Probabilistic modelling of soil moisture dynamics of irrigated cropland in the North China Plain

A probabilistic soil moisture dynamic model is used to estimate the soil moisture probability distribution and plant water stress of irrigated cropland in the North China Plain. Soil moisture and meteorological data during the period of 1998 to 2003 were obtained from an irrigated cropland ecosystem with winter wheat and maize in the North China Plain to test the probabilistic soil moisture dynamic model. Results showed that the model was able to capture the soil moisture dynamics and estimate long-term water balance reasonably well when little soil water deficit existed. The prediction of mean plant water stress during winter wheat and maize growing season quantified the suitability of the wheat-maize rotation to the soil and climate environmental conditions in North China Plain under the impact of irrigation. Under the impact of precipitation fluctuations, there is no significant bimodality of the average soil moisture probability density function.

Persistent organic pollutant residues in the sediments and mollusks from the Bohai Sea coastal areas, North China: An overview

The Bohai Sea costal area is one of the most developed zones of China and the sewage water from populous and developed cities, including Beijing, Tianjin. Qinhuangdao and Dalian is discharged into the Bohai Sea. Additionally, its semi-enclosed characteristic restricts water exchange, which leads to high accumulation of pollutants in the environment. This overview presents the residues of 6 classes of Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs). including PAHs, DDTs. HCHs, PCBs and PCDD/Fs. in the sediments and mollusks of the Bohai Sea through analyzing previous literatures. In the sediments. the highest PAH concentrations were detected in the vicinities of Qinhuangdao, while the northeast corner of the Bohai Bay possessed the highest levels of DDTs and PCBs. The investigations on HCHs and PCDD/Fs distributions on the whole sea scale have not been reported. In mollusks, PAH concentrations were in the same order of magnitude in the whole Bohai Sea, so were DDTs. HCHs and PCBs, while the outlier maximum values of PCDDs and PCDFs occurred in Yingkou. In general, the POPs residues in mollusks collected from Shandong Province were higher than the other areas. The compositions of DDTs, HCHs and PCBs in sediments indicated their recent usage. By comparing POP concentrations in sediments with the recommended criterions, it was shown that some individual PAH compounds occasionally associated with adverse biological effects in the vicinities of the Liaodong Bay and Qinhuangdao, and the Liaohe River Estuary were heavily contaminated with DDTs, but PCBs were all below the thresholds. In order to reveal the transference and transformation of POPs in the environment, further studies concerning with their behavior, fate and bioaccumulation in the different trophic levels should be programmed. Moreover, laws and regulations should be enforced to ban the illegal usage of POPs-containing pesticides to guarantee health of the environment and human. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Whole genome sequencing identifies circulating Beijing-lineage Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains in Guatemala and an associated urban outbreak.

Limited data are available regarding the molecular epidemiology of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) strains circulating in Guatemala. Beijing-lineage Mtb strains have gained prevalence worldwide and are associated with increased virulence and drug resistance, but there have been only a few cases reported in Central America. Here we report the first whole genome sequencing of Central American Beijing-lineage strains of Mtb. We find that multiple Beijing-lineage strains, derived from independent founding events, are currently circulating in Guatemala, but overall still represent a relatively small proportion of disease burden. Finally, we identify a specific Beijing-lineage outbreak centered on a poor neighborhood in Guatemala City.

The Olympic Games and urban displacement: the case of Beijing

Urban spectacles such as the Olympic Games have been long perceived as being able to impose desired effects in the city that act as host. This kind of urban boost may include the creation of new jobs and revenue for local community, growth in tourism and convention business, improvements to city infrastructure and environment, and the stimulation of broad reform in the social, political and institutional realm. Nevertheless at the other end of the debate, the potentially detrimental impacts of Olympic urban development, particularly on disadvantaged and vulnerable groups, have also been increasingly noticed in recent years and subsequently cited by a number of high profile anti-Olympic groups to campaign against Olympic bids and awards. The common areas of concern over Olympic-related projects include the cost and debts risk, environmental threat, the occurrence of social imbalance, and disruption and disturbance of existing community life. Among these issues, displacement of low income households and squatter communities resulting from Olympic-inspired urban renewal are comparatively under-explored and have emerged as an imperative area for research inquiry. This is particularly the case where many other problems have become less prominent. Changing a city’s demographic landscape, particularly displacing lower income people from the area proposed for a profitable development is a highly contentious matter in its own right. Some see it as a natural and inevitable outgrowth of the process of urban evolution, without which cities cannot move towards a more attractive location for consumption-based business. Others believe it reflects urban crises and conflicts, highlighting the market failures, polarization and injustice. Regardless of perception,these phenomena are visible everywhere in post-industrial cities and particularly cannot be ignored when planning for the Olympic Games and other mega-events. The aim of this paper is to start the process of placing the displacement issue in the context of Olympic preparation and to seek a better understanding of their interrelations. In order to develop a better understanding of this issue in terms of cause, process, influential factors and its implication on planning policy, this paper studies the topic from both theoretic and empirical angles. It portrays various situations where the Olympics may trigger or facilitate displacement in host cities during the preparation of the Games, identifies several major variables that may affect the process and the overall outcome, and explores what could be learnt in generic terms for planning Olympic oriented infrastructure so that ill-effects to the local community can be effectively controlled. The paper concludes that the selection of development sites, the integration of Olympic facilities with the city’s fabric, the diversity of housing type produced for local residents and the dynamics of the new socioeconomic structure.

