The education of the ideal citizens: an ethnographic study of two schools in Hong Kong

Soon after the political handover in 1997, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government had introduced a series of education and curriculum reforms. Such reforms is said to be proceeded in response to teenagers' lack of national identification towards their motherland China, and also to the public discourse addressing the economic challenges and competition in the universal trend of globalization. Although a few studies had unveiled the underlying values of Confucianism, neo- liberalism and market ideology under these objectives, how the new definitions of "ideal citizens" is understood and promoted in the actual school settings, and how those values influence the process of students' identity construction and their vision on their life trajectories, remains unknown.Drawing on the data from an ethnographic research conducted in 2010, this thesis illustrates how the qualities of an "ideal citizen" propagated in the education and curriculum reform would be understood and transformed in two very different schools in Hong Kong. One is a long- established girls' school located in a middle - class district, which has a reputation of providing "all- rounded" education and nurturing future woman -leaders; the other one is being considered as a "academically -low band" school located in remote area, which struggled to survive and started to admit "Non- Chinese speaking" (NCS) students from Pakistan, Nepal and Philippines three years ago in order to solve the problem of insufficient intake of local students. Apart from the half -year participant- observation in the two campuses, in -depth interviews of the 2 school principals, 13 teachers, 19 students and 2 alumni of the two schools have also been conducted. Other school documents including official school magazines, school reports as well as students' publications have also been collected as supporting information.Due to the different historical background, the school management strategy and most of all, the composition of students from very different socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds, the two schools had developed very different ideas and definition of an "ideal citizen ", and thus led to different directions of school policies and expectations on students. Through the examples of the provision of the "Other learning Experience" (OLE) and students' participation patterns in Chapter Five, the different language policies and students' ability in languages in Chapter Six, and the process of the construction of femininities of young girls in Chapter Seven, this study shows how the problematic of class, gender and ethnics domination still exist under the new context of education reform. This study also reveals that while Hong Kong policy - maker claimed that the education reform `bears upon the equity and balance of our society', the socio- economic backgrounds, ethnicity and gender which traditionally being viewed as factors that differentiate education outcomes in sociological studies are completely ignored in the reform

The Meaning Behind Responses And Changes In The IAPT Outcome Measures: Seeking Perspectives Of IAPT Service Users And Clinicians

The conceptual introduction of this thesis reviewed the existing literature and studies of responses to questionnaire measures of mental health and wellbeing. In the conceptual introduction I found that a range of factors can impact on the response process but also highlighted the lack of a unified theory and approach in this area. The empirical paper details a three-phase qualitative study on service users’ and clinicians’ views of the meaning behind responses and changes in questionnaires used in the IAPT setting. I identified a range of personal, interpersonal, contextual and questionnaire factors that influenced questionnaire responses. The study supported the acceptability of the Global Rating of Improvement measure and the utility in using this alongside the symptom measures to capture a holistic sense of wellbeing. Clinicians and service users might hold different understanding of the questionnaire scores, and the study emphasised the importance of taking a collaborative approach to interpret responses and changes of questionnaire scores for them to be clinically meaningful and beneficial. I subsequently proposed a conceptual framework of questionnaire response in a clinical setting to illustrate the findings and guide future research in this area. The critical appraisal includes further thoughts and personal reflections on this study and the wider research topic

Gas hydrate inhibition and its unique thermodynamic behaviors within the Porous clay sediment

The fundamental understanding of gas and water system in geological sediments is necessary for greenhouse gas sequestration and future energy production. Depending on the surrounding environments that water, gas, and other substrate material coexist, several unique phases such as supercritical, dissolved gas, gas oversatu-rated, and hydrate could be formed. Especially, gas hydrates which are composed of water frameworks and several gaseous guest molecules have drawn people’s attention for its application such as methane production with carbon dioxide sequestration. For these reasons, to produce methane from natural gas hydrate and store carbon dioxide by replacement reaction, the thermodynamic behaviors of gas hydrate and its stability have become an important issue. Please download the full abstract below

Pregnancy lipidomic profiles and DNA methylation in newborns from the CHAMACOS cohort.

