An investigation into early childhood art education in two Shanghai kindergartens

Historically, art practice in Chinese preschools was dominated by giving children a skill-based sense of achievement which was roundly criticized by Western art educators for stifling children`s personal expression and creativity. Chinese policy makers promoted a renewed early childhood art curriculum which draws heavily on conceptual and practical model of art education from abroad while still valuing aspects of past traditions. The objectives outlined in the revised early childhood art curriculum speak not only to an older Chinese emphasis on children`s early acquisition of art skills and the quality of work of art, but also to an overriding new emphasis on creative self-expression, co-constructing art learning, and art appreciation. Changes in the principles of early childhood art education have taken place since 2001, so what has changed in implementation? Using a qualitative, case study methodology, this study set out to address the following research questions: What are common rituals of practice that are typical of art education praxis in two contemporary Shanghai kindergartens? What do teachers reveal as their rationale for their approach to teaching art? How do children`s actions, artworks and speech represent their art learning? In what ways do teachers and children`s responses reflect the way that art education has been represented in current kindergarten policy guidelines and historical reforms? Examining what teacher and children did and said about art revealed commonly shared experiences. It appeared that a predetermined, teacher-directed style of teaching still dominated many preschool art sessions. Influenced by cultural factors, there was a widely shared commitment to the significance of teacher authority in ‘regulating’ children`s art experience, and the idea of skill progression drives the emergence of creative expression. The teaching of practical skills via modeling dominated even though policy shifts indicated to the value of emotional enjoyment. Teachers tried to adjust their tight control over children`s art-making, as evident in their endeavor to develop alternative rituals of practice to enhance children`s engagement with work of art. Nevertheless, changes in ideas, particularly the corresponding practice presented a challenge to teachers who had never seen these multiple perspectives demonstrated in a pragmatic manner. Teachers perhaps were not equipped with sufficient knowledge to effectively combine these opposing messages into effective practice. Constraints such as tight schedules, large class sizes, parents` expectations for observable outcomes of children`s learning, and more importantly, the lack of effective professional development further contributed to the perpetuation of a teacher-directed art practice. Indicated by this study, there were themes warranting further investigation: the tension between Chinese tradition and contrasting Western views of creativity and expressiveness; the constraints in practice that reinforce teacher-directed pedagogy; and effective interventions that support teachers to make significant changes in their own art pedagogical practice in kindergarten art

How can the enforcement of the Basel Convention be improved? : a case study of China and the UK and the role of networks

The rise of globalization and urbanization has led to increased production and emission of hazardous wastes. Developed countries often mitigate their disposal costs by exporting large quantities of these wastes to developing countries, causing significant environmental pollution. International organisations like the United Nations Environment Program and various countries have recognized this issue and have developed environmental laws to combat it. Despite these efforts, enforcement remains weak against the growing threat of pollution. This thesis investigates how to improve the enforcement of laws governing the transboundary movement of hazardous wastes, particularly focusing on the Basel Convention. It examines the role of inter-governmental and inter-institutional networks in achieving effective enforcement. By comparing national legislation and enforcement mechanisms in the UK and China, the study highlights significant differences in how these countries handle environmental law enforcement. The UK, typically a waste-exporting nation, and China, a waste-importing nation, exhibit contrasting enforcement capabilities. China's environmental law enforcement has evolved, yet it still lags behind the UK's more robust systems. The thesis underscores that networks - facilitating the exchange of expertise and resources—are essential in strengthening national and institutional capacities for enforcing laws on hazardous waste movement. Overall, the study concludes that enhancing cooperation through networks can significantly improve the enforcement of environmental laws, reducing the detrimental impact of hazardous waste transboundary movement.The rise of globalization and urbanization has led to increased production and emission of hazardous wastes. Developed countries often mitigate their disposal costs by exporting large quantities of these wastes to developing countries, causing significant environmental pollution. International organisations like the United Nations Environment Program and various countries have recognized this issue and have developed environmental laws to combat it. Despite these efforts, enforcement remains weak against the growing threat of pollution. This thesis investigates how to improve the enforcement of laws governing the transboundary movement of hazardous wastes, particularly focusing on the Basel Convention. It examines the role of inter-governmental and inter-institutional networks in achieving effective enforcement. By comparing national legislation and enforcement mechanisms in the UK and China, the study highlights significant differences in how these countries handle environmental law enforcement. The UK, typically a waste-exporting nation, and China, a waste-importing nation, exhibit contrasting enforcement capabilities. China's environmental law enforcement has evolved, yet it still lags behind the UK's more robust systems. The thesis underscores that networks - facilitating the exchange of expertise and resources—are essential in strengthening national and institutional capacities for enforcing laws on hazardous waste movement. Overall, the study concludes that enhancing cooperation through networks can significantly improve the enforcement of environmental laws, reducing the detrimental impact of hazardous waste transboundary movement

A coarse geometric approach to graph layout problems

We define a range of new coarse geometric invariants based on various graph-theoretic measures of complexity for finite graphs, including: treewidth, pathwidth, cutwidth, search number, topological bandwidth, bandwidth, minimal linear arrangment, sumcut, profile, vertex and edge separation. We prove that, for bounded degree graphs, these invariants can be used to define functions which satisfy a strong monotonicity property, namely they are monotonically non-decreasing with respect to regular maps, and as such have potential applications in coarse geometry and geometric group theory. On the graph-theoretic side, we prove asymptotically optimal upper bounds on the treewidth, pathwidth, cutwidth, search number, topological bandwidth, vertex separation, edge separation, minimal linear arrangement, sumcut and profile for the family of all finite subgraphs of any bounded degree graph whose separation profile is known to be of the form $r^a\log(r)^b$ for some $a>0$. This large class includes the Diestel-Leader graph, all Cayley graphs of non-virtually cyclic polycyclic groups, uniform lattices in almost all connected unimodular Lie groups, and certain hyperbolic groups.Comment: 19 page

