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Marine spatial planning (MSP) was developed as a place-based, integrated marine governance approach to address sectoral and fragmented management issues and has seen significant evolvement over the past two decades. MSP has rapidly become the most commonly endorsed management regime for sustainable development in the marine environment, with initiatives being implemented across multiple regions of the globe. Despite its broad and growing acceptance and use, there are several key challenges that remain, both conceptual and practical, that are negatively impacting the realization of MSP’s potential. These include institutional shortcomings, the exclusion of stakeholders, a failure to account for the human and social dimensions of marine regions, the marginalization of different types of knowledge, and the growing need to adapt to global environmental change. Although studies have examined the emergence of MSP in different geographical and institutional contexts, there is a lack of comparative analysis of how initiatives are progressing and if the foundational aims of MSP are being achieved. There is a need to analyze the degree to which MSP initiatives are responding to the environmental challenges that they have been set up to tackle and, as marine plans are setting out long-term visions for marine management, to understand if current initiatives are fit for purpose. This article responds to these concerns and reviews the evolution of MSP within 12 regional ocean areas. We utilize the term regional ocean areas to illustrate the geographical spread of MSP, with examinations conducted of the approach to MSP that specific nations within each of the 12 chosen clusters have followed. By critically assessing how MSP is progressing, it is possible to shed light on the opportunities and challenges that are facing current initiatives. This can help to reveal learning lessons that can inform future MSP systems and guide initiatives along more sustainable pathways.

Numerical simulation was carried out to investigate the gas-liquid two-phase flow-induced corrosion in high productivity gas wells containing carbon dioxide. The Eulerian-Eulerian multiphase model combined with the electrochemical corrosion model was applied to simulate the corrosion rate at the tubing thread connection induced by corrosive medium containing carbon dioxide. The predicted corrosion rate was compared with the field data in the literature. It is shown that the predicted results were conservative when merely considering the phase distribution. Qualitative analysis between the predicted phase distribution, flow characteristics, erosion-corrosion position and the field data was made.

With the exploitation of deep well, ultra-deep well, thermal recovery Well and Geothermal Well, the temperature of tubing and casing is increasing constantly. The influence degree of temperature on tubing and casing material performance has attracted much attention in the design of tubular strings. The experimental study on the yield strength and tensile strength of tubular materials with temperature change is carried out, which includes C110, 140ksi, P110 and S13Cr110. In this paper, the yield strength correction coefficient of tubular material is defined, and the material performance model of different steel grade tubular material with temperature change is established. The paper describes the influence of underground high temperature on the design of tubular strings and shows that the yield strength of tubular material will decrease under high temperature. This directly affects the safety parameter of tubing and casing design, and greatly impact on the safety reliability and service life of the tubular strings. This paper points out the defects which exist in the current API formulas, when calculating the force of the tubular string. It is suggested that the yield strength at high temperature should be used as the design basis for deep well and ultra-deep well when the underground temperature is high. The results can be used to guide the design and check of tubular strings under high temperature and high-pressure gas well.Keywords:deep and ultra-deep well; special performance tubing and casing; high temperature; yield strength; tubular strings integrity;OCTG

Jhan, H.-T.; Chiang, H.-T.; Lin, Y.-F.; Liu, W.-H., and Ting, K.-H., 2018. Trade-off analysis for marine recreation activities management along the Tainan Gold Coast. In: Wang, D. and Guido-Aldana, P.A. (eds.), Select Proceedings from the 3rd International Conference on Water Resource and Environment (WRE2017). Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 84, pp. 144–148. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208.Marine recreation activities have been flourishing in Taiwan recently. “Gold Coast” with a beautiful and long gold beach in Tainan City has excellent natural environmental conditions for marine recreation activities. However, how marine recreation activities coexist with offshore oyster farming becomes an important issue. This study explored the trade-off analysis of Tainan Gold Coast recreation activities with stakeholders' perspective, in order to make various sea uses coexist and develop. The approach of trade-off analysis adopts a framework of Multi-Criteria Analysis (MCA) to organize information and facilitate evaluation of the options and their impacts. This study developed 3 scenarios of “Gold Coast” sea use. The areas of oyster farming and marine recreation activities (with power and with non-power) along the “Gold Coast” were presented with different use proportions. The values of 3 scenarios based on social, economical and ecological criteria and their 6 indicators were derived with the contingent valuation method and official statistical data. Finally, this study used the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to gain the weights of 3 criteria and 6 indicators from stakeholders including oyster farmers, water recreation enthusiasts, local residents and officers in Tainan City. The findings indicate that the scenario C that oyster farming and marine recreation activities use the proportion of the waters area along “Gold Coast” as 3:7 over the conflicting zone is the optimum solution.

