what can we learn from the provision of childcare in rural China?

This paper explores whether the co-production model is more effective than the government-centric model in the provision of rural child welfare services in rural China. What are the processes and patterns of co-production in service provision? The paper begins by introducing the transition in the logic of service provision in the public sector from New Public Management to New Governance Theory. Then it elucidates the state of rural public service provision in China, especially child-related services. It then introduces a case that employs a co-production model in delivering child welfare services in rural China. By comparing the different intervention effects of the co-production versus the government-centric model, the paper argues that the co-production model is a dynamic way to deliver public services

Dependence of the Ice Water Content and Snowfall Rate on Temperature, Globally: Comparison of In-Situ Observations, Satellite Active Remote Sensing Retrievals and Global Climate Model Simulations

Cloud ice microphysical properties measured or estimated from in-situ aircraft observations are compared to global climate models and satellite active remote sensor retrievals. Two large datasets, with direct measurements of the ice water content (IWC) and encompassing data from polar to tropical regions, are combined to yield a large database of in-situ measurements. The intention of this study is to identify strengths and weaknesses of the various methods used to derive ice cloud microphysical properties. The in-situ data are measured with total water hygrometers, condensed water probes, and particle spectrometers. Data from polar, midlatitude, and tropical locations are included. The satellite data are retrieved from CloudSat/CALIPSO (2C-ICE, 2C-SNOWPROFILE), and Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Level2A. Although the 2CICE retrieval is for IWC, we developed a method to use the IWC to get snowfall rates (S). The GPM retrievals are for snowfall rate only. Model results are derived using the Community Atmosphere Model (CAM5) and the UK Met Office Unified Model (GA7). The retrievals and model results are related to the in-situ observations using temperature and partitioned by geographical region. Specific variables compared between the in-situ observations, models, and retrievals are the IWC and S. The retrieved IWCs are reasonably close in value to the in-situ observations, whereas the models' values are relatively low by comparison. Differences between the in-situ IWCs and those from the other methods are compounded when S is considered, leading to model snowfall rates that are considerably lower than derived from the in-situ data. Anomalous trends with temperature are noted in some instances

Postpartum depression in mothers and fathers: a structural equation model

open access articleBackground Post-partum depression (PPD) is a growing mental health concern worldwide. There is little evidence in the Chinese context of the relationship between paternal PPD and maternal PPD. Given the growing global concerns this relationship requires further exploration. Methods A survey was conducted with 950 total couples from March 2017 to December 2018. The study was conducted using a standardized questionnaire that included basic demographic information, information on the relationship between the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, marital satisfaction (both maternal and paternal), and PPD symptoms. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) analysis was used to explore the underlying mechanism for PPD symptoms in mothers and fathers. Results In 4.4% of the couples both the wife and the husband showed depressive symptoms. Maternal marital satisfaction showed a significant mediating effect on paternal PPD (B = -0.114, p < 0.01), and there was a direct effect of maternal PPD on paternal PPD (B = 0.31, p < 0.001). Conclusions This is the first study to investigate the possible correlation between maternal PPD, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationship satisfaction, maternal marital satisfaction, paternal marital satisfaction, and paternal PPD. It is important for future PPD interventions to target both maternal and paternal mental health, as well as the mechanisms identified that can lead to PPD

Modality- and task-specific brain regions involved in Chinese lexical processing

fMRI was used to examine lexical processing in native adult Chinese speakers. A 2 task (semantics and phonology) x 2 modality (visual and auditory) within-subject design was adopted. The semantic task involved a meaning association judgment and the phonological task involved a rhyming judgment to two sequentially presented words. The overall effect across tasks and modalities was used to identify seven ROIs, including the left fusiform gyrus (FG), the left superior temporal gyrus (STG), the left ventral inferior frontal gyrus (VIFG), the left middle temporal gyrus (MTG), the left dorsal inferior frontal gyrus (DIFG), the left inferior parietal lobule (IPL), and the left middle frontal gyrus (MFG). ROI analyses revealed two modality-specific areas, FG for visual and STG for auditory, and three task-specific areas, IPL and DIFG for phonology and VIFG for semantics. Greater DIFG activation was associated with conflicting tonal information between words for the auditory rhyming task, suggesting this region&#39;s role in strategic phonological processing, and greater VIFG activation was correlated with lower association between words for both the auditory and the visual meaning task, suggesting this region&#39;s role in retrieval and selection of semantic representations. The modality- and task-specific effects in Chinese revealed by this study are similar to those found in alphabetical languages. Unlike English, we found that MFG was both modality- and task-specific, suggesting that MFG may be responsible for the visuospatial analysis of Chinese characters and orthography-to-phonology integration at a syllabic level

Baichuan 2: Open Large-scale Language Models

Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable performance on a variety of natural language tasks based on just a few examples of natural language instructions, reducing the need for extensive feature engineering. However, most powerful LLMs are closed-source or limited in their capability for languages other than English. In this technical report, we present Baichuan 2, a series of large-scale multilingual language models containing 7 billion and 13 billion parameters, trained from scratch, on 2.6 trillion tokens. Baichuan 2 matches or outperforms other open-source models of similar size on public benchmarks like MMLU, CMMLU, GSM8K, and HumanEval. Furthermore, Baichuan 2 excels in vertical domains such as medicine and law. We will release all pre-training model checkpoints to benefit the research community in better understanding the training dynamics of Baichuan 2.Comment: Baichuan 2 technical report. Github: https://github.com/baichuan-inc/Baichuan