The Effect of Asian Origin, Culture and Learning Beliefs on High School Students\u27 Physical Science Learning Beliefs

Asian Americans have been recognized as the model minority in the United States since the 1960s. Students from Asian countries are winning in international competitions, especially in science and mathematics. Modern Western scholars working within the constructivist learning theory advocate malleable intelligence and effort, which actually corresponds to Asian learning beliefs and learning behaviors. This research is designed to test if American high school students and Chinese students from the mainland of China who are motivated to attend American universities are different in their learning beliefs of physical science and what accounts for the difference if there is any

International and Intra-national Technology Spillovers and Technology Development Paths in Developing Countries: The Case of China

This paper analyses the paths of technology development among regions with heterogeneous economic and technological characteristics, focusing on the case of China. It finds that intra-national technology transfer, that is, the technology transfer from technologically advanced provinces to less advanced ones, is more important than that taking place through FDI in the backward regions. In technologically advanced areas, learning by doing, indigenous R&D and technology transfer from FDI all play a significant role in technical progress. The relationship between the strength of interprovincial technology transfer and technological distance is U-shaped, with the technology threshold falling outside the upper bound of technology distance. This suggests that technology transfer takes place more effectively when technological distance is small. The paper finds that learning by doing and R&D are important internal routes to technical progress. R&D plays a key role in the assimilation of foreign technologies, whereas learning by doing is relevant for the absorption of interprovincial technology transfers.FDI, technology spillovers, technology threshold

An adaptive priority policy for radiotherapy scheduling

In radiotherapy, treatment needs to be delivered in time. Long waiting times can result in patient anxiety and growth of tumors. They are often caused by inefficient use of radiotherapy equipment, the linear accelerators (LINACs). However, making an efficient schedule is very challenging, especially when we have multiple types of patients, having different service requirements and waiting time constraints. Moreover, in radiotherapy a patient needs to go through a LINAC multiple times over multiple days, to complete the treatment. In this paper we model the radiotherapy treatment process as a queueing system with multiple queues, and we propose a new class of scheduling policies that are simple, flexible and fair to patients. Numerical experiments show that our new policy outperforms the commonly used policies. We also extend the policy to an adaptive one to deal with unknown and fluctuating arrival rates. Our adaptive policy turns out to be quite efficient in absorbing the effects caused by these changes. Due to the complexity of our problem, we select the parameters of the policies through simulation-based optimization heuristics. Our work may also have important implications for managers in other service systems such as call centers

Biopolymer Simulations: From Next-Generation Genomics to Consumer Products

University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation.May 2018. Major: Chemical Engineering. Advisor: Kevin Dorfman. 1 computer file (PDF); xiii, 168 pages.Biopolymers have many unique properties which play an essential and pervasive role in everyday life, thus making them attractive for engineering applications. Understand- ing how the particular properties of biopolymers give rise to important applications in technology remains a long-standing challenge. Although biopolymers can have different chemistries, they share some common physical properties: high molecular weights, stiff backbones, and complex internal structures. Computer simulation, therefore, plays quite an important role since it provides a way to study a generic model that, by changing the parameters appearing in the model, permits studying a wide variety of biopolymers. Specifically, we focus on two such biopolymers: DNA and methylcellulose. This thesis focuses on studying the universal properties of the two aforementioned biopolymers using novel molecular simulation techniques. DNA attracts particularly strong interest not only because of its fascinating double- helix structure but also because DNA carries biological information. Genomic mapping is emerging as a new technology to provide information about large-scale genomic structural variations. In this context, the conformation and properties of the linearized DNA are only beginning to be understood. With a Monte Carlo chain growth method known as pruned-enriched Rosenbluth method, we explore the force-extension relationship of stretched DNA. In this scenario, external forces and confinement are two fundamental and complementary aspects. We begin by stretching a single DNA in free solution. This allows separation of restrictions imposed by forces from that by walls. This work shows that the thickness of DNA plays an important role in the force-extension behavior. The key outcome is a new expression that approximates the force-extension behavior with about 5% relative error for all range of forces. We then analyze slit-confined DNA stretched by an external force. This work predicted a new regime in the force-extension behavior that features a mixed effect of both sensible DNA volume and sensible wall effects. We anticipate such a complete description of the force-extension of DNA will prove useful for the design of new genomic mapping technologies. The dissertation also involves another biopolymer, methylcellulose, which has an extremely wide range of commercial uses. Methylcellulose is thermoresponsive polymer that undergoes a morphological transition at elevated temperature, forming uniform diameter fibrils. However, mechanisms behind the solution-gel transition are poorly understood. Following the computational studies by Huang et al. [1], we apply Langevin dynamics simulations to a coarse-grained model that produces collapsed ring-like structures in dilute solution with a radius close to the fibrils observed in experiments. We show that the competition between the dihedral potential and self-attraction causes these collapsed states to undergo a rapid conformational change, which helps the chain to avoid kinetic traps by permitting a transition between collapsed states. We expect our findings from computational studies of biopolymers will not only provide a deep understanding of semiflexible polymer physics but also inspire novel engineering applications relying on the properties of biopolymers

Core human values and their interactions with pro-Tobacco factors on cigarette smoking: The role of factors not explicitly related to a risk behavior

More effective tobacco control requires new data on factors that are not explicitly related to smoking but are influential, such as “Terminal Values” regarding desirable end-states of existence and “Instrumental Values” regarding desirable modes of conduct. Association analysis was conducted among 36 Core Values (18 Terminal and 18 Instrumental) derived from Rokeach’s Value Survey, three risk factors (protobacco media, smoking peers and sensation-seeking), and cigarette smoking using data collected from a sample of 334 medical students in China. The participants were 18 to 24 years old (47% female) and 18.4% of them smoked in the past 30 days. Multivariate analysis indicated that cigarette smoking was negatively associated with nine Terminal Values (e.g., a Sense of Accomplishment and Self-Respect) and ten Instrumental Values (e.g., Clean and Self-Controlled). As expected, when the endorsed number of values/total value scores increased from low to high, the 30-day smoking rate declined from 32.6% - 75.0% to 13.5% - 15.9% (p < .01). The odds ratios (OR) for the endorsed Terminal Values and the total value scores were 0.50 (p < .01) and 0.64 (p < .01) respectively, and the ORs for the endorsed Instrumental Values and the total value scores were 0.42 (p < .01) and 0.44 (