Is There a Housing Bubble in China?

I chose to study the housing market in China because of the dual-degree program in which I am enrolled at the University of Rhode Island. The Chinese Flagship Program is dedicated to making sure that American students are prepared to work in China once they graduate. Each student is required to have a dual degree, Chinese and a second major of their choice. I chose International Business given my interests in economics and China. I began this research project while I was enrolled in third level Chinese, a course in which students are given an honors research project that must be researched using Chinese sources and written completely in Chinese. The topic for this research project came to me when I went to China and began to wonder if China was facing a potential housing crisis. There was clearly something “special” about China’s construction boom, and my project was aimed at learning about the Chinese housing market and comparing it to the market in the US. I did this by examining several factors that affect demand for housing including economic, demographic, cultural, and public policies and I looked specifically at housing markets in New York City and Shanghai. The second phase of the project was to look more closely at the housing market to see if China is experiencing a housing bubble comparable to what we experienced in the US in the housing bubble that burst in 2007. The project discusses how economic and societal factors in China appear to be combining to produce a housing bubble. This discussion is provided in the historical context of other economic bubbles that have occurred, including the American housing bubble of the early 2000s. The project concludes with some reflections on my experience in conducting the underlying research. The fact that the first phase of the project was undertaken during my sophomore year at URI has given me the ability to look back on my project to see how I could have expanded my initial work. Two extra years of study introduced me to different research strategies that allowed me to look deeper into the issue, as well as developing communications skills that helped me to present my research more clearly and concisely. Accordingly, my reflections at the end of this paper include additional research on this topic completed over the past year, along with thoughts on how I would alter my project if I were to do it again. Overall, my goal for this paper is to help inform the reader about the housing market in China including a discussion of a housing bubble, as well as compare some aspects of the U.S. housing market to the Chinese housing market. I also hope that my reflections on this project will help illustrate how the Honors Program has assisted me in developing my research skills and can be used to help gauge the effectiveness of their program

Interpreting Potential Groundwater Policies through Modeling of Market and Non-Market Benefits and Costs

Current policies leveraging financial incentives and improved irrigation efficiency to mitigate groundwater scarcity have not proven to curtail trends of resource depletion. Groundwater benefits cannot be appropriately valued solely on market forces, and so deeper policy consideration is warranted under a framework that considers the importance of groundwater across all its values to society. Understanding time preferences for groundwater management and preferences for alternative policies is vital to inform efficient policies. Furthermore, climate change remains politically controversial yet has important consequences for critical groundwater resources and their sustainable long-term management. Proliferating policy narratives concerning climate change could influence the way people think about managing groundwater resources. I present three empirical studies that address these issues. Chapter I examines irrigation efficiency technologies for improved outcomes using a market-based, spatially-dynamic optimization model to test the limitations of improvements alone and in tandem with typical environmental policy mechanisms. Improved efficiency induces some producers to plant more of water-intensive crops such as rice, and best-case improvements fail to counter trends of groundwater depletion over a 30-year horizon. Chapter II elicits public willingness to pay (WTP) for long-term groundwater management and for market and non-market groundwater services. I employ time-discounted choice models to endogenously estimate time preferences under different forms of discounting. This is the first non-market valuation to estimate heterogeneity in time preferences using flexible mixing distributions. I find significant WTP for water quality provision, buffer against long-term drought, jobs from agriculture, and provision of wildlife habitat that promotes fishing and duck hunting, while most people display evidence of hyperbolic or quasi-hyperbolic discounting. Individual parameter distributions for WTP and time preferences are not normally distributed. Chapter III continues the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) tradition to test for systematic influences of narrative frames about climate change on elicited groundwater and policy preferences. In a Choice Experiment (CE), some respondents were exposed to a structuralist, culturally-biased narrative frame about climate change and groundwater resources. Using theories about cultural risk perception and motivated reasoning for systematic evaluation, I find evidence for a cultural incongruency effect but no evidence for a congruency effect. This suggests that people could respond more strongly to incongruence than to congruence in the case of groundwater policy preferences

Multi-spectral materials: hybridisation of optical plasmonic filters and a terahertz metamaterial absorber

Multi-spectral materials, using hybridised plasmonic and metamaterial structures, can simultaneously exhibit unique resonant phenomena over several decades of wavelengths. A multi-spectral material that combines a plasmonic colour filter array and a terahertz metamaterial absorber into a single material is a promising prospect for a coaxial multi-spectral imager operating in the visible, near IR, and terahertz wavebands

