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Purpose: This study aims to answer the following questions: (1) Why have attempts to transplant Western vocational education models failed? (2) Is there anything we can learn from the experiences of Eastern Asian countries when developing their own vocational education models? Design/Approach/Methods: This study reviews the history of transplanting Western skill formation schemes into developing countries, an often-failed die-hard practice supported by both bilateral and multilateral donors. Findings: Our findings suggest that developing countries should design their technical and vocational education and training systems based on their unique cultural, sociological, and economic contexts. It offers two alternative pathways based on the experiences of the People's Republic of China and the Republic of Korea. Originality/Value: These East Asian examples could broaden the perspectives of policymakers in developing countries aspiring to develop functional skill formation schemes.

Regional higher education growth in non-federal states has not attracted much academic attention. This paper is one of the first attempts to explore China's latest higher education expansion and its systematic and regional impact from the perspective of multi-level governance. This article argues that the state had explicitly utilized the Commanding Heights Strategy to diffuse the higher education authority to sub-national level and promote regional growth. The Central authorities allowed the Ministry of Education establishing a vertical elite coalition to command the heights of tertiary institutional hierarchy and key resources for tertiary development. In addition, the state used both financial incentives and sectoral incentives to mobilize resources for regional expansion. The Commanding Heights Strategy shapes China's response to the higher education trilemma of costs, access, and quality. Under this strategy, the unprecedented tertiary expansion has expanded college access, but at the expense of affordability, quality, and a large and increasing regional variation.

Using global citizenship as the framework and guided by a phenomenological approach, this paper examines the experiences of overseas education on Chinese students studying in American high schools, and the mechanisms through which potential growth takes place. The data were collected from interviews with 15 Chinese students studying at American high schools and seven teacher participants who work closely with them. Findings reveal that international sojourning could potentially serve as an effective pathway to global citizenship because it may help international students develop global competencies (knowledge, understanding and skills), and global consciousness (values and attitudes). The paper argues that the process of growing into a global citizen may be viewed as an advanced level of student development, and the mechanisms through which this kind of ideal transformation takes place which were identified in this study include: having non-vanity motives, developing self-authorship, exposure to different perspectives, and experiencing disadvantages and deprivation.

