China threat? Evidence from the WTO

The rise of China has elicited a voluminous response from scholars, business groups, journalists and beyond.Within this literature, a 'China Threat Theory' has emerged which portrays China as a destabilizing force within global politics and economics. Though originating in Realist accounts, this China Threat Theory has spread across to other approaches, and it increasingly forms the backdrop against which scholarly work positions itself. Our article contributes to this debate by examining China's role within the World Trade Organization (WTO). It assesses the extent to which China has been the disruptive power that it is often claimed to be. In particular, the article examines the change identified in Chinese diplomacy around 2008, and argues that this is attributable to the process of learning and socialization that China had to undergo as a new member, coupled with its elevation to a position of decision-making power. Contrary to the China Threat Theory, we find little to suggest that China has adopted an aggressive system challenging mode of behaviour. © 2013 Kluwer Law International BV, The Netherlands

Canadian Space Agency Space Station Freedom utilization plans

Under the terms of the NASA/CSA Memorandum of Understanding, Canada will contribute the Mobile Servicing System and be entitled to use 3 percent of all Space Station utilization resources and user accommodations over the 30 year life of the Station. Equally importantly Canada, like NASA, can begin to exploit these benefits as soon as the Man-Tended Capability (MTC) phase begins, in early 1997. Canada has been preparing its scientific community to fully utilize the Space Station for the past five years; most specifically by encouraging, and providing funding, in the area of Materials Science and Applications, and in the area of Space Life Sciences. The goal has been to develop potential applications and an experienced and proficient Canadian community able to effectively utilize microgravity environment facilities such as Space Station Freedom. In addition, CSA is currently supporting four facilities; a Laser Test System, a Large Motion Isolation Mount, a Canadian Float Zone Furnace, and a Canadian Protein Crystallization Apparatus. In late April of this year CSA sent out a Solicitation of Interest (SOI) to potential Canadian user from universities, industry, and government. The intent of the SOI was to determine who was interested, and the type of payloads which the community at large intended to propose. The SOI will be followed by the release of an Announcement of Opportunity (AO) following governmental approval of the Long Term Space plan later this year, or early next year. Responses to the AO will be evaluated and prioritized in a fair and impartial payload selection process, within the guidelines set by our international partners and the Canadian Government. Payload selection is relatively simple compared to the development and qualification process. An end-to-end user support program is therefore also being defined. Much of this support will be provided at the new headquarters currently being built in St. Hubert, Quebec. It is recognized that utilizing the Space Station could be expensive for users; costing in many cases millions of dollars to get a payload from conception to retrieval. It is also recognized that some of the potential users cannot or will not invest a lot of money or effort into Space Station utilization, unless there is a perceived significant commercial potential. How best to fund Space Station payloads is under study. Space Station Freedom will provide the first opportunity for Canada to conduct experiments in a long-duration microgravity environment. CSA have been developing and funding potential users for some time, and considerable interest has been shown by the response to our SOI earlier this year. Canada can be one of the two earliest users for the Space Station, along with NASA. We hope to take full advantage of this opportunity

ABC for Climate: Dealing with Expensive Simulators

A single molecule or molecule complex detection method is disclosed in certain aspects, comprising nano- or micro-fluidic channels.U

Report on the Graduate Teaching Program

The Graduate Teaching Program at the ANU, now nearing the end of its second semester of operation, is off to a fine start. Given the relatively short time it has existed and the many different needs it aims to satisfy, it appears to have already achieved significant success. In particular, its emphasis on "practical" rather than merely theoretical approaches to teaching, its insistence on enrolling graduate students concurrently teaching undergraduates, and the pedagogic skills of the Program Co-ordinator, John Clanchy, constitute essential strengths. I enthusiastically support the aims of the program, and admire what has been accomplished so far

