Modernisation, Confucianism and Gender Justice in Rural and Urban China:The Lived Experience of Women with Children

Several profound demographic and socioeconomic transitions that have taken place since the 1980s have reshaped the everyday lives of women with children in contemporary China, as has the interaction between the Chinese modernisation process and transforming Confucianism. This thesis aims to investigate and compare the implications of these shifting social, institutional, and economic dynamics on women using a multiscalar and mixed-methods approach. The methods include the descriptive data analysis of national datasets and the thematic analysis of policy documents, which explore the breadth of socioeconomic transitions. A qualitative case study approach is also used to collect empirical data from a city and a village in Guangdong province. Empirical data are collected via sixty-nine semi-structured interviews with 13 stakeholders and 56 individual informants, which captures the complex and multidimensional experiences of women with children. As the foundation of this study, the human dignity approach is applied and developed to explore five interlinked dimensions of these lived experiences: physical and psychological well-being, care relations, social integration, self-determination, and equal value.The findings of secondary data suggest that Chinese families have become structurally independent under the transformation to a state-led market economy and its interaction with family planning policies. However, the lived experiences show that receiving support from older parents (in-laws) is still central to women’s coping strategies of the women to maintain care relationships, paid work, and further career development. The empirical evidence also reveals the rationale behind the different strategies, bringing to the fore how rural and urban women’s heterogeneous experiences are reconfigured through the interaction of the social stratifications of gender, place, and generation (age). Furthermore, this thesis further elaborates on the impact of continuities and changes in the labour market and family practises in relation to women’s self-determination in couple finance, household decision making, and parenting. Through rich empirical and theoretical analysis, this thesis has the potential to inform policy practises to address both institutional and spatial barriers facing women with children, promote the equal value of paid and unpaid care work, and meet women’s changing needs in different dimensions of everyday life.<br/

Circadian Clock Gene Expression and Drug/Toxicant Interactions as Novel Targets of Chronopharmacology and Chronotoxicology

Circadian rhythms are driven and maintained by circadian clock gene networks in both brain and peripheral organs. In the liver, circadian rhythms produce oscillation in drug Phase-I, Phase-II, and Phase-III (transporters) metabolism genes, which in turn would affect drug disposition and detoxication, resulting in diurnal variations of efficacy and toxicity when drugs are given at different times of the day. On the other hand, drugs and toxicants could affect circadian clock gene expression to produce biological effects leading to therapeutic or toxic outcomes. This chapter reviewed the relevant literature and a dozen of publications from our work, discussed the interactions of circadian clock genes with drugs and/or toxicants to better understand the importance of circadian clock gene expression as novel targets in Pharmacology and Toxicology

A high-gain-based global finite-time nonlinear observer

In this paper, a global finite-time observer is designed for a class of nonlinear systems with bounded rational powers imposed on the incremental nonlinearities. Compared with the previous global finite-time results, the new observer designed here is with a new gain update law. Moreover, an example is given to show that the proposed observer can reduce the time of the observation error convergence.National Science Foundation of China (Nos. 61074091, 61174216 and 51177088), the National Science Foundation of Hubei Province (2010CDB10807, 2011CDB187) and the Scientific Innovation Team Project of Hubei Provincial Department of Education (T200809, T201103).http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tcon20hb201

