Jinting Wu, Disability Segregation in an Age of Inclusion: Navigating Educational Pathways through Special Education Schools in Contemporary China

Across the globe, the impact of child disability on educational inequality has been relatively neglected. My current research focuses on the rising number of children with disabilities who grow up with stigma and bleak futures in China’s segregated special schools. By focusing on a uniquely marginalized population in a segregated educational setting, this research fills a compelling need to understand the intersection of disability and segregation – a dual marginality that continues to exist globally yet remains under-examined in educational, legal, and disability studies literature to date

From Without to Within: Inner Transformation as a Pedagogy for Social Activism

Change has become the urgency of our time, as the harrowing Anthropocene and ongoing socio-political crises are challenging the future of humanity and our planet. While systemic structural forces are often (and rightfully so) the target to blame, social activism is as much about our own path of inner change as it is about attempting to create a better world externally. This aspect of social activism can easily become misunderstood as inertia, while more traditional forms of resistance aimed at subverting macro-structures are favored. In this essay, I draw from literature on spirituality and consciousness, new biology, quantum sciences, as well as nature studies and education, to shed light on a new form of social activism that calls for each person to recognize our role in co-creating the world, and emphasizes spiritual awakening as the most vital feature of human flourishing. Social change in the external domain will not last unless we have done the inner work to weed out misconceptions, biases, and wrong thinking that led us to contemporary crises in the first place. The essay discussed the elevation of human consciousness through the aid of nature and yogic sciences as the need of the hour, and as the most crucial aspects of social activism in the new era

The Postsecular Turn in Education: Lessons from the Mindfulness Movement and the Revival of Confucian Academies

It is part of a global trend today that new relationships are being forged between religion and society, between spirituality and materiality, giving rise to announcements that we live in a ‘postsecular’ or ‘desecularized’ world. Taking up two educational movements, the mindfulness movement in the West and the revival of Confucian education in China, this paper examines what and how postsecular orientations and sensibilities penetrate educational discourses and practices in different cultural contexts. We compare the two movements to reveal a new quality of hybrid modernization in that they react, in different ways, to certain pathologies that are identified as consequences of secular modernity. Burnout syndrome, the sense of a spiritual void, but also the loss of a spiritual and cultural identity are being perceived as correlating to a one-sided push towards a modernity that emphasizes secular rationalization over mindfulness and Westernization over cultural particularity. The two case studies mark a critical insight on the present condition and limits of secularism and highlights the ongoing negotiations of values and modes of self-cultivation in schools. In an increasingly pluralistic world, the entanglement of the secular, spiritual, religious and wisdom traditions provides the opportunity to rethink education as a creative realm and an impossible possibility to reengage the minds and lives of those in the hybrid pedagogical time.Se trata de la versión preprint del artículo. Se puede consultar la versión final en https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-016-9513-

Good Intentions Gone Awry: Education Policy and Paradox of Consequences in Rural Ethnic China

This paper provides a situated critique of how evidence-based, “best practices”-oriented research can result in unanticipated consequences and perpetuate a self-fulfilling prophesy at the expense of deeper understanding of educational problems. I structure the paper along two analytical steps. First, I explore the sociology of unintended consequences through German Sociologist Max Weber and his contemporary critic Mohamed Cherkaoui. Second, I draw from an ethnographic study in rural ethnic communities of Southwest China to illustrate how best intentions at providing free compulsory education go awry, and how the controversial policy both fails and succeeds in fabricating its intended outcome. The ethnographic evidence highlights the unintended consequences of not only a state policy but also the fraught ways in which it is linked to other social mechanisms to produce a “successful failure.” The paper argues that by focusing on “best practices” and “what works” we often neglect the ways in which questions are posed and the ways in which assemblages of forces generate the topic or phenomenon in the first place. A research design that takes into account unintended consequences is necessarily emergent, interpretive, and open-ended

Genome-wide characterization of intergenic polyadenylation sites redefines gene spaces in Arabidopsis thaliana

