Chickens First\ud \ud Speciation by “Hopeful Monsters” in Fraternal Supertwins\ud

The idea of “hopeful monster” was proposed by Goldschmidt who envisioned that speciation could occur instantaneously via major chromosomal rearrangement in a one-step process; but he could not unravel how similar individual in the opposite sex to appear on the same time and location to generate next generation. This paper provides the answer for the challenge. \ud In this paper, a model of speciation in animals is discussed in detail. Only four steps are needed to generate a new species in sexual animals: fraternal twin zygotes, similar gross mutation on the zygotes, self-splitting of mutated zygotes into two groups of identical zygotes of both sexes, development of zygotes with birth of babies, and inbreeding when they mature. The outcome of these steps is generation of new species with chromosomal homozygosity. Viviparous animals (living young not eggs are produced) are used to explain the model. With slight modifications, other asexual organisms could be accommodated. \ud As the model provides the simplest explanation for speciation in all sexual animals, which plausibly explains many puzzles in biology; such as chicken egg, Cambrian explosion, appearance of new organs, etc. The author presents a few predictions that can be falsified. \ud This model needs only one assumption and it is consistent with many well-known observations. \u

Environmental and economic modelling of organic, stockless, horticultural crop rotations

Selected results from the ongoing “EU-Rotate_N” research project are presented. This EU 5th-framework project is developing a model-based decision support system to optimise nitrogen use in horticultural crop rotations across Europe. This paper introduces the economic and the fertility-building crops sub-models, and shows data from model validation and first model runs on an organic farm in central England. Preliminary results show that the model has the potential to be a powerful support tool for farmers and advisors, making decisions on rotational plan-ning. The economic, agronomic and environmental consequences of different rotational designs can be projected and assessed in detail

National-scale modelling of N leaching in organic and conventional horticultural crop rotations - policy implications

A method is presented to model N leaching in crop rotations on a national scale. Representative crop rotations for different regions and soil types are used in the cross-disciplinary, plant, soil, environment & economics model EU-Rotate_N. By comparing contrasting farming systems (organic and conventional) in the UK, their strengths and weaknesses in delivering environmental and economic sustainability can be assessed. Modelling results show that the annual leaching in different horticultural rotations and UK regions, using median weather, is within the range of 13-88 kg N/ha/year for organic and 54-130 kg N /ha/year for conventional. The weighted annual average figures are 39 kg N/ha/year for organic and 81 kg N/ha/year for conventional, respectively. It is concluded that organic horticultural rotations, with a current share of 6.1% already contribute to lower overall N losses from agriculture. However, on a UK national scale, only a large share of organic land use (e.g. >50%) has a large effect on reducing N losses. Similar reductions are also predicted by substantial cuts in conventional N inputs, giving a policy choice if pollution from agriculture steps up further on the political agenda

Transforming from Addicted Video Gamer to Doctoral Candidate: An Autoethnographic Reflection

Video game addiction has become a significant concern in many countries with the development of the digital entertainment industry. Researchers have devoted their efforts to understanding the causes of video game addiction and seeking solutions and treatment approaches to help reduce the addictive problem. Similar to the worldwide situation, video game addiction issues are also a major socio-cultural problem in China. Although qualitative and quantitative research methods have been used in video game addiction studies, current research still follows the model of collecting data from objective participants and then analysing it. Contrarily, there is a lack of first-person empirical data on overcoming video game addiction. This research adopts the autoethnographic approach to study video game addiction topics. The outcome indicates that the author’s game addiction is mainly created by seeking fun in gameplay and escapism from real-life problems. The factors that help the author overcome the addiction and further turn into a positive influence in his life include shifting attention and making life more purposeful

Resolving Corporate Insolvencies in China: the Gap Between Law and Reality

This article examines how corporate insolvencies in China, the second largest economy, are handled under the current legislation, the China Enterprise Bankruptcy Law of 2006. Relying on the fresh empirical data arising from the first ten years on the use of China’s three insolvency procedures, reorganization, composition and liquidation, this article reveals the huge gap between the law in the books and the law in action, arguing that the implementation of this law in China perhaps has not achieved the legislative objectives. The constitutional and institutional weaknesses affecting the application of this law are analyze

Chinese Parents’ Perception of Emergency Remote Teaching-learning in COVID-19 Pandemic in China

After Chinese government firstly released COVID-19 outbreak news in the world, the Chinese educational system launched the emergency remote teaching-learning (ERT) as the response to COVID-19 as new virus pandemic with the mission of “suspending schools without stopping teaching-learning”. The challenges that teachers, students and parents encountered and the ed-tech strategies that teachers and schools used in terms of effective remote teaching-learning has got the attention from the countries around the world. Since parents are the significant stakeholders of K-12 education, for better understanding the challenges in emergency remote teaching-learning from parents’ lens, their reactions are worth a word. In this qualitative case study, parent participants (N=741) from 16 provinces in mainland China gave responses to four open-ended questions in the web-based questionnaires released on wjx.cn (问卷星). The themes emerged from the thematic analysis. The participants emphasized that online teaching-learning can’t replace face-to-face one in the brick-and-mortar classrooms in terms of “no learning atmosphere” from the perspectives of students’ behavior, cognitive and emotion engagement. Parents held a pessimistic attitude towards the quality of online teaching. Parents argued that remote teaching-learning would be a disaster for students with poor self-regulation and learning autonomy. In depth, the parent participants’ concerns about emergency remote teaching-learning mirror the challenge of accountability in remote education. The current study suggests the school administrations to develop the systematic professional development programs for training the collaboration among in-service teachers, students and their parents how to develop online learning community and keeping student engagement in remote learning

Relevance Search via Bipolar Label Diffusion on Bipartite Graphs

The task of relevance search is to find relevant items to some given queries which can be viewed either as an information retrieval problem or as a semi-supervised learning problem In order to combine both of their advantages we develop a new relevance search method using label diffusion on bipartite graphs And we propose a heat diffusion-based algorithm namely bipartite label diffusion BLD Our method yields encouraging experimental results on a number of relevance search problem

An M-Learning Application to Enhance Children’s Learning Experience

eXtension.org is an interactive learning environment offers reliable educational and information resources on a variety of topics. For Youth, For Life Learning Network community works with eXtension.org to produce youth oriented content for the base of eXtension.org. However, there is no particular software or application designed for children to gather information from extension.org so far. The target user of eXtension.org is the general public, which means it is not child-friendly. In this project, we developed a child-friendly android version mobile app to draw children’s attention in exploring science knowledge from eXtension.org. The app is an educational tool designed to provide learning opportunities to children. It provides several articles to its users in a systematically categorized and prioritized topic. The application is a joint collaboration from eXtension.org and For Youth, For Life (FYFL)

TIPS AND TRAPS: METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES RELATED TO CONDUCTING AN ONLINE TRIP PLANNING STUD

This study examines methodological issues related to studying American college students’ online travel planning behavior. A mixed method approach, which integrated think-aloud protocol combined with the process tracing method, log analysis and survey techniques, was evaluated in this paper. In previous studies, this methodological approach has been subject to issues of reliability and validity that were addressed in the design of the current study. Specifically, questions were related to whether the experiment used in this study would yield results comparable to the decision-making and search processes respondents would engage upon on their real-life trip planning. The purpose of this paper was to discuss how this study has evolved from previous work in this area in order to increase reliability and validity. Issues regarding the artificiality of the environment are addressed in this paper. Overall it was found that the qualitative- based, mixed-method approach used in this study was deemed appropriate and has resulted in delivering insights into the phenomena of online travel planning