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For over six decades Israel's system of higher education has been managed by the Ministry of Education and the Council for Higher Education (CHE). During this period, significant transitions have occurred in the academic system throughout the world and in Israel, leaving their mark on research and teaching and on the related regulatory agencies. The purpose of the study is to examine the need for regulation of higher education in a capitalist world, with Israel serving as a case study. The study examines the CHE's management of changes that occurred in the academic world and the overall considerations utilized by the pilots of this regulatory agency, which led to shaping policy from a perspective of time and with an eye to the challenges of the future, in comparison to supervisory agencies around the world. The research method is based on research literature addressing the system of higher education in Israel and elsewhere as well as on interviews with senior academics occupying key positions in the CHE in the past and present. The research findings indicate that the CHE has a bureaucratic image, a short-sighted policy, and that it reacts to events more than leading them, as opposed to its declared goal of promoting high standard, innovative, and accessible research and teaching processes to benefit the economy and society. The conclusion generated by the research findings is that implementation of a hybrid model suitable for the twenty first century, which combines liberalization and regulation, should be explored. This model will let institutions of higher education develop independently while reducing government supervision, and will allow the regulatory body to regulate their activity via incentives and restrictions, while identifying market failures that it will define. Such a regulatory body will include an array of academic experts from the field of higher education with proven experience in the fields of academic research and teaching, in order to separate the managing of Israel's system of higher education from politics and bureaucracy.

Although open educational resources (OERs) can help bridge high school-university vocabulary gaps, central questions remain unanswered regarding effective design that enables students to go beyond the "small chunks" that typically characterize vocabulary learning in mobile learning environments (MLEs). This bi-national study adopted a design-based research paradigm to collect input of students at two Chinese universities regarding design factors to overcome potential barriers to learning vocabulary in MLEs. The study iterated through a cycle of analysis, development, implementation, and evaluation with two cohorts of 222 and 136 students, respectively, over two years. Results showed that L1 translations correlated with significantly improved performance on basic-level vocabulary exercises and pop vocabulary quizzes. However, results suggest that moving mobile learning into the mainstream will require designing more effective scaffolding for complex vocabulary learning as well as clearer guidelines for optimal integration of PC and MLEs for supporting self-directed vocabulary study.

Purpose: Community and technical college student employability is a pressing concern in the United States and China. Policy makers focus on developing students' human capital in the form of credentials and cognitive skills. However, the focus on completion overlooks the role that noncognitive skills and contextual factors may play in student employability. Method: In this exploratory study, conducted among educators and employers in the manufacturing and biotechnology fields in a large eastern Chinese city, we use a cultural capital framework to address the following questions: (a) What forms of cultural capital are valued by educators and employers? (b) How are these forms of capital being cultivated in the classroom? (c) How do considerations of cultural capital influence hiring and workplace training? and (d) What contextual factors influence these phenomena? Inductive thematic analyses of interviews, classroom observation, and notes from factory tours with eight educators and two employers were completed. Results: This study revealed a shared view that both cognitive and noncognitive skills are essential. Results also reveal a cultural predisposition within Chinese classrooms to lecturing but also a growing use of active learning techniques, a commitment to general education, the importance of "cultural fit" during the hiring process, and job quality and the cultural devaluation of the skilled trades as salient contextual factors. Conclusion: Implications for research, policy, and practice are considered, particularly the need for all students to acquire both cognitive and noncognitive skills as well as a more nuanced and culturally informed perspective on student employability.

