm that given the information of the symbol immediately preceding the current one, any other previous symbol is independent of the current one in PLC systems, which means the PLC channels is a Markov chain with the first-order. The field test is also performed to model the received OFDM signals with the help of AR model. The results show that the first-order AR model is enough to model the fading channel in PLC systems, which means the amount of uncertainty remaining in the current symbol should be negligible, given the information corresponding to the immediately preceding one.

Keywords: power line communication, channel model, markovian, information theory, first-order

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636 Suburban Large Residential Area Development Strategy with an Example of Liangzhu Culture Village in Hangzhou

Authors: Liang Fang

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The development of the large suburban residential area is a product of the leap development during the rapid urbanization process in China. On the process of the large-scale development of large settlements in a short time, various problems arose in the suburban residential area, such as spatial layout being disorder, basic facilities construction lagging behind and being unreasonable, residential neighborhood space and street culture missing. Aimed at the contradictions mentioned above, exploring a way is imminent to construct appropriate residential area. We select a typical Liangzhu Culture Village in Hangzhou and put forward functional composite residential area of fine development strategy, along which business promotes and assists community autonomy and then a good community culture is constructed. All in all, the development and construction mode, contributing to an all-people and full-time participation, is beneficial to create a harmonious community of sustainable development, which gives good implication to a single enterprise development city real estate projects.

Keywords: community autonomy, development and construction mode, functional composite, suburban large residential area

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635 Teacher-Student Relationship and Achievement in Chinese: Potential Mediating Effects of Motivation

Authors: Yuan Liu, Hongyun Liu

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Teacher-student relationship plays an important role on facilitating students’ learning behavior, school engagement, and academic outcomes. It is believed that good relationship will enhance the human agency—the intrinsic motivation—mainly through the strengthening of autonomic support, feeling of relatedness, and the individual’s competence to increase the academic outcomes. This is in line with self-determination theory (SDT), which generally views that the intrinsic motivation imbedded with human basic needs is one of the most important factors that would lead to better school engagement, academic outcomes, and well-being. Based on SDT, the present study explored the relation of among teacher-student relationship (teacher’s encouragement, respect), students’ motivation (extrinsic and intrinsic), and achievement outcomes. The study was based on a large scale academic assessment and questionnaire survey conducted by the Center for Assessment and Improvement of Basic Education Quality in Mainland China (2013) on Grade 8 students. The results indicated that intrinsic motivation mediated the relation between teacher-student relationship and academic achievement outcomes.

Keywords: teacher-student relationship, intrinsic motivation, academic achievement, mediation

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634 Study of Biofouling Wastewater Treatment Technology

Authors: Sangho Park, Mansoo Kim, Kyujung Chae, Junhyuk Yang

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The International Maritime Organization (IMO) recognized the problem of invasive species invasion and adopted the "International Convention for the Control and Management of Ships' Ballast Water and Sediments" in 2004, which came into force on September 8, 2017. In 2011, the IMO approved the "Guidelines for the Control and Management of Ships' Biofouling to Minimize the Transfer of Invasive Aquatic Species" to minimize the movement of invasive species by hull-attached organisms and required ships to manage the organisms attached to their hulls. Invasive species enter new environments through ships' ballast water and hull attachment. However, several obstacles to implementing these guidelines have been identified, including a lack of underwater cleaning equipment, regulations on underwater cleaning activities in ports, and difficulty accessing crevices in underwater areas. The shipping industry, which is the party responsible for understanding these guidelines, wants to implement them for fuel cost savings resulting from the removal of organisms attached to the hull, but they anticipate significant difficulties in implementing the guidelines due to the obstacles mentioned above. Robots or people remove the organisms attached to the hull underwater, and the resulting wastewater includes various species of organisms and particles of paint and other pollutants. Currently, there is no technology available to sterilize the organisms in the wastewater or stabilize the heavy metals in the paint particles. In this study, we aim to analyze the characteristics of the wastewater generated from the removal of hull-attached organisms and select the optimal treatment technology. The organisms in the wastewater generated from the removal of the attached organisms meet the biological treatment standard (D-2) using the sterilization technology applied in the ships' ballast water treatment system. The heavy metals and other pollutants in the paint particles generated during removal are treated using stabilization technologies such as thermal decomposition. The wastewater generated is treated using a two-step process: 1) development of sterilization technology through pretreatment filtration equipment and electrolytic sterilization treatment and 2) development of technology for removing particle pollutants such as heavy metals and dissolved inorganic substances. Through this study, we will develop a biological removal technology and an environmentally friendly processing system for the waste generated after removal that meets the requirements of the government and the shipping industry and lays the groundwork for future treatment standards.

