China's geoeconomic strategy: China’s strategy towards the financial crisis and economic reform

China’s pragmatic attitude towards its own 30 years of reform can be used to similarly characterise its attitude toward the global fi nancial crisis of 2008 and the resultant push for further economic reforms. China was able to manage the downturn following 2008, and has a good chance of managing the consequences of Europe’s slowdown by undertaking fiscal and monetary stimulus. The debate over global imbalances has increased the need for nations to re-balance their economies, including China. The Chinese economy requires rebalancing to sustain strong growth rates in the coming decades, with the slowdown in the West making the re-orientation towards growth by domestic demand an even greater imperative

[Review of] Leonore Loeb Adler and Uwe P. Gielen. Cross-Cultural Topics on Psychology

It has been over forty years since Gordon Allport published The Nature of Prejudice (Cambridge, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1954). To Allport, sociocultural factors play an important role in our prejudice, especially when we do not understand cultural differences. However, Allport\u27s book dealt little with cross-cultural research. Fortunately, Leonore Loeb Adler and Uwe P. Gielen, two experts in cross-cultural research, have presented us with their recent study on how cultural understanding helps us to be more open-minded

Formation of proto-cluster: a virialized structure from gravo-turbulent collapse II. A two-dimensional analytical model for rotating and accreting system

Most stars are born in the gaseous proto-cluster environment. The knowledge of this intermediate stage gives more accurate constraints on star formation characteristics. We demonstrate that a virialized globally supported structure, in which star formation happens, is formed out of a collapsing molecular cloud, and derive a mapping from the parent cloud parameters to the proto-cluster to predict its properties, with a view to confront analytical calculations with observations and simulations. The virial theorem is decomposed into two dimensions to account for the rotation and the flattened geometry. Equilibrium is found by balancing rotation, turbulence and self-gravity, while turbulence is maintained by accretion driving and dissipates in one crossing time. The angular momentum and the accretion rate of the proto-cluster are estimated from the parent cloud properties. The two-dimensional virial model predicts the size and velocity dispersion given the mass of the proto-cluster and that of the parent cloud. The gaseous proto-clusters lie on a sequence of equilibrium with the trend $R \sim M^{0.5}$, with limited variations depending on the evolutionary stage, the parent cloud, and the parameters not well known like turbulence driving efficiency by accretion and the turbulence anisotropy. The model reproduces successfully observations and simulation results. The properties of proto-clusters follow universal relations and they can be derived from that of the parent cloud. Using simple estimates to infer the peak position of the core mass function (CMF) we find a weak dependence on the cluster mass suggesting that the physical conditions inside proto-clusters may contribute to set a CMF, and by extension an IMF, that looks independent of the environment