Flash flood early warning is a very effective way to reduce casualties induced by rainstorm flash flood in mountainous area. The forecasting of flash flooding remains challenging because of the short response time and inaccurate warning threshold. So far, the flash flood disaster defenses often adopt the critical rainfall amounts inducing the peak discharge or water level to establish an early warning threshold in China. However, the runoff peak discharge depends on rainfall patterns including rainfall intensity and accumulation, result in the critical rainfall threshold has a significant uncertainty. To reduce this uncertainty, herein we present a dual-threshold method for flash flood early warning with consideration of rainfall patterns based on above two-rainfall metrics. Moreover, applying this new method in the flash flood disasters occurred in the Zhongdu river basin, Sichuan province of China to evaluate the early warning reliability. Firstly, five most likely rainfall patterns of this basin were determined according to the timing of rain peak in historical rainfall events, and then, we determined the critical rainfall thresholds under different rainfall patterns and soil moisture conditions. The result showed that the rainfall thresholds uncertainty caused by rainfall pattern is more pronounced than soil moisture. Next, using the cumulative rainfall depth and maximum rainfall intensity corresponding to disaster discharge in different flood processes to establish the dual-thresholds. We found the dual-threshold method comprehensively considers the impacts of soil moisture, rainfall temporal distribution and flood rising property, which can achieve early warning for the four protected objects along the Zhongdu River, with an average lead duration of 46.2 min. Compared with the other three single-threshold methods, the critical rainfall and the critical rainstorm curve methods frequently created false or missing warnings, making it difficult to achieve the effect of early warning. Although reliability of flood water level rising rate method is high, the lead time is relatively short and only lasts for a few minutes in some cases. As a result, the new proposed dual-threshold method, accounting for both the reliability and long lead time, can be a potential candidate for the flash flood disaster early warning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past 40 years, global tertiary expansion has been driven in part by the rise of the non-university sector. The growth of this sector, which includes vocational colleges, also contributes to increasingly diverse national higher education systems. Prior research has focused on inter-state variation in national systems, while very few studies have explored intra-state variation in the expansion of non-university sector. Building on the policy innovation and diffusion model, this study uses event history analysis to investigate key drivers behind Chinese prefecture cities' adoption of vocational colleges during the latest tertiary education expansion. The study employs a rich panel dataset from 273 Chinese cities between 2000 and 2014. Findings suggest that the socioeconomic and the politico-institutional contexts matter the most for cities' policy adoption, and the influence of policy diffusion is negative but not significant. Moreover, there is substantial heterogeneity across time and region. The characteristics of early adopters significantly differ from those of late adopters, and the diffusion paths vary within and across regions. This study illustrates that the emergence of sub-national government affiliated non-university institutions is driven by a complex combination of socioeconomic, politico-institutional, and policy forces. Results highlight the regional contextual factors that may override coercive pressure from national strategies to promote the non-university sector expansion and the structural diversity in the context of less developed economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has recently launched a radical reform to transform over 600 regional universities into application and technology oriented institutions. The reform is a response to diverse labour market demands, regional economic development and the suboptimal structure of the higher education system, and uses international experiences as a reference. While China is still struggling to identify proper international models to follow, this article offers a potential candidate--Finland, with respect to Finnish experiences recommendations for the Chinese reform are discussed and elicited. The analysis flows from discussions in a series of seminars and workshops held in Finland and China in 2014. This article argues that the Finnish experience is of relevance to Chinese regional university transformation, notwithstanding the huge difference in scale.

A huge increase in engineering graduates from the BRIC countries in recent decades potentially threatens the competitiveness of developed countries in producing high value-added products and services, while also holding great promise for substantially increasing the level of global basic and applied innovation. The key question is whether the quality of these new BRIC engineers will be high enough to actualize this potential. The objective of our study is to assess the evolving capacity of BRIC higher education systems to produce qualified engineering graduates. To meet this objective, we compare developments in the quality of undergraduate engineering programs across elite and non-elite higher education tiers within and across each BRIC country. To assess and compare the quality of engineering education across the BRIC countries, we use multiple sources of primary and secondary data gathered from each BRIC country from 2008 to 2011. In combination with this, we utilize a production function approach that focuses on key input-, process- and outcome-based indicators associated with the quality of education programs. Our analysis suggests that in all four countries, a minority of engineering students receives high quality training in elite institutions while the majority of students receive low quality training in non-elite institutions. Our analysis also shows how the BRIC countries vary in their capacity to improve the quality of engineering education.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the recent development of Chinese vocational colleges from two perspectives: the adoption of employability as a new institutional mission and organizational changes in six areas. The analysis is based on a multiple-case study. The analytical frameworks are developed from sociological theory and organizational theory. This study argues that vocational colleges in China are experiencing substantial transformations. At the macro level, they are transforming from a social institution to industry under the neoliberal argument for globalization. Colleges adopt employability as their new mission. At the micro level, there are considerable changes under the influence of the new mission, in terms of program goal, program development, curriculum development, dominant pedagogy, faculty development, and internal management. The changes fit the rhetoric of employability as a core competency. There is a tendency that Chinese vocational higher education institutions will degenerate into training organizations for employment.

This study analyzed 586 students from nine vocational high schools in three provinces in China. It found a substantial gap between the demand for and the supply of government financial aid. Moreover, correct student aid information and aid application was not equally distributed among various student groups. A financial aid application made a significant difference in access to aid. Finally, disadvantaged students got more aid when they received other kinds of financial support.