Lipids play a role in many biological functions and the newly emerging field of lipidomics aims to characterize the varying classes of lipid molecules present in biological specimens. Animal models have shown associations between maternal dietary supplementation with fatty acids during pregnancy and epigenetic changes in their offspring, demonstrating a mechanism through which prenatal environment can affect outcomes in children; however, data on maternal lipid metabolite levels during pregnancy and newborn DNA methylation in humans are sparse. In this study, we assessed the relationship of maternal lipid metabolites measured in the blood from pregnant women with newborn DNA methylation profiles in the Center for the Health Assessment of Mothers and Children of Salinas cohort. Targeted metabolomics was performed by selected reaction monitoring liquid chromatography and triple quadrupole mass spectrometry to measure 92 metabolites in plasma samples of pregnant women at ∼26 weeks gestation. DNA methylation was assessed using the Infinium HumanMethylation 450K BeadChip adjusting for cord blood cell composition. We uncovered numerous false discovery rate significant associations between maternal metabolite levels, particularly phospholipid and lysolipid metabolites, and newborn methylation. The majority of the observed relationships were negative, suggesting that higher lipid metabolites during pregnancy are associated with lower methylation levels at genes related to fetal development. These results further elucidate the complex relationship between early life exposures, maternal lipid metabolites, and infant epigenetic status

Education of ideal citizens: an ethnographic study of two schools in Hong Kong

Soon after the political handover in 1997, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government had introduced a series of education and curriculum reforms. Such reforms is said to be proceeded in response to teenagers' lack of national identification towards their motherland China, and also to the public discourse addressing the economic challenges and competition in the universal trend of globalization. Although a few studies had unveiled the underlying values of Confucianism, neo-liberalism and market ideology under these objectives, how the new definitions of "ideal citizens" is understood and promoted in the actual school settings, and how those values influence the process of students' identity construction and their vision on their life trajectories, remains unknown. Drawing on the data from an ethnographic research conducted in 2010, this thesis illustrates how the qualities of an "ideal citizen" propagated in the education and curriculum reform would be understood and transformed in two very different schools in Hong Kong. One is a long-established girls' school located in a middle-class district, which has a reputation of providing "all-rounded" education and nurturing future woman-leaders; the other one is being considered as a "academically-low band" school located in remote area, which struggled to survive and started to admit "Non-Chinese speaking" (NCS) students from Pakistan, Nepal and Philippines three years ago in order to solve the problem of insufficient intake of local students. Apart from the halfyear participant-observation in the two campuses, in-depth interviews of the 2 school principals, 13 teachers, 19 students and 2 alumni of the two schools have also been conducted. Other school documents including official school magazines, school reports as well as students’ publications have also been collected as supporting information. Due to the different historical background, the school management strategy and most of all, the composition of students from very different socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds, the two schools had developed very different ideas and definition of an "ideal citizen", and thus led to different directions of school policies and expectations on students. Through the examples of the provision of the “Other learning Experience” (OLE) and students’ participation patterns in Chapter Five, the different language policies and students’ ability in languages in Chapter Six, and the process of the construction of femininities of young girls in Chapter Seven, this study shows how the problematic of class, gender and ethnics domination still exist under the new context of education reform. This study also reveals that while Hong Kong policy-maker claimed that the education reform ‘bears upon the equity and balance of our society', the socio-economic backgrounds, ethnicity and gender which traditionally being viewed as factors that differentiate education outcomes in sociological studies are completely ignored in the reform

Gotta catch 'em all or not enough time: Users motivations for playing Pokemon Go (TM) and non-users' reasons for not installing

Urban exergames are played in the real-world environment using built-in mobile phone sensors. The influence of Pokémon Go on physical activity and sitting time has been examined previously, however limited research has explored motivations for using the application. Thus, the aim of this study was to explore Pokémon Go users' motivations for using the application, exusers' reasons for abandoning the game and non-users' reasons for not installing. After institutional ethical approval, the 'Physical Activity and Pokémon Go' questionnaire was developed using QualtricsTM and distributed using social media soon after launch in the United Kingdom (baseline). At baseline a total of 461 participants (n=193 male, n=265 female, n=3 transgender) who were predominantly white (n=420) and did not self-report a disability (n=443) completed the questionnaire. Users' (n=236) were questioned on their motivations for using Pokémon Go and non-users' provided reasons for not installing. At 3 months a total of 127 participants (n=23 users) completed the questionnaire again and all qualitative data was thematically analyzed. The most commonly reported reason for using Pokémon Go was 'to have fun' which was 86% and 83% at baseline and 3 months respectively. The second most frequent reason at baseline was 'friends were using it' (58%) and at 3 months was 'to be outside' (48%). The least common motivation for using Pokémon Go at both baseline and 3 months was 'to meet new people' (8% and 0% respectively). At baseline, social motives and competition were two general themes which encapsulated Pokémon Go users' motivation for using the application. There were two general themes reported by Pokémon Go users' as to why they did not think they would use the application in the future. These were application related factors and factors unrelated to Pokémon Go. Non-users reported a range of reasons for not using Pokémon Go, including lack of interest and a lack of time. Safety concerns and risk of adverse events were reported by both users and non-users. This is the first study to thematically analyze motives for using Pokémon Go in which the findings are: 1) future smartphone applications aiming to increase physical activity must ensure that objectives evolve to maintain initial interest and motivation to engage with applications; 2) game developers must consider the required phone storage and capability which could be a barrier to downloading; and 3) concerns of using the application including the safety of users and those around them