Keywords: biofouling, ballast water treatment system, filtration, sterilization, wastewater

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633 Digital Twin Technology: A Solution for Remote Operation and Productivity Improvement During Covid-19 Era and Future

Authors: Muhamad Sahir Bin Ahmad Shatiry, Wan Normeza Wan Zakaria, Mohamad Zaki Hassan

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The pandemic Covid19 has significantly impacted the world; the spreading of the Covid19 virus initially from China has dramatically impacted the world's economy. Therefore, the world reacts with establishing the new way or norm in daily life. The rapid rise of the latest technology has been seen by introducing many technologies to ease human life to have a minor contract between humans and avoid spreading the virus Covid19. Digital twin technologies are one of the technologies created before the pandemic Covid19 but slow adoption in the industry. Throughout the Covid19, most of the companies in the world started to explore to use it. The digital twin technology provides the virtual platform to replicate the existing condition or setup for anything such as office, manufacturing line, factories' machine, building, and many more. This study investigates the effect on the economic perspective after the companies use the Digital Twin technology in the industry. To minimize the contact between humans and to have the ability to operate the system digitally remotely. In this study, the explanation of the digital twin technology impacts the world's microeconomic and macroeconomic.

Keywords: productivity, artificially intelligence, IoT, digital twin

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632 Strategic Public Procurement: A Lever for Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Authors: B. Orser, A. Riding, Y. Li

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To inform government about how gender gaps in SME ( small and medium-sized enterprise) contracting might be redressed, the research question was: What are the key obstacles to, and response strategies for, increasing the engagement of women business owners among SME suppliers to the government of Canada? Thirty-five interviews with senior policymakers, supplier diversity organization executives, and expert witnesses to the Canadian House of Commons, Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates. Qualitative data were conducted and analysed using N’Vivo 11 software. High order response categories included: (a) SME risk mitigation strategies, (b) SME procurement program design, and (c) performance measures. Primary obstacles cited were government red tape and long and complicated requests for proposals (RFPs). The majority of 'common' complaints occur when SMEs have questions about the federal procurement process. Witness responses included use of outcome-based rather than prescriptive procurement practices, more agile procurement, simplified RFPs, making payment within 30 days a procurement priority. Risk mitigation strategies included provision of procurement officers to assess risks and opportunities for businesses and development of more agile procurement procedures and processes. Recommendations to enhance program design included: improved definitional consistency of qualifiers and selection criteria, better co-ordination across agencies; clarification about how SME suppliers benefit from federal contracting; goal setting; specification of categories that are most suitable for women-owned businesses; and, increasing primary contractor awareness about the importance of subcontract relationships. Recommendations also included third-party certification of eligible firms and the need to enhance SMEs’ financial literacy to reduce financial errors. Finally, there remains the need for clear and consistent pre-program statistics to establish baselines (by sector, issuing department) performance measures, targets based on percentage of contracts granted, value of contract, percentage of target employee (women, indigenous), and community benefits including hiring local employees. The study advances strategies to enhance federal procurement programs to facilitate socio-economic policy objectives.