From Beijing with love: The global dimension of Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor

Famous for being the first foreign feature film that obtained permission to shoot in the Forbidden City, The Last Emperor (1987) is also one of the most ambitious and expensive independent productions of its time, awarded four Golden Globes and nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture. In addition, The Last Emperor can be considered as one of the first attempts of cinematic collaboration between West and East, in a period of cultural and economic transformations witnessed by China. This article aims to offer an overview of the production history of The Last Emperor, focusing on the co-production collaborations and the outcomes of a western auteur’s gaze on Chinese history. Questions of Orientalism, travel narrative and critical reception are taken into account in order to engage with the transnational implications of Bertolucci’s film and the western fascination with China.

The Implementations of Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) in Beijing and Ontario Schools

Since the knowledge-based economy has become a fashion over the last few decades, the concept of the professional learning community (PLC) has started being accepted by educational institutions and governments as an effective framework to improve teachers’ collective work and collaboration. The purpose of this research was to compare and contrast the implementations of PLCs between Beijing schools and Ontario schools from principals’ personal narratives. In order to discover the lessons and widen the scope to understand the PLC, this research applied qualitative design to collect the data from two principal participants in each location by semistructured interviews. Four themes emerged: (a) structure and technology, (b) identity and climate, (c) task and support, and (d) change and challenge. This research found that the root of the characteristics of the PLCs in Beijing and Ontario was the different existing teaching and learning systems as well as the test systems. Teaching Research Groups (TRGs) is one of the systems that help Chinese to organize routine time and input resources to improve teachers’ professional development. However, Canadian schools lack a similar system that guarantees the time and resources. Moreover, standardized test plays different roles in China and Canada. In China, standardized tests, such as the college entrance examination, are regarded as the important purpose of education, whereas Ontario principals saw the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) as a tool rather than a primary purpose. These two main differences influenced principals’ beliefs, attitudes, strategies, and practices. The implications based on this discovery provide new perspectives for principals, teachers, policy makers, and scholars to widen and deepen the research and practice of the PLC.

Street-level labour inspection in China and the implementation of ILO Convention No.155 concerning occupational safety and health

Les relations de travail et d'emploi sont devenues des enjeux importants en Chine. La Chine a ratifié 25 conventions internationales du travail et a travaillé en étroite collaboration avec l'OIT pour améliorer la sécurité et la santé au travail. Malgré ces efforts, la Chine est souvent critiquée pour des violations du travail. Face à ces problèmes, un système législatif d'administration de travail a été développé au niveau national. Mais l’application de ces règlements demeure problématique.. En particulier, les difficultés rencontrées par les inspecteurs du travail dans l'application de ces lois constituent un élément clé du problème. Notre mémoire s'intéresse essentiellement au rôle de l'inspecteur du travail dans l'administration publique de la sécurité du travail en Chine. Ces fonctionnaires jouent un rôle important et peuvent parfois exercer leur discrétion en tant qu'acteurs de première ligne, faisant d'eux de vrais décideurs politiques. Par conséquent, la compréhension de leur rôle et de leur discrétion dans l'application des normes du travail en Chine est cruciale. Notre mémoire est centré sur une étude de cas qualitative d'un bureau d'inspection du travail dans la région de Beijing. Dans le cadre de notre recherche nous avons examiné le rôle des inspecteurs du travail au moyen d’entretiens semi-structurés, d’une recherche documentaire ainsi qu’à l’occasion d’une brève observation des inspecteurs sur lors de la visite d’un lieu de travail. Les résultats démontrent que la définition du pouvoir discrétionnaire des inspecteurs du travail de première ligne en Chine est un enjeu très complexe. L’étude de cas permet cependant d’élaborer un cadre permettant l’identification des facteurs critiques déterminants pour l'évaluation et la compréhension de la nature du pouvoir discrétionnaire de l'inspecteur du travail en application de la loi.

