Academic institutional repositories in China: A survey of CALIS member libraries

Purpose: China Academic Library &amp; Information System (CALIS) planned to launch an institutional repository (IR) project to promote IR development and open access at colleges and universities in China. In order to get to know the current state of IRs in academic institutions, with the help of Peking University Library, CALIS Administrative Center conducted this survey.Design/methodology/approach: We conducted an online survey of CALIS member libraries.Findings: Firstly, the development of IRs at China's colleges and universities is still in its infancy. Secondly, the Chinese colleges and universities have reached a consensus on the objective for having an IR. Thirdly, they are having high expectations of IR&nbsp;functions. Fourthly, they prefer to establish a centralized IR system at a minimum cost. Finally, there are both similarities and differences between the Chinese academic institutions and their counterparts in other countries in the state of IR development.Research limitations: The questionnaire needs to be improved because there is a lack of enough questions for those who do not plan to build an IR. Comparatively lower rate of valid questionnaire return can affect the accuracy of the results. It is hard to go into an in-depth discussion only based on the data collected from this questionnaire survey, and consequently, the findings from the survey can hardly present an accurate and comprehensive picture of the current state of IR development in the academic sector in China.Practical implications: The survey results provide essential foundation for CALIS IR project, and meanwhile the research can serve as a reference source for the future studies of the development of IRs at China's colleges and universities.Originality/value: It is the first national survey focused on the development of IRs in academic institutions in China.</p

POST-SECONDARY REGIONAL ACCREDITATION ASSESSMENT STANDARDS IN THE UNITED STATES

Regional accreditation organizations in the United States have increased their demands for transparency of student outcomes, as well as articulated the demands for a continuous improvement model that includes the assessment and evaluation of student learning. A review of the regional accreditation organizations in the United States was conducted to determine the assessment methods required to meet the accreditation standards. Two broad categories of assessment methods were identified as direct and indirect methods; however, a universal definition of the two assessment methods did not exist. This review resulted in the categorization of both methods as a resource for those responsible for assessment activities

Numerical Methods for Distributed Stochastic Compositional Optimization Problems with Aggregative Structure

The paper studies the distributed stochastic compositional optimization problems over networks, where all the agents' inner-level function is the sum of each agent's private expectation function. Focusing on the aggregative structure of the inner-level function, we employ the hybrid variance reduction method to obtain the information on each agent's private expectation function, and apply the dynamic consensus mechanism to track the information on each agent's inner-level function. Then by combining with the standard distributed stochastic gradient descent method, we propose a distributed aggregative stochastic compositional gradient descent method. When the objective function is smooth, the proposed method achieves the optimal convergence rate $\mathcal{O}\left(K^{-1/2}\right)$. We further combine the proposed method with the communication compression and propose the communication compressed variant distributed aggregative stochastic compositional gradient descent method. The compressed variant of the proposed method maintains the optimal convergence rate $\mathcal{O}\left(K^{-1/2}\right)$. Simulated experiments on decentralized reinforcement learning verify the effectiveness of the proposed methods

The Effects of Education and Cognitive Skills on Employability and Earnings for Labor Market Entrants: Evidence from Large-scale Worldwide Survey Data

