Thinking About Life: Being Balanced

My thesis work represents my thinking about life at present. It is influenced by Chinese culture and Chinese philosophy as well as my own experience. I was also inspired by the Yin Yang doctrine of Taosim. Everything is composed of a pair of contrary elements: positive and negative. Balance is the keyword of my life view currently. I believe that everyone\u27s life should be balanced. This means enjoying the positive parts and not resenting the negative parts because they are equally important in our lives. It is the negative element of life that enhances the positive element. I suggest experiencing both and trying to balance them, accept what life has to offer and follow the rules of nature. The mirror is the most appropriate material I found for expressing this concept. Outside the mirror, there is a positive world which is real and touchable, while inside it is a negative one that is unreal. It is the same as our lives. Each contains both positive and negative. In my thesis, I show my concept of both positive and negative in life through the positive and negative world in the mirror. I researched, developed and invented different methods of shaping and making mirrors for different purposes in my projects. In addition to mirror, I used materials such as steel, silver and wood to complete my pieces. I learned new techniques and invented new methods as they became needed in my projects. This allowed me to express my concept freely instead of being limited by the techniques that I had already learned. In my thesis show I used not only traditional art forms such as sculpture and jewelry, but also installations, videos and interactive pieces. Audiences can understand my view of life from my thesis work or come to their own comprehension from my pieces. Artwork should reflect the present and arouse people to experience deep thinking. This is my view of art as well as my hope for my thesis work

The State and Policies of Mobility of International Students in China

Today, while the number of Chinese students studying at universities abroad continues to rise, the number of international students studying in China has also greatly increased. As a destination country, China is third after only the United States and the United Kingdom. The situation seems to contradict the traditional theory of center-periphery, and this paper will specifically analyze whether China has moved from the periphery to the center of the knowledge production system. The number of international students is low relative to the scale of China\u27s higher education system when one looks at the number of international students attending Chinese universities. At the same time, only a few international students go to China to pursue a degree, and student talent tends to be relatively low. In contrast, China is number one as a source country of students studying abroad worldwide, and student talent is considered excellent. In response to on-going globalization, the Chinese government implemented the "Plan for Study in China" and is aggressively recruiting international students, but China still remains on the periphery of the international higher education system in terms of number and talent of students

Chinese land reform:property rights and land use

Is China’s “property rights” legislation, which distinguishes transferable “property rights” and inalienable “land ownership”, a new concept that is unknown before, or a pragmatic reversion to the individual property rights system abolished by the communist revolution? This study claims that the latter is a better exposition. As part of a “socialist market economy”, such a reversion is manifested in the legal recognition of the leasehold tenure after the “responsibility system” in agricultural production had proved to be successful. As the development of private property rights is a prelude to market transactions, land use rights reform in China should be conducive to the success of China’s economic liberalization policies, provided that there is a contemporaneous advance in the development of the polices and technical know-how, such as new land use right policy and land surveying

Embodied interaction: Learning Chinese characters through body movements

This experimental study examined the design and effectiveness of embodied interactions for learning. The researchers designed a digital learning environment integrating body joint mapping sensors to teach novice learners Chinese characters, and examined whether the embodied interaction would lead to greater knowledge acquisition in language learning compared to the conventional mouse-based interaction. Fifty-three adult learners were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The study adopted a pretest, an immediate posttest, and a delayed posttest on knowledge acquisition. Although higher scores were found for the embodied interaction group in both posttests, only the delayed posttest showed a statistically significant group difference. The findings suggested that active embodied actions lead to better knowledge retention compared with the passive visual embodiment. The body-moving process works as an alternative and complementary encoding strategy for character understanding and memorization by associating the semantic meaning of a character with the construction of a body posture

Measuring local environmental inequity using gis and publicly-available data (Mengukur Ketidakadilan Lingkungan Lokai Menggunakan GLY dan Data yang Tersedia)

