DEMAND FOR FOOD QUANTITY AND QUALITY IN CHINA

As their incomes rise, Chinese consumers are changing their diets and demanding greater quality, convenience, and safety in food. Food expenditures grow faster than quantities purchased as income rises, suggesting that consumers with higher incomes purchase more expensive foods. The top-earning Chinese households appear to have reached a point where the income elasticity of demand for quantity of most foods is near zero. China’s food market is becoming segmented. The demand for quality by high-income households has fueled recent growth in modern food retail and sales of premium-priced food and beverage products. Food expenditures and incomes have grown much more slowly for rural and low-income urban households.China, food, consumption, demand, income, elasticities, Engel curve, households, rural, urban, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

The correlation between Self-regulated Learning Behaviors and Academic Classification for HBCU Students Participating in Online and Remote Learning Experiences

The COVID-19 pandemic placed tremendous pressures on economic, medical, and educational infrastructures and systems around the world. Educational leaders were advised to “shutdown” schools which meant teachers and students were forbidden to gather in the same physical space to deliver and receive instruction. Pressures were transferred to technology leaders to create, maintain, and sustain technology infrastructure that depended on instructional technologies to mediate interactions among students, content, and instructors to provide learners with quality environments, experiences, and services while adhering to social distancing mandates. From a social cognitive perspective, this study is concerned with the relationship between abrupt environmental alteration created by the pandemic and the behavioral implications of deploying motivational and learning strategies empirically proven to contribute to academic success in traditional and online environments. The study showed undergraduate students at an HBCU participating in remote and online learning demonstrated slightly above average self-regulatory strategy use in environmental structuring (3.85), task strategy use (3.26), and time management (3.51). There is a statistically significant correlation between environmental structuring strategy use and academic classification; and a statistically significant correlation between time management strategy use and academic classification. This study does bring attention to environmental conditions of students served by HBCUs; and the implications of these factors on learning behaviors they rely on in technology-mediated learning environments and experiences

The correlation between Self-regulated Learning Behaviors and Academic Classification for HBCU Students Participating in Online and Remote Learning Experiences

The COVID-19 pandemic placed tremendous pressures on economic, medical, and educational infrastructures and systems around the world. Educational leaders were advised to “shutdown” schools which meant teachers and students were forbidden to gather in the same physical space to deliver and receive instruction. Pressures were transferred to technology leaders to create, maintain, and sustain technology infrastructure that depended on instructional technologies to mediate interactions among students, content, and instructors to provide learners with quality environments, experiences, and services while adhering to social distancing mandates. From a social cognitive perspective, this study is concerned with the relationship between abrupt environmental alteration created by the pandemic and the behavioral implications of deploying motivational and learning strategies empirically proven to contribute to academic success in traditional and online environments. The study showed undergraduate students at an HBCU participating in remote and online learning demonstrated slightly above average self-regulatory strategy use in environmental structuring (3.85), task strategy use (3.26), and time management (3.51). There is a statistically significant correlation between environmental structuring strategy use and academic classification; and a statistically significant correlation between time management strategy use and academic classification. This study does bring attention to environmental conditions of students served by HBCUs; and the implications of these factors on learning behaviors they rely on in technology-mediated learning environments and experiences

Computation of Reacting Flows in Combustion Processes

The main objective of this research was to develop an efficient three-dimensional computer code for chemically reacting flows. The main computer code developed is ALLSPD-3D. The ALLSPD-3D computer program is developed for the calculation of three-dimensional, chemically reacting flows with sprays. The ALL-SPD code employs a coupled, strongly implicit solution procedure for turbulent spray combustion flows. A stochastic droplet model and an efficient method for treatment of the spray source terms in the gas-phase equations are used to calculate the evaporating liquid sprays. The chemistry treatment in the code is general enough that an arbitrary number of reaction and species can be defined by the users. Also, it is written in generalized curvilinear coordinates with both multi-block and flexible internal blockage capabilities to handle complex geometries. In addition, for general industrial combustion applications, the code provides both dilution and transpiration cooling capabilities. The ALLSPD algorithm, which employs the preconditioning and eigenvalue rescaling techniques, is capable of providing efficient solution for flows with a wide range of Mach numbers. Although written for three-dimensional flows in general, the code can be used for two-dimensional and axisymmetric flow computations as well. The code is written in such a way that it can be run in various computer platforms (supercomputers, workstations and parallel processors) and the GUI (Graphical User Interface) should provide a user-friendly tool in setting up and running the code

Exploring First-time Online Undergraduate and Graduate Students’ Growth Mindsets and Flexible Thinking and Their Relations to Online Learning Engagement

The present study was an attempt to help us reveal the characteristics and complexity of today’s first-time online students in a higher education setting. Data were collected from undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in fully online courses for the first time during spring semester in the 2016-2017 academic year at a Southern university in the United States. Primarily, path analysis was conducted to investigate the impacts of flexible thinking, mindsets, and self-efficacy on the 254 first-time online students’ online learning engagement. The results of the path analysis supported six out of the eight hypotheses and all standardized path coefficients have values between 0.14 to 0.31. In conclusion, growth mindset and learning self-efficacy appear to be important variables for first-time online students and have a positive relation to online engagement. The practical implications and future research are discussed

Nuclear Structure Calculations with Low-Momentum Potentials in a Model Space Truncation Approach

We have calculated the ground-state energy of the doubly magic nuclei 4He, 16O and 40Ca within the framework of the Goldstone expansion starting from various modern nucleon-nucleon potentials. The short-range repulsion of these potentials has been renormalized by constructing a low-momentum potential V-low-k. We have studied the connection between the cutoff momemtum Lambda and the size of the harmonic oscillator space employed in the calculations. We have found a fast convergence of the results with a limited number of oscillator quanta.Comment: 6 pages, 8 figures, to be published on Physical Review

Microscopy of Progressive Decay of Cottonwood by the Brown-Rot Fungus Gloeophyllum Trabeum

Eastern cottonwood (Populus deltoides Bartr.) samples subjected to various degrees of brown-rot decay by Gloeophyllum trabeum (FPL 617) were studied by scanning electron (SEM) and polarizing microscopy. A technique was developed to prepare decayed wood specimens for SEM. Ray cells were heavily decomposed in early stages of decay. Bore holes were produced in early stages to facilitate hyphal penetration into fiber tracheids. Degradation of fiber tracheid walls began with the formation of radial checks or voids in the S2 layer, followed by the removal of the entire S2 layer, which often caused the separation of the S3 layer from the remaining cell wall. The S3 layer often was removed before the decomposition of the S1 layer. The compound middle lamella remained intact even after the complete removal of the secondary wall

Microscopy Of Progressive Decay Of Cottonwood By The Brown-Rot Fungus Gloeophyllum Trabeum

Eastern cottonwood (Populus deltoides Bartr.) samples subjected to various degrees of brown-rot decay by Gloeophyllum trabeum (FPL 617) were studied by scanning electron (SEM) and polarizing microscopy. A technique was developed to prepare decayed wood specimens for SEM. Ray cells were heavily decomposed in early stages of decay. Bore holes were produced in early stages to facilitate hyphal penetration into fiber tracheids. Degradation of fiber tracheid walls began with the formation of radial checks or voids in the S2 layer, followed by the removal of the entire S2 layer, which often caused the separation of the S3 layer from the remaining cell wall. The S3 layer often was removed before the decomposition of the S1 layer. The compound middle lamella remained intact even after the complete removal of the secondary wall