Schools as spaces for in/exclusion of young Mainland Chinese students and families in Hong Kong

Around 30,000 children living in Shenzhen, Mainland China cross the border to Hong Kong to attend school every day. This paper focuses on the school as a key meso-level organisation that mediates macro-level policies and micro-level everyday life experiences among these children and their families. We advocate a relational, spatial perspective, conceptualising schools as webs of intersecting physical, social and digital spaces, where differences between the “locals” and “others” are played out, negotiated and (re)produced, and in turn giving rise to specific (and understudied) geographies of in/exclusion. Drawing on our qualitative research, we offer a close reading of three exemplary school spaces: (i) the physical classroom and school grounds, (ii) the digital classroom, and (iii) at the school gate. Our findings demonstrate the complex and at times contradictory ways in which “the school” is a place of both inclusion and exclusion. It is a dynamic and power-traversed space where social differences between the “locals” and the “others” are played out, contested and redefined continuously

Making ways for 'better education': Placing the Shenzhen-Hong Kong mobility industry

Tens of thousands of children living on Mainland China cross the border between Shenzhen and Hong Kong for a ‘better education’ every day. A well-oiled industry is in place to manage, facilitate and control this education mobility field. It involves schools, diverse businesses and non-governmental organisations that, in articulation with the Chinese and Hong Kong states, stimulate and regulate the movement of people, materialities, ideas and practices. Drawing on our fieldwork and media analysis, this paper unpacks the transurban mobility industry to illustrate the role of the various players and how they work in conjunction to facilitate cross-border schooling, especially among the very young children. We map out and visualise with photos the workings of the schools, buses, escorts, tutoring centres, day care and boarding houses. We show how the mobility industry, intersecting with other business networks and mobility systems, links Shenzhen and Hong Kong, taking and making places in these cities, especially in the border region. Our paper illustrates the role of this mobility industry in the making of the political-economy and socio-culture of the border area, which constantly connects, divides and redefines the two cities and regions it bridges. We end with some reflections on the implications of the recent political challenges and COVID-19 pandemic on this cross-border education mobility system

CBS promoter hypermethylation increases the risk of hypertension and stroke

OBJECTIVES: Cystathionine β-synthase is a major enzyme in the metabolism of plasma homocysteine. Hyperhomocysteinemia is positively associated with hypertension and stroke. The present study was performed to examine the possible effects of Cystathionine β-synthase promoter methylation on the development of hypertension and stroke. METHODS: Using quantitative methylation-specific PCR, we determined the Cystathionine β-synthase methylation levels in 218 healthy individuals and 132 and 243 age- and gender-matched stroke and hypertensive patients, respectively. The relative changes in Cystathionine β-synthase promoter methylation were analyzed using the 2- ΔΔCt method. The percent of the methylated reference of Cystathionine β-synthase was used to represent the Cystathionine β-synthase promoter methylation levels. RESULTS: In this study, the Cystathionine β-synthase promoter methylation levels of hypertensive and stroke participants were both higher than that of the healthy individuals (median percentages of the methylated reference were 50.61%, 38.05% and 30.53%, respectively, all p<0.001). Multivariable analysis showed that Cystathionine β-synthase promoter hypermethylation increased the risk of hypertension [odds ratio, OR (95% confidence interval, CI)=1.035 (1.025–1.045)] and stroke [OR (95% CI)=1.015 (1.003–1.028)]. The area under the curve of Cystathionine β-synthase promoter methylation was 0.844 (95% CI: 0.796–0.892) in male patients with hypertension and 0.722 (95% CI: 0.653–0.799) in male patients with stroke. CONCLUSION: Cystathionine β-synthase promoter hypermethylation increases the risk of hypertension and stroke, especially in male patients

Diversity and phylogeny of basidiomycetous yeasts from plant leaves and soil: Proposal of two new orders, three new families, eight new genera and one hundred and seven new species