Keywords: procurement, small business, policy, women

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631 Different Friendships' Influences on Chinese High School Students' Mental Well Beings

Authors: Richard Chen

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The study is mainly focused on the influence of different kinds of friendships on the well being of Chinese high school students. The main objective is to find out whether friendship style focusing on depth rather than breadth and whether making friends based on similarities in personality and character rather than interests and hobbies improve students’ mental state. Overall, 262 high school participants completed our study by filling out questionnaires online across China. Data showed, unexpectedly, optimal combinations of friendship styles indicate that students who seek depth of connection in friendship benefit more by focusing more on hobbies than on personalities, and those aiming to expand their social connections would be happier and less stressed when they made friends with those who shared their personalities rather than hobbies. The relationship between stress and the frequency of self-talk was also investigated, and a positive correlation between the pressure a student felt, and the frequency of self-talk behavior was confirmed. The results shed light on relationship management and wellbeing among Chinese high school students and may be applied by counselors and teachers to improve the overall level of satisfaction for Chinese high school students.

Keywords: hobbies, personalities, happiness, pressure, self-talk

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630 The Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility Information Disclosure on the Accuracy of Analysts' Earnings Forecasts

Authors: Xin-Hua Zhao

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In recent years, the growth rate of social responsibility reports disclosed by Chinese corporations has grown rapidly. The economic effects of the growing corporate social responsibility reports have become a hot topic. The article takes the chemical listed engineering corporations that disclose social responsibility reports in China as a sample, and based on the information asymmetry theory, examines the economic effect generated by corporate social responsibility disclosure with the method of ordinary least squares. The research is conducted from the perspective of analysts’ earnings forecasts and studies the impact of corporate social responsibility information disclosure on improving the accuracy of analysts' earnings forecasts. The results show that there is a statistically significant negative correlation between corporate social responsibility disclosure index and analysts’ earnings forecast error. The conclusions confirm that enterprises can reduce the asymmetry of social and environmental information by disclosing social responsibility reports, and thus improve the accuracy of analysts’ earnings forecasts. It can promote the effective allocation of resources in the market.

Keywords: analysts' earnings forecasts, corporate social responsibility disclosure, economic effect, information asymmetry

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629 From Ritual City to Modern City: The City Space Transformation of Xi’an in the Early 20th Century

Authors: Zhang Bian, Zhao Jijun

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The urban layout of Xi’an city (the capital Chang’an in the Tang dynasty) was shaped by feudal etiquette, but this dominant factor was replaced by modern city planning during the period of the Republic of China. This makes Xi’an a representative case to explore the transformation process of Chinese cities in the early 20th century. By analyzing the contrast and connection between the historical texts of city planning and the realistic construction activities recorded by the maps and images, this paper reviews the transformation process of the urban space of Xi’an in the early 20th century and divides it into four phases according to important events that significantly impacted planning and construction activities. Based on this, the entire transformation of Xi’an’s city planning and practices can be characterized by three aspects: 1) the dominant force of the city plan and construction changed with the establishment of modern city administrations; 2) the layout of the city was continuously broadened to meet the demand of modern economy and city life; and, 3) the ritual space was transformed into practical space for commercial and recreational activities.

Keywords: city space, the early 20th century, transformation, Xi’an city

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628 The Use of Technology in Mathematics Learning (1995-2024): A Bibliometric Analysis

Authors: Rahma Adinda Sartika

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The use of technology in learning mathematics has received a positive response from both students and teachers, so many researchers have conducted research on this theme. Based on the findings carried out in this study, 807 documents relevant to this theme have been published in Scopus from 1995-2024. After going through the stages of identification, screening, eligibility, and including, the documents that meet the criteria are 227 documents. These documents are then analyzed using the bibliometric method so that it can be seen that the most published documents in the Scopus database occurred in 2020, with 38 documents, and the lowest was from 1996 to 2000 and 2004 to 2007, namely, no documents published. The highest number of citations is in documents published in 2018, with a total of 349 citations, so the h-index is higher than the others. The country that published the most documents relevant to this theme is Indonesia with a total of 91 documents. The second largest is the United States, with a total of 28 published documents, and the third largest is China, with a total of 15 documents. Indonesia and the United States have the most working relationships between countries compared to other countries. The focus of research related to this theme is 1) mathematics learning, 2) learning systems, 3) engineering education, 4) technology and 5) mathematical concepts.

