Unveiling the motivation and push factors of pursuing Economics Doctoral Degrees in China

It generally takes a lot of time and hard-work to complete a PhD program. Thus, most Chinese universities cannot full fill their PhD admission plans just a few years ago. However, things have changed dramatically over the years. Nowadays, the rate of acceptance for PhD applicants can be well below twenty percent even in the second tier universities. This trend in education will have large impact on the educational system, students as well as the labor market. It is worth questioning why more and more Chinese people are interested in pursuing a PhD degree, especially in Economics related majors. Therefore, this paper intends to figure out the push factors and motivations behind the growing popularity of PhD programs in Economics, through a combined method of questionnaire surveys and interviews. Specifically, 20 PhD students in Economics related majors at Graduate School of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences were randomly selected to complete a questionnaire. First, general information were collected though the first 5 questions. Next, 21 specific questions were asked, covering all possible explanations and implications for the popularity of the PhD programs. Then, interviews were conducted among these students to provide supplementary information. Finally, the results were summarized and analyzed. Conclusions drawn from the results suggested that students decision towards education could have been affected by factors such as social recognition, government policies and current job market. This paper provides rich information on China’s highest education and high-end talents, which can be useful for researchers, educational institutions, employers and future students. Key words: Doctoral education; Economics education; Attractiveness of education; Quality of education; Returns of education; Value of PhD; Driving forces; Incentive

Empirical Analysis of Factors Impacting Turnover Intention and Termination Intention among Manufacturing Workers

The purpose of this study was to investigate how turnover intention relates to job satisfaction, organizational commitment, leadership, job performance, work-family conflict among manufacturing workers in Tennessee, USA. A causal model was proposed and a turnover intention survey questionnaire was set up for manufacturing workers. The data was collected from a large manufacturing company in the East Tennessee area and was analyzed by SPSS and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The results of our study indicated that job satisfaction and organizational commitment have negatively and significantly affected the manufacturing worker’s turnover intention while the work-family conflict has positively and significantly affected turnover intention. Although leadership indirectly influences turnover intention, its efforts on turnover intention were fully mediated by job satisfaction and organizational commitment. No effect of job performance on turnover intention was found in this study based on the manufacturing workers. The results suggested that policies for enhancing worker job satisfaction and organizational commitment, balancing work-family conflict, and improving leadership style should be proposed to reduce turnover intention. The relationship between factors and termination intention were also investigated in this study. Moreover, the results indicated that job performance and role conflict are the determinants of the manufacturing workers’ termination intention. The results suggested that management needs to improve their worker\u27s job performance and reduce their role conflict and then decrease the workers’ termination intention

Civil Aviation English for Pilots: An English Air-ground Communication Course Based on Simulating Videos

Communication between pilots and ATCs is one crucial element that affects flight safety. As a result, with the significant increase of international air service, ICAO decided English as the mandatory language of international civil aviation in the 1950s. According to the English requirement of ICAO, an English proficiency test was required in China. However, pilot’s lack of English background and the imperfect English air-ground communication curriculum in China cause a dilemma.To solve this problem, a simulating video based English air-ground communication course with an effective language teaching approach, CLT, was developed in the project

Deformation Behavior of Bulk Metallic Glasses and High Entropy Alloys by Nanoindentation

Nanoindentation has become a powerful tool in the measurement of the mechanical properties of diverse materials, such as metallic materials, polymer materials, and even biomaterials. In this thesis, three types of Zr-based bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) were investigated by nanoindentation. Our work focuses on the characterization of the hardness, the reduced modulus, and the deformation behavior under different indentation conditions. The study of the hardness and the reduced modulus is to access the effect of the indentation load on deformation behavior and to determine the inhomogeneous deformation. The morphological profiles of the residual indentation on the surface of the specimen after an indentation were observed by the atomic force microscope (AFM). Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) measurements were performed to determine characteristic thermal properties, the glass transition temperature (Tg), and the crystallization temperature (Tx). The serrated-flow behavior (or pop-in behavior) was investigated at different loading rates. It is concluded that the pop-in size gradually increases with the decrease in the loading rate and the increase of the indentation depth. And the research of the indentation tests on the several metallic glasses at different indentation rates indicates that a much higher critical strain rate will lead to the disappearance of flow serrations. Another type of material of a high-entropy alloy (HEA) was also investigated in this thesis. The hardness, reduced modulus, and deformation behavior were investigated by the indentation tests. Compared to Zr-based BMGs, this type of HEA has lower hardness and higher reduced modulus. Creep behavior was observed in the indentation tests. However, serrated flow behavior disappears. The microstructure of this HEA was investigated by the X-ray diffraction (XRD), atomic force microscopy (AFM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and energy-dispersive spectroscopy (EDS). For the advanced research, the simulation of ion-implantation of HEAs was preformed, because the advanced reactor is one of the important potential applications of HEAs and advanced nuclear-energy systems, which will require materials that can withstand extreme reactor environments of high-temperature and high-doses radiation