Dosimetric comparison of intensity modulated radiotherapy and three-dimensional conformal radiotherapy in patients with gynecologic malignancies: a systematic review and meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: To quantitatively evaluate the safety and related-toxicities of intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) dose–volume histograms (DVHs), as compared to the conventional three-dimensional conformal radiotherapy (3D-CRT), in gynecologic malignancy patients by systematic review of the related publications and meta-analysis. METHODS: Relevant articles were retrieved from the PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane Library databases up to August 2011. Two independent reviewers assessed the included studies and extracted data. Pooled average percent irradiated volumes of adjacent non-cancerous tissues were calculated and compared between IMRT and 3D-CRT for a range of common radiation doses (5-45Gy). RESULTS: In total, 13 articles comprised of 222 IMRT-treated and 233 3D-CRT-treated patients were included. For rectum receiving doses ≥30 Gy, the IMRT pooled average irradiated volumes were less than those from 3D-CRT by 26.40% (30 Gy, p = 0.004), 27.00% (35 Gy, p = 0.040), 37.30% (40 Gy, p = 0.006), and 39.50% (45 Gy, p = 0.002). Reduction in irradiated small bowel was also observed for IMRT-delivered 40 Gy and 45 Gy (by 17.80% (p = 0.043) and 17.30% (p = 0.012), respectively), as compared with 3D-CRT. However, there were no significant differences in the IMRT and 3D-CRT pooled average percent volumes of irradiated small bowel or rectum from lower doses, or in the bladder or bone marrow from any of the doses. IMRT-treated patients did not experience more severe acute or chronic toxicities than 3D-CRT-treated patients. CONCLUSIONS: IMRT-delivered high radiation dose produced significantly less average percent volumes of irradiated rectum and small bowel than 3D-CRT, but did not differentially affect the average percent volumes in the bladder and bone marrow

Global finite-time observers for a class of nonlinear systems

Global finite-time observers are designed for a class of nonlinear systems with bounded varying rational powers imposed on the increments of the nonlinearities whose solutions exist and are unique for all positive time. The global finite-time observers designed in this paper are with two homogeneous terms. The global finite-time convergence of the observation error system is achieved by combining global asymptotic stability and local finite-time stability.Yanjun Shen’s work was partially supported by the National Science Foundation of China (No. 61074091, 61174216, 51177088), the National Science Foundation of Hubei Province (2010CDB10807, 2011CDB187), the Scientific Innovation Team Project of Hubei Provincial Department of Education (T200809, T201103).http:/www.kybernetika.czam201

Ambient processed (110) preferred MAPbI3thin films for highly efficient perovskite solar cells

Organic-inorganic hybrid perovskites have attracted intensive attention due to their exceptional optoelectronic properties. With a massive leap of efficiency from 3.8% to 25.2% in a decade, perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have been considered the most promising next-generation photovoltaic technology. Recently, the methylamine (MA)-gas-mediated approach has been widely studied for preparing precursor solutions to deposit large scale perovskite thin films for PSCs. In this article, high-quality MAPbI3films were spin-coated using a MA-gas-mediated perovskite precursor. The deposited MAPbI3films showed larger crystal grains, lower surface roughness, and a preferred (110) crystal orientation compared to the films deposited by the Lewis adduct method. Planar PSC devices fabricated using the MA-gas-mediated precursor showed a high efficiency of 19.28% and a higher average efficiency than the devices fabricated by the Lewis adduct method

INSTITUTIONAL ENVIRONMENT AND INSTITUTIONAL LOGICS IN CONSTRUCTION SAFETY MANAGEMENT: THE CASE OF CLIMATIC HEAT STRESS ON SITE

Although climatic heat stress can be fully brought under control and prevented from causing short-term or long-term damage to the human body in laboratory experiments, the expected effect of interventions are however often lost in the practice on construction site as frontline personnel are driven by conflicting institutional logics in their specific institutional environment. The paper presents a comparative study between Hong Kong and Mainland China in the case of climatic heat stress management on construction sites. Specifically, we look into how societal culture as institutional logics leads workers and managers to their pragmatic or normative behaviours that deviate from the expected outcome of safety management. Two competing institutional logics in construction safety management are identified and discussed, i.e., production logic and prevention logic. Comparative analysis of the Chinese samples under two different institutional environments identifies two distinct society-level cultural logics that shape personal strategies of reconciling safety and production goals, i.e., Confucianism logic and Chinese pragmatism logic. Their implications on construction safety management are further discussed

Individualized analysis reveals CpG sites with methylation aberrations in almost all lung adenocarcinoma tissues

Additional file 1: Table S1. Stable and reversal CpG site pairs identified in the samples measured by two platforms