People’s stock of knowledge, abilities, and other personal characteristics, namely human capital, has been widely regarded as a fundamental input to both individuals\u27 ability to earn a living and to fuel economic growth. Traditionally, formal education has been widely considered as a good investment in human capital and an extensive literature has shown that it has a positive and strong association with labor market success. However, considering the global knowledge economy, which emphasizes skills and knowledge, the economic benefits of formal education are being questioned, as findings from recent research reviews revealed that the overall rate of return to education had been gradually declining since the 1950s globally. On the contrary, cognitive skills are identified as key predictors of an individual’s productivity and have been demonstrated being strongly and robustly related to labor market benefits based on abundant previous studies. Meanwhile, the increased importance of human capital and rising recognition of the roles of cognitive skills in labor market have led to the development of more elaborately designed large-scale international surveys focusing on directly assessing fundamental cognitive skills, and the comprehensive and rich data collected from the surveys has provided a great opportunity to conduct broader, more thorough, and reliable policy-related analyses. This dissertation was designed to estimate the effects or payoffs of formal education and three directly-measured fundamental cognitive skills - literacy, numeracy, and problem solving in technology-rich environments (PSTRE) on employability and earnings of labor-market entrants (25 to 34 years old individuals) through analyzing the most up-to-date worldwide data collected from PIAAC survey of adult skills across 35 countries between 2011 and 2018, while controlling for a series of critical individual and country-level factors, such as gender, the highest achieved level of formal education, actual work experience, job-related training, GDP per capita, poverty rate, high-school or college completion rates, mobile phone and internet usage. The dissertation further examined any potential heterogenous or interaction effects of education and these three cognitive skills across population subgroups, especially the gender groups, and STEM versus non-STEM study areas. The main findings were summarized as follows: 1) With respect to employability, overall, the proficiencies in literacy and numeracy had significant positive effects on employability for labor-market entrants aged 25 to 34 years old. Given other conditions were the same, on average the odds of being employed would increase by 11.2% for each one standard deviation increase in combined literacy and numeracy skill score; In contrast, the proficiency in PSTRE skill was not significantly associated with the probability of employment. Additionally, the effects of these three cognitive skills on employability varied widely across countries. For example, better proficiencies in cognitive skills would result in better employment opportunities in countries like United Kingdom and Norway, while in some other countries (i.e., Chile, Peru, etc.) cognitive skills did not seem to have any effects on boosting individuals’ chances of securing a job. 2) With respect to earnings, overall, all three cognitive skills have demonstrated statistically significant positive associations with earnings of labor market entrants. Given other conditions being the same, on average an individual’s hourly pay rate would be increased by 8.2% for each one standard deviation rise in combined literacy and numeracy skill score or increased by 6.0% for every one-standard-deviation increase in PSTRE skill score. Similarly, their effects on individual’s earnings varied greatly across countries. 3) Formal education, or the highest level of achieved educational attainment, was found to be positively associated with both employability and earnings for labor market entrants. However, only individuals with a bachelor’s degree or beyond would be able to enjoy significantly better employment opportunities and/or receive significantly higher earnings compared to their peers who did not finish high school; on average their odds of being employed would increase by 70.2% or 55.7%, and their hourly wages would be higher by 22.3% or 22.0%, when considering literacy and numeracy skills or the proficiency in PSTRE skill, respectively. Meanwhile, individuals with high-school or equivalent education, or who received some college education, did not seem to have an advantage in employability or earnings compared to their counterparts who did not finish high school. This finding indicated that Spence’s job-market signaling theory still applied, where the educational attainment level serves as a credential for employees and provides a signal for employers to efficiently differentiate or screen between high- and low-productivity employees, therefore, more-educated workers tend to have a better chance to be employed and/or receive a higher pay. Further, this finding also provided empirical evidence that formal schooling, especially higher education, remained a beneficial factor in forming human capital and likely a good investment for individuals. 4) Applying the standard Mincer earnings equation to the sampled data, this dissertation found that one additional year of formal schooling would result in a 9.1% increase in individual\u27s hourly wage. This overall rate of return matched findings from previous literature, and further provided new empirical evidence for supporting the continuous robustness of the classic Mincer earnings model. 5) As for population subgroups, this dissertation found that male workers overall enjoyed better employment opportunities and received higher earnings than their female counterparts; on average, their odds of being employed would increase by 45.6%, and their hourly pay rates would be higher by 12.0% or 13.4%, when literacy and numeracy skills or the PSTRE skill were controlled, respectively. Moreover, the effects of gender on employability and earnings varied widely across countries, for instance, a male worker in Peru would have 1.5 times higher odds to be employed, and receive a higher hourly pay by 40% in Estonia. This finding indicated that gender hiring inequality and gender income inequality remained as general issues. 6) Another set of population subgroups this dissertation aimed to explore was the field of study area (STEM vs. non-STEM) because the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) labor force has become a popular topic in discussion of the job market. Overall, this dissertation found that the field of study area had mixed effects on employability and demonstrated merely a weak non-significant positive association with earnings for labor market entrants. Specifically, when PSTRE skill was controlled, individuals with a STEM background tended to enjoy significantly better job opportunities than their non-STEM background counterparts, on average their odds of being employed would increase by 12.6%; While when literacy and numeracy skills were analyzed, studying a STEM field did not have any significant effects on increasing an individual’s probability of employment. Albeit the overall effects on earnings were non-significant, the findings did show studying in a STEM field would result in various monetary returns across countries, for instance, workers with a STEM background in Chile could receive higher hourly wages by more than 13%, while in countries like Ecuador or Greece, STEM or non-STEM background did not quite make a difference on earnings

Targeting Neddylation Pathways to Inactivate Cullin-RING Ligases for Anticancer Therapy

