Managing the re‐entry process of returnee government scholars in an emerging transition economy–an embeddedness perspective

This paper reports the findings of a study that investigates the factors affecting the re‐entry and readjustment process of returnee government scholars in Vietnam. These returnee scholars were originally sent overseas to study as part of changes introduced by the Vietnamese government to develop its domestic talent pool. Using the perspective of home country embeddedness, we find that career and community embeddedness factors, together with readjustment factors, have an effect on returnee scholars’ career and life satisfaction in their home country. These factors subsequently affected their intention to stay or re‐expatriate. The study contributes to public sector change management theory by examining factors affecting the re‐entry process of returnees within an emerging transition economy. It also adds to the limited studies on understanding and managing the re‐entry processes and state‐led diaspora strategies among returnee government scholars from emerging transition economies and their effectiveness

An Investigation of Working Holiday Experiences: A Means-End Analysis Approach

Once a marginal activity undertaken by backpackers, working holiday tourism has now gradually become accepted by young people. This study extends the means-end approach to examine the factors associated with the tourists’ experiences. The main purpose is to learn more about the role and meaning of the benefits from this type of travelling. By using the “laddering” technique, a total of 60 subjects participated in one-on-one in-depth personal interviews and the interviewing data were then analyzed. These outcomes generally referred to positive consequences or benefits. Of these benefits, those involving being independent in personal finances, escapism, experiencing a different culture, developing a range of skills, and making relationships have received the most prior research attention. The subjects provided information regarding the higher-level meanings related to these intermediated-level benefits, such as self-change and being open-minded. The results also highlighted several key personal values (in particular, accomplishment, self-confidence, unforgettable memories and satisfying one’s curiosity) that appeared to serve as the higher level “ends” of the experiences. The study’s findings have important implications for researchers and practitioners interested in the study of working holiday tourism

Development of Authoring and Agency in Early Childhood Through Play

The recent national focus on universal early childhood education programs has drawn attention to the challenges of organizing learning contexts and practices in which children can thrive as learners and community members. Preparing children for school and improving the quality of early childhood education face limits, however, when the role of play is dismissed or reduced to merely instrumental activity. Framed in Vygotsky’s cultural-historical theory, Bakhtin’s dialogic approach, and Stetsenko’s transformative activist stance, I reframe play as a process of authoring that fuels children’s passion for being agentive actors in the world and their own lives. This approach addresses how children are positioning themselves in trying out different play roles in the world they themselves co-create with others. This process entails the initiation of intentions, agency, and the negotiation of differences, all cumulating in a stance children take in co-authoring their lives and their worlds. This qualitative study was conducted in a naturalistic setting where dimensions of interaction, authoring processes, and positionality were observed and analyzed through an ethnographic lens focused on authoring themes. Data included naturalistic observations, field notes and video-recordings with 14 children ages 3 to 5 engaging in extended episodes of free-play time over a twelve-week period. Four themes emerged from the qualitative analysis of the data: (1) initiating/setting intention in which children began a play scenario and showed the desire and intention to pursue a play role; (2) negotiating/making decision in which children constructed boundaries and negotiated their stance and space with others, that is, how children began to differentiate self-other relationships; (3) acknowledging/showing attention in which children established a standpoint and position collaboratively yet from an individually unique stance; (4) claiming/exercising authority in which children showed an active dialogic understanding of a shared goal, and exercised authority by claiming a space or position. The patterns of interaction among these four themes reveal the complex journey children take in the process of authoring their identity. This study suggests that play creates the space of authoring in which children can exercise agency in co-creating their world and themselves, where they can re-experience and negotiate their possible selves within possible worlds in relation to others. This research contributes to both theoretical and educational re-conceptualizations of play as an important developmental portal through which children develop agency

Re-expatriation inclinations among skilled female self-initiated repatriates in Asia\u27s rapidly emerging markets

Purpose Integrating identity theory and role theory, this study examines the re-expatriation inclinations of highly-skilled professional female self-initiated repatriates (SIRs) in an Asian rapidly emerging market (REM) and the reasons underlying these inclinations. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted a survey on a sample of highly-skilled professional female SIRs in Vietnam (N = 248). Structural equation modelling was used to evaluate the model. Findings The study found that female SIRs\u27 career identity, family identity and social identity have a significant influence on their inclinations to re-expatriate. Attitude towards re-expatriation fully mediates the influence of family identity and career identity on re-expatriation inclinations. Research limitations/implications This research was limited to female SIRs in one REM, namely Vietnam, and may lack generalisability in countries and contexts. Originality/value By delineating the identity-related factors that contribute to skilled female SIRs\u27 inclinations to re-expatriate and recognising gender as a complex, multifaceted social construct, the authors broaden the way expatriation is conceptualised and isolate factors that can inform practices for recruitment and retention of this important sub-set of international talent

Non-Volatile Memory Array Based Quantization- and Noise-Resilient LSTM Neural Networks

