Chinese Government’s Inability to Use Film – One of the Most Powerful Cultural Tools of Soft Power Expansion – to Achieve Its Soft Power Expansion Goals: Lessons for China to Tackle Its Soft Power-Deficit Problem

Many scholars of Chinese soft power commonly believe that despite the fact that China has been working hard to achieve successful soft power expansion, one of the biggest factors that leads to Chinese soft power deficit or failure of the Chinese government to effectively trump “China threat” is its inability to use its cultural industries as a tool to fulfill its soft power expansion goals. This is a major obstacle to China in achieving its goal of successful Chinese soft power expansion, as it is said that culture is the most traditional and powerful source of soft power expansion. This paper, through its exploration of a specific cultural industry of China – its film industry – and China’s failure to use it successfully as a tool of soft power expansion, will strive to find out what is inducing this failure in order to produce a concrete lesson that China can take away to tackle its soft power deficit issue. This phenomenon in which China is unable to achieve successful soft power expansion through films is an interesting outlier case, for films are viewed by scholars as one of the most “powerful” cultural tools of soft power expansion (Lovric 2016). Through looking at the case studies of Japan and South Korea of how their film industries have granted them successful soft power expansion, and by comparing these cases to the unsuccessful case of China and its film industry, this paper will argue that the barrier to the Chinese government’s soft power expansion achievement through its film industry is not the government intervention in itself, but the fashion in which the CCP intervenes: in the form of censorship that discourages creative content from flourishing in a bottom-up fashion (due to its historic and present view of films as medium of spreading political propaganda). This leads to the overarching argument of this paper that: although cultural industries like films have the capacity to serve as powerful tools of soft power expansion, governments should note that a condition to this success is that cultural industries should be encouraged to develop organically from within the society rather than in a top-down fashion with heavy governmental involvement in the form of censorship

Contributors to Success on the Automotive Service Excellence (ASE) Student Certification Exam

This study sought to identify which elements contribute to success on the Automotive Service Excellence (ASE) Student Certification exam. Students at an eastern U.S. technical college who completed all of their automotive major courses and the ASE Student Certification exam during the spring 2017 semester were selected for the study. The results of this study revealed that there was a direct correlation between performance in Physics, Algebra, and Trigonometry 1 and performance on the ASE Student Certification exam. It was also revealed that students who were required to participate in remedial math and/or remedial reading courses were likely to perform at a lower level than their counterparts on the exam. Students who participated in a secondary automotive Career and Technical Education (CTE) program were also likely to perform at a lower level than their counterparts. The results of this study would be useful to administrators and faculty in postsecondary automotive preparation programs

An Exploration of Experiential Learning Practices Utilized by STEM Educators

Educators within applied STEM disciplines assert they promote the development of new knowledge, skills, and attitudes by integrating experiential education within their instruction. However, few studies have actually investigated this phenomenon. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore how applied STEM instructors of career and technical education define experiential learning and utilize it while teaching safety and health subjects. The results revealed that while almost all educators claimed to utilize experiential learning practices, essential modes of Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle (1984) were underutilized. The results would be useful for professionals interested in learning about authentic experiential education strategies

The role of striatal G alpha(q/11) protein in methamphetamine-induced behavioral sensitization in mice

G alpha(q/11) protein transducer signals from neurotransmitter receptors and has been implicated in several functions of the central nervous system. In this study, the role of G alpha(q/11) protein in methamphetamine (METH)-induced behavioral sensitization was investigated using neurochemical and behavioral approaches. Repeated treatment with METH (2 mg/kg, intraperitoneally) significantly increased behavioral sensitization as well as G alpha(q/11) protein expression and G alpha protein activity in the striata of mice, while a single treatment of METH at the same dose did not affect these parameters. Repeated intrastriatal injections of a G alpha(q/11) inhibitor, [D-Trp7,9,10]-substance P, significantly reduced behavioral sensitization and striatal dopamine (DA) level in response to METH, with no effect on striatal tyrosine hydroxylase expression. These results suggest that G alpha(q/11) protein facilitates METH-induced behavioral sensitization by modulating DA release in the mouse striatum © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserve

C57BL/6N mutation in Cytoplasmic FMRP interacting protein 2 regulates cocaine response.

The inbred mouse C57BL/6J is the reference strain for genome sequence and for most behavioral and physiological phenotypes. However, the International Knockout Mouse Consortium uses an embryonic stem cell line derived from a related C57BL/6N substrain. We found that C57BL/6N has a lower acute and sensitized response to cocaine and methamphetamine. We mapped a single causative locus and identified a nonsynonymous mutation of serine to phenylalanine (S968F) in Cytoplasmic FMRP interacting protein 2 (Cyfip2) as the causative variant. The S968F mutation destabilizes CYFIP2, and deletion of the C57BL/6N mutant allele leads to acute and sensitized cocaine-response phenotypes. We propose that CYFIP2 is a key regulator of cocaine response in mammals and present a framework to use mouse substrains to identify previously unknown genes and alleles regulating behavior. Science 2013 Dec 20; 342(6165):1508-12