Use of digital camera to assess nitrogen status of winter wheat in the Northern China Plain

The most widely used methods to assess the nitrogen (N) status of winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) are the determination of plant total N by combustion, the testing of nitrate in the leaf tissue and the use of SPAD readings. However, due to their labor requirements or high costs these methods can hardly be applied to the huge wheat growing areas of the Northern China Plain. This study therefore examined an alternative method to measure the N status of wheat by using a digital camera to record the visible green light reflected from the plant canopy. The experiment was conducted near Beijing in a multi-factorial field trial with three levels of N. The intensity of green light reflected from the wheat canopy was compared to the total N concentration, to the nitrate concentration of the basal stem, and to the SPAD readings of leaves. The results show significant inverse relationships between greenness intensity, canopy total N, and SPAD readings at booting and flowering. At booting, sap nitrate <2000mgL^-1 was inversely related to greenness intensity and to sap nitrate concentration in the basal stem. At sap nitrate ~2000mgL^-1, the greenness intensity reached a plateau. At booting and flowering, significant inverse relationships between greenness intensity and shoot biomass were found. The results show the potential of the new method to assess the N status of winter wheat.

La cooperación militar entre China y Rusia y su incidencia en la seguridad de Asia Central durante el periodo 2001-2008

Durante los últimos diez años, la cooperación militar entre China y Rusia ha buscado proteger los intereses nacionales de ambos Estados, los cuales se encuentran estrechamente relacionados con las dinámicas en materia de seguridad de Asia Central.

"Un mundo un sueño": los juegos olimpicos y su incidencia en la consolidación del proyecto político de china

Ante la mirada atónita del mundo, la República Popular China realizó los Juegos Olímpicos (J.J.O.O.), Beijing 2008, que no sólo han sido los más costosos de toda la historia con una explosiva demostración de modernización sino fueron un éxito para los intereses del Partido Comunista Chino (PCCh). De esta manera, los argumentos principales de la estrategia de Deng Xiaoping y del PCCh y la incidencia política de los J.J.O.O. contribuyeron a la consolidación del proyecto político chino, la economía socialista de mercado, y la articulación de este proceso a la consecución de los objetivos del PCCh en cuanto a la restauración de la continuidad del régimen comunista chino, la integridad territorial, su prestigio, liderazgo y poder en el contexto internacional que le ha permitido la construcción de la imagen de la `Nueva China del siglo XXI´.

Análisis de los intereses geoestratégicos de China y Estados Unidos en Corea del Sur tras el programa nuclear de Corea del Norte

La península coreana ha sido desde la Guerra Fría y a la actualidad una zona convulsionada por intereses políticos, económicos e ideológicos. Ese panorama obliga un análisis sobre la configuración y los cambios que se han dado entre las potencias actuales, China y Estados Unidos, desde la existencia de un programa nuclear norcoreano que afecta a Corea del Sur y la definición de los intereses de Beijin y Washington.

Estudio de factibilidad para exportar madera aserrada a la Región de Guangdong, República Popular China

China es un país aliado con la economía de Colombia debido a su alta importación de productos como café y madera. En los últimos años la exportación de madera desde Colombia hacia China ha presentado un crecimiento sin procedentes, debido a que los empresarios prefieren proveedores que ofrezcan productos con alguna transformación. Se ha elegido Guangdong, como una de las principales ciudades de China para la exportación de madera por el gran crecimiento de mercado que ha reflejado en los últimos años en la utilización de este producto para la diversidad de fines privados y comerciales. Este trabajo muestra el análisis que se ha realizado para la exportación de madera aserrada a dicho mercado meta, al igual que la presentación del producto, su proceso de elaboración y sus ventajas para ser una gran oferta de calidad en China. De igual manera se profundiza en el proceso de exportación que se planea realizar, el cual incluye los procesos de logística y distribución, las normas, la documentación necesaria y las reglas que se deben cumplir tanto en Colombia como en China. Los aspectos financieros también son incluidos como parte del proyecto con el fin de tener en cuenta el presupuesto necesario para incurrir con este tipo de negociación