ABSTRAK Masalah ketidakadilan lingkungan sudah mulai diangkat oleh kelompok yang prihatin terhadap masyarakat minoritas dan miskin selama satu dekade belakangan ini, serta oleh para pengambil keputusan akhir-akhir ini. Meskipun demikian, hanya sedikit kota yang telah mengambil langkah nyata dan aktif untuk mengidentifikasi persoalan ketidakadilan lingkungan, apalagi untuk mencari penyebabnya, mengatasi persoalan, atau mencegah timbulnya ketidakadilan tersebut. Tujuan tulisan ini adalah untuk menunjukkan cara komunitas menggunakan teknik yang biasa digunakan oleh perencana yang dapat menganalisis data yang tersedia dan dapat diakses oleh umwn untuk mengkaji komunitas minoritas dan miskin yang secara tidak proporsional menderita karena tercemarinya lingkungan. Dalam penelitian ini, Geographic Information System (GIS) dan data sosial-elconomi serta kependudukan yang tersedia digunakan untuk mengkaji kaitan antara kondisi kesehatan kelompok masycrrakat tertentu di kota Cincinnati, Ohio, dan kedekatannya terhadap lokasi pembuangan limbah dan toksid yang selama ini diketahui. Ditemukan dalam penelitian ini bahwa komunitas yang tinggal di dekat lokasi pembuangan limbah Ohio (the Ohio EPA\u27s Master Sites List/Mg) dan lokasi pembuangan toksid (the US. EPA\u27s Toxic Release Inventory/TN) cenderung miskin, berpendidikan rendah dan kelompok minoritas. Penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa ada hubungan yang signifikan antara kelompok etnik/ras serta tingkat kematian penduduk dan kedekatan lokasi mereka dengan tempat pembuangan limbah. Makalah ini menyarankan perlunya penelitian lanjutan untuk mengetahui ada tidaknya kaitan antara kondisi tersebut dan kebijakan publik yang kurang memperhatikan kelompok minoritas dan miskin. Penelitian ini menunjukkan kegunaan GIS untuk mengkaji kemingkinan timbulnya bencana lingkungan, sekaligus juga perlunya perencanaan yang lebih balk untuk meningkatkan kualitas lingkungan hidup seluruh warga kota. Kata kunci: Environmental Inequity, GI

The onset of convection in rotating circular cylinders with experimental boundary conditions

Convective instabilities in a fluid-filled circular cylinder heated from below and rotating about its vertical axis are investigated both analytically and numerically under experimental boundary conditions. It is found that there exist two different forms of convective instabilities: convection-driven inertial waves for small and moderate Prandtl numbers and wall-localized travelling waves for large Prandtl numbers. Asymptotic solutions for both forms of convection are derived and numerical simulations for the same problem are also performed, showing a satisfactory quantitative agreement between the asymptotic and numerical analyses

Evaluation of the properties of hybrid yellow poplar (Liriodendron sino-americanum): A comparison study with yellow poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera)

As one of fast-growth wood species, hybrid yellow poplar (YP-h, Liriodendron sino-americanum) has been extensively planted throughout of China, however, little is known about its properties and applicability in structural and nonstructural applications such as construction and furniture. The aim of this study was to evaluate the properties of YP-h and examine its differences with yellow poplar (YP, Liriodendron tulipifera). The average vessel diameter of YP-h (55 μm) was 19 % lower than YP (68 μm), but, the density of YP-h was 37 % higher than YP and the dimensional change in YP-h was higher than YP. Comparable tensile strength and flexural modulus were found in YP-h and YP, however, the flexural, shear, and impact strength of YP-h was 35 %, 40 %, and 55 % higher than those of YP, respectively. The drilling, mortising, and turning processability of YP-h were superior to those of YP. Compared to the gluing and coating performance of YP, YP-h had inferior gluing properties and equivalent coating performance. Therefore, hybrid yellow poplar can be an ideal candidate for yellow poplar to be utilized in construction and furniture