佛隨念之現觀加行

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Talent development, work habits, and career exploration of Chinese middle-school adolescents: Development of the career and talent development self-efficacy scale

This article describes the development of an instrument - the Career and Talent Development Self-Efficacy Scale (CTD-SES) - for assessing students' self-efficacy in applying life skills essential for personal talent development, acquisition of positive work habits, and career exploration. In Study 1, data were obtained from a large sample of Chinese middle-school students (N=15,113) in Grades 7-9 in Hong Kong. The CTD-SES is an 18-item questionnaire with subscales containing items that address students' orientations toward developing their own talents, acquiring and applying positive work habits, and exploring their career possibilities. Evidence is provided for internal consistency, temporal stability, and factor structure of the CTD-SES. Goodness of fit statistics provided support for a three-primary-factor-plus-higher-factor model, and this solution was used in the statistical analyses. The data also indicated that students with plans for university study reported significantly higher scores than those without on all three domains of career and talent development. In Study 2 (N=308) Grade 10 high-ability students' scores in CTD-SES were correlated with scores in career decision self-efficacy and academic performance. The development and validation of CTD-SES is the first step toward investigating career exploration, work habits, and talent development among Asian middle-school adolescents. © 2010 European Council for High Ability.postprin

Characterisation of diesel vehicle emissions and determination of remote sensing cutpoints for diesel high-emitters

© 2019 Elsevier Ltd Diesel vehicles are a major source of air pollutants in cities and have caused significant health risks to the public globally. This study used both on-road remote sensing and transient chassis dynamometer to characterise emissions of diesel light goods vehicles. A large sample size of 183 diesel vans were tested on a transient chassis dynamometer to evaluate the emission levels of in-service diesel vehicles and to determine a set of remote sensing cutpoints for diesel high-emitters. The results showed that 79% and 19% of the Euro 4 and Euro 5 diesel vehicles failed the transient cycle test, respectively. Most of the high-emitters failed the NO limits, while no vehicle failed the HC limits and only a few vehicles failed the CO limits. Vehicles that failed NO limits occurred in both old and new vehicles. NO/CO2 ratios of 57.30 and 22.85 ppm/% were chosen as the remote sensing cutpoints for Euro 4 and Euro 5 high-emitters, respectively. The cutpoints could capture a Euro 4 and Euro 5 high-emitter at a probability of 27% and 57% with one snapshot remote sensing measurement, while only producing 1% of false high-emitter detections. The probability of high-emitting events was generally evenly distributed over the test cycle, indicating that no particular driving condition produced a higher probability of high-emitting events. Analysis on the effect of cutpoints on real-driving diesel fleet was carried out using a three-year remote sensing program. Results showed that 36% of Euro 4 and 47% of Euro 5 remote sensing measurements would be detected as high-emitting using the proposed cutpoints. In-service diesel vehicles emit low CO and HC but high NO

Eco-driving technology for sustainable road transport: A review

© 2018 Elsevier Ltd Road transport consumes significant quantities of fossil fuel and accounts for a significant proportion of CO2 and pollutant emissions worldwide. The driver is a major and often overlooked factor that determines vehicle performance. Eco-driving is a relatively low-cost and immediate measure to reduce fuel consumption and emissions significantly. This paper reviews the major factors, research methods and implementation of eco-driving technology. The major factors of eco-driving are acceleration/deceleration, driving speed, route choice and idling. Eco-driving training programs and in-vehicle feedback devices are commonly used to implement eco-driving skills. After training or using in-vehicle devices, immediate and significant reductions in fuel consumption and CO2 emissions have been observed with slightly increased travel time. However, the impacts of both methods attenuate over time due to the ingrained driving habits developed over the years. These findings imply the necessity of developing quantitative eco-driving patterns that could be integrated into vehicle hardware so as to generate more constant and uniform improvements, as well as developing more effective and lasting training programs and in-vehicle devices. Current eco-driving studies mainly focus on the fuel savings and CO2 reduction of individual vehicles, but ignore the pollutant emissions and the impacts at network levels. Finally, the challenges and future research directions of eco-driving technology are elaborated

Fuel consumption and emissions performance under real driving: Comparison between hybrid and conventional vehicles

© 2018 Elsevier B.V. Hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) are perceived to be more energy efficient and less polluting than conventional internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles. However, increasing evidence has shown that real-driving emissions (RDE) could be much higher than laboratory type approval limits and the advantages of HEVs over their conventional ICE counterparts under real-driving conditions have not been studied extensively. Therefore, this study was conducted to evaluate the real-driving fuel consumption and pollutant emissions performance of HEVs against their conventional ICE counterparts. Two pairs of hybrid and conventional gasoline vehicles of the same model were tested simultaneously in a novel convoy mode using two portable emission measurement systems (PEMSs), thus eliminating the effect of vehicle configurations, driving behaviour, road conditions and ambient environment on the performance comparison. The results showed that although real-driving fuel consumption for both hybrid and conventional vehicles were 44%–100% and 30%–82% higher than their laboratory results respectively, HEVs saved 23%–49% fuel relative to their conventional ICE counterparts. Pollutant emissions of all the tested vehicles were lower than the regulation limits. However, HEVs showed no reduction in HC emissions and consistently higher CO emissions compared to the conventional ICE vehicles. This could be caused by the frequent stops and restarts of the HEV engines, as well as the lowered exhaust gas temperature and reduced effectiveness of the oxidation catalyst. The findings therefore show that while achieving the fuel reduction target, hybridisation did not bring the expected benefits to urban air quality