Keywords: technology, bibliometric, mathematics learning, mathematical concepts

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627 The Interaction of Lay Judges and Professional Judges in French, German and British Labour Courts

Authors: Susan Corby, Pete Burgess, Armin Hoeland, Helene Michel, Laurent Willemez

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In German 1st instance labour courts, lay judges always sit with a professional judge and in British and French 1st instance labour courts, lay judges sometimes sit with a professional judge. The lay judges’ main contribution is their workplace knowledge, but they act in a juridical setting where legal norms prevail. Accordingly, the research question is: does the professional judge dominate the lay judges? The research, funded by the Hans-Böckler-Stiftung, is based on over 200 qualitative interviews conducted in France, Germany and Great Britain in 2016-17 with lay and professional judges. Each interview lasted an hour on average, was audio-recorded, transcribed and then analysed using MaxQDA. Status theories, which argue that external sources of (perceived) status are imported into the court, and complementary notions of informational advantage suggest professional judges might exercise domination and control. Furthermore, previous empirical research on British and German labour courts, now some 30 years old, found that professional judges dominated. More recent research on lay judges and professional judges in criminal courts also found professional judge domination. Our findings, however, are more nuanced and distinguish between the hearing and deliberations, and also between the attitudes of judges in the three countries. First, in Germany and Great Britain the professional judge has specialist knowledge and expertise in labour law. In contrast, French professional judges do not study employment law and may only seldom adjudicate on employment law cases. Second, although the professional judge chairs and controls the hearing when he/she sits with lay judges in all three countries, exceptionally in Great Britain lay judges have some latent power as they have to take notes systematically due to the lack of recording technology. Such notes can be material if a party complains of bias, or if there is an appeal. Third, as to labour court deliberations: in France, the professional judge alone determines the outcome of the case, but only if the lay judges have been unable to agree at a previous hearing, which only occurs in 20% of cases. In Great Britain and Germany, although the two lay judges and the professional judge have equal votes, the contribution of British lay judges’ workplace knowledge is less important than that of their German counterparts. British lay judges essentially only sit on discrimination cases where the law, the purview of the professional judge, is complex. They do not sit routinely on unfair dismissal cases where workplace practices are often a key factor in the decision. Also, British professional judges are less reliant on their lay judges than German professional judges. Whereas the latter are career judges, the former only become professional judges after having had several years’ experience in the law and many know, albeit indirectly through their clients, about a wide range of workplace practices. In conclusion, whether or if the professional judge dominates lay judges in labour courts varies by country, although this is mediated by the attitudes of the interactionists.

Keywords: cross-national comparisons, labour courts, professional judges, lay judges

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626 Turkey at the End of the Second Decade of the 21st Century: A Secular or Religious Country?

Authors: Francesco Pisano

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Islam has been an important topic in Turkey’s institutional identity. Since the dawn of the Turkish Republic, at the end of the First World War, the new Turkish leadership was urged to deal with the religious heritage of the Sultanate. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Turkey’s first President, led the country in a process of internal change, substantially modifying not merely the democratic stance of it, but also the way politics was addressing the Muslim faith. Islam was banned from the public sector of the society and was drastically marginalized to the mere private sphere of citizens’ lives. Headscarves were banned from institutional buildings together with any other religious practice, while the country was proceeding down a path of secularism and Westernization. This issue is demonstrated by the fact that even a new elected Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, was initially barred from taking the institutional position, because of allegations that he had read a religious text while campaigning. Over the years, thanks to this initial internal shift, Turkey has often been seen by Western partners as one of the few countries that had managed to find a perfect balance between a democratic stance and an Islamic inherent nature. In the early 2000s, this led many academics to believe that Ankara could eventually have become the next European capital. Since then, the internal and external landscape of Turkey has drastically changed. Today, religion has returned to be an important point of reference for Turkish politics, considering also the failure of the European negotiations and the always more unstable external environment of the country. This paper wants to address this issue, looking at the important role religion has covered in the Turkish society and the way it has been politicized since the early years of the Republic. It will evolve from a more theoretical debate on secularism and the path of political westernization of Turkey under Ataturk’s rule to a more practical analysis of today’s situation, passing through the failure of Ankara’s accession into the EU and the current tense political relation with its traditional NATO allies. The final objective of this research, therefore, is not to offer a meticulous opinion on Turkey’s current international stance. This issue will be left entirely to the personal consideration of the reader. Rather, it will supplement the existing literature with a comprehensive and more structured analysis on the role Islam has played on Turkish politics since the early 1920s up until the political domestic revolution of the early 2000s, after the first electoral win of the Justice and Development Party (AKP).

