Alternative Pathways for Urbanization in China: Inclusion, Empowerment and Sustainability

The twentieth century has been characterized by rapid urbanization accompanied by enormous urban growth and massive rural-to-urban migration around the world. The state-led urban expansion model of economic development that shapes China’s contemporary economy, systematically excludes farmers in general, and left-behind female farmers in particular, from its urbanization processes. Without integrating its large rural population into urban development, China is limiting its capacity for sustainable economic growth. Hence, if China aspires to become a high-income country by rebalancing its development strategies in more inclusive, equitable and sustainable directions, moving toward a more farmer-oriented urbanization pathway is vital. Given that male out-migration and females being left behind are the outcomes of gender inequalities within and beyond rural households, left-behind women, who are even more left out of policy discourses than men, need to be integrated into more inclusive approaches to urbanization planning. However, China’s land-driven, top-down model of urban development may systematically prevent the emergence of bottom-up approaches that would allow farmers to participate more fully in and to benefit from urbanization. To tackle these problems, this dissertation incorporates Friedmann’s alternative development framework, which is centered on inclusion, empowerment, gender equity and sustainability, to guide a holistic and systematic analysis. Through a case study of Chongqing, this dissertation first examines how one local state utilizes land resources to facilitate more people-oriented urbanization, rather than merely extracting land revenue. Subsequently, it also examines opportunities for left-behind women to develop self-empowerment through a comparison between left-behind and non-left-behind women’s empowerment status, using the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index. Finally, integrated urbanization practices, centered on inclusion, sustainable development, and gender equity, are examined for their relevance to possible alternative urbanization pathways in China. The results of the two studies confirm that such pathways could evolve from China’s current practices in ways that are compatible with its present model of state capitalism, while fulfilling its aspirations for securing a socialist market economy. With an exclusive focus on the agency of farmers overall and then female farmers, specifically, this dissertation fills an existing research gap by providing a ground-up analysis of integrated alternative urbanization pathways in China, which depart from current economy-maximizing approaches

The Influence of Parent-Child Relationship on Pupils’ Learning Motivation: The Mediating Role of Teacher-Student Relationship

Objective: The study is to analyze the influence of parent-child relationship on pupils’ learning motivation, and to explore the mediating mechanism of teacher-student relationship in parent-child relationship and learning motivation. Method: This study conducted a questionnaire survey on 213 pupils in Grades 5 and 6 in two schools in Beijing using Pianta’s teacher-student relationship scale revised by Qu, Dornbush’s parent-child intimacy scale revised by Zhang and the learning motivation scale adapted by Hu. Results: Gender, grade, whether they are the only child and to be a class cadre or not show significant differences in some dimensions of parent-child relationship, teacherstudent relationship and learning motivation. The total scores of parent-child relationship, teacher-student relationship and learning motivation are positively correlated, and some sub dimensions are also significantly correlated. Parentchild relationship and teacher-student relationship have a significant positive predictive effect on learning motivation, and parent-child relationship has a significant positive predictive effect on teacher-student relationship. Teacher-student relationship plays a mediating role in the influence of parent-child relationship on learning motivation. Conclusions: Parent-child relationship can promote the relationship between teachers and students, and then enhance pupils’ learning motivation

Application of Fireproof Coating for New Energy Vehicle Battery Pack

In the development process of new energy vehicles, the battery pack is one of the key parts, and the safety of the battery pack has always been an important factor affecting the application range and market sales of new energy vehicles. In order to improve the safety of battery packs, fireproof coatings are widely used on the surface of battery packs. This paper introduces the application of fireproof coatings in new energy vehicles by analyzing the composition and function of fireproof coatings

Effects of dietary oxidized fish oil on the growth performance, intestinal health, and antioxidant capacity of zebrafish

This study aimed to investigate the effects of oxidized fish oil (OFO) on growth performance, intestinal health, and antioxidant function and to determine the minimum concentration of oxidized fish oil to cause irreversible damage to the intestinal tissue structure of zebrafish. A 30-day feeding trial on zebrafish (average weight 0.054 g) was conducted in triplicate groups of fish fed four test diets containing different concentrations of OFO: 0% OFO (OFF, blank control), 2% OFO (OF1), 4% OFO (OF2), and 6% OFO (OF3). The body weight gain (WG), specific growth rates (SGR), feed conversion ratio (FCR), survival rate (SR), and antioxidant function {glutathione peroxidase (GSH-PX), total superoxide dismutase (T-SOD), catalase (CAT), and malondialdehyde (MDA)} were recorded. The intestinal structure was observed at the end of the trial. After the 14-day experimental period, Final body weight (FBW), WG, and SGR decreased significantly with the increase in the concentration of feed OFO (P < 0.05), while FCR showed a downward trend. The activity of T-SOD decreased significantly, the activities of GSH-PX and CAT, and the MDA content increased significantly with the increase in the concentration of feed OFO (P < 0.05). The intestinal morphological damage score showed an upward trend with the increase in the concentration of OFO, and it was significantly higher in group OF2 and OF3 than in group OF1 (P < 0.05). After the 28-day test period, the experimental indexes and intestinal antioxidant function trends were the same as those on 14 days. The increased OFO concentration significantly increased the intestinal morphological injury score (P < 0.05). These results demonstrated that adding 4% OFO to the feed for 14 days could induce irreversible damage to the intestinal tissue structure, weaken the antioxidant function, and decrease the growth performance of zebrafish

Towards Efficient Communications in Federated Learning: A Contemporary Survey

In the traditional distributed machine learning scenario, the user's private data is transmitted between nodes and a central server, which results in great potential privacy risks. In order to balance the issues of data privacy and joint training of models, federated learning (FL) is proposed as a special distributed machine learning with a privacy protection mechanism, which can realize multi-party collaborative computing without revealing the original data. However, in practice, FL faces many challenging communication problems. This review aims to clarify the relationship between these communication problems, and focus on systematically analyzing the research progress of FL communication work from three perspectives: communication efficiency, communication environment, and communication resource allocation. Firstly, we sort out the current challenges existing in the communications of FL. Secondly, we have compiled articles related to FL communications, and then describe the development trend of the entire field guided by the logical relationship between them. Finally, we point out the future research directions for communications in FL

Ranking range based approach to MADM under incomplete context and its application in venture investment evaluation

In real-world Multiple Attribute Decision Making (MADM) problem, the attribute weights information may be unknown or partially known. Several approaches have been suggested to address this kind of incomplete MADM problem. However, these approaches depend on the determination of attribute weights, and setting different attribute weight vectors may result in different ranking positions of alternatives. To deal with this issue, this paper develops a novel MADM approach: the ranking range based MADM approach. In the novel MADM approach, the minimum and maximum ranking positions of every alternative are generated using several optimization models, and the average ranking position of every alternative is produced applying the Monte Carlo simulation method. Then, the minimum, maximum and average ranking positions of the alternative are integrated into a new ranking position of the alternative. This novel approach is capable of dealing with venture investment evaluation problems. However, in the venture investment evaluation process, decision makers will present different risk attitudes. To deal with this issue, two ranking range based MADM approaches with risk attitudes are further designed. A case study and a simulation experiment are presented to show the validity of the proposal