No Substitute for Experience

The twenty-sixth of December 2012 marked an important date in Chinese military history—the fourth anniversary of China\u27s furthest and most extensive naval operations to date, the ongoing antipiracy deployments in the Gulf of Aden. In the first-ever simultaneous three-fleet public display, China\u27s North Sea Fleet, East Sea Fleet, and South Sea Fleet all held open day activities. The guided-missile destroyers Qingdao, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen and guided-missile frigate Zhoushan, together with their associated helicopters and personnel, were visited by more than eight thousand people from all sectors of the society at the port cities after which they are named.https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cmsi-red-books/1009/thumbnail.jp

China’s Blue Soft Power

On 3 September 2014, almost six years since Chinese warships first entered the Gulf of Aden to fulfill antipiracy duties, China Central Television (CCTV)–8 aired the first episode of “In the Gulf of Aden” (舰在亚丁湾). The multidozen-episode program, designed to “ignite raging patriotism” (燃起熊 熊爱国心), given evening prime-time status, and attracting a popular audience with a star-studded cast, explores in dramatic fashion Beijing’s experience fighting modern piracy

Tracking Under-Reported Financial Flows: China’s Development Finance and the Aid-Conflict Nexus Revisited

China’s development finance is sizable but reliable information is scarce. To address critical information gaps, we introduce a new open source methodology for collecting project-level development finance information and create a database of Chinese official finance to Africa from 2000-2011. Our initial data collection efforts found that China’s official finance commitments amount to approximately US$ 73 billion over the 2000-2011 period. We provide details on 1,511 non-investment projects to 50 African countries. We use this database to extend previous research on the aid-conflict nexus. Our results show that sudden withdrawals of “traditional” aid are only more likely to induce conflict in the absence of sufficient alternative funding from China. More broadly, these findings highlight the importance of gathering better data on the development activities of China and other non-traditional donors to better understand the link between foreign aid and conflict

Apples and Dragon Fruits: The Determinants of Aid and Other Forms of State Financing from China to Africa

Chinese “aid” is a lightning rod for criticism. Policymakers, journalists, and public intellectuals claim that Beijing is using its largesse to cement alliances with political leaders, secure access to natural resources, and create exclusive commercial opportunities for Chinese firms—all at the expense of citizens living in developing countries. We argue that much of the controversy about Chinese “aid” stems from a failure to distinguish between China’s Official Development Assistance (ODA) and more commercially-oriented sources and types of state financing. Using a new database on China’s official financing commitments to Africa from 2000-2013, we find the allocation of Chinese ODA to be driven primarily by foreign policy considerations, while economic interests better explain the distribution of less concessional flows. These results highlight the need for better measures of an increasingly diverse set of non-Western financial activities

Isolation and Culture of Larval Cells from C. elegans

Cell culture is an essential tool to study cell function. In C. elegans the ability to isolate and culture cells has been limited to embryonically derived cells. However, cells or blastomeres isolated from mixed stage embryos terminally differentiate within 24 hours of culture, thus precluding post-embryonic stage cell culture. We have developed an efficient and technically simple method for large-scale isolation and primary culture of larval-stage cells. We have optimized the treatment to maximize cell number and minimize cell death for each of the four larval stages. We obtained up to 7.8×104 cells per microliter of packed larvae, and up to 97% of adherent cells isolated by this method were viable for at least 16 hours. Cultured larval cells showed stage-specific increases in both cell size and multinuclearity and expressed lineage- and cell type-specific reporters. The majority (81%) of larval cells isolated by our method were muscle cells that exhibited stage-specific phenotypes. L1 muscle cells developed 1 to 2 wide cytoplasmic processes, while L4 muscle cells developed 4 to 14 processes of various thicknesses. L4 muscle cells developed bands of myosin heavy chain A thick filaments at the cell center and spontaneously contracted ex vivo. Neurons constituted less than 10% of the isolated cells and the majority of neurons developed one or more long, microtubule-rich protrusions that terminated in actin-rich growth cones. In addition to cells such as muscle and neuron that are high abundance in vivo, we were also able to isolate M-lineage cells that constitute less than 0.2% of cells in vivo. Our novel method of cell isolation extends C. elegans cell culture to larval developmental stages, and allows use of the wealth of cell culture tools, such as cell sorting, electrophysiology, co-culture, and high-resolution imaging of subcellular dynamics, in investigation of post-embryonic development and physiology

The TRIUMF Nuclear Structure Program and TIGRESS

The Isotope Separator and Accelerator (ISAC) facility located at the TRIUMF laboratory in Vancouver, Canada, is one of the world's most advanced ISOL-type radioactive ion beam facilities. An extensive {gamma}-ray spectroscopy program at ISAC is centered around two major research facilities: (1) the 8{pi} {gamma}-ray spectrometer for {beta}-delayed {gamma}-ray spectroscopy experiments with the low-energy beams from ISAC-I, and (2) the next-generation TRIUMF-ISAC Gamma-Ray Escape Suppressed Spectrometer (TIGRESS) for in-beam experiments with the accelerated radioactive ion beams. An overview of these facilities and recent results from the diverse program of nuclear structure and fundamental interaction studies they support is presented