Significance: Protein neddylation is catalyzed by an E1 NEDD8-activating enzyme (NAE), an E2 NEDD8-conjugating enzyme, and an E3 NEDD8 ligase. Known physiological substrates of neddylation are cullin family members. Cullin neddylation leads to activation of cullin-RING ligases (CRLs), the largest family of E3 ubiquitin ligases responsible for ubiquitylation and degradation of many key signaling/regulatory proteins. Thus, through modulating CRLs, neddylation regulates many biological processes, including cell cycle progression, signal transduction, and tumorigenesis. Given that NEDD8 is overexpressed and CRLs are abnormally activated in many human cancers, targeting protein neddylation, in general, and cullin neddylation, in particular, appears to be an attractive anticancer approach. Recent Advances: MLN4924, a small molecule inhibitor of NAE, was discovered that inactivates CRLs and causes accumulation of CRL substrates to suppress tumor cell growth both in vitro and in vivo. Promising preclinical results advanced MLN4924 to several clinical trials for anticancer therapy. Critical Issues: In preclinical settings, MLN4924 effectively suppresses tumor cell growth by inducing apoptosis, senescence, and autophagy, and causes sensitization to chemoradiation therapies in a cellular context-dependent manner. Signal molecules that determine the cell fate upon MLN4924 treatment, however, remain elusive. Cancer cells develop MLN4924 resistance by selecting target mutations. Future Directions: In the clinical side, several Phase 1b trials are under way to determine the safety and efficacy of MLN4924, acting alone or in combination with conventional chemotherapy, against human solid tumors. In the preclinical side, the efforts are being made to develop additional neddylation inhibitors by targeting NEDD8 E2s and E3s. Antioxid. Redox Signal. 21, 2383?2400.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/140276/1/ars.2013.5795.pd

Large modulation of thermal transport in 2D semimetal triphosphides by doping-induced electron-phonon coupling

Recent studies demonstrate that novel 2D triphosphides semiconductors possess high carrier mobility and promising thermoelectric performance, while the carrier transport behaviors in 2D semimetal triphosphides have never been elucidated before. Herein, using the first-principles calculations and Boltzmann transport theory, we reveal that the electron-phonon coupling can be significant and thus greatly inhibits the electron and phonon transport in electron-doped BP3 and CP3. The intrinsic heat transport capacity of flexural acoustic phonon modes in the wrinkle structure is largely suppressed arising from the strong out-of-plane phonon scatterings, leading to the low phonon thermal conductivity of 1.36 and 5.33 W/(mK) for BP3 and CP3 at room temperature, and at high doping level, the enhanced scattering from electron diminishes the phonon thermal conductivity by 71% and 54% for BP3 and CP3, respectively. Instead, electron thermal conductivity shows nonmonotonic variations with the increase of doping concentration, stemming from the competition between electron-phonon scattering rates and electron group velocity. It is worth noting that the heavy-doping effect induced strong scattering from phonon largely suppresses the electron transport and reduces electron thermal conductivity to the magnitude of phonon thermal conductivity. This work sheds light on the electron and phonon transport properties in semimetal triphosphides monolayer and provides an efficient avenue for the modulation of carrier transport by doping-induced electron-phonon coupling effect

Prospects of gravitational waves in the minimal left-right symmetric model

The left-right symmetric model (LRSM) is a well-motivated framework to restore parity and implement seesaw mechanisms for the tiny neutrino masses at or above the TeV-scale, and has a very rich phenomenology at both the high-energy and high-precision frontiers. In this paper we examine the phase transition and resultant gravitational waves (GWs) in the minimal version of LRSM. Taking into account all the theoretical and experimental constraints on LRSM, we identify the parameter regions with strong first-order phase transition and detectable GWs in the future experiments. It turns out in a sizeable region of the parameter space, GWs can be generated in the phase transition with the strength of $10^{-17}$ to $10^{-12}$ at the frequency of 0.1 to 10 Hz, which can be detected by BBO and DECIGO. Furthermore, GWs in the LRSM favor a relatively light $SU(2)_R$-breaking scalar $H_3^0$, which is largely complementary to the direct searches of a long-lived neutral scalar at the high-energy colliders. It is found that the other heavy scalars and the right-handed neutrinos in the LRSM also play an important part for GW signal production in the phase transition.Comment: 41 pages, 10 figures, 5 tables, added references, improved tex

Design of the Tsinghua Tabletop Kibble Balance

The Kibble balance is a precision instrument for realizing the mass unit, the kilogram, in the new international system of units (SI). In recent years, an important trend for Kibble balance experiments is to go tabletop, in which the instrument's size is notably reduced while retaining a measurement accuracy of $10^{-8}$. In this paper, we report a new design of a tabletop Kibble balance to be built at Tsinghua University. The Tsinghua Kibble balance aims to deliver a compact instrument for robust mass calibrations from 10 g to 1 kg with a targeted measurement accuracy of 50 $\mu$g or less. Some major features of the Tsinghua Kibble balance system, including the design of a new magnet, one-mode measurement scheme, the spring-compensated magnet moving mechanism, and magnetic shielding considerations, are discussed.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figure