In cloud and edge computing models, it is important that compute devices at the edge be as power efficient as possible. Long short-term memory (LSTM) neural networks have been widely used for natural language processing, time series prediction and many other sequential data tasks. Thus, for these applications there is increasing need for low-power accelerators for LSTM model inference at the edge. In order to reduce power dissipation due to data transfers within inference devices, there has been significant interest in accelerating vector-matrix multiplication (VMM) operations using non-volatile memory (NVM) weight arrays. In NVM array-based hardware, reduced bit-widths also significantly increases the power efficiency. In this paper, we focus on the application of quantization-aware training algorithm to LSTM models, and the benefits these models bring in terms of resilience against both quantization error and analog device noise. We have shown that only 4-bit NVM weights and 4-bit ADC/DACs are needed to produce equivalent LSTM network performance as floating-point baseline. Reasonable levels of ADC quantization noise and weight noise can be naturally tolerated within our NVMbased quantized LSTM network. Benchmark analysis of our proposed LSTM accelerator for inference has shown at least 2.4x better computing efficiency and 40x higher area efficiency than traditional digital approaches (GPU, FPGA, and ASIC). Some other novel approaches based on NVM promise to deliver higher computing efficiency (up to 4.7x) but require larger arrays with potential higher error rates.Comment: Published in: 2019 IEEE International Conference on Rebooting Computing (ICRC

Bound states of 3He at the edge of a 4He drop on a cesium surface

We show that small amounts of 3He atoms, added to a 4He drop deposited on a flat cesium surface at zero temperature, populate bound states localized at the contact line. These edge states show up for drops large enough to develop well defined surface and bulk regions together with a contact line, and they are structurally different from the well-known Andreev states that appear at the free surface and at the liquid-solid interface of films. We illustrate the one-body density of 3He in a drop with 1000 4He atoms, and show that for sufficiently large number of impurities, the density profiles spread beyond the edge, coating both the curved drop surface and its flat base and eventually isolating it from the substrate.Comment: 10 pages and 7 figures. Submitted to PR

The role of rr-mode damping in the thermal evolution of neutron stars

The thermal evolution of neutron stars (NSs) is investigated by coupling with the evolution of $\textit{r}$-mode instability that is described by a second order model.The heating effect due to shear viscous damping of the $\textit{r}$-modes enables us to understand the high temperature of two young pulsars (i.e., PSR B0531+21 and RX J0822-4300) in the framework of the simple $npe$ NS model, without superfluidity or exotic particles.Moreover, the light curves predicted by the model within an acceptable parameter regime may probably cover all of the young and middle-aged pulsars in the $\lg T_s^{\infty}-\lg t$ panel, and an artificially strong $p$ superfluidity invoked in some early works is not needed here. Additionally, by considering the radiative viscous damping of the $\textit{r}$-modes, a surprising extra cooling effect is found, which can even exceed the heating effect sometimes although plays an ignorable role in the thermal history.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figure

Sibling recurrence risk ratio analysis of the metabolic syndrome and its components over time

BACKGROUND: The purpose of this study was to estimate both cross-sectional sibling recurrence risk ratio (λ(s)) and lifetime λ(s )for the metabolic syndrome and its individual components over time among sibships in the prospectively followed-up cohorts provided by the Genetic Analysis Workshop 13. Five measures included in the operational criteria of the metabolic syndrome by the Adult Treatment Panel III were examined. A method for estimating sibling recurrence risk with correction for complete ascertainment was used to estimate the numerator, and the prevalence in the whole cohort was used as the denominator of λ(s). RESULTS: Considerable variability in the λ(s )was found in terms of different time-points for the cross-sectional definition, the times of fulfilling the criterion for lifetime definition, and different components. Obesity and hyperglycemia had the highest cross-sectional λ(s )of the five components. Both components also had the largest slopes in the linear trend of the lifetime λ(s). However, the magnitudes of the lifetime λ(s )were similar to that of the mean cross-sectional λ(s), which were <2. The results of nonparametric linkage analysis showed only suggestive evidence of linkage between one marker and lifetime diagnosis of low high-density lipoprotein cholesterol and metabolic syndrome, respectively. CONCLUSION: The λ(s )of the metabolic syndrome and its components varies substantially across time, and the λ(s )of lifetime diagnosis was not necessarily larger than that of a cross-sectional diagnosis. The magnitude of λ(s )does not predict well the maximum LOD score of linkage analysis

Recurrent disturbances and the degradation of hard coral communities in Taiwan

Recurrent disturbances can have a critical effect on the structure and function of coral reef communities. In this study, long-term changes were examined in the hard coral community at Wanlitung, in southern Taiwan, between 1985 and 2010. In this 26 year interval, the reef has experienced repeated disturbances that include six typhoons and two coral-bleaching events. The frequency of disturbance has meant that species susceptible to disturbance, such as those in the genus Acropora and Montipora have almost disappeared from the reef. Indeed, almost all hard coral species have declined in abundance, with the result that total hard coral cover in 2010 (17.7%) was less than half what it was in 1985 (47.5%). In addition, macro-algal cover has increased from 11.3% in 2003 to 28.5% in 2010. The frequency of disturbance combined with possible chronic influence of a growing human population mean that a diverse reef assemblage is unlikely to persist on this reef into the future