Background:Messenger RNA polyadenylation is an essential step for the maturation of most eukaryotic mRNAs.Accurate determination of poly(A) sites helps define the 3’-ends of genes, which is important for genome annotation and gene function research. Genomic studies have revealed the presence of poly(A) sites in intergenic regions, which may be attributed to 3’-UTR extensions and novel transcript units. However, there is no systematically evaluation of intergenic poly(A) sites in plants. Results:Approximately 16,000 intergenic poly(A) site clusters (IPAC) in Arabidopsis thaliana were discovered and evaluated at the whole genome level. Based on the distributions of distance from IPACs to nearby sense and antisense genes, these IPACs were classified into three categories. About 70 % of them were from previously unannotated 3’-UTR extensions to known genes, which would extend 6985 transcripts of TAIR10 genome annotation beyond their 3’-ends, with a mean extension of 134 nucleotides. 1317 IPACs were originated from novel intergenic transcripts, 37 of which were likely to be associated with protein coding transcripts. 2957 IPACs corresponded to antisense transcripts for genes on the reverse strand, which might affect 2265 protein coding genes and 39 non-protein-coding genes, including long non-coding RNA genes. The rest of IPACs could be originated from transcriptional read-through or gene mis-annotations. Conclusions:The identified IPACs corresponding to novel transcripts, 3’-UTR extensions, and antisense transcription should be incorporated into current Arabidopsis genome annotation. Comprehensive characterization of IPACs from this study provides insights of alternative polyadenylation and antisense transcription in plants.Funding supports were in part from US National Science Foundation (No. 1541737 to QQL), the Hundred Talent Plans of Fujian Province and Xiamen City (to QQL). This project was also funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 61201358 and 61174161), the Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Province of China (No. 2012J01154), and the specialized Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China (Nos. 20120121120038 and 20130121130004), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities in China (Xiamen University: Nos. 2013121025, 201412G009, and 2014X0234)

Effects of seawater acidification and solar ultraviolet radiation on photosynthetic performances and biochemical compositions of Rhodosorus sp. SCSIO-45730

Ocean acidification (OA) caused by rising atmospheric CO2 concentration and solar ultraviolet radiation (UVR) resulting from ozone depletion may affect marine organisms, but little is known regarding how unicellular Rhodosorus sp. SCSIO-45730, an excellent species resource containing various biological-active compounds, responds to OA and UVR. Therefore, we conducted a factorial coupling experiment to unravel the combined effects of OA and UVR on the growth, photosynthetic performances, biochemical compositions and enzyme activities of Rhodosorus sp. SCSIO-45730, which were exposed to two levels of CO2 (LC, 400 μatm, current CO2 level; HC, 1000 μatm, future CO2 level) and three levels of UVR (photosynthetically active radiation (PAR), PAR plus UVA, PAR plus UVB) treatments in all combinations, respectively. Compared to LC treatment, HC stimulated the relative growth rate (RGR) due to higher optimum and effective quantum yields, photosynthetic efficiency, maximum electron transport rates and photosynthetic pigments contents regardless of UVR. However, the presence of UVA had no significant effect but UVB markedly reduced the RGR. Additionally, higher carbohydrate content and lower protein and lipid contents were observed when Rhodosorus sp. SCSIO-45730 was cultured under HC due to the ample HCO3− applications and active stimulation of metabolic enzymes of carbonic anhydrase and nitrate reductase, thus resulting in higher TC/TN. OA also triggered the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS), and the increase of ROS coincided approximately with superoxide dismutase and catalase activities, as well as phenols contents. However, UVR induced photochemical inhibition and damaged macromolecules, making algal cells need more energy for self-protection. Generally, these results revealed that OA counteracted UVR-related inhibition on Rhodosorus sp. SCSIO-45730, adding our understanding of the red algae responding to future global climate changes

Flexible/Bendable Acoustofluidics Based on Thin Film Surface Acoustic Waves on Thin Aluminum Sheets

In this paper, we explore the acoustofluidic performance of zinc oxide (ZnO) thin-film surface acoustic wave (SAW) devices fabricated on flexible and bendable thin aluminum (Al) foils/sheets with thicknesses from 50 to 1500 μm. Directional transport of fluids along these flexible/bendable surfaces offers potential applications for the next generation of microfluidic systems, wearable biosensors and soft robotic control. Theoretical calculations indicate that bending under strain levels up to 3000 με causes a small frequency shift and amplitude change (<0.3%) without degrading the acoustofluidic performance. Through systematic investigation of the effects of the Al sheet thickness on the microfluidic actuation performance for the bent devices, we identify the optimum thickness range to both maintain efficient microfluidic actuation and enable significant deformation of the substrate, providing a guide to design such devices. Finally, we demonstrate efficient liquid transportation across a wide range of substrate geometries including inclined, curved, vertical, inverted, and lateral positioned surfaces using a 200 μm thick Al sheet SAW device