Keywords: democracy, Islam, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey

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625 Effects of Education Equity Policy on Housing Prices: Evidence from Simultaneous Admission to Public and Private Schools Policy in Shanghai

Authors: Tianyu Chen

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China's school district education policy has encouraged parents to purchase properties in school districts with high-quality education resources. Shanghai has implemented "Simultaneous Admission to Public and Private Schools" (SAPPS) since 2018, which has covered all nine-year compulsory education by 2020. This study examines the impact of SAPPS on the housing market, specifically the premium effect of houses located in dual-school districts. Based on the Hedonic Pricing Model and the Signaling Theory, data is collected from 585 second-hand house transactions in Pudong New Area, Shanghai, and it is analyzed with the Difference-in-Differences (DID) model. The results indicate that the implementation of SAPPS has exacerbated the premium of dual school district housing and weakened the effect of the policy to a certain degree. To ensure equal access to education for all students, the government should work both on the supply and demand sides of the education resource equation.

Keywords: simultaneous admission to public and private schools, housing prices, education policy, education equity

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624 Behaviour and Design of the Candle-Loc Inter-Module Connection in High-Rise Modular Buildings under Seismic Action

Authors: Alessandro Marzucchini, Yie Sue Chua, Andrew Lian, Richard Shonn Mills

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A unique, fast and easy installed inter-module connection named Candle-Loc was developed and applied in several high-rise steel and reinforced concrete modular buildings in Singapore and Hong Kong, China. However, its effect on the global behaviour of modular buildings in high seismic zones was not studied. Therefore, the design concept and the structural performance of each component in this connection was investigated through analytical approach. Response spectrum, linear time-history, and nonlinear time-history analyses were conducted to investigate the effects of the different joint models of the Candle-Loc in the global analysis of high-rise buildings under high seismic loads. It is found that it is important to assess the level of plasticity developed in the inter-module connection under high seismic loads. The ductility of the lateral force resisting system influences the amount of load taken by the inter-module connections.

Keywords: high-rise, inter-module connection, nonlinear, seismic, time-history analysis

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623 Multi-Model Super Ensemble Based Advanced Approaches for Monsoon Rainfall Prediction