Most of the members of the Competent Authority are from the professions such as fisheries or urban planning, which has limited capacity for integrated coastal management, and are urgent on getting into capacity development. Therefore, this paper assesses Taiwan's local government's integrated coastal management capabilities through the competency assessment framework provided by the United Nations Development Program as for bridging the gap between required capacity and existing capacity. The main findings of the study are: in terms of Institutional arrangements, the scores of "incorporating stakeholders", "budgeting, management and execution", and "making policies and strategies" are lower. For leadership level and knowledge level, each item has a higher score than 3.30, which shows that local government personnel mostly agree with the leaders of integrated coastal management and have certain knowledge; and in terms of accountability, only "whether your organization has the ability to establish a strong vision of a responsible mechanism" has a lower score of 3.03, which shows that local government personnel also agree on the level of accountability. This shows that the current management and maintaining the status quo of the Competent Authority lacks of overall planning for future coastal use. The leaders of the existing coastal management authorities should form a cross-disciplinary team to fully plan for the coast for the future. In terms of training, there should be a coastal management authority to conduct central training in the first place, and subsidies to the local government. Therefore, we are able to gradually implement integrated coastal management. Summary In order to promote integrated coastal management and promote the sustainable development of coastal areas, our country announced in February 2015 the implementation of the "Coastal Zone Management Act", the Ministry of Interior Affairs is responsible for the development of the overall coastal management plan, and the local government is responsible for the formulation of the secondary protection plan and the protection plan. However, only a small number of local governments in Taiwan currently have marine affairs specialized units, the rest of the county and city coastal management affairs are mostly promoted by the Urban Development Bureau or the Construction Department. Most of the members of the Competent Authority are from the professions such as fisheries or urban planning, which has limited capacity for integrated coastal management, and are urgent on getting into capacity development. Therefore, the following study assesses Taiwan's local government's integrated coastal management capabilities through the competency assessment framework provided by the United Nations Development Program as for bridging the gap between required capacity and existing capacity. The main findings of the study are: in terms of Institutional arrangements, the scores of "incorporating stakeholders", "budgeting, management and execution", and "making policies and strategies" are lower. For leadership level and knowledge level, each item has a higher score than 3.30, which shows that local government personnel mostly agree with the leaders of integrated coastal management and have certain knowledge; and in terms of accountability, only "whether your organization has the ability to establish a strong vision of a responsible mechanism" has a lower score of 3.03, which shows that local government personnel also agree on the level of accountability. This shows that the current management and maintaining the status quo of the Competent Authority lacks of overall planning for future coastal use. The leaders of the existing coastal management authorities should form a cross-disciplinary team to fully plan for the coast for the future. In terms of training, there should be a coastal management authority to conduct central training in the first place, and subsidies to the local government. Therefore, we are able to gradually implement integrated coastal management.