China established a large-scale financial aid system in the late 1980s. This multilayered aid system aimed at enhancing educational and employment opportunities. However, very few studies have examined the impact of student aid on learning effort and outcome, career decisions, and early labor market performance. Using two recent Chinese college student surveys, this study found that students who received financial aid were significantly more likely to take more courses, spend more hours studying outside class, have a higher class ranking, and be less likely to fail a course. Additionally, having financial aid could promote graduate school enrollment and initial employment but had no significant impact on expected salary. Current aid programs for those who receive public financial assistance are thus beneficial in terms of educational outcome and employment perspective. (Contains 12 notes and 5 tables.)

The Chinese financial aid system intends to increase the affordability of postsecondary education and provide access to college for disadvantaged students. However, the research base for access to aid in China is extremely thin. Using data from a large cross-sectional survey in Beijing, this study found that attending selective institutions with high-ability peers was positively correlated with the amount of aid awarded and the probability of receiving aid. Female students, students with college-educated fathers, and students from poorer households were expected to receive more aid. Junior and senior students along with more able individuals in science-related majors obtained significantly more financial assistance. (Contains 4 tables.)

We compare three countries where public policy has explicitly sought to align incentives of employers and educational institutions around closing the gap between skill formation and labor market demand. In large, heterogeneous countries such as the United States, Russia and China, collaborative arrangements such apprenticeships and other forms of public-private partnerships can be constructed at the subnational level by building on direct, face-to-face ties across educational, business, government, and civic sectors. Drawing on existing literature as well as fieldwork studying a number of specific cases in the three countries, the paper develops a typology of such arrangements and proposes an explanation for the observed variation. It emphasizes the importance of two sets of factors: those that induce cooperation on the part of firms and schools, and those that influence the character of such partnerships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regional higher education growth in non-federal states has not attracted much academic attention. This paper is one of the first attempts to explore China's latest higher education expansion and its systematic and regional impact from the perspective of multi-level governance. This article argues that the state had explicitly utilized the Commanding Heights Strategy to diffuse the higher education authority to sub-national level and promote regional growth. The Central authorities allowed the Ministry of Education establishing a vertical elite coalition to command the heights of tertiary institutional hierarchy and key resources for tertiary development. In addition, the state used both financial incentives and sectoral incentives to mobilize resources for regional expansion. The Commanding Heights Strategy shapes China's response to the higher education trilemma of costs, access, and quality. Under this strategy, the unprecedented tertiary expansion has expanded college access, but at the expense of affordability, quality, and a large and increasing regional variation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Facing a rapidly aging population, China has recently started to formulate and implement policies with the aim to provide old-age care. While well-developed old-age care policies commonly include a built-in component that assesses eligibility based on vulnerability, no such process is established in the context of China. Here, based on data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study collected in both 2011 and 2013, we (a) developed a simple and effective strategy for identifying vulnerable Chinese elderly, which can serve as a basis for policy targeting, and (b) improved the policy relevance and targeting efficiency of this vulnerability measure by including additional health indicators. Our vulnerability measures identify 35% to 46% of Chinese elderly as vulnerable, covering up to 67% of elderly at high risk of death or functional decline. They can serve as an initial screening step for more comprehensive geriatric assessments and enable policy makers to effectively target vulnerable elderly persons in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The groundwater pollution is an increasingly serious problem in the world. There are abundant coal resources and coalbed methane resources in Sanjiao area, Hedong Coalfield. The exploitation of mineral resources has a pernicious influence on the local groundwater environment. The local shallow groundwater is the only drinking water source for local residents. So the analysis of the groundwater pollution characteristics is essential for maintaining drinking water safe for local residents. The results showed that NH4 +, Cl-, SO4 2-, NO3 -, F-, NO2-, Cr6+, Fe, TDS, etc. have exceeded to varying degrees. The amount of methane in SX99 is very high, so it should take measures to release methane to reduce the methane concentration in groundwater. