An Important Way for the Balanced Development of China’s Higher Education: First-class Universities to the Central and Western Regions

With the support of the higher education institutions in the western region and the promotion of the higher education revitalization plan in the central and western regions, China has basically solved the problem of “higher education poverty in the central and western regions”, but the relationship between supply and demand of high quality higher education is still very tense, especially in the central and western high quality higher education. Being lack of resources and a small number of first-class universities, the uneven geographical distribution of high-quality higher education resources has become the main factor restricting the overall development of China’s higher education. How to rationally allocate high-quality higher education resources in the east to the central and western regions, the feasibility of first-class universities to the central and western schools, and the promotion of policies to solve the central and western are of great significance. Keywords: higher education balance, first-class university, central and western school DOI: 10.7176/JEP/10-9-06 Publication date:March 31st 201

The Effect of Codesharing Alliances on Airline Performances

Codesharing has been a widespread strategy favored by many airlines worldwide because they believe that this strategy can be employed to increase the traffic as well as bring the company more financial benefits. There has been plenty of research studying the effect of codesharing on the airfare using both analytical and empirical models. However, the effect of codesharing on airlines’ performances has not been fully studied. In this paper we study how codesharing strategies may contribute to the performance differences of a group of sampled airlines from 2004 to 2014. The codesharing strategies are characterized by the number of codesharing partners, the number of codesharing routes and types of codesharing, etc. The performances of airlines are measured by operating margin, load factor, and the growth rate of traffic and revenue. Other variables considered include the number of passengers, load factor, revenue passenger miles, available seat miles, passenger yield, and unit operating cost

Research on Scientific Research Performance of Humanities and Social Sciences in China’s First-class Universities Based on SE-DEA

The research efficiency of humanities and social sciences in 41 first-class universities in China was measured based on Super Efficiency DEA method. It is found that most universities have higher research efficiency, but the scale efficiency is lower, and the universities with ineffective scale are mostly large-scale universities. Through analysis, the efficiency of universities is driven by insufficient input of resources, inefficiency is caused by insufficient output of results and redundancy of input of resources. There are the following suggestions: one recommends that large-scale universities should appropriately reduce the scale of scientific research; secondly, “pseudo-effective universities” should strengthen output-oriented to achieve real efficiency; at the same time, inefficient universities can improve from the aspects of technology and management capabilities. Keywords: first-class universities, research performance, super efficiency DEA DOI: 10.7176/JESD/10-10-17 Publication date:May 31st 201

Characterization of proton exchange materials for fuel cells by solid state nuclear magnetic resonance

Solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) has been used to explore the nanometer-scale structure of Nafion, the widely used fuel cell membrane, and its composites. We have shown that solid-state NMR can characterize chemical structure and composition, domain size and morphology, internuclear distances, molecular dynamics, etc. The newly-developed water channel model of Nafion has been confirmed, and important characteristic length-scales established. Nafion-based organic and inorganic composites with special properties have also been characterized and their structures elucidated. The morphology of Nafion varies with hydration level, and is reflected in the changes in surface-to-volume (S/V) ratio of the polymer obtained by small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS). The S/V ratios of different Nafion models have been evaluated numerically. It has been found that only the water channel model gives the measured S/V ratios in the normal hydration range of a working fuel cell, while dispersed water molecules and polymer ribbons account for the structures at low and high hydration levels, respectively. Although the cross-section morphology of Nafion has been derived from SAXS data, the structure in the third dimension, which is channel straightness, was not clear. With 2H NMR, D2O can be used as a probe to study channel straightness (persistence length). In drawn Nafion with straight channels, the exchange between bound and free D2O results in a residual quadrupolar splitting of 1-2 kHz; while in normal Nafion with coiled channels, the 2H quadrupolar splitting of D2O is ~ 10-fold smaller. It is explained by the motional averaging of the 2H coupling frequencies in the NMR timescale when D2O diffuses through differently-oriented segments. The simulations of line narrowing and T2 relaxation times of D2O revealed a persistence length within 30 to 80 nm for normal Nafion. The Nafion phosphatranium composite developed by Verkade and Wadhwa, which is a potential candidate for anion exchange membranes, has been characterized by solid-state NMR. The synthesized membrane has two major components, in which phosphatranium cations are bonded to Nafion side-groups via either P or N with a mole ratio of 2:1. Degradation of the phosphatranium cations has not been found in the composite membrane, which implies a good stability of the material. Nafion-silica (NafSil) and Nafion-zirconium phosphate (NafZrP) composites prepared by the in-situ growth of inorganic particles in the channels of Nafion membrane have been characterized. Under typical situations with an inorganic volume fraction of around 15%, elongated nanoparticles are formed inside the water channels. The inorganic particles have cylindrical shapes with a cross-section area of ~ 6 nm2 and surrounded by water layers with a thickness of ~ 0.8 nm. Zirconium phosphates (ZrP) synthesized in and outside Nafion have been characterized in detail by solid-state NMR and X-ray diffraction (XRD). It has been found that typical α-ZrP with water of crystallization transforms to anhydrous α-ZrP and condensed pyrophosphates after drying at 150oC. When grown in Nafion, ZrP favors a structure with two disordered layers and a majority of (HO)P(OZr)3 sites, different from regular α-ZrP, particularly after drying