VI-Band Follow-Up Observations of Ultra-Long-Period Cepheid Candidates in M31

The ultra-long period Cepheids (ULPCs) are classical Cepheids with pulsation periods exceeding $\approx 80$ days. The intrinsic brightness of ULPCs are ~1 to ~3 mag brighter than their shorter period counterparts. This makes them attractive in future distance scale work to derive distances beyond the limit set by the shorter period Cepheids. We have initiated a program to search for ULPCs in M31, using the single-band data taken from the Palomar Transient Factory, and identified eight possible candidates. In this work, we presented the VI-band follow-up observations of these eight candidates. Based on our VI-band light curves of these candidates and their locations in the color-magnitude diagram and the Period-Wesenheit diagram, we verify two candidates as being truly ULPCs. The six other candidates are most likely other kinds of long-period variables. With the two confirmed M31 ULPCs, we tested the applicability of ULPCs in distance scale work by deriving the distance modulus of M31. It was found to be $\mu_{M31,ULPC}=24.30\pm0.76$ mag. The large error in the derived distance modulus, together with the large intrinsic dispersion of the Period-Wesenheit (PW) relation and the small number of ULPCs in a given host galaxy, means that the question of the suitability of ULPCs as standard candles is still open. Further work is needed to enlarge the sample of calibrating ULPCs and reduce the intrinsic dispersion of the PW relation before re-considering ULPCs as suitable distance indicators.Comment: 13 pages, with 14 Figures and 4 Tables (one online table). AJ accepte

Efficient Recovery of CO2 from Flue Gas by Clathrate Hydrate Formation in Porous Silica Gels

Thermodynamic measurements and NMR spectroscopic analysis were used to show that it is possible to recover CO2 from flue gas by forming a mixed hydrate that removes CO2 preferentially from CO2/N2 gas mixtures using water dispersed in the pores of silica gel. Kinetic studies with 1H NMR microimaging showed that the dispersed water in the silica gel pore system reacts readily with the gas, thus obviating the need for a stirred reactor and excess water. Hydrate phase equilibria for the ternary CO2-N2-water system in silica gel pores were measured, which show that the three-phase hydrate-water-rich liquid-vapor equilibrium curves were shifted to higher pressures at a specific temperature when the concentration of CO2 in the vapor phase decreased. 13C cross-polarization NMR spectral analysis and direct measurement of the CO2 content in the hydrate phase suggested that the mixed hydrate is structure I at gas compositions of more than 10 mol % CO2, and that the CO2 molecules occupy mainly the more abundant 51262 cages. This makes it possible to achieve concentrations of more than 96 mol % CO2 gas in the product after three cycles of hydrate formation and dissociation. 1H NMR microimaging showed that hydrate yields of better than 85%, based on the amount of water, could be obtained in 1 h when a steady state was reached, although ~90% of this yield was achieved after ~20 min of reaction time.NRC publication: Ye

A multi band study of the optically dark GRB 051028

Observations were made of the optical afterglow of GRB 051028 with the Lulin observatory's 1.0 m telescope and the WIDGET robotic telescope system. R band photometric data points were obtained on 2005 October 28 (UT), or 0.095-0.180 days after the burst. There is a possible plateau in the optical light curve around 0.1 days after the burst; the light curve resembles optically bright afterglows (e.g. GRB 041006, GRB 050319, GRB060605) in shape of the light curve but not in brightness. The brightness of the GRB 051028 afterglow is 3 magnitudes fainter than that of one of the dark events, GRB 020124. Optically dark GRBs have been attributed to dust extinction within the host galaxy or high redshift. However, the spectrum analysis of the X-rays implies that there is no significant absorption by the host galaxy. Furthermore, according to the model theoretical calculation of the Ly$\alpha$ absorption to find the limit of GRB 051028's redshift, the expected $R$ band absorption is not high enough to explain the darkness of the afterglow. While the present results disfavor either the high-redshift hypothesis or the high extinction scenario for optically dark bursts, they are consistent with the possibility that the brightness of the optical afterglow, intrinsically dark.Comment: 5page, 5 figures, 1 table, accepted for publication in PASJ Letter. PASJ styl