Funding Information: We thank Prof. Jian-Yun Zhuang for his advice on nomenclatural matters. We thank Dr. Alexander Idnurm for his kindly providing the sequences and informations of strain IAM13481 and his critical comments for this manuscript, Dr. Aleksey Kachalkin for his sharing the physilogical data of strain KBP Y-5548 and Masako Takashima for her sharing the physilogical data of strain TY-217. We also thank Ana Pontes and Cl?udia Carvalho for editing illustrations of Kondoa myxariophila and for ITS sequencing, respectively. This study was supported by grants No. 31570016 from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) and national project on scientific groundwork No. 2014FY210400 from the Ministry of Science and Technology of China. The authors are solely responsible for the content of this work.Nearly 500 basidiomycetous yeast species were accepted in the latest edition of The Yeasts: A Taxonomic Study published in 2011. However, this number presents only the tip of the iceberg of yeast species diversity in nature. Possibly more than 99 % of yeast species, as is true for many groups of fungi, are yet unknown and await discovery. Over the past two decades nearly 200 unidentified isolates were obtained during a series of environmental surveys of yeasts in phyllosphere and soils, mainly from China. Among these isolates, 107 new species were identified based on the phylogenetic analyses of nuclear ribosomal DNA (rDNA) [D1/D2 domains of the large subunit (LSU), the small subunit (SSU), and the internal transcribed spacer region including the 5.8S rDNA (ITS)] and protein-coding genes [both subunits of DNA polymerase II (RPB1 and RPB2), the translation elongation factor 1-α (TEF1) and the mitochondrial gene cytochrome b (CYTB)], and physiological comparisons. Forty-six of these belong to 16 genera in the Tremellomycetes (Agaricomycotina). The other 61 are distributed in 26 genera in the Pucciniomycotina. Here we circumscribe eight new genera, three new families and two new orders based on the multi-locus phylogenetic analyses combined with the clustering optimisation analysis and the predicted similarity thresholds for yeasts and filamentous fungal delimitation at genus and higher ranks. Additionally, as a result of these analyses, three new combinations are proposed and 66 taxa are validated.publishersversionpublishe

Nomenclatural issues concerning cultured yeasts and other fungi: why it is important to avoid unneeded name changes

The unambiguous application of fungal names is important to communicate scientific findings. Names are critical for (clinical) diagnostics, legal compliance, and regulatory controls, such as biosafety, food security, quarantine regulations, and industrial applications. Consequently, the stability of the taxonomic system and the traceability of nomenclatural changes is crucial for a broad range of users and taxonomists. The unambiguous application of names is assured by the preservation of nomenclatural history and the physical organisms representing a name. Fungi are extremely diverse in terms of ecology, lifestyle, and methods of study. Predominantly unicellular fungi known as yeasts are usually investigated as living cultures. Methods to characterize yeasts include physiological (growth) tests and experiments to induce a sexual morph; both methods require viable cultures. Thus, the preservation and availability of viable reference cultures are important, and cultures representing reference material are cited in species descriptions. Historical surveys revealed drawbacks and inconsistencies between past practices and modern requirements as stated in the International Code of Nomenclature for Algae, Fungi, and Plants (ICNafp). Improper typification of yeasts is a common problem, resulting in a large number invalid yeast species names. With this opinion letter, we address the problem that culturable microorganisms, notably some fungi and algae, require specific provisions under the ICNafp. We use yeasts as a prominent example of fungi known from cultures. But viable type material is important not only for yeasts, but also for other cultivable Fungi that are characterized by particular morphological structures (a specific type of spores), growth properties, and secondary metabolites. We summarize potential proposals which, in our opinion, will improve the stability of fungal names, in particular by protecting those names for which the reference material can be traced back to the original isolate

Power System Fault Diagnosis with Quantum Computing and Efficient Gate Decomposition

Power system fault diagnosis is crucial for identifying the location and causes of faults and providing decision-making support for power dispatchers. However, most classical methods suffer from significant time-consuming, memory overhead, and computational complexity issues as the scale of the power system concerned increases. With rapid development of quantum computing technology, the combinatorial optimization method based on quantum computing has shown certain advantages in computational time over existing methods. Given this background, this paper proposes a quantum computing based power system fault diagnosis method with the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA). The proposed method reformulates the fault diagnosis problem as a Hamiltonian by using Ising model, which completely preserves the coupling relationship between faulty components and various operations of protective relays and circuit breakers. Additionally, to enhance problem-solving efficiency under current equipment limitations, the symmetric equivalent decomposition method of multi-z-rotation gate is proposed. Furthermore, the small probability characteristics of power system events is utilized to reduce the number of qubits. Simulation results based on the test system show that the proposed methods can achieve the same optimal results with a faster speed compared with the classical higher-order solver provided by D-Wave