Mobile access to moodle activities: student usage and perceptions

Parallel Sessions 4Theme: Mobile Learning MOOCs and 21st Century-learningWith the rapidly increasing use of handheld mobile devices among staff and students in higher education, it has become more and more common for them to access teaching and learning related information and services using mobile devices (Peters, 2009). A 2011 survey on mobile services in academic libraries in Hong Kong and Singapore reveals that the possession rate of mobile devices was 93.4% among Hong Kong college students, and 61.9% of them used smartphones to access the Internet (Ang, 2012). It is not uncommon to see university students use smartphones to access learning resources on Moodle and other LMSs. However, how students use Moodle via mobile phones and what their perceptions of mobile access to Moodle have rarely been formally investigated. The current research aims at filling this gap by looking at which Moodle activities students would use mobile phones to access and exploring possible reasons behind the usage patterns.postprin

Developing a career development self-efficacy instrument for Chinese adolescents in Hong Kong

A 24-item measure, the Career Development Self-Efficacy Inventory (CD-SEI), was developed to assess career development self-efficacy among adolescents in Hong Kong. The CD-SEI covered six domains representing competencies needed by high school students transiting from school to work in Hong Kong. The confirmatory factor analyses of the responses from 6776 Grades 10-13 students showed that the six primary factors with one higher order factor model was the best fit to the data, though the one general factor model yielded an adequate fit. Reliability analyses showed that the total scale and subscales were internally consistent. The data suggested that Hong Kong adolescents had some, but not strong confidence in their career development. Students with plans to study at a university had more confidence in their career development than those who did not have such plans. This is the first study to develop and validate a career development self-efficacy measure for Chinese adolescents. Issues related to comprehensive guidance programming and assessment instrument development from a cross-cultural perspective were discussed. © Springer 2005.postprin

Factors influencing school connectedness: Chinese adolescents' perspectives

This study explored the concept of school connectedness and the factors that may influence its development with a sample of Chinese adolescents. Six focus groups involving 52 high school students were conducted using a set of predetermined discussion topics. Results indicated that the students fully understood the notion of school connectedness and could identify a number of key influences affecting its development. These factors could be grouped under several domains including teacher care, peer relations, broader school relationships, school disciplinary policies and practices, activities within the school's guidance and counseling program, and opportunities for talent development. The students were also able to suggest practical strategies that schools might introduce to enhance and strengthen students' acquisition of connectedness to school. The implications from the findings are discussed with particular reference to implementing comprehensive school guidance and counseling program in Hong Kong. © 2011 The Author(s).published_or_final_versionSpringer Open Choice, 21 Feb 201

Enhancing life skills development: Chinese adolescents' perceptions

This study explored Chinese adolescents' perceptions of their own life skills development and the importance they place on such skills. The study also investigated the within-school and outsideschool influences that may help develop and enhance life skills development. Six focus groups involving 52 high school students were conducted, using a set of predetermined discussion topics. Results revealed students' awareness of many salient life skills, including those related directly to academic development, 'learning to learn', personal and social growth, and future career planning. The students were also able to suggest practical strategies that schools might use to further enhance students' life skills development. Contextual factors influencing the development of life skills appear to include not only experiences within the school curriculum and the guidance and counseling program, but also talent development opportunities, and family and peer relationships. The implications of the findings are discussed with particular reference to implementing comprehensive school guidance and counseling programs in Hong Kong. © 2010 NAPCE.postprin

Tackling nitric oxide emissions from dominant diesel vehicle models using on-road remote sensing technology

© 2018 Elsevier Ltd Remote sensing provides a rapid detection of vehicle emissions under real driving condition. Remote sensing studies showed that diesel nitrogen oxides emissions changed little or were even increasing in recent years despite the tightened emission standards. To more accurately and fairly evaluate the emission trends, it is hypothesized that analysis should be detailed for individual vehicle models as each model adopted different emissions control technologies and retrofitted the engine/vehicle at different time. Therefore, this study was aimed to investigate the recent nitric oxide (NO) emission trends of the dominant diesel vehicle models using a large remote sensing dataset collected in Hong Kong. The results showed that the diesel vehicle fleet was dominated by only seven models, accounting for 78% of the total remote sensing records. Although each model had different emission levels and trends, generally all the dominant models showed a steady decrease or stable level in the fuel based NO emission factors (g/kg fuel) over the period studied except for BaM1 and BdM2. A significant increase was observed for the BaM1 2.49 L and early 2.98 L models during 2005–2011, which we attribute to the change in the diesel fuel injection technology. However, the overall mean NO emission factor of all the vehicles was stable during 1991–2006 and then decreased steadily during 2006–2016, in which the emission trends of individual models were averaged out and thus masked. Nevertheless, the latest small, medium and heavy diesel vehicles achieved similar NO emission factors due to the converging of operation windows of the engine and emission control devices. The findings suggested that the increasingly stringent European emission standards were not very effective in reducing the NO emissions of some diesel vehicle models in the real world. The European emission regulations were not very effective in reducing the NO emissions from some diesel vehicle models in the real world