To what extent are Contextualised Admission policies in China just and fair? And how could they be improved?

Contextualised admission (CA) to higher education (HE) is a policy attempt to reduce the stratification of student intakes, in widespread use internationally. This study examined whether the use of residence in impoverished provinces, a rural hukou or a minority ethnicity in China could reliably, steadily and accurately identify disadvantaged students for contextualised admission purposes. And it examined where there are better indicators that could be used instead, or as well. This study involved a structured review of existing evidence on the disparities in HE participation in terms of popularly discussed indicators in China. It then employed secondary data analysis including administrative data, universities’ data, and two nationally representative cohort datasets with more than 10,000 cases (Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) and China Family Panel Study (CFPS)) to answer research questions. Finally, in order to bring this data up to date and obtain some further information, a cross-sectional survey of 800 middle school students was conducted asking about their plans for higher education. The findings of the structured review and descriptive analysis of CGSS and CFPS confirmed that there are important disparities in university participation between different provinces in China, especially in terms of hukou (residential registration) status, and family socio-economic background. According to CGSS and CFPS, the currently used indicators also include living in an under-developed province, a rural hukou and having a minority ethnicity. Not all of these indicators are necessarily appropriate to be used for contextualised admissions. For example, group-level or area-based indicators such as ethnicity, or province or urban/rural residence will exclude some truly disadvantaged students, and falsely include some clearly advantaged students. The analysis of CGSS/CFPS showed that both false identification of disadvantage, and non-identification of disadvantage, were relatively common. The results of CGSS and CFPS analyses also showed that other potential indicators could be problematic. They provided no evidence that the sex of the student and their month of birth are clearly associated with disadvantage. Other indicators such as social class and parental occupation are hard to define and hard for administrators to verify. Furthermore, some indicators such as having non-party member parents cover a very large sub-set of the population, and school-level indicators have the same deficits as area ones – they mistake the individual for their peers. The most promising single indicator, according to the findings, might be parental educational credentials. Students with parents who have only completed compulsory education have more difficulty in accessing HE, and they are more likely to be part of a less advantaged family. Parental education information is usually officially verifiable and this information is accessible to higher education institutions (HEIs), making it safe and relatively easy to use. The survey results illustrate the key point that current contextualised admission policies in China only focus on National College Entrance Examination (NCEE) candidates, and so ignore around half of students in each age cohort. This means that the policies are only concerned with students who are already on track to university. There is little or no widening participation on offer for the large group who do not take NCEE and are largely invisible. This group is stratified by sex, age-in-year, and other contextual variables, as well as by parental education, socio-economic status (SES), and province. The study has several suggested implications. For non-NCEE students, alternative policies are needed leading to a possible HE future for them, or else they need to have at least the chance to be part of contextualised admissions. For all, removal of artificial barriers such as the restrictions associated with hukou status would be a major step towards a fairer system, less predicated on accidents of birth. For contextualised admissions, authorities need to move away from reliance on group or area-based indicators, and towards use of accessible, verifiable indicators of genuine disadvantage

Numerical approximation of BSDEs using local polynomial drivers and branching processes

We propose a new numerical scheme for Backward Stochastic Differential Equations based on branching processes. We approximate an arbitrary (Lipschitz) driver by local polynomials and then use a Picard iteration scheme. Each step of the Picard iteration can be solved by using a representation in terms of branching diffusion systems, thus avoiding the need for a fine time discretization. In contrast to the previous literature on the numerical resolution of BSDEs based on branching processes, we prove the convergence of our numerical scheme without limitation on the time horizon. Numerical simulations are provided to illustrate the performance of the algorithm.Comment: 28 page

Contextualised Admission: Does Province-Based Quota Policy Improve Geographical HE Equity in China?

HE geographical equity is a significant societal problem in China. As the primary admission policy, Province-based Quota Policy has been implemented to ameliorate geographical disparity in HE admission. However, the contribution of this improvement is controversial. In order to evaluate this melioration, this study conducted a secondary data analysis of the latest admissions of all regular Higher Education Institutions (hereafter, HEIs) and HEIs in the World Double-First project in China through three indexes. The study found that provincial disparities in HE admission exist. Both regular HEIs and prestigious HEIs show more preferences to students from well-developed provinces, while less places in HE are prepared for those from inland, remote and under-developed provinces. The implications of this study for future policy making and implementation should be more balanced quota distributions and more educational investment in disadvantaged areas

Process Drivers, Inter-Model Spread, and the Path Forward: A Review of Amplified Arctic Warming