This study challenges the assumption that international students from the Global South migrate to advanced Western economies primarily for economic gain and social distinction. Through temporally focused interviews with Chinese student switchers in the United Kingdom, that is, migrants who moved from China for university and remain working in situ after graduation, we examine how lifestyle factors may come into play in evoking and accommodating (im)mobilities. Our findings reveal how participants' experiences before, during and after international education are narrated as an entanglement of affective and rational concerns. We highlight how their migration decisions are driven by the search for a desired lifestyle that features work–life balance and a perceived release from a work‐oriented and socially pressurized life in China. Yet, their final emplacement remains an open question due to familial responsibilities in China and Chinese citizenship regulations. The study provides an original conceptual amalgamation of student migration and lifestyle mobility, and sheds further light on the importance of life courses in international student migration literature and lifestyle mobility studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental sustainability has become an important issue of concern throughout many countries. Among the many sources of concern include air pollution, the effects of which are often capitalized into house prices. In this article, we focus on air pollution in the city of Changsha, China, and the impacts of new pollution regulations on the relationship between pollution exposure and house sales prices. We use the Air Quality Index (Aqi) data from 10 air quality monitoring stations in Changsha to interpolate a previous 12-month average Aqi value for each dwelling unit in the city, based on geographical location. Controlling for important house characteristics such as the living area and the distance to the nearest subway stations, we use the Blue Sky Protection Campaign action plan (BSPC) as the quasi-natural experiment to identify the causal effect of air pollution on house prices. We find dwelling units that were previously in relatively higher-polluted neighborhoods saw their values increase by about 2% after the pollution regulation was implemented, which is statistically significant. This implies China could achieve greater housing wealth for its homeowners by implementing further pollution restrictions, both in Changsha and perhaps also in other parts of the country. Other Asian countries could potentially learn from the results of this analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rapid economic and energy growth in Asia has led to change in the loadings of black carbon (BC) in the last two decades. This work uses remotely sensed column absorbing aerosol optical depth to quantify BC loading day-by-day and grid-to-grid. Variance maximization is used to uniquely compute an unbiased set of observations of remotely sensed NO2 in space and time of urban and suburban sources, including regions with changing energy and industry. An inversely applied probabilistic MIE algorithm constrains the size, mixing state, and number of BC using four spectral observations. Significant differences in the particle size and mixing state are identified and attributed including: a drop around 2012 when China's national air pollution policies were adopted, a drop ahead of the 2008 Olympics, and flattening from 2015 onward. A case of simultaneous reduction in BC mass and increase in BC number demonstrates PM2.5 controls may not fully control BC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transshipment is one of the most common activities occurring between carriers and fishing vessels to exchange fish, as well as fuel, crew, and gear at sea or at port. While transshipment reduces the need for the fishing vessels to visit ports to offload their catches, thus increasing their efficiency, research has shown that this activity is also one of the major facilitators of IUU fishing. Research on transshipments is limited, and the few studies that are available on the subject focus on identifying hotspots of transshipment, and networks of actors involved. No study to date has examined the role ports play in facilitating transshipment activities, nor are there any studies that examine whether ports that are affiliated with China (the country with the highest IUU Fishing Index Score and 38% of the global share of distant-water fleets) are more likely to experience disproportionately higher volumes of FOC-flagged carrier vessel visits. Therefore, using the carrier vessel portal database from Global Fishing Watch, which contains information on the origin and destination ports of the carrier vessels involved in transshipment activities between 2015 and 2022, this research aims to (a) understand hot spots of FOC-flagged carrier vessel activity in the high seas and where such vessels offload their catches around the world; and (b) empirically test the characteristics of the ports (and the countries where these ports are located) used by these vessels to offload their catches. Findings suggest that ports that experience higher volumes of fishing vessel traffic, are in close proximity to high-seas transshipment activities involving FOC-flagged carriers, are designated ports of entry for foreign vessels, are Chinese-affiliated, as well as have low monitoring, control, and surveillance capacity are significantly more likely to be visited by FOC-flagged high-risk carrier vessels. This research proposes policy recommendations deriving from the findings of this research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we test the hypothesis that beliefs about the ideal mother are convergent across cultures and that these beliefs overlap considerably with attachment theory's notion of the sensitive mother. In a sample including 26 cultural groups from 15 countries around the globe, 751 mothers sorted the Maternal Behavior Q-Set to reflect their ideas about the ideal mother. The results show strong convergence between maternal beliefs about the ideal mother and attachment theory's description of the sensitive mother across groups. Cultural group membership significantly predicted variations in maternal sensitivity belief scores, but this effect was substantially accounted for by group variations in socio-demographic factors. Mothers living in rural versus urban areas, with a low family income, and with more children, were less likely to describe the ideal mother as highly sensitive. Cultural group membership did remain a significant predictor of variations in maternal sensitivity belief scores above and beyond socio-demographic predictors. The findings are discussed in terms of the universal and culture-specific aspects of the sensitivity construct.

Research to date in mainland China has mainly focused on children with autistic disorder rather than Autism Spectrum Conditions and the diagnosis largely depended on clinical judgment without the use of diagnostic instruments. Whether children who have been diagnosed in China before meet the diagnostic criteria of Autism Spectrum Conditions is not known nor how many such children would meet these criteria. The aim of this study was to evaluate children with a known diagnosis of autism in mainland China using the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule and the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised to verify that children who were given a diagnosis of autism made by Chinese clinicians in China were mostly children with severe autism. Of 50 children with an existing diagnosis of autism made by Chinese clinicians, 47 children met the diagnosis of autism on the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule algorithm and 44 children met the diagnosis of autism on the Autism Diagnostic Interview--Revised algorithm. Using the Gwet's alternative chance-corrected statistic, the agreement between the Chinese diagnosis and the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule diagnosis was very good (AC1?=?0.94, p?