The Relationship between Energy Input and Economic Development: Latest Evidence from China

China’s energy consumption, energy production and economic production have all experienced fast growth over the past few decades. Previous research suggests a possible causal relationship between economic growth and energy consumption, but no enough empirical evidences were provided. Therefore, this research intends to evaluate the relationship between energy input and economic development, using China’s latest data and by means of elasticity and statistical tests. Conclusions drawn from the results suggest that there is a varying positive correlation between energy and economic development; China’s energy efficiency has improved while the dependency of China’s economy on electricity has increased in recent years; there is a unidirectional causality from economic growth to energy consumption and a unidirectional relationship from economic growth to coal consumption. This paper provides comprehensive information on the relationship between China’s energy input and economic development, which can be useful for policy makers and researchers. Keywords: Energy consumption, Economic development, Causalit

GELATIN MICROGEL INCORPORATED POLY (ETHYLENE GLYCOL) BIOADHESIVE WITH ENHANCED ADHESIVE PROPERTY AND BIOACTIVITY

In this study, chemically crosslinked gelatin microgels were incorporated into dopamine-modified poly (ethylene glycol) (PEGDM) adhesive to form composite bioadhesive with simultaneously improved adhesive property and bioactivity. Gelatin microgel, with an average diameter of 53.6±14.2μm, was prepared with water in oil emulsification method and chemically crosslinked with 1-ethyl-3-[3-dimethylaminopropyl]carbodiimide hydrochloride (EDC) and N-hydroxysuccinimide (NHS). Gelatin microgels were incorporated into PEGDM adhesive precursor solution at 1.5wt%, 3.75wt% and 7.5wt%. The cure time of adhesive reduced from 54 seconds to 37 seconds with increasing gelatin microgel content. Additionally, the incorporation of the gelatin microgel also increased the crosslinking density of the adhesive network as indicated by the reduced equilibrium water content and increased elastic modulus based on compression testing. The compliance of adhesive was not compromised with the increased crosslinking density, as the failure strain showed no significant decrease from the compression testing result. Results from oscillator rheometry indicated that both the storage and loss moduli of the adhesive increased with increasing microgel content, which suggested that the microgels increased both chemical and physical crosslinks in the adhesive architecture. The increased physical crosslink indicated increased energy dissipation ability of the adhesive. Lap shear adhesive test demonstrated that the addition of gelatin microgel enhanced the adhesive property of adhesive. The adhesive property was increased 1.5-2 fold after the addition of gelatin microgel. In the in vitro degradation test, samples of different formulation groups degraded gradually under a similar rate after soaked in the phosphate buffer solution (pH=7.4) and incubated at 37°C. After 8 weeks samples were completely degraded. The in vitro cell viability was tested with L929 mouse fibroblast and the results showed no cytotoxicity in each test formulation. The in vitro cell attachment experiment revealed an enhanced cell attachment and spreading of primary rat dermal fibroblast on gelatin microgel containing PEGDM adhesive compared to the adhesive without gelatin microgel. The results of rat subcutaneous implantation revealed higher cell recruitment and collagen deposition compared with control adhesive group which has no gelatin microgel in structure. Cell infiltration was found in the pocket structure formed by the degradation of gelatin microgel. In conclusion, the incorporation of gelatin microgel presents a simple method to simultaneously enhance the adhesive property and bioactivity of bioadhesive

Anyon exclusions statistics on surfaces with gapped boundaries

An anyon exclusion statistics, which generalizes the Bose-Einstein and Fermi-Dirac statistics of bosons and fermions, was proposed by Haldane[1]. The relevant past studies had considered only anyon systems without any physical boundary but boundaries often appear in real-life materials. When fusion of anyons is involved, certain `pseudo-species' anyons appear in the exotic statistical weights of non-Abelian anyon systems; however, the meaning and significance of pseudo-species remains an open problem. In this paper, we propose an extended anyon exclusion statistics on surfaces with gapped boundaries, introducing mutual exclusion statistics between anyons as well as the boundary components. Motivated by Refs. [2, 3], we present a formula for the statistical weight of many-anyon states obeying the proposed statistics. We develop a systematic basis construction for non-Abelian anyons on any Riemann surfaces with gapped boundaries. From the basis construction, we have a standard way to read off a canonical set of statistics parameters and hence write down the extended statistical weight of the anyon system being studied. The basis construction reveals the meaning of pseudo-species. A pseudo-species has different `excitation' modes, each corresponding to an anyon species. The `excitation' modes of pseudo-species corresponds to good quantum numbers of subsystems of a non-Abelian anyon system. This is important because often (e.g., in topological quantum computing) we may be concerned about only the entanglement between such subsystems.Comment: 36 pages, 14 figure