Transnationalism and Migration: Chinese Migrants in New Zealand

Transnational migration is an integral part of the modern world. Immigration policies, economic initiatives and international agreements of modern natiion-states have shaped the growth of transnational migration. Nation-states classify migrants into different categories for the purpose of border control; they have favoured some groups of migrants over the others. This is particularly true for New Zealand, which has maintained close connections with the United Kingdom and preferred British migrants to other peoples since the nineteenth century. New Zealand has always emphasized the economic integration of migrants into the society. Against this background, Chinese migrants arrived and developed their transnational networks across the Pacific Ocean for familiar, social and economic reasons. This paper discusses the transformation of New Zealand\u27s immigration policies and its impact on transnational practices of Chinese migrants from the past to the present. It begins with a critical account of the early development of immigration policies in New Zealnd. Then it discusses the transnational networks of Chinese migrants in New Zealand throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The core of this study focuses on the different patterns of Chinese migration and settlement in New Zealand after the immigration reform in the 1980s and the emergence of Chinese transnational networks in the recent decades

Intermolecular 1,3-dipolar cycloadditions of azomethine imines

Dipolar cycloadditions of azomethine imines, formed in situ from aldehydes and N1-alkyl-N2-acylhydrazines, with electron-deficient dipolarophiles produce pyrazolidines: mono-substituted dipolarophiles afford principally 4-substituted pyrazolidines

An alkylation route to carbo- and heteroaromatic amino acids

Amino acids carrying aromatic carbo- and heterocycles in the side chain, such as naphthyl-, biphenyl- and pyridylalanines, have been prepared by alkylation of a glycine enolate with a haloalkyl carbocycle or heterocycle, with enantiomeric excess up to 87% using the ephedrine amide protocol

A catalytic dipolar cycloaddition route to pyrroloimidazoles

A catalytic method involving carbenoid insertion onto dihydroimidazoles is reported for the generation of dihydroimidazolium ylides, and their subsequent diastereoselective cycloaddition to form pyrrolo[1,2-a]imidazole

Isolation of novel para-pentyl phenyl benzoate from Mondia whitei.(Hook.F.) skeels (periplocaceae), its structure, synthesis and neuropharmacological evaluation

Background: Mondia whitei L. (Hook. F.) Skeels (Periplocaceae) is a medicinal plant used locally in managing pain, fever, loss of appetite and as aphrodiasc in the South-Western states of Nigeria. However, the fruit is consumed habitually in the South-Eastern states of Nigeria, leading to speculation that it may possess some central nervous system effect but which has not been scientifically investigated, hence this study.Methodology: Fresh fruits of Mondia whitei were collected and identified by a taxonomist. They were chopped into small pieces and extracted with absolute ethanol. The crude extract was subjected to various chromatographic techniques to isolate a novel compound whose structure was elucidated from the analysis of the crystal data and by extensive use of spectroscopy. The structure was confirmed by synthesis. The compound was subjected to anxiolytic and sedative activity assay. Computational analysis of the receptor binding event of isolated compound at the gamma amino butyric acid A receptor was also evaluated.Results: The structure of the compound was elucidated as para pentyl phenyl benzoate. The neuropharmacological evaluation of the compound indicated significant (p<0.05) depression of the central nervous system. The binding characteristics of the compound to gamma amino butyric acid A receptors appears to be more favorable than those obtained for gamma amino butyric acid, chlorpromazine, benzamidine, and is comparable with the affinity obtained for pentobarbitone and diazepam.Conclusion: These present data provide evidence for the role of para pentyl phenyl benzoate in the habitual consumption of the fruit as well as its central nervous system activities.Keywords: Mondia whitei, Periplocaceae, isolation and synthesis, sedative and anxiolytic effect and Para pentylphenyl benzoat

Characterizing Multi-planet Systems with Classical Secular Theory

Classical secular theory can be a powerful tool to describe the qualitative character of multi-planet systems and offer insight into their histories. The eigenmodes of the secular behavior, rather than current orbital elements, can help identify tidal effects, early planet-planet scattering, and dynamical coupling among the planets, for systems in which mean-motion resonances do not play a role. Although tidal damping can result in aligned major axes after all but one eigenmode have damped away, such alignment may simply be fortuitous. An example of this is 55 Cancri (orbital solution of Fischer et al., 2008) where multiple eigenmodes remain undamped. Various solutions for 55 Cancri are compared, showing differing dynamical groupings, with implications for the coupling of eccentricities and for the partitioning of damping among the planets. Solutions for orbits that include expectations of past tidal evolution with observational data, must take into account which eigenmodes should be damped, rather than expecting particular eccentricities to be near zero. Classical secular theory is only accurate for low eccentricity values, but comparison with other results suggests that it can yield useful qualitative descriptions of behavior even for moderately large eccentricity values, and may have advantages for revealing underlying physical processes and, as large numbers of new systems are discovered, for triage to identify where more comprehensive dynamical studies should have priority.Comment: Published in Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy, 25 pages, 10 figure

Optical Imaging and Spectroscopic Observation of the Galactic Supernova Remnant G85.9-0.6

