Search

The purpose of this study was to investigate differences between science lessons taught by Chinese astronauts in a space shuttle and those taught by American astronauts in a space shuttle, both of whom conducted experiments and demonstrations of science activities in a microgravity space environment. The study examined the instructional structure and science topics coverage, as well as the methods employed for helping students conceptualize scientific laws via experimental demonstrations and activities. The analysis of the lessons sampled in this study revealed three predominant themes for how both the Chinese and the American astronauts conceptualized the science topics (i.e., Health and Life in Space, Work and Career in Space, and Exploration in Space and Earth Science). The analysis also examined how the teacher-student interactions were structured. Research findings suggest that under the appropriate conditions informal science education can play a distinct role in providing students with experiences of: (a) experiments unavailable in classroom settings, and (b) explanations of these experiments by field-based scientists conducting original research.

Copyright of Carta Internacional is the property of Associacao Brasileira de Relacoes Internacionais and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The marine bacterium Photobacterium damselae subsp. damselae is a pathogen that causes disease in diverse marine animals, and is also a serious opportunistic human pathogen that can cause fatal infections. Strains of this pathogen isolated from diseased European sea bass in aquaculture facilities in the Turkish coast of the Black Sea were found to exhibit reduced sensitivity to multiple antimicrobials. Selected representative strains were subjected to complete genome sequencing and plasmid characterization. It was found that multidrug resistant (MDR) isolates harboured large conjugative plasmids sharing part of their sequence backbone with pAQU-group plasmids, hitherto reported exclusively in China and Japan. Four new pAQU-group versions of plasmids were identified in the present study, containing distinct combinations of the resistance determinants tetB, floR, sul2, qnrVC, dfrA and strAB. Conjugative transfer of pPHDD2-OG2, a representative plasmid of 170,998 bp, occurred at high frequencies (2.2 × 10-2 transconjugants per donor cell), to E. coli and to pathogenic P. damselae subsp. damselae and subsp. piscicida strains. Upon transfer, pPHDD2-OG2 conferred reduced susceptibility to a number of antimicrobials to the recipient strains. Comparative genomics analysis of host strains suggested that these MDR plasmids of the pAQU-group were acquired by different genetic lineages of Pdd. This study provides evidence that P. damselae subsp. damselae isolated from diseased fish constitute a reservoir for conjugative MDR pAQU-group plasmids in the Mediterranean basin, and have the potential to spread to diverse bacterial species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past four decades, infrastructural and economic development in Chinese cities has outpaced its cultural development. As the proportion of people living in cities in China quintupled from 1950 to 2014, from 11% to 54% according to a 2009 report by McKinsey, while at the same time various challenges have paved the way to limit cultural prosperity and quality of life in cities. Cities currently face number of problems: Vehicle-oriented streets are not friendly to pedestrians; public spaces are designed without users in mind [1] ; communities are isolated from one another [2] ; and finally creative industries are lagging behind other industries according to a 2014 Forbes report. It seems that China's urban development states a condition of “survivability” rather than “livability”. What is understood from the notion of livability within a city today is to be able to sustain quality of life through holistic planning strategies rather than purely economic ones. Such cities create robust natural environments as well as built environments, social equity as well as social stability. And as a result both a more reliable creative prosperity and economic prosperity have been maintained. This paper will seek to establish a 3-pillar approach to social inclusion and will examine each of these through issues related with migrants in China facing today. It seems that there is a great potential in using mobile and web-based technologies to generate rapid and sustainable solutions for migrants. There is also an enormous potential to develop feedback mechanisms for these solutions that can become part of the ‘culture’ of living in big cities in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study evaluates the capacity of three gridded precipitation products (MSWEP V2.2, TRMM-3B42 V7, and GPM-IMERG V6) to detect precipitation in the Min Jiang watershed, a data-scarce and mountainous region in western China. A set of statistical and contingency indices is calculated for the precipitation products and compared with rain gauge observations at 23 ground stations from July 2000 to May 2016. Consistency between gridded and ground precipitation datasets is examined at different temporal (i.e., daily, monthly, seasonally, and annually) and spatial (i.e., site