Taiwan has advantages in the development of offshore wind power, as it has abundant wind energy resources at the seas. The local government has developed a series of measures to promote the development of wind power generation industry. The development of offshore wind farm in Taiwan, however, has to solve the problems that offshore wind farms are overlapping with some traditional fishing grounds and are unable to reach consensus with relevant stakeholders. This paper starts from the great potential of offshore wind power in Taiwan and the active promotion of the government, and analyses the impact and possible opportunities brought by offshore wind farm development to local fisheries, from the perspective of Zhanghua Area, a key area of development of offshore wind farm in Taiwan. This paper proposes that the local government in Taiwan should use marine spatial planning as a tool, through the comprehensive participation of government, developers, fishermen and other bodies, seeking the coexistence and prosperity of offshore wind farm and fisheries. Avoidance, compensation, and feedback, as well as communication and collaboration will be an important strategy to solve the conflicts of multiple use of the sea and to promote the development of marine renewable energy.

Background The study aims to investigate the occurrence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after earthquakes among the elderly. Methods Data from cross-sectional studies focusing on the prevalence of PTSD after earthquakes among the elderly were collected from PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure in December 2019. The search terms included post-traumatic stress disorder, earthquake, and elderly. This study used Review Manager 5.0 to evaluate the impact of the results. In addition, forest plots, sensitivity analysis, and bias analysis were carried out on the included articles. The combined estimate of the risk ratio and the standard deviation of the 95% confidence interval (95% CI) were measurements of the size of the effect. Results There were 4,834 patients included from 10 eligible studies. The sample sizes of PTSD group and non-PTSD group were 1,277 and 3,557, respectively. The meta-analysis showed that the overall occurrence of PTSD after earthquakes among the elderly was 0.25; the occurrence in females was higher than that in males, and the occurrence in the same province indicated little difference (Wenchuan city 0.25 and Ya'an city 0.24). Conclusions After earthquakes, the occurrence of PTSD is higher among the elderly than among other age groups, and higher among the females than among the males, while there is little difference among different areas within the same province. This indicated that prioritized specific psychological interventions should be provided to the aged and the females.

Diabetes mellitus is becoming a major health burden worldwide. Pancreatic β-cell death is a characteristic of type 2 diabetes (T2D), but the underlying mechanisms of pancreatic β-cell death remain unknown. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to identify potential targets in the pancreatic islet of T2D. The GSE20966 dataset was obtained from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database, and differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified by using the GEO2R tool. The Gene Ontology terms and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes Pathway enrichment analysis of DEGs were further assessed using the Database for Annotation, Visualization and Integrated Discovery. Furthermore, protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks were constructed for the up- and downregulated genes using STRING databases and were then visualized with Cytoscape. The body weight, fasting blood glucose (FBG), pancreatic index and biochemistry parameters were measured in db/db mice. Moreover, the morphology of the pancreas was detected by hematoxylin and eosin staining, and hub genes were assessed using reverse transcription-quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) and western blot analysis. In total, 570 DEGs were screened, including 376 upregulated and 194 downregulated genes, which were associated with 'complement activation, classical pathway', 'proteolysis', 'complement activation' and 'pancreatic secretion pathway'. It was found that the body weight, FBG, alanine aminotransferase, aspartate aminotransferase, total cholesterol, triglycerides, blood urea nitrogen, creatinine, fasting serum insulin, glucagon and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels were significantly higher in db/db mice, while high-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels and the pancreatic index were significantly decreased. Furthermore, albumin, interleukin-8, CD44, C-C motif chemokine ligand 2, hepatocyte growth factor, cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator, histone cluster 1 H2B family member n, mitogen-activated protein kinase 11 and neurotrophic receptor tyrosine kinase 2 were identified as hub genes in PPI network. RT-qPCR and western blotting results demonstrated the same expression trend in hub genes as found by the bioinformatics analysis. Therefore, the present study identified a series of hub genes involved in the progression of pancreatic β-cell, which may help to develop effective therapeutic strategy for T2D.

Two new polyketides, neosarphenols A and B (1 and 2, resp.), were isolated from Neosartorya glabra, together with six known polyketides, 3–8, and two meroterpenoids, 9 and 10. The structures of the new compounds were elucidated by comprehensive spectroscopic analysis, especially by HR-ESI-MS and NMR experiments. All compounds were evaluated for their cytotoxic activities against MDA-MB-231, MCF-7, and PANC-1 tumor cell lines; 1 and 6 exhibited selective and moderate cytotoxicities against PANC-1 cell line.

