Reformulating the Developmental State Theory to Explain Chinese Spatial Planning

Developmental state literature almost completely neglects the fact that one of the unique features of the developmental state is its capacity to reorganize its territory, and the literature on the Chinese developmental state repeats the same oversight. Against this backdrop, this study attempts to retheorize China's spatial planning from a developmental state perspective. In light of the theoretical discussion in this study, we argue that the developmentalist spatial planning has five main characteristics of the developmentalist spatial planning: 1) The state sees its territory as a means of production, not as a living environment. 2) Industrial location policies were market-conforming. 3) The spatial planning was controlled or strongly influenced by the elite economic agency that formulates industrial policies and guides the market. 4) The bureaucracy is more or less insulated from local growth coalitions. 5) Spatial planning creates rather than responds to economic changes. These five characteristics are apparent in China’s spatial planning as much as in South Korea’s

Comparing Preservice and Early Career Teachers' Perceptions of Elementary Music Teacher Education Practices: A Mixed Methods Study

University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. January 2018. Major: Music Education. Advisor: Keitha Hamann. 1 computer file (PDF); x, 368 pages.Elementary school music experiences have been shown to be influential for lifelong music engagement, and sound music teacher education would be the most effective way to provide positive school music experiences to students in elementary schools. In spite of this importance, many countries have different elementary music education and music teacher education practices based on their cultural values and educational priorities. The purpose of this study is to compare music teacher education practices for elementary schools in South Korea with those in the upper Midwest region of the United States by investigating preservice and early career elementary music teachers’ perceptions of their own music teacher education programs, self-perceptions of competence, and their suggestions for improvement. This Sequential Explanatory Mixed Methods study, which involved survey data in Phase I and interviews in Phase II, attempts to unravel the reasons behind these teachers’ perceptions and to approach a middle ground for elementary school music teacher education by recommending some practical ways to improve in two very distinctive contexts. The quantitative and qualitative results reveal that US teachers were mostly satisfied with their training, while the majority of the Korean teachers expressed great disappointment. Teachers in both countries expressed some degree of concern regarding the grade level preparation and appreciated their training courses and student teaching practicum when those were practical and related to pedagogy. In addition, their experiences in university courses and student teaching were greatly dependent on course instructors and cooperating teachers they met. In terms of a level of confidence in music teaching, the US teachers showed higher levels of confidence than did the Korean teachers, and their levels of confidence were highly related to their perceptions regarding the institutional performance addressing knowledge and skills that are necessary and relevant to the music teachers’ needs. Participants, regardless of their teaching experience level and their satisfaction, agreed that teachers who have enough music training and proper understanding of elementary school children should teach music in elementary schools, although the current status of each country was different, and the degrees of agreement were varied. In addition, while many US teachers wanted to have a prescribed curriculum as a guideline to ensure effective music teaching, every single Korean respondent preferred to have a prescribed curriculum, revealing the long educational convention and the current situation. Teachers in the US especially critiqued insufficient elementary school level consideration and practicality in their program. Their perceptions revealed the weaknesses in training elementary music specialists under the choral/instrumental track system for broad K-12 certification. On the other hand, although training in Korea was targeted to the elementary school level, the Korean music education major does not seem to function effectively to train elementary school level experts due to a lack of enough music expertise, practicality, and pedagogical support. Based on the teachers’ suggestions for improvement, some realistic remedies were proposed to find a middle ground such as enhancing music methods courses in terms of pedagogical content and practicality, increasing interrelation between the field experiences and university training courses, utilizing veteran elementary music teachers as music education faculty and cooperating teachers, and offering more accessible and organized professional development opportunities to elementary in-service teachers. The ultimate beneficiary of these improvements would be elementary school children who would have increased chances of getting a quality music education in their early and critical years

Hull-form optimization of a 66,000 dwt bulk carrier in irregular wave condition

This paper deploys optimization techniques to obtain the optimum hull form of a 66,000 DWT bulk carrier in calm water and in irregular head waves at sea state 6. Parametric modification functions for the bow hull-form variation are SAC shape, section shape (U-V type, DLWL type). Multi-objective functions are applied to minimize the values of wave-making resistance in calm water and mean added resistance in waves. WAVIS version 1.3 is used to obtain wave-making resistance in calm water condition. The modified Fujii and Takahashi's formula is applied to obtain the added resistance in short waves. The added resistance in long wave is obtained from the potential-flow solver based on the 3-D panel method. And the mean added resistance in irregular head waves is obtained by linear superposition of the wave spectrum and the response function. The PSO (Particle swarm optimization) algorithm is employed for the optimization technique. The resistance and motion characteristics in calm water, in regular head waves and in irregular head waves of the two hull forms are compared. It has been shown that the optimal brings 6.8% reduction in the mean added resistance at sea state 6

Two-Dimensional Dirac Fermions Protected by Space-Time Inversion Symmetry in Black Phosphorus

We report the realization of novel symmetry-protected Dirac fermions in a surface-doped two-dimensional (2D) semiconductor, black phosphorus. The widely tunable band gap of black phosphorus by the surface Stark effect is employed to achieve a surprisingly large band inversion up to ~0.6 eV. High-resolution angle-resolved photoemission spectra directly reveal the pair creation of Dirac points and their moving along the axis of the glide-mirror symmetry. Unlike graphene, the Dirac point of black phosphorus is stable, as protected by spacetime inversion symmetry, even in the presence of spin-orbit coupling. Our results establish black phosphorus in the inverted regime as a simple model system of 2D symmetry-protected (topological) Dirac semimetals, offering an unprecedented opportunity for the discovery of 2D Weyl semimetals