Limited studies have investigated the latent autistic traits in the mainland Chinese population for autism spectrum conditions (ASC). This study explored the psychometric properties of a Mandarin Chinese version of the CAST in a sample consisting of 737 children in mainstream schools and 50 autistic cases. A combination of categorical data factor analysis and item response theory suggested a good-fit model of a two-factor solution for 28 items on the Mandarin CAST including social and communication, and inflexible/stereotyped language and behaviours (Goodness-of-fit indices: RMSEA = 0.029, CFI = 0.957, TLI = 0.950, SRMR = 0.064). The correlation between the two factors was moderate (GFC = 0.425). This study provided evidence for the CAST as a multidimensional measure for ASC screening in a Chinese population and also showed that the symptom manifestation of ASC in Chinese children shares similarity with western populations.

Little is known about research on Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC) in mainland China. The few available studies in mainland China have shown the screening and diagnostic instruments for ASC used in mainland China were different from the West. Literature on screening and diagnostic instruments and criteria were reviewed and current available instruments were identified and evaluated. Eight screening instruments and two diagnostic instruments were identified. The Clancy Autism Behaviour Scale (CABS), the Autism Behaviour Checklist (ABC) and the Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS) were the most frequently used instruments in mainland China. They were adopted from the West more than two decades ago for detecting individuals with Childhood Autism but not the whole autism spectrum. Standardised instruments need to be validated and adopted into autism research in mainland China. (Contains 3 figures.)

Little is known about the current situation regarding Autism Spectrum Conditions in mainland China. Electronic databases and bibliographies were searched to identify literature on service provision for ASC in both English and Chinese databases. 14 studies and 6 reports were reviewed. The findings of identified papers on service provision were summarized according to four settings for ASC including healthcare, mainstream education, private special education, and state-run special education. The literature on the situation of the healthcare system and educational services for children with ASC in China was profoundly limited. There were great financial problems faced by the parents of autistic children which were partly due to the under-developed healthcare and educational system for ASC. (Contains 2 tables.)

Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with service providers regarding the current healthcare provision and education services for children with Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC) and their families in mainland China. 10 service providers described the current policy and identified unmet needs within current practice. Providers perceived that children with ASC were an important but under-served group in mainland China. Two levels of service provision related to ASC were identified: (1) healthcare services mainly provided by government authorities; (2) education services mainly provided by the parents of children with ASC. Little cooperation was reported between the two types of providers. The structure of service provision for ASC is under-developed. There is an important need to establish coherent healthcare and education policies to support children with ASC and their families. (Contains 1 table and 1 figure.)

This study examined the processes and predictors of change in maternal ratings of internalizing and externalizing symptoms and attachment security in 70 infant girls adopted from China at a mean age of 13.5 months. These children's mental and language development were also directly assessed. The adopted children were assessed within the first month of adoption and again six, 12 and 24 months later. Comparisons were made with 43 girls of similar age and family background. Results indicated that from six months postadoption onward, adopted children exhibited a rapid increase in internalizing symptoms, especially in emotion reactivity. Adopted children initially formed attachment rapidly. Growth in attachment gradually slowed down over time. Individual differences that emerged in the rate of attachment growth from six months postadoption were related to mental ability in both groups. The results point to the effects of potential risk factors on the processes of change, at least in the two years following adoption. (Contains 4 notes, 5 tables, and 3 figures.)

Preschool and kindergarten classes in the United States are entering a time of unprecedented diversity and demographic transformation. Teachers must plan and implement a curriculum that reflects, supports, and values the varieties of cultural backgrounds, religious affiliations, socioeconomic classes, and language groups that children represent. In this article, the author explores cultural heritage in a kindergarten classroom and describes a project that promotes opportunities for play and social interaction.

Children's peer relations are critical for social adjustment and respect plays an important role in peer relations. Furthermore, children's understanding and expression of respect is related to culture. This chapter discusses the interplay of culture, peer social competence, and respect. (Contains 1 table.)