level, sub-regional level, and watershed level) resolutions. We identify possible reasons for discrepancies among precipitation datasets. Our results indicate that: (1) the MSWEP product is best suited for the study of long-term mesoscale rainfall, rather than short-term light or extreme rainfall; (2) the IMERG product represents stable performance for the simulation of rainfall spatial variability and detection capability; and (3) Composition of the datasets, climatic systems, and regional topography are key factors influencing the consistency between gridded and ground precipitation datasets. Therefore, we suggest using MSWEP V2.2 and GPM-IMERG V6 as potential precipitation data sources for hydrometeorological studies over the Min Jiang watershed. The findings of this study inform future hydrometeorological and climate applications in data-scarce regions with complex terrain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humanitarian rescue has become an important part of government emergency management in China. In order to select the optimal humanitarian rescue scheme accurately and in a timely manner in an emergency, reduce the harm of disasters to human life and health, and improve the government's emergency management ability, a multi-attribute emergency group decision-making method is proposed. First, interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy sets are used to express the preferences of decision-makers, and interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy entropy is used to calculate attribute weights. Then, based on the technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution (TOPSIS) method, the weight of the decision-maker is calculated. Then, the relevant interval intuitionistic fuzzy operators are used to summarize the preferences of decision-makers in group decision-making. Finally, we will use the closeness ranking method to choose the optimal scheme, and the feasibility and practicability of the proposed method are demonstrated by an example. The example shows that the model is more scientific, objective, and comprehensive in solving the problem of multi-attribute group decision-making than the traditional scheme selection, which only depends on the subjective discussion of decision-makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Population aging has become an important factor restricting China′s social and economic development. The smart health and elderly care industry has developed rapidly in the past five years. However, the service resources among various elderly service providers are relatively isolated and scattered. In other words, the core management problem in the components of the smart elderly care service ecosystem is how to deal with the relationships of interest among multiple resource agents. Thus, the main contribution of this study is to employ symbiosis theory and the logistic growth model to construct a model of the evolution of the symbiosis of multiple resource agents in the smart elderly care service ecosystem. Then, we carry out a stability analysis, and analyze the evolutionary model of two resource agents′ symbiosis under different values of interdependence coefficients. Finally, we use computer simulations to dynamically simulate the model and comparatively analyze the population density of the hospital–nursing home symbiotic relationship using real cases in China. According to the study, we find that the enterprise goal in the smart elderly care service ecosystem should be to maximize the overall value of the multiple resource agents, and the result of the symbiotic evolution between different resource agents depends on the symbiotic interdependence coefficient, while the resource agent uses different strategies under different symbiosis models. Therefore, regulation is needed to ensure the relative fairness of the distribution of value co-creation in the smart elderly care service ecosystem when the resource agent takes actions that benefit itself. Of course, when the ecosystem is in a reciprocal symbiosis model, each resource agent benefits from the activities of the other resource agents, which is ideal in reality; in other words, the best symbiosis model between the two resource agents should be the similar reciprocal symbiosis model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Determining the etiology of oculocutaneous albinism is important for proper clinical management and to determine prognosis. The purpose of this study was to genotype and phenotype eight adopted Chinese children who presented with oculocutaneous albinism and easy bruisability.Results: The patients were evaluated at a single center; their ages ranged from 3 to 8 years. Whole exome or direct sequencing showed that two of the children had Hermansky-Pudlak syndrome (HPS) type-1 (HPS-1), one had HPS-3, one had HPS-4, and four had non-syndromic oculocutaneous albinism associated with TYR variants (OCA1). Two frameshift variants in HPS1 (c.9delC and c.1477delA), one nonsense in HPS4 (c.416G > A), and one missense variant in TYR (c.1235C > T) were unreported. The child with HPS-4 is the first case with this subtype reported in the Chinese population. Hypopigmentation in patients with HPS was mild compared to that in OCA1 cases, who had severe pigment defects. Bruises, which