Authors: Swati Bhomia, C. M. Kishtawal, Neeru Jaiswal

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Traditionally, monsoon forecasts have encountered many difficulties that stem from numerous issues such as lack of adequate upper air observations, mesoscale nature of convection, proper resolution, radiative interactions, planetary boundary layer physics, mesoscale air-sea fluxes, representation of orography, etc. Uncertainties in any of these areas lead to large systematic errors. Global circulation models (GCMs), which are developed independently at different institutes, each of which carries somewhat different representation of the above processes, can be combined to reduce the collective local biases in space, time, and for different variables from different models. This is the basic concept behind the multi-model superensemble and comprises of a training and a forecast phase. The training phase learns from the recent past performances of models and is used to determine statistical weights from a least square minimization via a simple multiple regression. These weights are then used in the forecast phase. The superensemble forecasts carry the highest skill compared to simple ensemble mean, bias corrected ensemble mean and the best model out of the participating member models. This approach is a powerful post-processing method for the estimation of weather forecast parameters reducing the direct model output errors. Although it can be applied successfully to the continuous parameters like temperature, humidity, wind speed, mean sea level pressure etc., in this paper, this approach is applied to rainfall, a parameter quite difficult to handle with standard post-processing methods, due to its high temporal and spatial variability. The present study aims at the development of advanced superensemble schemes comprising of 1-5 day daily precipitation forecasts from five state-of-the-art global circulation models (GCMs), i.e., European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (Europe), National Center for Environmental Prediction (USA), China Meteorological Administration (China), Canadian Meteorological Centre (Canada) and U.K. Meteorological Office (U.K.) obtained from THORPEX Interactive Grand Global Ensemble (TIGGE), which is one of the most complete data set available. The novel approaches include the dynamical model selection approach in which the selection of the superior models from the participating member models at each grid and for each forecast step in the training period is carried out. Multi-model superensemble based on the training using similar conditions is also discussed in the present study, which is based on the assumption that training with the similar type of conditions may provide the better forecasts in spite of the sequential training which is being used in the conventional multi-model ensemble (MME) approaches. Further, a variety of methods that incorporate a 'neighborhood' around each grid point which is available in literature to allow for spatial error or uncertainty, have also been experimented with the above mentioned approaches. The comparison of these schemes with respect to the observations verifies that the newly developed approaches provide more unified and skillful prediction of the summer monsoon (viz. June to September) rainfall compared to the conventional multi-model approach and the member models.

Keywords: multi-model superensemble, dynamical model selection, similarity criteria, neighborhood technique, rainfall prediction

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622 Burrowing Invertebrates Induce Fragmentation of Mariculture Styrofoam Floats and Formation of Microplastics

Authors: Yifan Zheng, Jinmin Zhu, Jiji Li, Gulling Li, Huahong Shi

Abstract:

Secondary microplastics originate from the fragmentation of large plastics, and weathering is supposed to be the main cause of fragmentation. In this study, we investigated burrows and burrowing invertebrates on Styrofoam floats from the mariculture areas of China’s coastal waters. Various burrows were found on the submerged surface of Styrofoam floats and could be divided into ‘I’, ‘S’, ‘J’, and ‘Y’ types based on the burrow entrance number and passage curvature. Different invertebrate species, including 5 isopods, 8 clamworms, and 12 crabs, were found inside the burrows. Micro-foams were found in the bodies of these burrowers, with an average abundance of 4.2 ± 0.3 (isopod), 6.9 ± 2.0 (clamworm), and 3.0 ± 0.5 (crab) micro-foams per individual. In the laboratory, we observed the boring process of crabs in abandoned floats. Field and laboratory evidence suggested that these invertebrates bored various burrows. The total volume of crab burrows on a 3-year-used float was estimated to be 2.6 × 10³ cm³, producing 4.1 × 10⁸ microplastics. This study highlights the critical role of bioerosion in destroying man-made substrates and prompting microplastic pollution.

Keywords: burrowing invertebrate, mariculture area, styrofoam float, fragmentation, microplastics

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621 Applicable Law to Intellectual and Industrial Property Agreements According to Turkish Private International Law and Rome I Regulation

Authors: Sema Cortoglu Koca

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Intellectual and industrial property rules, have a substantial effect on the sustainable development. Intellectual and industrial property rights, as temporary privileges over the products of intellectual activity, determine the supervision of information and technology. The level and scope of intellectual property protection thus influence the flow of technology between developed and developing countries. In addition, intellectual and industrial property rights are based on the notion of balance. Since they are time-limited rights, they reconcile private and public benefits. That is, intellectual and industrial property rights respond to both private interests and public interests by rewarding innovators and by promoting the dissemination of ideas, respectively. Intellectual and industrial property rights can, therefore, be a tool for sustainable development. If countries can balance their private and public interests according to their particular context and circumstances, they can ensure the intellectual and industrial property which promotes innovation and technology transfer relevant for them. People, enterprises and countries who need technology, can transfer developed technology which is acquired by people, enterprises and countries so as to decrease their technological necessity and improve their technology. Because of the significance of intellectual and industrial property rights on the technology transfer law as mentioned above, this paper is confined to intellectual and industrial property agreements especially technology transfer contracts. These are license contract, know-how contract, franchise agreement, joint venture agreement, management agreement, research and development agreement. In Turkey, technology transfer law is still a developing subject. For developing countries, technology transfer regulations are very important for their private international law because these countries do not know which technology transfer law is applicable when conflicts arise. In most technology transfer contracts having international elements, the parties choose a law to govern their contracts. Where the parties do not choose a law, either expressly or impliedly, and matters which is not excluded in party autonomy, the court has to determine the applicable law to contracts in a matter of capacity, material, the formal and essential validity of contracts. For determining the proper law of technology transfer contracts, it is tried to build a rule for applying all technology transfer contracts. This paper is confined to the applicable law to intellectual and industrial property agreements according to ‘5718 Turkish Act on Private International Law and Civil Procedure’ and ‘Regulation (EC) No 593/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 June 2008 on the law applicable to contractual obligations (Rome I)’. Like these complex contracts, to find a rule can be really difficult. We can arrange technology transfer contracts in groups, and we can determine the rule and connecting factors to these groups. For the contracts which are not included in these groups, we can determine a special rule considering the characteristics of the contract.