Explaining the origins of agriculture is a topic of ongoing debate in anthropology. Traditional explanations have often been categorized as either push or pull models. The former considers the transition as an adaptive response to environmental change, and the latter views farming as a result of cultural innovations. The theoretical debates reflect the traditional dichotomy between materialism and idealism in archaeological research. Yet underlying both approaches is an anthropocentric ontology that privileges humans over nonhumans as the principal agents of historical change. This paper seeks to transcend the limitation through a close examination of the role of nonhumans in the origins of rice agriculture in southern China. Challenging traditional approaches that attribute the rise of agriculture to human interventions on the environment, this paper explores how the active agencies exercised by nonhumans, such as plants and material tools, entrapped humans into a long-term dependence and later into a sedentary lifestyle, eventually leading up to fully agricultural societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Faces are visual stimuli that convey rich social information. Previous experiments found better recognition for faces that were evaluated based on their social traits than on their perceptual features during encoding. Here, we ask whether this social‐encoding benefit in face recognition is also found for categories of faces that we have no previous social experience with, such as other‐race faces. To answer this question, we first explored whether social and perceptual evaluations for other‐race faces are consistent and valid. We then asked whether social evaluations during encoding improve recognition for other‐race faces. Results show that social and perceptual evaluations of own‐ and other‐race faces were valid. We also found high agreement in social and perceptual evaluations across individuals from different races. This indicates that evaluations of other‐race faces are not random but meaningful. Furthermore, we found that social evaluations facilitated face recognition regardless of race, demonstrating a social‐encoding benefit for both own‐ and other‐race faces. Our findings highlight the role of social information in face recognition and show how it can be used to improve recognition of categories of faces that are hard to recognize due to lack of experience with them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article compares the professional responsibility campaigns against unethical intellectual property (IP) practitioners in the U.S. and China. Topics discussed are disciplinary authority and international disciplinary role of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), China as a trademark and patent superpower and its consequences for the bar, evolution of U.S. and China trademark enforcement campaigns, alternatives to attorney discipline, choice of law rules and international practice.