Three new xanthones, namely huperxanthones A–C (1–3, resp.), were obtained from the cultures of Aspergillus versicolor, a fungal endophyte of Huperzia serrata, together with 1,7-dihydroxy-8-(methoxycarbonyl)xanthone-3-carboxylic acid (4), β-diversonolic acid methyl ester (5), 4-hydroxyvertixanthone (6), and sydowinin B (7). The structures of the new compounds were established by detailed NMR and MS analysis, especially by 2D-NMR experiments. All xanthones were evaluated for their effects on α-glucosidase. Compound 4 exhibited a potent inhibitory activity against α-glucosidase with an IC50 value of 0.24 mM (vs. 0.38 mM for acarbose). The rest of the compounds showed weak or no activity against α-glucosidase.

Supplemental Digital Content is available in the text, Background: Epidemiology studies suggested that shift work or night work may be linked to prostate cancer (PCa); the relationship, however, remains controversy. Methods: PubMed, ScienceDirect, and Embase (Ovid) databases were searched before (started from the building of the databases) February 4, 2017 for eligible cohort studies. We pooled the evidence included by a random- or fixed-effect model, according to the heterogeneity. A predefined subgroup analysis was conducted to see the potential discrepancy between groups. Sensitivity analysis was used to test whether our results were stale. Results: Nine cohort studies were eligible for meta-analysis with 2,570,790 male subjects. Our meta-analysis showed that, under the fixed-effect model, the pooled relevant risk (RR) of PCa was 1.05 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.00, 1.11; P = .06; I2 = 24.00%) for men who had ever engaged in night shift work; and under the random-effect model, the pooled RR was 1.08 (0.99, 1.17; P = .08; I2 = 24.00%). Subgroup analysis showed the RR of PCa among males in western countries was 1.05 (95% CI: 0.99, 1.11; P = .09; I2 = 0.00%), while among Asian countries it was 2.45 (95% CI: 1.19, 5.04; P = .02; I2 = 0.00%); and the RR was 1.04 (95% CI: 0.95, 1.14; P = .40; I2 = 29.20%) for the high-quality group compared with 1.21 (95% CI: 1.03, 1.41; P = .02; I2 = 0.00%) for the moderate/low-quality group. Sensitivity analysis showed robust results. Conclusions: Based on the current evidence of cohort studies, we found no obvious association between night shift work and PCa. However, our subgroup analysis suggests that night shift work may increase the risk of PCa in Asian men. Some evidence of a small study effect was observed in this meta-analysis.

Sensor positioning is a fundamental block in various location-dependent applications of wireless sensor networks. In order to improve the positioning accuracy without increasing the complex and cost of sensor nodes, an improve sensor positioning method is proposed for wireless sensor networks. In the method, after receiving the broadcasting message of the neighboring anchor nodes, the sensor nodes calculate a modifying factor of the change of the signal strength. And they modify the distances between themselves and neighboring anchor nodes with the modifying factor. Simulation results show that the proposed method can obtain a high positioning accuracy.

The wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are usually deployed among widely area for environmental monitoring, data collection and other applications. In order to reduce the energy consumption and extend the lifetime of WSNs, as well as receive the data quickly, a source-based data aggregation algorithm (SBDA) for clustering wireless sensor networks is proposed. The method aggregated the data from sensor nodes and marked different transmission priority for the data. Simulation results show that, compared to existing protocols, the proposed method achieves a longer life time, and a lower packet drop ratio.

In this paper, the real-time problem of heat transfer model for continuous casting billets has been converted to an optimization problem of multiple time steps. In the optimization problem, the time steps as the optimal variables were constrained by the numerical stability. Furthermore, the objective function was defined by the relative calculation time, and the calculations were subject to the accuracy constraint determined by the maximum absolute temperature difference from the reference grid system. The optimization problem has been solved by particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm, by introducing a penalty factor for the accuracy constraint. Results and corresponding analysis show that when the penalty factor is big enough, especially when it tends to positive infinity, the optimized time steps are only determined by the accuracy constraint, independent of the penalty factor and also computers.