Keywords: intellectual and industrial property agreements, Rome I regulation, technology transfer, Turkish act on private international law and civil procedure

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620 Grammatical and Lexical Explorations on ‘Outer Circle’ Englishes and ‘Expanding Circle’ Englishes: A Corpus-Based Comparative Analysis

Authors: Orlyn Joyce D. Esquivel

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This study analyzed 50 selected research papers from professional language and linguistic academic journals to portray the differences between Kachru’s (1994) outer circle and expanding circle Englishes. The selected outer circle Englishes include those of Bangladesh, Malaysia, the Philippines, India, and Singapore; and the selected expanding circle Englishes are those of China, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, and Thailand. The researcher built ten corpora (five research papers for each corpus) to represent each variety of Englishes. The corpora were examined under grammatical and lexical features using Modified English TreeTagger in Sketch Engine. Results revealed the distinct grammatical and lexical features through the table and textual analyses, illustrated from the most to least dominant linguistic elements. In addition, comparative analyses were done to distinguish the features of each of the selected Englishes. The Language Change Theory was used as a basis in the discussion. Hence, the findings suggest that the ‘outer circle’ Englishes and ‘expanding circle’ Englishes will continue to drift from International English.

Keywords: applied linguistics, English as a global language, expanding circle Englishes, global Englishes, outer circle Englishes

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619 Using A Corpus Approach To Investigate Positive University Images: A Comparison Between Chinese And ESC Universities

Authors: Han Hongmei

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University image is receiving attention because of its key role in influencing student choice, faculty loyalty, and social recognition. Therefore, all universities strive to promote their positive images. However, for most people, the positive image of a university is often from fragmented perceptual understanding. Since universities’ official websites are important channels for image promotion, a corpus approach to university profiles in their official websites can reveal holistic positive images of universities. This study aims to compare positive images of high-level universities in China and English-speaking countries based on a profile corpus of theseuniversities. It is found that the positive images revealed in these university profiles are similar, with some minor differences. The similarities are reflected in the campus environment, historical achievements, comprehensive characteristics, scientific research institutions, and diversified faculty; while the differences are reflected in their unique characteristics. Furthermore, the findings also reveal a gap between Chinese universities and high-level universities in the English-speaking countries.

Keywords: university image, positive image, corpus of university profiles, comparative analysis, high-frequency words

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618 Research on Planning Strategy of Characteristic Town from the Perspective of Ecological Concept: A Case Study on Hangzhou Dream Town in Zhejiang

Authors: Xiaohan Ye

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Under the new normal situation, some urban spaces with the industrial base and regional features in Zhejiang, China have been selected to build a characteristic town, a kind of environmentally-friendly development platform with city-industry integrated, in an attempt to achieve the most optimized layout of productivity with the least space resource. After analysis on the connotation, mechanism and mode of characteristic town in Zhejiang, it is suggested in this paper that characteristic town should take improving the regional ecological environment as an important object in planning strategy from the perspective of ecological concept. Improved environmental quality, optimized resource allocation, and compact industrial distribution should be realized so as to drive the regional green and sustainable development. Finally, this paper analyzes location selection, industrial distribution, spatial organization and environment construction based on the exploration of the dream town of Zhejiang province, the first batch of provincial-level characteristic towns to demonstrate how to apply the ecological concept to the design of characteristic town.