Arctic amplification (AA) is a coupled atmosphere-sea ice-ocean process. This understanding has evolved from the early concept of AA, as a consequence of snow-ice line progressions, through more than a century of research that has clarified the relevant processes and driving mechanisms of AA. The predictions made by early modeling studies, namely the fall/winter maximum, bottom-heavy structure, the prominence of surface albedo feedback, and the importance of stable stratification have withstood the scrutiny of multi-decadal observations and more complex models. Yet, the uncertainty in Arctic climate projections is larger than in any other region of the planet, making the assessment of high-impact, near-term regional changes difficult or impossible. Reducing this large spread in Arctic climate projections requires a quantitative process understanding. This manuscript aims to build such an understanding by synthesizing current knowledge of AA and to produce a set of recommendations to guide future research. It briefly reviews the history of AA science, summarizes observed Arctic changes, discusses modeling approaches and feedback diagnostics, and assesses the current understanding of the most relevant feedbacks to AA. These sections culminate in a conceptual model of the fundamental physical mechanisms causing AA and a collection of recommendations to accelerate progress towards reduced uncertainty in Arctic climate projections. Our conceptual model highlights the need to account for local feedback and remote process interactions within the context of the annual cycle to constrain projected AA. We recommend raising the priority of Arctic climate sensitivity research, improving the accuracy of Arctic surface energy budget observations, rethinking climate feedback definitions, coordinating new model experiments and intercomparisons, and further investigating the role of episodic variability in AA

Impact of cytotoxic T lymphocytes immunotherapy on prognosis of colorectal cancer patients

BackgroundExpansion and activation of cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) in vitro represents a promising immunotherapeutic strategy, and CTLs can be primed by dendritic cells (DCs) loaded with tumor-associated antigens (TAAs) transformed by recombinant adeno-associated virus (rAAV). This study aimed to explore the impact of rAAV-DC-induced CTLs on prognosis of CRC and to explore factors associated with prognosis.MethodsThis prospective observational study included patients operated for CRC at Yan’an Hospital Affiliated to Kunming Medical University between 2016 and 2019. The primary outcome was progression-free survival (PFS), secondary outcomes were overall survival (OS) and adverse events. Totally 49 cases were included, with 29 and 20 administered rAAV-DC-induced CTL and chemotherapy, respectively.ResultsAfter 37-69 months of follow-up (median, 54 months), OS (P=0.0596) and PFS (P=0.0788) were comparable between two groups. Mild fever occurred in 2 (6.9%) patients administered CTL infusion. All the chemotherapy group experienced mild-to-moderate adverse effects, including vasculitis (n=20, 100%), vomiting (n=5, 25%), nausea (n=17, 85%) and fatigue (n=17, 85%).ConclusionsLymphatic metastasis (hazard ratio [HR]=4.498, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.290-15.676; P=0.018) and lower HLA-I expression (HR=0.294, 95%CI: 0.089-0.965; P=0.044) were associated with poor OS in the CTL group. CTLs induced by rAAV-DCs might achieve comparable effectiveness in CRC patients compare to chemotherapy, cases with high tumor-associated HLA-I expression and no lymphatic metastasis were more likely to benefit from CTLs

Reviewing the logic of social scientific claims

This paper considers three different claims to knowledge, namely, “fully descriptive”, “generally descriptive” and causal claims. These are all common in social science, and each type of claim requires more assumptions than the previous one. After discussing their methodological and logical foundations, this paper describes some of the limitations in the nature of these three claims. Fully descriptive claims suffer from non-random errors and inaccuracies in observations, and can be queried in terms of utility. Generally, in addition to observational errors, descriptive can be questioned because of the long-standing problem of induction. Even the notion of falsification might not be able to help with this. Finally, causal claims are the most problematic of the three. While widely assumed, causation cannot be observed directly. The paper combines and develops three models of what causation might be, and discusses their implications for causal claims. It points out that so far our belief in causation is still a kind of religious one, and that neither theory nor inferential statistics can help in proving or observing its existence. Finally, the paper provides some suggestions for avoiding being misled by false knowledge and reporting our research findings with tentative care and judgement

Contextualised Admission: Does Province-Based Quota Policy Improve Geographical HE Equity in China?

HE geographical equity is a significant societal problem in China. As the primary admission policy, Province-based Quota Policy has been implemented to ameliorate geographical disparity in HE admission. However, the contribution of this improvement is controversial. In order to evaluate this melioration, this study conducted a secondary data analysis of the latest admissions of all regular Higher Education Institutions (hereafter, HEIs) and HEIs in the World Double-First project in China through three indexes. The study found that provincial disparities in HE admission exist. Both regular HEIs and prestigious HEIs show more preferences to students from well-developed provinces, while less places in HE are prepared for those from inland, remote and under-developed provinces. The implications of this study for future policy making and implementation should be more balanced quota distributions and more educational investment in disadvantaged areas