Creativity, innovation and the ‘New’ MBA : China and the 21st century knowledge economy

This paper discusses the development of new models of business education in contemporary China. It describes the rise of the Masters of Business Administration (MBA) degree in the context of the growth of a new professional-managerial class in China, as a corollary of modernisation and economic reform. While the Masters of Business Administration (MBA) has its origins in the United States, it has grown into a globally recognized qualification for business status, particularly when acquired from ‘elite’ institutions in a highly competitive and extensively ranked global system. Its growth in Asia is reflective of the significant shortages of managerial expertise as economic success throws traditional family-based or state capitalist models of business organization into question. In China, the rise of the MBA has been more recent, although the original idea was introduced in the late 1970s, not long after the directive of Deng Xiaoping to modernise the economy. We consider the role played by new MBA programs, such as the Executive MBA (EMBA) and the International MBA (IMBA) as new educational products designed, not so much for the re-engineering of management practices in SOEs along more effective commercial lines, but rather upon developing an internationally networked business elite better able to engage with the new challenges of the global knowledge economy

Le droit chinois des contrats : sa codification, ses sources, ses champs d'application et ses caractéristiques

Le développement du droit des contrats comme discipline juridique indépendante est chose récente en Chine. Son rapprochement des concepts occidentaux ne remonte qu'à quelques années. Ce droit apparaît, sur le plan formel, à la croisée d'un système administratif, d'un système coutumier et d'un système juridique. Ses défauts peuvent venir de sa jeunesse. De nombreux problèmes sont trop récents pour qu'on ait une idée claire de leurs solutions opportunes. De plus, la société chinoise connaît de grands changements résultant de la réforme économique et le droit économique est en pleine mutation. D'une part, l'État continue à jouer son rôle traditionnel, à « gérer tout » et à diriger l'économie; la planification et les ingérences administratives, quoique sensiblement atténuées, ne peuvent totalement disparaître et réapparaissent souvent pour maintenir l'ordre économique et social. D'autre part, l'économie de marché présuppose une liberté complète des sujets économiques et force l'État à décentraliser les décisions, à permettre plus d'autonomie de gestion et à accorder un rôle essentiel au jeu de l'offre et de la demande sur le marché. Ce mélange, qui vise à réaliser « l'économie socialiste de marché », entraîne la coexistence, dans le droit des contrats, de normes traditionnelles chinoises, de règles modernes et d'emprunts aux droits occidentaux.The development of the law of contracts as an independent legal discipline is of recent vintage in China. Its rapprochement with western concepts has only come about in recent years. From a formal standpoint, this part of the law appears poised at the crossroads of an administrative system, a custom-based system and a legal system. Its shortcomings may arise from its recent origin. Many problems are still too new for fully grasping what solutions might be the most timely. In addition, Chinese society is undergoing profound changes as a result of economic reform, and the économie grounds of law are also in full evolution. On the one hand, the State pursues its traditional role of « managing everything » and directing the economy: planning and administrative interferences — although significantly diminished — cannot disappear entirely and often reappear to maintain economic and social order. On the other, the market economy presupposes complete freedom for economic players and force s the State to decentralize decision-making, grant greater managerial autonomy and assign an essential role to the interplay of supply and demand in the market place. This mixture, which aims at founding a « socialist market economy », entails coexistence of traditional Chinese standards, modern rules and loans from western legal systems, all in the law of contracts

Acid mine drainage: Sludge dewatering, metal recovery and synthesis of magnetite nanoparticles

Acid mine drainage (AMD) is one of the significant environmental challenges for the coal and hard-rock mining industry. Traditional AMD treatment generates large volumes of sludge with low solids which are difficult to dewater. In this study, a systematic investigation was carried out on the characteristics and dewaterability of AMD sludge produced from an ammonia neutralization operation, and the dewatering performance of different treatment options. In order to mitigate the AMD sludge problem, a selective precipitation process was developed to recover Fe and Al while AMD was treated simultaneously. In conjunction, a low-cost synthesis approach was examined to prepare magnetite nanoparticles with the recovered iron from AMD, and its implication in environmental engineering was discussed.;The AMD sludge from ammonia neutralization was characterized by high pH and alkalinity, high total Fe and Al, elevated sulfate, and low solids (0.72 +/- 0.24%). Compared to other AMD sludges and metal hydroxide sludges, ammonia-treated AMD sludge demonstrated relatively good dewaterability in terms of specific resistance to filtration. Coagulation and flocculation treatment did not effectively reduce the final volume of the settled sludge. Sludge cakes with 6.2% solids and a filter yield of 3.04 kg/m2h were achieved by vacuum filtration. Additionally, a belt filter press showed a good performance in improving solids content of the sludge cake.;Simultaneous metal recovery and AMD treatment were achieved using a selective precipitation process based on solubility characteristics of the major and minor metals in the AMD. Separate iron and aluminum hydroxide products with relatively high purity were successfully recovered via iron precipitation at pH 3.5-4.0 followed by aluminum precipitation at pH 6.0-7.0, while simultaneously meeting the NPDES effluent discharge standards. The proposed metal recovery process was relatively easy to implement in the field.;An approach to synthesize low-cost magnetite nanoparticles via coprecipitation was developed with the recovered ferric iron from AMD as the iron source. Through scanning and transmission electron microscopic studies, it was demonstrated that most of the magnetite nanoparticles ranged from 10 to 15 nm and were spheroidical or cubic in shape. Consequently, the recovered ferric iron from AMD could be used as a low-cost substitute feedstock for reagent-grade chemical for magnetite nanoparticle preparation, which provided great opportunity for the application of magnetite nanoparticles in environmental engineering

Globally Optimal Cell Tracking using Integer Programming

We propose a novel approach to automatically tracking cell populations in time-lapse images. To account for cell occlusions and overlaps, we introduce a robust method that generates an over-complete set of competing detection hypotheses. We then perform detection and tracking simultaneously on these hypotheses by solving to optimality an integer program with only one type of flow variables. This eliminates the need for heuristics to handle missed detections due to occlusions and complex morphology. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach on a range of challenging sequences consisting of clumped cells and show that it outperforms state-of-the-art techniques.Comment: Engin T\"uretken and Xinchao Wang contributed equally to this wor