With the growth of population and rapid development of economy in Taiwan, problems including the reduced number of marine habitats and increased sea pollution have continued to harm marine bio-resources and diversity. Although the Taiwanese government has established several kind of marine protected areas (MPAs) but the management performance is dissatisfactory. Therefore, the management arrangements of MPAs in Taiwan are discussed in this study, based on 3 institutional arrangement elements: governmental organization, legal basis, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). A questionnaire survey was administered to 4 groups (industrial, governmental, scholar, and NGO) to understand how these groups perceive the institutional arrangements of the management of MPAs in Taiwan. Finally, the institutional arrangements of the management of the MPAs discussed. The research findings showed that most survey participants believed that governmental organizations most required improvement, particularly in “monitoring standard” and “financial budget allotment.” Other than “stability,” the participants disapproved of the legal basis in the institutional arrangements of the management of MPAs. Among the 4 participating groups, only NGOs agreed that NGOs should be involved in the institutional arrangements of the management for MPAs in Taiwan. All 4 groups approved the institutional arrangements regarding “participation and cooperation,” and none of the 4 groups approved the institutional arrangements regarding “more responsible behavior.”

The Taiwanese government has actively proposed numerous policies in response to problems encountered by distant-water fisheries. However, an indicator framework for evaluating the performance of distant-water fishery policies does not exist. Therefore, this study established an indicator framework to evaluate the performance of the policies regarding the Taiwanese distant-water fishery. Based on a literature review and current fishery policies, we proposed 61 indicators. Three rounds of questionnaires using the Modified Delphi method were conducted that involved experts from industry, the government, and academia and 43 policy indicators were selected in the ecological, economic, social, and institutional dimensions according to the results. Because of limited data access, 30 indicators were selected as the final indicators. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was used to analyze the weight value of each indicator before the indicators were aggregated. Finally, relevant indicators were used to analyze the performance of distant-water fishery policies. The results indicated that ecological policies performed exceptionally, achieving the policy goals of establishing a biological database, practically developing fishery resources, strengthening observation systems, and conducting international scientific research exchanges. The effects of the economic policies were not significant, indicating that the performance of this policy in promoting the marketing of distant-water fish catches and relevant fishery costs and subsidies require further improvement. Additionally, the effects of the social policies were not significant, suggesting that the performance of this policy in cultivating fishery experts and enhancing fisherman requires strengthening. Finally, the institutional policies achieved the goals of adjusting the structure of the distant-water fishery, expanding international cooperation, and maintaining regulations regarding international waters, thereby indicating that the institutional policy performance was optimal.

Automatic quasi-synchronization device is an important device for power plants, which directly affect the safety and life of the generator as well as energy savings. Adverse devices and network with the same period a manual generator are killers and it has an affect the operation of the power system. There are still a large number of power plants and networks using manual mode, although most plants have automatic synchronizing device, but most are in the disabled state. Technology development path suited to phase out production which is old and bad and replace them with the more advanced new products. Therefore, the development of advanced computer automatic synchronizing device can greatly prevent the occurrence of the closing asynchronous generator. This paper introduces the development status automatic synchronizing device, discusses the hardware design of DSP-based automatic synchronizing device and automatic synchronization process simulation.

Agent oriented software engineering is a novel software paradigm that is considered as an important approach to supporting the development of complex software systems based on agent technology. Many attentions had been paid by researchers in academic; literature and practitioners in industry literature. In the past ten years, great progresses of agent oriented software engineering has been made. However, there are still a great number of problems that should be solved before it moves to industry application and its potentials should be exploited extensively. After investigating the background and characteristics of agent oriented software engineering, the paper presented the state of agent oriented software design engineering

As the rapid development of social informatization, software reliability and security are highly required. Only applying high-quality software products can increase work efficiency. Quality is the life of software. How to enhance the quality of software products and how to use effective quality management method is an urgent need. This paper discuss the key point of software engineering and software quality management, and this is the basis of software quality ensurance model.

