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This self-reflective essay examines my experience as a Chinese doctoral student while studying in a large research university in America. Through my self-reflection, with Foucault's analysis on power, I hope to shed some light on my experience with the neoliberal academy, which caused much discomfort and created my fragmented identities. Instead of questioning the problematic neoliberal power relations that caused my discomfort in the first place, as the madman of higher ed, I was directed to psychotherapy to treat my symptoms, which only caused more confusion. Through my story, I hope to reveal how social context, neoliberalism in this case, and social discourse of psychotherapy, work hand in hand in the higher education space, which have exercised intangible power and created fragmented identities among many international doctoral students in America. At the end of the article, I provide suggestions for graduate students to navigate the neoliberal academy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whether L1 (the first language) should be used in English (as the second or foreign language) classrooms has long been a controversial issue. In the United States, much of this work has focused on French or Spanish as a foreign language teaching and learning. In the context of English as a foreign language, research has focused on adults and primary school students. This literature review considers this question in the context of Chinese as L1 and secondary EFL classrooms. Our review suggests that the use of Chinese serves several supportive functions and that, despite the insistence on strong English-only policies, teachers and students actively use Chinese to enhance their language teaching and learning experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a substantial burden of chronic respiratory diseases, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). LMICs have particular challenges in delivering cost-effective prevention, diagnosis, and management of COPD. Optimal care can be supported by effective implementation of guidelines. This American Thoracic Society workshop considered challenges to implementation of COPD guidelines in LMICs. We make 10 specific recommendations: 1) relevant organizations should provide LMIC-specific COPD management guidance; 2) patient and professional organizations must persuade policy-makers of the importance of lung function testing programs in LMICs; 3) healthcare education and training should emphasize the early-life origins of COPD; 4) urgent action is required by governments to reduce airborne exposures, including exposures to tobacco smoke and indoor and outdoor air pollution; 5) guidance for COPD in LMICs should explicitly link across Essential Medicine Lists and the World Health Organization package of essential noncommunicable disease interventions for primary health care in low-resource settings and should consider availability, affordability, sustainability, and cost-effective use of medicines; 6) the pharmaceutical industry should work to make effective COPD and tobacco-dependence medicines globally accessible and affordable; 7) implementation of locally adapted, cost-effective pulmonary rehabilitation programs should be an international priority; 8) the World Health Organization Global Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Noncommunicable Diseases should specify how improvements in respiratory health will be achieved; 9) research funders should increase the proportion of funding allocated to COPD in LMICs; and 10) the respiratory community should leverage the skills and enthusiasm of earlier-career clinicians and researchers to improve global respiratory health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We assembled a complete reference genome of Eumaeus atala, an aposematic cycad-eating hairstreak butterfly that suffered near extinction in the United States in the last century. Based on an analysis of genomic sequences of Eumaeus and 19 representative genera, the closest relatives of Eumaeus are Theorema and Mithras. We report natural history information for Eumaeus, Theorema, and Mithras. Using genomic sequences for each species of Eumaeus, Theorema, and Mithras (and three outgroups), we trace the evolution of cycad feeding, coloration, gregarious behavior, and other traits. The switch to feeding on cycads and to conspicuous coloration was accompanied by little genomic change. Soon after its origin, Eumaeus split into two fast evolving lineages, instead of forming a clump of close relatives in the phylogenetic tree. Significant overlap of the fast evolving proteins in both clades indicates parallel evolution. The functions of the fast evolving proteins suggest that the caterpillars developed tolerance to cycad toxins with a range of mechanisms including autophagy of damaged cells, removal of cell debris by macrophages, and more active cell proliferation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The etiologic agent of an outbreak of pneumonia in Wuhan, China, was identified as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 in January 2020. A patient in the United States was given a diagnosis of infection with this virus by the state of Washington and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on January 20, 2020. We isolated virus from nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal specimens from this patient and characterized the viral sequence, replication properties, and cell culture tropism. We found that the virus replicates to high titer in Vero-CCL81 cells and Vero E6 cells in the absence of trypsin. We also deposited the virus into 2 virus repositories, making it broadly available to the public health and research communities. We hope that open access to this reagent will expedite development of medical countermeasures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early abstract reasoning has typically been characterized by a "relational shift," in which children initially focus on object features but increasingly come to interpret similarity in terms of structured relations. An alternative possibility is that this shift reflects a learned bias, rather than a typical waypoint along a universal developmental trajectory. If so, consistent differences in the focus on objects or relations in a child's learning environment could create distinct patterns of relational reasoning, influencing the type of hypotheses that are privileged and applied. Specifically, children in the United States may be subject to culture-specific influences that bias their reasoning toward objects, to the detriment of relations. In experiment 1, we examine relational reasoning in a population with less object-centric experience-3-y-olds in China-and find no evidence of the failures observed in the United States at the same age. A second experiment with younger and older toddlers in China (18 to 30 mo and 30 to 36 mo) establishes distinct developmental trajectories of relational reasoning across the two cultures, showing a linear trajectory in China, in contrast to the U-shaped trajectory that has been previously reported in the