Metal/graphene sheets as p-type transparent conducting electrodes in GaN light emitting diodes

We demonstrate the use of graphene based transparent sheets as a p-type current spreading layer in GaN light emitting diodes (LEDs). Very thin Ni/Au was inserted between graphene and p-type GaN to reduce contact resistance, which reduced contact resistance from similar to 5.5 to similar to 0.6 Omega/ cm(2), with no critical optical loss. As a result, LEDs with metal-graphene provided current spreading and injection into the p-type GaN layer, enabling three times enhanced electroluminescent intensity compared with those with graphene alone. We confirmed very strong blue light emission in a large area of the metal-graphene layer by analyzing image brightness.open281

Highly circularly polarized white light using a combination of white polymer light-emitting diode and wideband cholesteric liquid crystal reflector

We present a simple and intriguing device that generates highly circularly polarized white light. It comprises white polymer light-emitting diodes (WPLEDs) attached to a wideband cholesteric liquid crystal (CLC) reflector with a wide photonic bandgap (PBG) covering the visible range. The degree of circular polarization realized is very high over the visible range. The wide PBG was realized by introducing a gradient in pitch of the cholesteric helix by controlling the twisting power within the CLC medium. WPLEDs fabricated using a ternary (red, green, and blue) fluorescent polymer blend with the same moiety showed a low turn-on voltage, high brightness, high efficiency, and good color stability.open0

Optically Transparent Patch Antennas Using Saltwater for WLAN Applications

This paper presents the design, fabrication, and measurement of a novel transparent patch antenna using saltwater with high-optical-transparency applications for wireless local area networks (WLANs) at 2.4–2.5 GHz. The most important reason for using saltwater for transparent antenna applications is its superior average optical transparency (OTav >90%) compared to other typical transparent electrodes, such as indium tin oxide (ITO; OTav >80%) or metal-mesh film (MMF; OTav >60%). This study designs three types of antennas: an antenna with a conductive part made of copper sheet (CS) for both the radiator and ground plane (case 1) to compare the performance with two types of proposed transparent antennas that use saltwater as the conductive parts; an antenna with saltwater for the radiator and MMF for the ground plane (case 2); and an antenna with saltwater for both the radiator and ground plane (case 3). The case 1, case 2, and case 3 antennas have peak gains of 6.87, 4.4, and 1.91 dB, respectively, and have corresponding radiation efficiencies of 93.5%, 62%, and 34%. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of a transparent patch antenna using saltwater

Multi-frame-based Cross-domain Image Denoising for Low-dose Computed Tomography

Computed tomography (CT) has been used worldwide for decades as one of the most important non-invasive tests in assisting diagnosis. However, the ionizing nature of X-ray exposure raises concerns about potential health risks such as cancer. The desire for lower radiation dose has driven researchers to improve the reconstruction quality, especially by removing noise and artifacts. Although previous studies on low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) denoising have demonstrated the effectiveness of learning-based methods, most of them were developed on the simulated data collected using Radon transform. However, the real-world scenario significantly differs from the simulation domain, and the joint optimization of denoising with modern CT image reconstruction pipeline is still missing. In this paper, for the commercially available third-generation multi-slice spiral CT scanners, we propose a two-stage method that better exploits the complete reconstruction pipeline for LDCT denoising across different domains. Our method makes good use of the high redundancy of both the multi-slice projections and the volumetric reconstructions while avoiding the collapse of information in conventional cascaded frameworks. The dedicated design also provides a clearer interpretation of the workflow. Through extensive evaluations, we demonstrate its superior performance against state-of-the-art methods

Clinical Characteristics of Monomorphic Post-transplant Lymphoproliferative Disorders

Post-transplant lymphoproliferative disorders (PTLD) are a heterogeneous group of lymphoproliferative disorders associated with immunosuppression and Epstein-Barr virus infection. PTLD is classified into three major categories: early lesions, polymorphic PTLD, and monomorphic PTLD. The majority of monomorphic PTLD cases are non-Hodgkin's lymphoma of B-cell origin. This retrospective study was conducted to investigate the incidence, clinical manifestation, treatment, and outcomes of monomorphic PTLD among 5,817 recipients of solid organ or allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation from five institutions. Fourteen patients with monomorphic PTLD were identified (male:female 11:3; median age 42.6 yr, range 24-60). The overall incidence rate was 0.24%. The most common disease type was diffuse large B cell lymphoma (n=7). The median time between the transplant and diagnosis of PTLD was 85.8 months. However, all cases of PTLD after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation occurred within 1 yr after transplantation. Ten of the 14 patients had EBV-positive tumor. Fourteen patients received combination systemic chemotherapy and four patients were treated with radiation therapy. Ten patients achieved a complete response (CR) and two patients a partial response (PR). The median follow-up period for surviving patients was 36.6 months. Nine patients remain alive (eight CR, one PR). Nine of 11 solid organ transplantations preserved graft function. The present study indicates a lower incidence rate and a longer median time before the development of PTLD than those of previous reports. Careful monitoring was needed after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation for PTLD