Teaching as part of the PhD: the Harvard experience

I would like to start by thanking Dean Ray Spear, Margot Pearson, and John Clanchy for their warm hospitality during this, my first visit to Australia and to the ANU. I'm always aware when I lecture outside the United States that the problems we deal with may not be similar to those you face, and that the solutions we have come up with may not be applicable to conditions elsewhere. But I hope nevertheless that some of what I have to say will find resonance with you at a university where, as at Harvard, Ph.D. students are often simultaneously engaged in teaching and research. Let me introduce my topic by giving you a little background about Harvard University and its graduate school. Then I'll say something about teaching by graduate students and the role of the Derek Bok Center in offering them training. Finally, l would like to raise two broader issues concerning the way graduate students learn and the responsibility the university has for fostering that learning. What is our situation? Harvard University has approximately 6,000 undergraduates - fewer than the ANU - and 11,000 graduate students. That latter number looks high. However, most of those graduate students are in professional schools of law, medicine, and business. Actually, in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the number of graduate Ph.D. students is about 1,800, or a little less than a third the number of undergraduates. Of these 1,800, most will teach by the time they receive their degree. A heavy use of graduate students in the teaching ranks is characteristic of most American research universities. At Harvard, graduate students have taught undergraduates on a regular basis for more than fifty years. In fact the current president of the university, Neil Rudenstine, himself tutored in Renaissance English literature when he was a graduate student in the Harvard English Department in the early 1960s. Teaching Fellows, as tutors are called at Harvard, depend on their teaching for a significant part of their income, just as the university depends on them to provide a skilled but relatively inexpensive source of labor. They perform three principal types of teaching: what you call tutorials and we call sections, attached to a large lecture course; what you call demonstrations and what we call laboratory supervisions; and finally what we call tutorials, on the Oxbridge model. In all these domains, Teaching Fellows make an essential contribution to the teaching life of the university. But although the tradition of graduate student teaching is well established, the practice of training those teachers is far more recent. Formerly, the way graduate students learned to teach, at least at Harvard, was trial and error, sink or swim. There were some disasters early in the semester, as tutors fumbled their way through tutorials and demonstrations. But common wisdom among the faculty held that graduate tutors gained experience by making mistakes. This approach was reinforced by a common assumption that what mattered in teaching was subject mastery. If you understood the material in a course, you could communicate it. Some tutors did in fact develop into good teachers over time; but it was hard on them, and especially hard on their students

Credit Strategies for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises Within a Changing Environment

Access to credit in the changing environment is the primary challenge to survival for many small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) owners. The purpose of this multicase study was to understand how seasoned small business leaders in wholesaling and manufacturing in Northwest Arkansas strategically adapted to obtaining access to credit in an environment of bank mergers and acquisitions, disruptive information technology, federal and state regulations, and globalization. The conceptual framework that grounded this study was adaptive leadership and change management. Although, small business leaders prefer to obtain credit from community banks through relationship financing, leaders of SMEs can adapt to the challenges of the changing environment. The data collection process involved face-to-face, onsite, semistructured interviews of 5 participant SME owners selected via purposive sampling throughout the Northwest Arkansas region. Analysis of the transcripts involved coding data into groups using keyword identification and regrouping the data into themes. Themes that emerged from the study included the importance of formalizing a capital strategy, utilizing alternative forms of financing, and responding and adapting to change. Also, small business owners use financial software to provide technical, financial reports, and pro forma statements with variance analysis. Positive social change from the findings of this study may develop through SMEs\u27 potential to increase job provision thereby benefiting workers\u27 families with better employment opportunities, enhancing public infrastructure through greater tax revenues, and generating a long-term, viable, sustainable future to the region\u27s public education through an increased tax base

Serial analysis of genes expressed in normal human glomerular mesangial cells

Advances in sequencing based genomics like the Human Genome Mapping Project (HGMP) have meant that the majority of the estimated human genes have been at least partially sequenced. The variation in expression of a set of essentially identical genes will provide information on the molecular basis of phenotype. Serial analysis of gene expression (SAGE) is based on the ability to assign an individual transcript to a ten base pair 'tag', and the technology facilitating rapid sampling of such tags. Glomerular mesangial cells (MC) are considered to play a major role in the development of renal disease and in vitro culturing of MC's has become a model system with which to study the molecular mechanisms of glomerular pathology. To this end, a SAGE project was undertaken to identify genes expressed in normal human mesangial cells (NHMC). Primary normal human mesangial cells were cultured for periods up to 96 hrs. A total of 46,219 tags were sampled (14,953 unique tags). Tags were mapped to 20,382 sequences. Of these 79% of tags mapped to characterised cDNAs, 16% tags mapped to ESTs. 5% of tags failed to match any database entry. The most abundant tags mapped to ribosomal genes or genes associated with the cytoskeleton. Represented in the top ten tags were the matricellular genes transgelin (1.2%), SPARC (1%) type IV collagen (0.5%) and fibronectin (0.53%), which support the notion that the MC is a producer and re-modeller of the glomerular extracellular matrix (ECM). The contractile nature of MC was apparent with the high abundance of contractile proteins like myosins and tropomyosins. Also apparent in the transcriptome were lineage specific isoforms of several genes, supporting the myoblastoid linage of MC. Comparing the transcriptomes of the MC to other libraries revealed a high correlation between cells in the same lineage as MC, such as astrocytes, smooth muscle cells and fibroblasts when compared to libraries sampled from heart, liver and various other unrelated cell lines. Understanding gene expression in the mesangial cell facilitates a greater understanding of its role in renal pathology