Fusarium and allied fusarioid taxa (FUSA). 1

Seven Fusarium species complexes are treated, namely F. aywerte species complex (FASC) (two species), F. buharicum species complex (FBSC) (five species), F. burgessii species complex (FBURSC) (three species), F. camptoceras species complex (FCAMSC) (three species), F. chlamydosporum species complex (FCSC) (eight species), F. citricola species complex (FCCSC) (five species) and the F. concolor species complex (FCOSC) (four species). New species include Fusicolla elongata from soil (Zimbabwe), and Neocosmospora geoasparagicola from soil associated with Asparagus officinalis (Netherlands). New combinations include Neocosmospora akasia, N. awan, N. drepaniformis, N. duplosperma, N. geoasparagicola, N. mekan, N. papillata, N. variasi and N. warna. Newly validated taxa include Longinectria gen. nov., L. lagenoides, L. verticilliforme, Fusicolla gigas and Fusicolla guangxiensis. Furthermore, Fusarium rosicola is reduced to synonymy under N. brevis. Finally, the genome assemblies of Fusarium secorum (CBS 175.32), Microcera coccophila (CBS 310.34), Rectifusarium robinianum (CBS 430.91), Rugonectria rugulosa (CBS 126565), and Thelonectria blattea (CBS 952.68) are also announced her

Efficient handover mechanism for radio access network slicing by exploiting distributed learning

Network slicing is identified as a fundamental architectural technology for future mobile networks since it can logically separate networks into multiple slices and provide tailored quality of service (QoS). However, the introduction of network slicing into radio access networks (RAN) can greatly increase user handover complexity in cellular networks. Specifically, both physical resource constraints on base stations (BSs) and logical connection constraints on network slices (NSs) should be considered when making a handover decision. Moreover, various service types call for an intelligent handover scheme to guarantee the diversified QoS requirements. As such, in this paper, a multi-agent reinforcement LEarning based Smart handover Scheme, named LESS, is proposed, with the purpose of minimizing handover cost while maintaining user QoS. Due to the large action space introduced by multiple users and the data sparsity caused by user mobility, conventional reinforcement learning algorithms cannot be applied directly. To solve these difficulties, LESS exploits the unique characteristics of slicing in designing two algorithms: 1) LESS-DL, a distributed Q-learning algorithm to make handover decisions with reduced action space but without compromising handover performance; 2) LESS-QVU, a modified Q-value update algorithm which exploits slice traffic similarity to improve the accuracy of Q-value evaluation with limited data. Thus, LESS uses LESS-DL to choose the target BS and NS when a handover occurs, while Q-values are updated by using LESS-QVU. The convergence of LESS is theoretically proved in this paper. Simulation results show that LESS can significantly improve network performance. In more detail, the number of handovers, handover cost and outage probability are reduced by around 50%, 65%, and 45%, respectively, when compared with traditional methods

An Extension of BIM Using AI: a Multi Working-Machines Pathfinding Solution

Multi working-machines pathfinding solution enables more mobile machines simultaneously to work inside of a working site so that the productivity can be expected to increase evolutionary. To date, the potential cooperation conflicts among construction machinery limit the amount of construction machinery investment in a concrete working site. To solve the cooperation problem, civil engineers optimize the working site from a logistic perspective while computer scientists improve pathfinding algorithms’ performance on the given benchmark maps. In the practical implementation of a construction site, it is sensible to solve the problem with a hybrid solution; therefore, in our study, we proposed an algorithm based on a cutting-edge multi-pathfinding algorithm to enable the massive number of machines cooperation and offer the advice to modify the unreasonable part of the working site in the meantime. Using the logistic information from BIM, such as unloading and loading point, we added a pathfinding solution for multi machines to improve the whole construction fleet’s productivity. In the previous study, the experiments were limited to no more than ten participants, and the computational time to gather the solution was not given; thus, we publish our pseudo-code, our tested map, and benchmark our results. Our algorithm’s most extensive feature is that it can quickly replan the path to overcome the emergency on a construction site

Making ways for ‘better education’: Placing the Shenzhen-Hong Kong mobility industry

Tens of thousands of children living on Mainland China cross the border between Shenzhen and Hong Kong for a ‘better education’ every day. A well-oiled industry is in place to manage, facilitate and control this education mobility field. It involves schools, diverse businesses and non-governmental organisations that, in articulation with the Chinese and Hong Kong states, stimulate and regulate the movement of people, materialities, ideas and practices. Drawing on our fieldwork and media analysis, this paper unpacks the transurban mobility industry to illustrate the role of the various players and how they work in conjunction to facilitate cross-border schooling, especially among the very young children. We map out and visualise with photos the workings of the schools, buses, escorts, tutoring centres, day care and boarding houses. We show how the mobility industry, intersecting with other business networks and mobility systems, links Shenzhen and Hong Kong, taking and making places in these cities, especially in the border region. Our paper illustrates the role of this mobility industry in the making of the political-economy and socio-culture of the border area, which constantly connects, divides and redefines the two cities and regions it bridges. We end with some reflections on the implications of the recent political challenges and COVID-19 pandemic on this cross-border education mobility system