In this work, iminodiacetic acid-functionalized poly(glycidyl methacrylate)grafted carbon fibers (CCFs) were prepared by electrochemically mediated atom transfer radical polymerization (eATRP) for nano-nickel recovery from spent electroless nickel (EN) plating baths. The adsorption behaviors of Ni2+ were investigated at CCFs in the spent EN plating baths. The adsorption kinetics perfectly fitted pseudo-second order model with a chemisorption process. The thermodynamic parameters suggested that adsorption was feasible, spontaneous, and endothermic. The adsorption maximum capacity was 0.908 mM g−1 under optimum conditions (pH 5.2, 50 °C and 40 min). The present materials were carefully characterized by the Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, field emission scanning electron microscope, and electrochemical techniques. Experimental results showed that CCFs were successfully prepared, which were efficient adsorbent and support for nano-nickel recovery from the spent EN plating baths.

Due to population growth, rapid economic development and inadequate marine control, the use of ocean and coastal regions in Taiwan has become more frequent and intense in recent years. However, the lack of comprehensive marine and coastal planning in this island nation has led to many conflicts over space and resources and limited its ability to prepare for and respond to environmental hazards, thus threatening national security as well as the safety and property of its citizens. This study proposes a marine zoning scheme for southern Taiwan. The results show that many important habitats in the southern sea areas have not been properly protected due to the extremely small size of the marine protected area. Furthermore, the majority of the conflicts derive from the exclusive fishing right vs. other uses such as marine conservation. Therefore, it is crucial to establish the marine spatial planning (MSP) for the Southern Taiwan to deal with the conflicts of use seas and uncertainties associated with complex, heterogeneous, and dynamic marine system.

Chen, L.-S.; Liu, W.-H., and Yen, H.-L., 2019. Applying the system conservation planning method to the South Penghu Marine National Park marine protected area in Penghu. In: Yu, T.-s. (ed....

Novel specific 16S rDNA-targeted primers were successfully designed and applied to the characterization of endophytic diversity in Dendrobium officinale. Using the popular universal bacterial primers 27f/1492r, the fragments of chloroplast and mitochondrion 16S/18S rDNA were amplified from D. officinale. They shared high nucleotide identity with the chloroplast 16S rDNAs (99-100 %) and with the mitochondrion 18S rDNAs (93-100 %) from various plants, respectively, and both shared 73-86 % identities with the bacterial 16S rDNA sequences in GenBank. The current bacterial universal primers, including 27f/1492r, match well with the chloroplast and mitochondrion 16S/18S rDNAs, which accordingly renders these primers not useful for endophytic diversity analysis. Novel 16S rDNA-targeted primers fM1 (5'-CCGCGTGNRBGAHGAAGGYYYT-3') and rC5 (5'-TAATCCTGTTTGCTCC CCAC-3') were designed, which show good specificity compared to the 16S/18S rDNAs of D. officinale, and perfect universality within bacteria except for Cyanobacteria. The primers fM1/rC5, together with 515f-GC/rC5, which overlaps the whole V4 region of 16S rDNA, were subjected to nested polymerase chain reaction denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (PCR-DGGE) to analyze the diversity of endophytic bacteria in D. officinale from three different sources in China. The results showed diversities in roots and stems of the plants from all three locations. Altogether, 29 bands were identified as bacteria, with the dominant group being Proteobacteria and the dominant genus being Burkholderia, some of which commonly has the function of nitrogen fixation and thus may play potentially important roles in D. officinale. Therefore, the nested PCR-DGGE method based on the novel primers provides a good alternative for investigating the communities and roles of endophytes in D. officinale.