Robust Kernel-Based Tracking with Multiple Subtemplates in Vision Guidance System

The mean shift algorithm has achieved considerable success in target tracking due to its simplicity and robustness. However, the lack of spatial information may result in its failure to get high tracking precision. This might be even worse when the target is scale variant and the sequences are gray-levels. This paper presents a novel multiple subtemplates based tracking algorithm for the terminal guidance application. By applying a separate tracker to each subtemplate, it can handle more complicated situations such as rotation, scaling, and partial coverage of the target. The innovations include: (1) an optimal subtemplates selection algorithm is designed, which ensures that the selected subtemplates maximally represent the information of the entire template while having the least mutual redundancy; (2) based on the serial tracking results and the spatial constraint prior to those subtemplates, a Gaussian weighted voting method is proposed to locate the target center; (3) the optimal scale factor is determined by maximizing the voting results among the scale searching layers, which avoids the complicated threshold setting problem. Experiments on some videos with static scenes show that the proposed method greatly improves the tracking accuracy compared to the original mean shift algorithm

Optimization of the preparation process and antioxidant activity analysis of blueberry juice by wet ultrafine grinding process and compound enzymolysis method

Objective: This study aimed to optimize the preparation process of blueberry juice and improve its antioxidant activity. Methods: Blueberry juice was prepared using a wet ultrafine grinding process and compound enzymolysis method. Response surface methodology was used to optimize the process parameters and analyze the antioxidant activity of blueberry juice. Results: There were significant differences in the juice yield and active substance content of blueberry juice under different solid-liquid ratios, crushing times, compound enzyme contents, and enzymatic hydrolysis times, with enzymatic hydrolysis time having the most significant impact on juice yield and anthocyanin content. The optimal process parameters for the wet ultrafine grinding process and compound enzymolysis method are solid-liquid ratio of 1∶1.7 (g/g), pulverization time of 8.00 min, compound enzyme content of 0.15%, and enzymatic hydrolysis time of 127 min. Under the control of these process conditions, the blueberry juice yield was 87.89%, with the contents of anthocyanin, total flavonoid and total phenol were 612.04 mg/L, 2.96 g/L and 3.43 g/L, respectively, and its antioxidant capacity was equivalent to 0.3% vitamin C when the addition amount is 1.6 mL. Conclusion: The wet ultrafine grinding process and compound enzymolysis method can improve the juice yield of blueberry juice, maximize the retention of its active substances, and enhance its antioxidant capacity

An Efficient Approach to Solve the Large-Scale Semidefinite Programming Problems

Solving the large-scale problems with semidefinite programming (SDP) constraints is of great importance in modeling and model reduction of complex system, dynamical system, optimal control, computer vision, and machine learning. However, existing SDP solvers are of large complexities and thus unavailable to deal with large-scale problems. In this paper, we solve SDP using matrix generation, which is an extension of the classical column generation. The exponentiated gradient algorithm is also used to solve the special structure subproblem of matrix generation. The numerical experiments show that our approach is efficient and scales very well with the problem dimension. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm is applied for a clustering problem. The experimental results on real datasets imply that the proposed approach outperforms the traditional interior-point SDP solvers in terms of efficiency and scalability

A Dynamic Simulation of Annular Multiphase Flow during Deep-water Horizontal Well Drilling and the Analysis of Influential Factors

A gas kick simulation model for deep-water horizontal well with diesel-based drilling fluid is presented in this paper. This model is mainly based on the mass, momentum, and energy conservation equations. The unique aspect of this model is the fluid-gas coupling and the change of mud properties after the gas influx from the formation. The simulation results show that the gas in an annulus dissolves first and it then escapes from the drilling fluid due to the gas solution in diesel. Therefore, it is possible to avoid existing gas hydrate by using oil-based drilling fluids. When gas kick occurred, it will be more dangerous, if the well has a longer horizontal section, a greater gas influx from the formation, and smaller displacement. The occurrence and development of overflow will be very quick in the condition of pumping; it will also be more dangerous, when diesel-based drilling fluid is used in the deep-water horizontal wells

Ex vivo pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic of hexahydrocolupulone against Clostridium perfringens in broiler chickens

The economic impact of necrotizing enteritis (NE) resulting from Clostridium perfringens infection has been significant within the broiler industry. This study primarily investigated the antibacterial efficacy of hexahydrocolupulone against C. perfringens, and its pharmacokinetics within the ileal contents of broiler chickens. Additionally, a dosing regimen was developed based on the pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) model specific to broiler chickens. Results of the study indicated that the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of hexahydrocolupulone against C. perfringens ranged from 2 mg/L to 16 mg/L in MH broth. However, in ileal content, the MIC ranged from 8 mg/L to 64 mg/L. The mutation prevention concentration (MPC) in the culture medium was found to be 128 mg/L. After oral administration of hexahydrocolupulone at a single dosage of 10–40 mg/kg bodyweight, the peak concentration (Cmax), maximum concentration time (Tmax), and area under the concentration-time curve (AUC) in ileal content of broiler chickens were 291.42–3519.50 μg/g, 1–1.5 h, and 478.99–3121.41 μg h/g, respectively. By integrating the in vivo PK and ex vivo PD data, the AUC0-24h/MIC values required for achieving bacteriostatic, bactericidal, and bacterial eradication effects were determined to be 36.79, 52.67, and 62.71 h, respectively. A dosage regimen of 32.9 mg/kg at 24 h intervals for a duration of 3 days would yield therapeutic efficacy in broiler chickens against C. perfringens, provided that the MIC below 4 mg/L