Optical CCD imaging with H$\alpha$ and [SII] filters and spectroscopic observations of the galactic supernova remnant G85.9-0.6 have been performed for the first time. The CCD image data are taken with the 1.5m Russian-Turkish Telescope (RTT150) at TUBITAK National Observatory (TUG) and spectral data are taken with the Bok 2.3 m telescope on Kitt Peak, AZ. The images are taken with narrow-band interference filters H$\alpha$, [SII] and their continuum. [SII]/H$\alpha$ ratio image is performed. The ratio obtained from [SII]/H$\alpha$ is found to be $\sim$0.42, indicating that the remnant interacts with HII regions. G85.9-0.6 shows diffuse-shell morphology. [SII]$\lambda\lambda 6716/6731$ average flux ratio is calculated from the spectra, and the electron density $N_{e}$ is obtained to be 395 $cm^{-3}$. From [OIII]/H$\beta$ ratio, shock velocity has been estimated, pre-shock density of $n_{c}=14$ $cm^{-3}$, explosion energy of $E=9.2\times10^{50}$ ergs, interstellar extinction of $E(B-V)=0.28$, and neutral hydrogen column density of $N(HI)=1.53\times10^{21}$ $cm^{-2}$ are reported.Comment: 20 pages, 4 tables, 4 figures. Accepted for publication in Astrophysics & Space Scienc

A two-step learning approach for solving full and almost full cold start problems in dyadic prediction

Dyadic prediction methods operate on pairs of objects (dyads), aiming to infer labels for out-of-sample dyads. We consider the full and almost full cold start problem in dyadic prediction, a setting that occurs when both objects in an out-of-sample dyad have not been observed during training, or if one of them has been observed, but very few times. A popular approach for addressing this problem is to train a model that makes predictions based on a pairwise feature representation of the dyads, or, in case of kernel methods, based on a tensor product pairwise kernel. As an alternative to such a kernel approach, we introduce a novel two-step learning algorithm that borrows ideas from the fields of pairwise learning and spectral filtering. We show theoretically that the two-step method is very closely related to the tensor product kernel approach, and experimentally that it yields a slightly better predictive performance. Moreover, unlike existing tensor product kernel methods, the two-step method allows closed-form solutions for training and parameter selection via cross-validation estimates both in the full and almost full cold start settings, making the approach much more efficient and straightforward to implement

Isolation of novel para-pentyl phenyl benzoate from Mondia whitei. (Hook.F) Skeels (Periplocaceae), its structure, synthesis, and neuropharamacological evaluation

Background: Mondia whitei L. (Hook. F.) Skeels (Periplocaceae) is a medicinal plant used locally in managing pain, fever, loss of appetite and as aphrodiasc in the South-Western states of Nigeria. However, the fruit is consumed habitually in the South-Eastern states of Nigeria, leading to speculation that it may possess some central nervous system effect but which has not been scientifically investigated, hence this study. Methodology: Fresh fruits of Mondia whitei were collected and identified by a taxonomist. They were chopped into small pieces and extracted with absolute ethanol. The crude extract was subjected to various chromatographic techniques to isolate a novel compound whose structure was elucidated from the analysis of the crystal data and by extensive use of spectroscopy. The structure was confirmed by synthesis. The compound was subjected to anxiolytic and sedative activity assay. Computational analysis of the receptor binding event of isolated compound at the gamma amino butyric acid A receptor was also evaluated. Results: The structure of the compound was elucidated as para pentyl phenyl benzoate. The neuropharmacological evaluation of the compound indicated significant (p<0.05) depression of the central nervous system. The binding characteristics of the compound to gamma amino butyric acid A receptors appears to be more favorable than those obtained for gamma amino butyric acid, chlorpromazine, benzamidine, and is comparable with the affinity obtained for pentobarbitone and diazepam. Conclusion These present data provide evidence for the role of para pentyl phenyl benzoate in the habitual consumption of the fruit as well as its central nervous system activities

Equilibration processes in the Warm-Hot Intergalactic Medium

The Warm-Hot Intergalactic Medium (WHIM) is thought to contribute about 40-50 % to the baryonic budget at the present evolution stage of the universe. The observed large scale structure is likely to be due to gravitational growth of density fluctuations in the post-inflation era. The evolving cosmic web is governed by non-linear gravitational growth of the initially weak density fluctuations in the dark energy dominated cosmology. Non-linear structure formation, accretion and merging processes, star forming and AGN activity produce gas shocks in the WHIM. Shock waves are converting a fraction of the gravitation power to thermal and non-thermal emission of baryonic/leptonic matter. They provide the most likely way to power the luminous matter in the WHIM. The plasma shocks in the WHIM are expected to be collisionless. Collisionless shocks produce a highly non-equilibrium state with anisotropic temperatures and a large differences in ion and electron temperatures. We discuss the ion and electron heating by the collisionless shocks and then review the plasma processes responsible for the Coulomb equilibration and collisional ionisation equilibrium of oxygen ions in the WHIM. MHD-turbulence produced by the strong collisionless shocks could provide a sizeable non-thermal contribution to the observed Doppler parameter of the UV line spectra of the WHIM.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Space Science Reviews, special issue "Clusters of galaxies: beyond the thermal view", Editor J.S. Kaastra, Chapter 8; work done by an international team at the International Space Science Institute (ISSI), Bern, organised by J.S. Kaastra, A.M. Bykov, S. Schindler & J.A.M. Bleeke