may be more visible in patients with hypopigmentation, were found in all cases with either HPS or OCA1. Whole mount transmission electron microscopy demonstrated absent platelet dense granules in the HPS cases; up to 1.9 mean dense granules per platelet were found in those with OCA1. Platelet aggregation studies in OCA1 cases were inconclusive.Conclusions: Clinical manifestations of oculocutaneous albinism and easy bruisability may be observed in children with HPS or OCA1. Establishing definitive diagnoses in children presenting with these phenotypic features is facilitated by genetic testing. Non-syndromic oculocutaneous albinism and various HPS subtypes, including HPS-4, are found in children of Chinese ancestry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Climate change has increased the intensity and frequency of floods in many regions. • Flood drainage rights (FDR) allocation is a useful tool for planning and management. • Factors driving FDR allocation in China's Yellow River watershed were analyzed. • We used a deep learning (variational autoencoder) model to quantify FDR allocation. • Our proposed FDR allocation plan outperformed three conventional allocation methods. Climate change has increased the intensity and frequency of storms in many world regions, calling for new flood planning and management strategies. The concept of flood drainage rights (FDR), or the legal rights of regions to drain floodwaters into river reaches, is used in watershed planning in China. Quantifying the allocation of FDR remains challenging, where some previous methods have resulted in unreasonable or impractical allocation plans due to incomplete consideration of driving factors or the use of unscientific allocation methods. This study explores the allocation plan of FDR in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River Watershed in China. Climatic variability and change have caused frequent flooding in portions of the basin, with significant societal and economic implications. First, we comprehensively analyzed factors driving FDR for regions in the watershed. Following the conceptual flood resilience strategy currently being advocated for the region, we considered natural, socioeconomic, governance, resilience, and resistance factors that influence the complex allocation of FDR and established a qualitative indicator system to reflect the complexity of these driving factors. Second, we quantified FDR values for flood-prone regions in the middle and lower river reaches of this major river basin. We introduced a specific deep learning method, called the variational autoencoder (VAE) model, to quantify FDR allocation, providing a robust solution to the challenge of the multi-objective, high-dimensional, nonlinear, and non-normal distribution of factors driving FDR allocation. Next, using data from 2005 to 2019, this model was applied to the study area. The allocation of FDR (summing to 100%) across five flood-prone provinces of the watershed includes Inner Mongolia (9.36%), Shaanxi (10.00%), Shanxi (10.95%), Henan (32.58%), and Shandong (37.12%). Using the harmony evaluation method based on harmony theory, we compared the new VAE allocation method with three conventional allocation methods. The VAE allocation method has the highest degree of harmony, suggesting that it is the most practical for FDR allocation and is a reasonable allocation for flood management. Such FDR can work with water conservancy engineering facilities as part of a comprehensive management system toward protecting public health, minimizing economic losses, and preserving functions of development and natural lands within floodplains of the Yellow River. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Fruits and vegetables constitute core constituents of 'planetary health' diets. • In alleged healthful foods, pesticide residues are omnipresent – often surpassing MRL. • We systematically map non-chemical alternatives per compound, commodity and country. • Food producers possess myriad safe, practicable and effective non-chemical alternatives. • Our work facilitates transitions towards ecologically-based farming tactics. Food can be health-giving. A global transition towards plant-based diets may equally help curb carbon emissions, slow land-system change and conserve finite resources. Yet, projected benefits of such 'planetary health' diets imperfectly capture the environmental or societal health outcomes tied to food production. Here, we examine pesticide-related hazards of fruit and vegetable consumption, and list proven management alternatives per commodity, geography and chemical compound. Across countries, pesticide use in these alleged healthful foods is extensive with up to 97% food items containing residues and up to 42% posing dietary risks to consumers. Multiple residues are present in 70–92% of US- and China-grown stone fruit while 58% US cauliflower is tainted with neonicotinoid insecticides. Science-based alternatives and decision-support frameworks can help food producers reduce risks and potential harm by deliberately abstaining from pesticide use. As such, opportunities abound to advance 'win-win' diets that simultaneously nurture human health and conserve global biodiversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]