Failure mode judgment software is widely used in the security control system, it always has higher safety critical level than other softwares. Therefore the testing standards for such software must also be improved. In order to solve the problem of the black box testing for such software, this paper establishment the software fault tree based on the software fault analysis, and use the software fault tree as a test case design tree, then design the test case after obtained the minimal cut sets. Meanwhile, this paper establish the test case design tree for the failure mode misjudgment, and use it as the basis in designing the failure mode misjudgment test cases. We developed the test case assisted design tool based on these methods, and successfully use it in the software testing of the escape software.

This study establishes an offshore and coastal fisheries policy indicator system to evaluate the performance of policies to achieve sustainable development in offshore and coastal fisheries. A modified Delphi method is used to establish this system, and the weights of indicators are calculated using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to aggregate indicators. Results show that ecological policies have not achieved their goals because production and catch per unit effort are decreasing. Indicators with respect to management efficiency have increased after the implementation of the buyback and off-fishing programs. However, net returns indicator, which is affected by increasing cost and production value, is stable. Due to inefficient management resulting from insufficient resources, indicators for the number of illegal fishing cases per year and the number of smuggled aquatic production incidents have increased. This shows that requirement for enhanced compliance is necessary. The objective for cultivating talents in fisheries has not been achieved because average wage for fishers is lower than the average civil wage, resulting in an increase in the hiring of foreign fishers.

This study examines the Taiwanese institutional arrangements for ocean and coastal management to explore the development of ocean and coastal management in Taiwan 20 years after the “Rio Declaration on Environment and Development.” First, we employed purposive sampling to distribute questionnaires among industry personnel, government officials and personnel, scholars, and personnel of nongovernment organizations (NGOs) involved in institutional arrangements for ocean and coastal management. We recovered 159 effective copies of the 323 distributed questionnaires, for an effective recovery rate of 49.2%. Subsequently, we used descriptive statistics, analysis of variance (ANOVA), and Scheffe's method for post hoc tests to analyze whether the four groups of participants had differing perspectives or cognition levels of the three dimensions and multiple criteria of the institutional arrangements. The results show that (1) for state organizational arrangements, the four groups all disagreed with the Taiwanese g...

Marine environmental governance (MEG)—incompletely defined, variably understood, evolving in its theory, and growing in practice at international to local scales—is emerging as an increasingly acce...

The continuous casting process is used for the solidification of molten steel into semi-finished shapes. To improve billet quality and the trackability and stability of secondary cooling water during continuous casting, the tundish temperature was introduced into the water distribution for secondary cooling to design the relevant control system, based on the water distribution model, tundish temperature, surface temperature and fuzzy self-adaptive PID. The solidification model calculated the prime water distribution according to procedure parameters. And the other two control strategies adjusted it on line. The control system has been applied on some caster and the effect is obvious, which indicates that the dynamic control system is better than the conventional open-loop system.

The present study aims to investigate the effect of a trans-disciplinary design of curricula, deemed a powerful tool for teaching and research on complex environmental problems, with a goal to help solve the real problems that climate change has brought to the coastal environment in Taiwan. Three major real-life problems in southern Taiwan—declining mullet fisheries, flooding, and coral bleaching—were integrated into four courses. Adopting a qualitative case study method, the researchers investigated the student perceptions of the trans-disciplinary learning experiences, their attitudes toward marine and coastal environmental protection, and their capability of solving the problems related to marine and coastal environments. The researchers employed various methods to analyze the student reflection reports, student self-evaluation forms, and the tape-recorded class meetings. The findings suggest the following: the trans-disciplinary curriculum stands to be an innovative yet indispensable design for coastal management education; such a curriculum benefits students by equipping them with essential knowledge and skills to succeed in future marine conservation; action learning for marine and coastal sustainability serves as the final goal of trans-disciplinary learning project; a trans-disciplinary case study on the design of curricula provides effective knowledge integration of marine and coastal sustainability.