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has recently launched a radical reform to transform over 600 regional universities into application and technology oriented institutions. The reform is a response to diverse labour market demands, regional economic development and the suboptimal structure of the higher education system, and uses international experiences as a reference. While China is still struggling to identify proper international models to follow, this article offers a potential candidate – Finland, with respect to Finnish experiences recommendations for the Chinese reform are discussed and elicited. The analysis flows from discussions in a series of seminars and workshops held in Finland and China in 2014. This article argues that the Finnish experience is of relevance to Chinese regional university transformation, notwithstanding the huge difference in scale. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A huge increase in engineering graduates from the BRIC countries in recent decades potentially threatens the competitiveness of developed countries in producing high value-added products and services, while also holding great promise for substantially increasing the level of global basic and applied innovation. The key question is whether the quality of these new BRIC engineers will be high enough to actualize this potential. The objective of our study is to assess the evolving capacity of BRIC higher education systems to produce qualified engineering graduates. To meet this objective, we compare developments in the quality of undergraduate engineering programs across elite and non-elite higher education tiers within and across each BRIC country. To assess and compare the quality of engineering education across the BRIC countries, we use multiple sources of primary and secondary data gathered from each BRIC country from 2008 to 2011. In combination with this, we utilize a production function approach that focuses on key input-, process- and outcome-based indicators associated with the quality of education programs. Our analysis suggests that in all four countries, a minority of engineering students receives high quality training in elite institutions while the majority of students receive low quality training in non-elite institutions. Our analysis also shows how the BRIC countries vary in their capacity to improve the quality of engineering education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to analyze the recent development of Chinese vocational colleges from two perspectives: the adoption of employability as a new institutional mission and organizational changes in six areas. The analysis is based on a multiple-case study. The analytical frameworks are developed from sociological theory and organizational theory. This study argues that vocational colleges in China are experiencing substantial transformations. At the macro level, they are transforming from a social institution to industry under the neoliberal argument for globalization. Colleges adopt employability as their new mission. At the micro level, there are considerable changes under the influence of the new mission, in terms of program goal, program development, curriculum development, dominant pedagogy, faculty development, and internal management. The changes fit the rhetoric of employability as a core competency. There is a tendency that Chinese vocational higher education institutions will degenerate into training organizations for employment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study analyzed 586 students from nine vocational high schools in three provinces in China. It found a substantial gap between the demand for and the supply of government financial aid. Moreover, correct student aid information and aid application was not equally distributed among various student groups. A financial aid application made a significant difference in access to aid. Finally, disadvantaged students got more aid when they received other kinds of financial support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The Chinese financial aid system intends to increase the affordability of postsecondary education and provide access to college for disadvantaged students. However, the research base for access to aid in China is extremely thin. Using data from a large cross-sectional survey in Beijing, this study found that attending selective institutions with high-ability peers was positively correlated with the amount of aid awarded and the probability of receiving aid. Female students, students with college-educated fathers, and students from poorer households were expected to receive more aid. Junior and senior students along with more able individuals in science-related majors obtained significantly more financial assistance. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Pancreatic cancer (PC) is a lethal disease with extremely high mortality. Although surgical resection is the optimal therapeutic approach for PC, about 30%-40% of those patients are not candidates for surgical resection when diagnosed. Chemotherapy and radiotherapy also could not claim a desirable effect on PC. The application of interventional radiology approaches is limited by unavoidable damage to the surrounding vessels or organs. By the superiority of mechanism and technology, IRE could ablate the tumor by creating irreversible pores on the membrane of PC cells with other tissues like vessels and pancreatic ducts untouched. This consensus gathers the theoretical basis and clinical experience from multiple Chinese medical centers, to provide the application principles and experience from Chinese experts in the IRE field., Competing Interests: None