Keywords: characteristic town, ecological concept, Hangzhou dream town, planning strategy

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617 The Willingness and Action of Engineering Students in Career Choice: A Mixed-Method Research from the Perspective of the Rational Choice Theory

Authors: Juan Wang, Xiuxiu Wang, Di Wang

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Engineers are an important force supporting the economic and social development of a country. As China has the largest scale of engineering education in the world, the career choice of engineering students will affect the contribution of human capital to national scientific and technological progress and economic development. A questionnaire survey shows the following: on the whole, the students surveyed were willing to engage in an engineering career, but their willingness needed to be enhanced, and their willingness was affected by such factors as their understanding of the value of the engineering career; the resources from individual benefits, resources from career and individual strengths. Also, based on in-depth interviews with some engineering students, it is found that engineering students’ career choice behaviors totally based on survival rationality, economic rationality, social rationality and other combinations. Based on this, policy support should be given to the enrollment, training, employment and other aspects of engineering education; improve the professional status and treatment of engineers through multiple measures; ensure a smooth career path to enhance the willingness of engineering students to choose careers.

Keywords: engineering students, career choice, engineer, human capital

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616 A Comparative Study of Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (GARCH) and Extreme Value Theory (EVT) Model in Modeling Value-at-Risk (VaR)

Authors: Longqing Li

Abstract:

The paper addresses the inefficiency of the classical model in measuring the Value-at-Risk (VaR) using a normal distribution or a Student’s t distribution. Specifically, the paper focuses on the one day ahead Value-at-Risk (VaR) of major stock market’s daily returns in US, UK, China and Hong Kong in the most recent ten years under 95% confidence level. To improve the predictable power and search for the best performing model, the paper proposes using two leading alternatives, Extreme Value Theory (EVT) and a family of GARCH models, and compares the relative performance. The main contribution could be summarized in two aspects. First, the paper extends the GARCH family model by incorporating EGARCH and TGARCH to shed light on the difference between each in estimating one day ahead Value-at-Risk (VaR). Second, to account for the non-normality in the distribution of financial markets, the paper applies Generalized Error Distribution (GED), instead of the normal distribution, to govern the innovation term. A dynamic back-testing procedure is employed to assess the performance of each model, a family of GARCH and the conditional EVT. The conclusion is that Exponential GARCH yields the best estimate in out-of-sample one day ahead Value-at-Risk (VaR) forecasting. Moreover, the discrepancy of performance between the GARCH and the conditional EVT is indistinguishable.

Keywords: Value-at-Risk, Extreme Value Theory, conditional EVT, backtesting

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615 The 2017 Shanghai Model Breaking Stalemate in Chinese Education Reform: A Discussion of China’s Scheduled Experiment in Access to Higher Education Between 2017 and 2020

Authors: Ping Chou, Xiaoyan Zhou

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Domestically and internationally, the Chinese education has long been criticized for being test-oriented, and in spite of efforts made by the Chinese government, it remains hard to find a solution. This paper intends to look at the situation in a comparatively objective manner and discuss the significance of the Shanghai Model as a newly-scheduled experiment for education reform. As a breakthrough, in addition to comprehensive inner-quality evaluation, a small but important step is to be taken in shifting focus of attention back to students by giving them more freedom in selecting certain courses for aptitude tests for college admission. As the first author of the paper has studied and taught both in Chinese and American colleges and universities, comparisons are made when the situation becomes relevant. The official solution for test-oriented education is to make students well-rounded but the writers of this paper believe that it is even more important to make the system well-rounded so it can accept a spectrum of diverse individuals with different potential.

Keywords: college admission, education reform, Shanghai model, test-oriented education

Procedia PDF Downloads 338