United States. In a third experiment, Chinese 3-y-olds exhibit a bias toward relational solutions in an ambiguous context, while those in the United States prefer objectbased solutions. Together, these findings establish populationlevel differences in relational bias that predict the developmental trajectory of relational reasoning, challenging the generality of an initial object focus and suggesting a critical role for experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Illegal fishing activities in the Gulf of Mexico pose a threat to the US national security, as well as damage to the economy. The US Coast Guard (USCG) estimates over 1100 incursions by Mexican fisherman into US regulated waters in the Gulf of Mexico annually. Fishermen enter the water borders to catch red snapper, which is one of the Gulf of Mexico's signature and most valuable fish. There are a number of academic contributions which have sought to improve the understanding of the problem of illegal fishing, and to try to generate better solutions. In this study, we investigate the relationship between illegal fishing activities and environmental factors with oneyear of historical sight, weather, and moon phase data. Descriptive analysis provides some interesting insights such as sight patterns depending on wave height, moon phase, and hours of a day. Also, we develop logistic regression models that shows wave height is negatively correlated with sight occurrences for all sight types. In addition, we oversample the data and develop two pre diction models using logistic regression and k-nearest neighbor algorithm and compare prediction accuracies. The results show that k-nearest neighbor algorithm performs better in most of the cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many papers in the housing literature treat the intertemporal evolution of the logarithm of US real house prices as a unit root process. They also study the cointegration relationship among the logarithm of real house prices and fundamental economic variables such as income and they apply an error correction specification for modeling and forecasting real house prices. This paper argues that the logarithm of US real house price is not a unit root process. Instead, the evidence from a 120-year national dataset and metro area level and state level panel data sets supports the notion that US house prices are trend stationary. One result of this conclusion is that the validity of analyses of US house prices based on cointegration and error correction models needs to be reconsidered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rainfall disaggregation in time can be useful for the simulation of hydrologic systems and the prediction of floods and flash floods. Disaggregation of rainfall to timescales less than 1 h can be especially useful for small urbanized watershed study, and for continuous hydrologic simulations and when Hortonian or saturation-excess runoff dominates. However, the majority of rain gauges in any region record rainfall in daily time steps or, very often, hourly records have extensive missing data. Also, the convective nature of the rainfall can result in significant differences in the measured rainfall at nearby gauges. This study evaluates several statistical approaches for rainfall disaggregation which may be applicable using data from West-Central Florida, specifically from 1 h observations to 15 min records, and proposes new methodologies that have the potential to outperform existing approaches. Four approaches are examined. The first approach is an existing direct scaling method that utilizes observed 15 min rainfall at secondary rain gauges, to disaggregate observed 1 h rainfall at more numerous primary rain gauges. The second approach is an extension of an existing method for continuous rainfall disaggregation through statistical distributional assumptions. The third approach relies on artificial neural networks for the disaggregation process without sorting and the fourth approach extends the neural network methods through statistical preprocessing via new sorting and desorting schemes. The applicability and performance of these methods were evaluated using information from a fairly dense rain gauge network in West-Central Florida. Of the four methods compared, the sorted neural networks and the direct scaling method predicted peak rainfall magnitudes significantly better than the remaining techniques. The study also suggests that desorting algorithms would also be useful to randomly replace the artificial hyetograph within a rainfall period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article addresses the influence of global warming on the mass balance of the Bering and Hubbard Glaciers in Alaska. The overall research goal is to estimate how the accelerated melting of these glaciers will contribute to rising sea levels, while this article specifically examines the projected change in mass of the two glaciers during the period from October 2010 through September 2018. Precipitation and climate are considered. Research methodology and conclusions are provided. INSET: FURTHER INFORMATION ON GLACIERS.

Comparative study of knowledge management (KM) promises to lead to more effective knowledge use in all cultural environments. This pilot study compares KM priorities, needs, tools, and administrative structure components in large Chinese and American universities. General KM theory and literature related to KM in higher education are analyzed to develop the four components of the study. Comparative differences in KM practice at large Chinese and American universities are analyzed for each component. A correlation matrix reveals statistically significant co-variation among all but one of the study components. Four conclusions related to comparative KM and suggestions for future research are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pb adsorption capacities of Fe oxide. Mn oxide and organic materials in natural surface coatings (biofilms and associated minerals ) collected in three lakes, two ponds and a river in Jilin Province, China and Cayuga Lake in US were studied. A novel extraction technique was employed to remove one or more component(s) from the surface coatings. Pb adsorption to surface coatings before and after extraction was performed to determine the adsorptive properties of the extracted component(s), The statistical analysis of observed Pb adsorption was carried out using nonlinear least squares fitting (NLSF) to estimate the Pb adsorption capacity of each component of surface coatings. For each body of water, the estimated Pb adsorption capacity of Mn oxide (mol Pb/mol Mn) was significantly higher than that of Fe oxide (mol Pb/ mol Fe). The value of estimated adsorption capacities of organic materials with the unit mol Pb per kg COD was similar to or Less than that of Fe oxides with the unit mol Pb per mol Fe. Comparison of components of surface coatings in different waters showed that the estimated Pb adsorption capacities of components in surface coatings developed in different natural waters were different, especially for Mn oxides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]