An Investigation of the Intercultural Communicative Competence of Students from Sino-foreign Joint Education Program in HBUT

This study employed a questionnaire survey to assess the intercultural communicative competence (ICC) of 113 students enrolled in the Sino-foreign Joint Education Program at Hubei University of Technology. The Assessment of Intercultural Competence of Chinese College Students (AIC-CCS) was utilized to investigate their ICC. The findings indicate that the participants’ overall ICC reached an intermediate level. Notably, proficiency in knowledge pertaining to domestic culture is the highest, while competence in understanding foreign culture is comparatively lower. The study identifies varying degrees of influence among the six dimensions of ICC, with knowledge related to foreign culture and intercultural communicative skills demonstrating a more pronounced positive impact on overall ICC levels. Furthermore, students who participated in intercultural courses exhibited significantly higher ICC compared with their counterparts who did not partake in such courses

Fasudil ameliorated liposaccharide-induced acute kidney injury in mice by inhibiting NLRP3

Purpose: To determine the influence of fasudil on LPS-mediated acute kidney injury (AKI) in mice.Methods: Healthy C57 mice (n = 140) of largely similar weight were used in this study. They were assigned to a treatment group (n = 40), a model group (n = 50), and a blank control group (n = 50). Mice in treatment and model groups were injected with lipopolysaccharide (LPS). In the treatment group, each mouse was injected intravenously with fasudil daily before the establishment of the mouse model of AKI. All mice were sacrificed 6 h after establishing the AKI model. Portions of the kidney from mice were used for preparation of tissue homogenates, while the remaining portions were subjected to primary culture. Transformed C3H Mouse Kidney-1 (TCMK1) and mesangial cells from mouse glomeruli (SV40-MES-13) cells were used for assays of cell growth and apoptosis. Blood samples were alsocollected from the mice. Thereafter, the levels of blood urea nitrogen (BUN) and creatinine (Cr) in kidney homogenates of the three groups were determined. Moreover, levels of NLRP3, nuclear factor kappa-B (NF-κB), toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4), tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), interleukin (IL)-6, and IL-1β in the homogenates and blood were assayed. Cell growth and apoptosis were also measured.Results: The treatment group and model group showed higher levels of BUN and Cr than the control group, with a higher level observed in model mice than in the treatment mice. There were significantly higher relative levels of NF-κB, NLRP3 and TLR4 in treatment and model groups than in controls, with a higher level observed in model mice than in treatment mice. There were significantly higher concentrations of inflammatory factors in treatment and model mice groups than in control mice, with higher levels observed in model mice than in treatment mice. The TCMK1 and SV40-MES-13 cells in the two groups showed slower cell growth and stronger apoptosis than those in control group (p < 0.05).Conclusion: Fasudil relieved LPS-mediated AKI in mice by suppressing TLR4/NF-κB signal pathway and lowering NLRP3. Thus, fasudil has potential as a new adjunctive agent for the treatment of AKI

Optimization Research of Generation Investment Based on Linear Programming Model

AbstractLinear programming is an important branch of operational research and it is a mathematical method to assist the people to carry out scientific management. GAMS is an advanced simulation and optimization modeling language and it will combine a large number of complex mathematical programming, such as linear programming LP, nonlinear programming NLP, MIP and other mixed-integer programming with the system simulation. In this paper, based on the linear programming model, the optimized investment decision-making of generation is simulated and analyzed. At last, the optimal installed capacity of power plants and the final total cost are got, which provides the rational decision-making basis for optimized investments

A Contrastive Study of English Introductions of Chinese and British Museums in Move Distribution and Readability

Based on a designed move analysis model, we manually annotated 83 English introductions of Chinese museums (EICMs) and 127 English introductions of British museums (EIBMs), and used SPSS to do the significance test on the distribution of moves. The result shows that the moves of Identification, Location, History, Evaluation, Additional Museum Attractions, and Summary in EICMs occur significantly more frequently, while the moves of Highlight, Action Soliciting, and Support occur significantly less frequently. Besides, the study also investigated the readability of the introductions of the two groups of museums. The result shows that EICMs’ overall readability is significantly lower, especially in Narrativity, Syntactic Simplicity, and Deep Cohesion.Those results show that EICMs are more of informational text, while EIBMs are more of promotional text. Choices of narrative person, substance and function words, and use of causal and intentional particles may lead to the difference in readability. Contemporary museums have long since moved on from the stage where objects were left to “speak for themselves”. Museum introductions’ content selection and language expression should be targeted at their readers. The findings are expected to provide a reference for the writing and translation of museum introductions, and attract more visitors to Chinese museums