Since the 1960s Taiwan has been a significant player in the global distant water tuna fisheries (DWTF). However, Taiwan's lack of political recognition has led some fisheries businesses to employ less conventional methods including Flags of Convenience (FOCs) in harvesting tuna resources. Meanwhile, Taiwan has been experiencing the painful cost of readjusted DWTF policies. This paper compares the readjusted policies in accordance with international management instruments and tuna compliance requirements (Compliance Agreement and UNFSA) and domestic laws are already undergoing adjustments to take these into account. This again demonstrates Taiwan's unique position in the international community: despite it not being a member of the United Nations, Taiwan spares no effort to ensure the sustainability of marine resources, and does its utmost to fulfill the responsibilities and duties of a Flag State.

The main aim of the research presented in this paper was to investigate ‘how to reduce the bluetooth discovery time in collaborative middleware based collaborative working environment (CWE), to enhance the communications of mobile users. The high level collaborative middleware is a research and technology development (RTD) challenge and one of most desirable medium to long term research outputs for CWEs. This research activity outlines a collaborative middleware module that has been developed on Smartphone technology and enables to reduce the discovery time of a multi-user collaborative working environment via a Bluetooth wireless communications network. To achieve this aim, it started with discussing the key design parameters, and then the design of collaborative middleware module with collaborative functionality; finally it is a comparison test to evaluate the impact of middleware. The result of the evaluation concludes the Bluetooth enabled collaborative middleware can reduce the discovery time in CWE.

Cationic polymerizations of p-methylstyrene (pMS) with H2O/AlCl3/triphenylamine (TPA) or triethylamine (TEA) initiating system were carried out in mixed solvents of n-hexane and dichloromethane at −80 ∼ −50 °C. The effects of TPA or TEA concentration, solvent polarity, polymerization temperature and time on monomer conversion, number-average molecular weight (Mn), molecular weight distribution (MWD, Mw/Mn), stereoregulatity and crystallinity of poly(p-methylstyrene) (PpMS) were investigated. The stereospecific cationic polymerization of p-methylstyrene could be achieved and high molecular weight (Mn = 116,000 ∼ 436,000 g mol−1) polymers with isotactic-rich segments (more than 75% of meso dyad) along macromolecular chains could be successfully synthesized. A possible mechanism for stereospecific cationic polymerization of pMS was proposed. The propagation proceeded via the dominant back-side attack and insertion of monomer from the growing ion paired species. The steric course of propagation was mainly determined by the tightness of the growing ion paired species and steric hindrance in counteranion. The resulting isotactic-rich PpMS could form crystal morphology with 10 ∼ 30 μm in size by flow-induced crystallization under pressure at 180 °C. A possible model for the aligning mechanism was sketched to describe crystallization and to explain the multi-melting peaks and lower glass transition temperatures of PpMS. This is the first example of stereospecific cationic polymerization of p-methylstyrene to get crystallizable polymers with such high molecular weights and isotacticity.

Cationic polymerization of styrene was conducted with 1-chloro-1-phenylethane (SCl)/AlCl 3 /phenyl methyl ether (PME) initiating system in hexane/CH 2 Cl 2 (60/40, v/v) at −80 °C. The kinetics for cationic polymerization of styrene was investigated by in-situ ATR-FTIR spectroscopy. The isotactic-rich polystyrene ( i PS) with m dyad of 81%, mm triad of 63% and mmmm pentad of 50% could be synthesized. Small amounts of crystalline regions in i PS formed after flow-induced crystallization and the crystallinity increased with increasing the molecular weight of i PS. Furthermore, the long-chain branched isotactic-rich polystyrene ( bi PS) with around 12 times higher molecular weight than that of corresponding i PS could be synthesized via cationic polymerization of styrene by introducing a small amount of isoprene (Ip) as a comonomer and branching sites as well. The possible mechanism for long-chain branching formation via intermolecular alkylation reaction by using Ip structural units along polymer chain as branching sites was proposed. The nucleation rate of bi PS could be greatly enhanced with increasing the content of branching sites, leading to an obvious increase in crystallinity. The multi-melting temperatures from 140 °C to 237 °C were observed in DSC curves of these PS products. The tensile strength of commercial atactic polystyrene could be improved remarkably from 41.4 MPa to 55.7 MPa by adding 16.7% of bi PS.