A study of Chinese university English teachers’ subjectivity in a neoliberal EAP policy implementation: from a Foucauldian perspective

Human capital has had a considerable influence on the education policies in China. In this paper, a new policy of the Shanghai Education Bureau is described in which universities were strongly recommended to replace their English in general education programs with an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) one, in order to produce talent for regional and national development. Using a Foucauldian perspective to explore the extent the teachers were subjectified by the Shanghai EAP Policy. The teachers had demonstrated their subjectivity, particularly via critiquing, questioning the discourse, and mediating their EAP teaching. Teachers’ praxis becomes useful in helping them to develop independent professionalism to sustain their subjectivity in a neoliberal discourse

Human-Induced and Climate-Driven Contributions to Water Storage Variations in the Haihe River Basin, China

Terrestrial water storage (TWS) can be influenced by both climate change and anthropogenic activities. While the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites have provided a global view on long-term trends in TWS, our ability to disentangle human impacts from natural climate variability remains limited. Here we present a quantitative method to isolate these two contributions with reconstructed climate-driven TWS anomalies (TWSA) based on long-term precipitation data. Using the Haihe River Basin (HRB) as a case study, we find a higher human-induced water depletion rate (−12.87 ± 1.07 mm/yr) compared to the original negative trend observed by GRACE alone for the period of 2003–2013, accounting for a positive climate-driven TWSA trend (+4.31 ± 0.72 mm/yr). We show that previous approaches (e.g., relying on land surface models) provide lower estimates of the climate-driven trend, and thus likely underestimated the human-induced trend. The isolation method presented in this study will help to interpret observed long-term TWS changes and assess regional anthropogenic impacts on water resources

Thermal management performances of PCM/water cooling-plate using for lithium-ion battery module based on non-uniform internal heat source

In order to improve the working performance of the lithium-ion battery, the battery module with Phase change material/water cooling-plate was designed and numerically analyzed based on the energy conservation and fluid dynamics. The non-uniform internal heat source based on 2D electro-thermal model for battery LiFePO4/C was used to simulate the heat generation of each battery. Then factors such as height of water cooling-plate, space between adjacent batteries, inlet mass flow rate, flow direction, thermal conductivity and melting point of PCM were discussed to research their influences on the cooling performance of module. And the 5 continuous charge-discharge cycles was used to research the effect of PCM/water cooling plate on preventing thermal runaway. The results showed that the water cooling plate set close to the near-electrode area of battery removed the majority of heat generated during discharging and decreased the maximum temperature efficiently. The PCM between the adjacent batteries could improve the uniformity of temperature field. In addition, the PCM/water cooling plate could limit the maximum temperature effectively and improve the uniformity of temperature field during the 5 continuous charge-discharge cycles. As a result, it prevented the emergence of thermal runaway and increased the safety of module. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Effect of Repeated Loading on the Flexural Load Carrying Capacity ofMarine Concrete Beams Exposed to Chloride Environment

To investigate the effect of repeated loading on the flexural load carrying capacity of marine concrete beams suffering from chloride attack, a total of 10 marine concrete beams and 27 concrete cubes were designed for flexural performance test and compressive strength test, respectively. Three damage mechanisms, including repeated loading with a stress level of 0.4, chloride salt dry-wet cycles and coupling action of repeated loading history and chloride salt dry-wet cycles, were applied for concrete beams and cubes. Test results show that the effect of repeated loading on the degradation of compressive strength of concrete is significantly higher than that on the flexural properties of concrete beams, and the corresponding degradation ratio between them is maintained at about 1.5. The effect of chloride salt dry-wet cycles on concrete compressive strength is 1.8 times higher than that on the flexural load carrying capacity of test beams. Combined with the test data proposed in this paper and some existing studies, the influence of compressive strength loss on the flexural load carrying capacity of marine concrete beams was discussed. The analysis shows that the compressive strength loss rate can effectively reflect the remaining flexural load carrying capacity of marine concrete beams and there is an exponential relationship between them