Defining the Regional and Seasonal Climatic Response of Long Douglas-Fir Tree-Ring Chronologies in Central Mexico

Problems with instrumental climate data and difficulties arising from the distribution of sensitive, long-term tree-ring chronologies across Mexico\u27s complex terrain have made it difficult to model the climate signal of tree-rings in Mexico. The objective of this research is to utilize the improved long-term, high-resolution, gridded instrumental climate dataset for Mexico recently developed by Zhu and Lettenmaier (2007) to document the climate signal of Douglas-fir in central Mexico. Through correlation analysis between five Douglas-fir tree-ring chronologies created by the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville Tree-Ring Laboratory and Zhu and Lettenmaier\u27s (2007) gridded historical climate dataset, this research aims to define the regional and seasonal precipitation signal of earlywood (EW) and latewood (LW) tree-ring chronologies and to create a regionally averaged time series that could be considered as a proxy of seasonal climate for specific regions of central Mexico. Monthly and seasonal analyses between the gridded data and the EW and LW tree-ring chronologies show that spring precipitation signal in EW is the strongest, especially at Cuauhtémoc la Fragua. Summer precipitation signal in LW is apparent, though the region of strong signal is smaller than for EW and spring. Cuauhtémoc la Fragua again displayed the best results for modeling regional climate signal in the LW. There was a modest amount of seasonal overlap in climate signal between EW and LW. Also, because the tree-ring chronologies come from sites at remote, high elevations, more high-elevation climate data might contribute to better overall modeling of precipitation signal in the Douglas-fir of central Mexico

The Emerging Importance of Skull-Brain Interactions in Traumatic Brain Injury

The recent identification of skull bone marrow as a reactive hematopoietic niche that can contribute to and direct leukocyte trafficking into the meninges and brain has transformed our view of this bone structure from a solid, protective casing to a living, dynamic tissue poised to modulate brain homeostasis and neuroinflammation. This emerging concept may be highly relevant to injuries that directly impact the skull such as in traumatic brain injury (TBI). From mild concussion to severe contusion with skull fracturing, the bone marrow response of this local myeloid cell reservoir has the potential to impact not just the acute inflammatory response in the brain, but also the remodeling of the calvarium itself, influencing its response to future head impacts. If we borrow understanding from recent discoveries in other CNS immunological niches and extend them to this nascent, but growing, subfield of neuroimmunology, it is not unreasonable to consider the hematopoietic compartment in the skull may similarly play an important role in health, aging, and neurodegenerative disease following TBI. This literature review briefly summarizes the traditional role of the skull in TBI and offers some additional insights into skull-brain interactions and their potential role in affecting secondary neuroinflammation and injury outcomes

Do mothers prefer helpers or smaller litters? Birth sex-ratio and litter size adjustment in cotton-top tamarins

Boulton, R. A., & Fletcher, A. W. (2015). Do mothers prefer helpers or smaller litters? Birth sex-ratio and litter size adjustment in cotton-top tamarins. Ecology & Evolution, 5(3), 598-606 Copyright (c)2015, the authors, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ece3.1396/fullSex allocation theory has been a remarkably productive field in behavioural ecology with empirical evidence regularly supporting quantitative theoretical predictions. Across mammals in general and primates in particular however, support for the various hypotheses has been more equivocal. Population level sex ratio biases have often been interpreted as supportive, but evidence for small scale facultative adjustment has rarely been found. The helper repayment (HR) also named the local resource enhancement (LRE) hypothesis predicts that, in cooperatively breeding species, mothers invest more in the sex which assists with rearing future offspring, and that this bias will be more pronounced in mothers who require extra assistance (i.e. due to inexperience or a lack of available alloparents). We tested these hypotheses in captive cotton-top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus) utilising the international studbook and birth records obtained through a questionnaire from ISIS registered institutions. Infant sex, litter size, mother’s age, parity and group composition (presence of non-reproductive subordinate males and females) were determined from these records. The HR hypothesis was supported over the entire population, which was significantly biased towards males (the ‘helpful’ sex). We found little support for helper repayment at the individual level, as primiparous females and those in groups without alloparents did not exhibit more extreme tendencies to produce male infants. Primiparous females were, however, more likely to produce singleton litters. Singleton births were more likely to be male, which suggests that there may be an interaction between litter size adjustment and sex allocation. This may be interpreted as supportive of the HR hypothesis, but alternative explanations at both the proximate and ultimate levels are possible. These possibilities warrant further consideration when attempting to understand the ambiguous results of primate sex ratio studies so far