A techno-functional approach applied to the lithics of the Late Upper Palaeolithic Shizitan 29 site allows the identification of previously unrecognized technical features of microblade pressure production and new behavioral understanding of its evolution beginning ca. 26,000 cal b.p. These technical features may relate to the evolution of so-called boat-shaped cores, including the development of two blade scar sequences and the 8-like contour of the striking platform (likely related to fixing cores in a holding device). Counter to traditional typological lithic analyses centered on final core morphologies, we seek to identify technical objectives related to the required pressure production. In doing so, we argue that earlier semi-conical cores may have maximized the exploitation of the core volume, while subsequent boat-shaped cores developed to maximize the efficiency of the production of straight profile, regular blades. This allowed microblades to become a critical adaptation for final Pleistocene hunter-gatherers in northern East Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This work presents a new model free inversion estimation framework using daily TROPOMI NO2 columns and observed fluxes from the continuous emissions monitoring systems (CEMS) to quantify three years of daily-scale emissions of NOx at 0.05°×0.05° over Shanxi Province, a major world-wide energy producing and consuming region. The NOx emissions, day-to-day variability, and uncertainty on a climatological basis are computed to be 1.83, 1.01, and 1.06 Tg per year respectively. The highest emissions are concentrated in the lower Fen River valley, which accounts for 25 % of the area, 52 % of the NOx emissions, and 72 % of CEMS sources. Two major forcing factors (10th to 90th percentile) are horizontal transport distance per day (66–666 km) and lifetime of NOx (6.7–18.4 h). Both of these values are consistent with NOx emissions to both the surface layer and the free troposphere. The third forcing factor, the ratio of NOx / NO2, on a pixel-by-pixel basis is demonstrated to have a significant correlation with the combustion temperature and energy efficiency of large energy consuming sources. Specifically, thermal power plants, cement, and iron and steel companies have a relatively high NOx / NO2 ratio, while coking, industrial boilers, and aluminium oxide show relatively low ratio. Variance maximization is applied to daily TROPOMI NO2 columns identifies three significant modes, and successfully attributes them both spatially and temporally to (a) this work's computed emissions, (b) remotely sensed TROPOMI UVAI, and (c) computed transport based on TROPOMI NO2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Problem definition: It is common practice for firms to deploy strategies based on customer segmentation (by clustering customers into different segments) and price discrimination (by offering different prices to different customer segments). Price discrimination, although seemingly beneficial, can hurt firms in competitive environments. Academic/practical relevance: It is thus critical for firms to understand when to engage in price discrimination and how to support discriminatory pricing practices with appropriate inventory management strategies. This paper tackles this overarching question through operational lenses by studying the joint impact of price discrimination and the allocation of limited inventory across customer segments. Methodology: We develop a Bertrand competition game featuring capacity restrictions, quality differentiation, and customer heterogeneity. Results: We characterize (pure- or mixed-strategy) Nash equilibria for a single-stage game reflecting uniform pricing and for a two-stage inventory-price game reflecting discriminatory pricing along with endogenous inventory allocation. Managerial implications: We identify three sources of market friction in price competition enabling firms to earn higher profits: capacity limitations, quality differentiation, and customer heterogeneity. Price discrimination eliminates the market frictions from customer heterogeneity, but strategic inventory allocation restores (or strengthens) the market frictions from capacity limitations. As such, price discrimination is only beneficial when combined with optimal inventory allocation across segments. We discuss relevant real-world examples featuring regional price discrimination along with strategic inventory allocation, including fast fashion and vaccines. Otherwise, uniform pricing may outperform discriminatory pricing. Our results thus underscore the critical role of inventory allocation in the design of competitive pricing strategies. Funding: This research was partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant 71821002]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/msom.2022.1146. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The importance of breastfeeding in low- and middle- income countries is well recognized, yet the importance of postnatal mental health on breastfeeding practices and beliefs in these settings has been understudied. This study investigates the associations between maternal mental health problems, breastfeeding beliefs and breastfeeding practices in rural China. Methods: Cross-sectional data were collected in November and December 2019 from 742 mothers of infants under 6 months old in rural Sichuan Province, China. Maternal mental health (depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms) was assessed using the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (short form). Breastfeeding beliefs were assessed using the Iowa Infant Feeding Attitude Scale and Breastfeeding Self-Efficacy Scale (short form). Breastfeeding practices were assessed through a 24-h dietary recall questionnaire. Ordinary least squares regression, multiple logistic regression and heterogeneous effects analyses were used to identify associations between symptoms of mental health problems and breastfeeding outcomes. Results: The average age of sample infants was 2.7 months. Among mothers, 13% showed symptoms of depression, 16% anxiety, and 9% stress. The prevalence of exclusive breastfeeding in the previous 24 h was 38.0%. Depression symptoms were significantly associated with breastfeeding attitude (훽= − 1.11, 95% CI: − 2.07, − 0.14) and breastfeeding self-efficacy (훽= − 3.19, 95% CI: − 4.93, − 1.45). Anxiety and stress symptoms were significantly associated with breastfeeding self-efficacy (훽= − 1.81, 95% CI: − 3.43, − 0.18 and 훽 = − 2.88, 95% CI: − 4.98, − 0.78, respectively). There were no significant associations between symptoms of mental health problems and exclusive breastfeeding. The heterogeneous effects analyses revealed that less educated mothers with symptoms of stress had lower odds of exclusive breastfeeding than educated mothers without symptoms of stress (OR: 0.53, 95% CI: 0.25,1.10). Mothers of younger infants had higher odds of exclusive breastfeeding than the mother of older infants, regardless of depression, anxiety, or stress symptoms. Conclusion: Symptoms of maternal mental health problems are significantly associated with breastfeeding attitude and self-efficacy; however, these symptoms are not associated with breastfeeding practices. Maternal educational level and infant age may play a role in mothers' breastfeeding practices. To improve breastfeeding practices, interventions should employ a multi-dimensional approach that focuses on improving maternal mental well-being and considers demographic characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the beginning of the Coronavirus disease pandemic (COVID-19). It highlights the research finding which says that severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is not originated from China. It mentions that China has not allowed foreign researchers to conduct independent origin studies in the country and United States President Joseph Robinette Biden criticized the World Health Organization report.

If the major endeavor of Taiwan anthropology’s study of the ethnic Han during the 1960s and 1970s focused on dimensions of culture and society harking back to the Qing dynasty, there remained in the background a powerful but unsatisfied curiosity regarding contemporary China. The opening up of China to fieldwork initiated a period of new concern with the present, in China research, to be sure, but also for anthropology in Taiwan. The middle-class transformation of society on both sides of the Taiwan Straits created the environment for a new phase of anthropological research. For China anthropology the middle class has become a defining element in the study both of those who are in it and those marginal to it. Middle-class characteristics now dominate this anthropology, ranging from the emergence of individualism and the triumph of the commodified and commodity-seeking self to the struggle for place in an insecure and rapidly changing class setting, to nationalism, and even to the impact of automobile ownership. Contrasts with Taiwan highlight and make explicit how China ethnologies share a framework of research and analysis, albeit one not defined by shared theoretical approaches, but nevertheless one that might be usefully and critically expanded to include comparable areas of concern in Taiwan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]