Nocardia seriolae is the causative agent of nocardiosis in both marine and freshwater fish. Here, we report on multiple outbreaks of nocardiosis associated with elevated mortality (23-35%) in farmed largemouth bass in Sichuan, China, from 2017 to 2018. A total of 9 strains isolated from diseased largemouth bass were identified as N. seriolae by phenotypic characterization, 16S rRNA and hsp65 gene sequence analysis. The clinical signs of infected largemouth bass included hemorrhage, skin ulcers and prominent tubercles varying in size in the gill, liver, spleen and kidney. Experimental infection indicated that these isolates were the pathogens responsible for the mortalities. In vitro antibacterial activities of 12 antibiotics against N. seriolae isolates were determined as minimum inhibitory concentrations. Histopathological observation of diseased fish infected with N. seriolae showed necrotizing granulomatous hepatitis, nephritis, splenitis, epithelial hypertrophy and hyperplasia with degenerative changes of the epithelium in the gill. Large quantities of bacterial aggregates were found in the necrotic area of the granuloma by Lillie-Twort Gram stain and immunocytochemistry. Our findings indicated that N. seriolae is a serious threat to the largemouth bass Micropterus salmoides industry in Southwest China.

Recent outbreaks of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has led a global pandemic cross the world. Most countries took two main interventions: suppression like immediate lockdown cities at epicenter or mitigation that slows down but not stopping epidemic for reducing peak healthcare demand. Both strategies have their apparent merits and limitations; it becomes extremely hard to conduct one intervention as the most feasible way to all countries. Targeting at this problem, this paper conducted a feasibility study by defining a mathematical model named SEMCR, it extended traditional SEIR (Susceptible-Exposed-Infectious-Recovered) model by adding two key features: a direct connection between Exposed and Recovered populations, and separating infections into mild and critical cases. It defined parameters to classify two stages of COVID-19 control: active contain by isolation of cases and contacts, passive contain by suppression or mitigation. The model was fitted and evaluated with public dataset containing daily number of confirmed active cases including Wuhan and London during January 2020 and March 2020. The simulated results showed that 1) Immediate suppression taken in Wuhan significantly reduced the total exposed and infectious populations, but it has to be consistently maintained at least 90 days (by the middle of April 2020). Without taking this intervention, we predict the number of infections would have been 73 folders higher by the middle of April 2020. Its success requires efficient government initiatives and effective collaborative governance for mobilizing of corporate resources to provide essential goods. This mode may be not suitable to other countries without efficient collaborative governance and sufficient health resources. 2) In London, it is possible to take a hybrid intervention of suppression and mitigation for every 2 or 3 weeks over a longer period to balance the total infections and economic loss. While the total infectious populations in this scenario would be possibly 2 times than the one taking suppression, economic loss and recovery of London would be less affected. 3) Both in Wuhan and London cases, one important issue of fitting practical data was that there were a portion (probably 62.9% in Wuhan) of self-recovered populations that were asymptomatic or mild symptomatic. This finding has been recently confirmed by other studies that the seroprevalence in Wuhan varied between 3.2% and 3.8% in different sub-regions. It highlights that the epidemic is far from coming to an end by means of herd immunity. Early release of intervention intensity potentially increased a risk of the second outbreak., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Driven by the automation technologies and health informatics of Industry 4.0, hospitals in China have deployed a complete automation system/platform for healthcare services accessing. Without much more Internet knowledge, elderlies usually seek the third-party to assist them to get healthcare services from Web or APPs, it consequently results in an unexpected situation that scalpers could grab all healthcare services booking by unrighteous means in order to resell to elderlies for a much higher price. Moreover, it is hard for physicians to identify the scalpers due to the complexity, ad-hoc, and multiscenario nature of healthcare processes. In this paper, a novel method is proposed for the identification and creation of user groups of scalpers in mobile healthcare services. The approach utilizes and extends state of the art data analysis approaches in the event-logs of the mobile system to identify user groups. Based on the user groups, user profiles are extracted by identifying representative eventcases from hierarchical user-event clusters. A comprehensive evaluation is conducted in a selected test-set from the event-logs of a mobile healthcare APP. The result shows its accuracy and effectiveness in scalper detection in mobile healthcare APP. Further, a complete case study is deployed in a real word hospital to ensure its utility, efficacy, and reliability.