Mechanical behaviour and environmental stability of continuous fibre-reinforced glass-ceramic matrix composites

The mechanical behaviour of three continuous Silicon carbide fibre-reinforced glass-ceramic matrix composites has been investigated at room and high temperatures. Commercially available composites with magnesium aluminosilicate, calcium aluminosilicate and barium magnesium aluminosilicate glass-ceramic matrices were considered. The materials were tested in the as-received and aged (heat-treated in a n oxidizing environment) condition. Four-point bend static tests and fiexural creep, fatigue and creep-fatigue tests were carried out a s well as a small quantity of tensile tests of aged composites. The experimental results have highlighted the importance of the carbon-rich layer at the fibre/matrix interface for obtaining "graceful" failures. At temperatures of 700 to 800 °C oxidative degradation of the interface results in significant strength reduction and a transition to brittle fracture mode. By rapid heat treatment of the materials at 1100°C for 1 h it is possible to seal the fibre ends by forming a silica "plug" which prevents oxygen ingress, retaining the carbon-rich interphase and composite behaviour. The results of the creep and creep-fatigue tests indicate low-cycle loading has a strong influence on the life of components at high temperatures

When should patients with stroke receive thrombolytics?

Thrombolytic therapy should be limited to patients with acute ischemic stroke who meet strict inclusion and exclusion criteria and who can adhere to strict treatment protocol. Patients treated under these conditions have improved combined mortality and disability outcomes at 1 year when treated with recombinant tissue plasminogen activator (rtPA) (number needed to treat [NNT]=18; 95% confidence interval [CI], 11-56) (strength of recommendation [SOR]: B, meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials with significant heterogeneity)

Addressing alcohol and tobacco harms in remote Indigenous communities and rapid responses to mental health crises in regional centres

Alcohol Management Plans (AMPs) were initially designed as part of a wide range of innovative and significant Queensland Government reforms. As well as supply control, these promised to reduce alcohol and substance misuse and violence through demand reduction by addressing key social determinants: economic development; education and training, land and sustainable natural resource management, housing, and health 3, 4. The limited available evidence in the peer-reviewed published literature points to some favourable impacts of restrictions 5, 6, including a reduction in indicators of serious injury in some communities to historically low levels 7. These favourable findings were reflected in an internal Queensland Government review 4. However, the evidence that these initial positive effects were experienced in all communities, or that they have been sustained, particularly after the most recent round of restrictions in 2008, has become equivocal 8. This paper was the first in a unique evaluation research program designed to examine the health and social effects of Queensland�s AMPs 1, 9. It investigates issues surrounding implementation of the designed AMP intervention components, specifically their perceived impacts on alcohol supply and consumption, violence, injury and community health and well-being. Perceptions and experiences are reported of the community leaders, service providers and relevant organisations with a mandate or responsibility for alcohol-related matters in the affected AMP communities and nearby towns.The research reported in this paper is a project of the Australian Primary Health Care Research Institute, which is supported by a grant from the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing under the Primary Health Care Research, Evaluation and Development Strategy

Evolutionary Dead End in the Galápagos: Divergence of Sexual Signals in the Rarest of Darwin's Finches

Understanding the mechanisms underlying speciation remains a challenge in evolutionary biology. The adaptive radiation of Darwin's finches is a prime example of species formation, and their study has revealed many important insights into evolutionary processes. Here, we report striking differences in mating signals (songs), morphology and genetics between the two remnant populations of Darwin's mangrove finch Camarhynchus heliobates, one of the rarest species in the world. We also show that territorial males exhibited strong discrimination of sexual signals by locality: in response to foreign songs, males responded weaker than to songs from their own population. Female responses were infrequent and weak but gave approximately similar results. Our findings not only suggest speciation in the mangrove finch, thereby providing strong support for the central role of sexual signals during speciation, but they have also implications for the conservation of this iconic bird. If speciation is complete, the eastern species will face imminent extinction, because it has a population size of only 5–10 individuals