Chinese private schools may come across as a contradictory phenomenon: why would an authoritarian and officially socialist government, that needs to rely on education as an instrument of national unification and ideological control, allow for private schools and profit-making in the educational sector? However, seen against the background of the far-reaching privatisation processes that have been

During autumn 2015 we conducted a large qualitative user study on our library as a learning space. The purpose of the study was to find evidence regarding user needs, in order to be able to make well-informed decisions for a development project.The paper will discuss both the usefulness of qualitative methods in understandingstudents’ and researchers’ needs and requirements when using the library,

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Complex formation between Pd(II), Pt(II) and iodide has been studied at 25 °C for an aqueous 1.00 M perchloric acid medium. Measurements of the solubility of PdI2(s) in aqueous mercury(II) perchlorate and of AgI(s) and PdI2(s) in aqueous solutions of Pd2+(aq) and Ag+(aq) gave the solubility product of PdI2(s) as Kso=(7±3) × 10−32 M3, which is much smaller than previous literature values.The stabilComplex formation between Pd(II), Pt(II) and iodide has been studied at 25 °C for an aqueous 1.00 M perchloric acid medium. Measurements of the solubility of PdI2(s) in aqueous mercury(II) perchlorate and of AgI(s) and PdI2(s) in aqueous solutions of Pd2+(aq) and Ag+(aq) gave the solubility product of PdI2(s) as Kso=(7±3) × 10−32 M3, which is much smaller than previous literature values.The stabil

Climatic fire danger will likely increase because more droughts and heat-waves are caused by climate change. Climate change can shift fires from occurring only rarely to regularly in ecosystems not until now adapted to fire. We applied dynamic vegetation-fire models to investigate these future responses. The future of fire in Mediterranean-type ecosystems depends strongly on changes in vegetation

Under climate change conditions, climatic wildfire danger could also increase in ecosystems not dominated by fires until now. This increasing trend could lead to more area burned in the future. We have developed an algorithm to map new fire-prone areas in Europe and Northern Africa that identifies grid points where a rare fire event is becoming the mean at the end of the 21st century. When applyin

Observationer och modelleringsstudier har visat att den globala markytan har genomgått betydande förändringar under de senaste decennierna, drivet av både naturliga och antropogena faktorer, såsom förändringar i ekosystemens produktivitet, bränder och markanvändning. Markytans förändringar kan potentiellt påverka det lokala och regionala klimatet genom förändringar i processer som sker mellan jordObservation and modelling studies have indicated that the global land surfaces have been undergoing significant changes in the past few decades, driven by both natural and anthropogenic factors, such as changes in ecosystem productivity, fire and land use. Land surface changes can potentially influence local and regional climate through land-atmosphere interactions. Continued greenhouse gas emissi

Estimating Cartesian contact forces and torques enables external force supervision for robotic manipulators and even force-controlled applications while avoiding the need for additional external sensing. Redundant manipulators facilitate the problem of Cartesian contact force and torque estimation (CCFE) at the TCP, since an increased amount of joint level information is available for estimating t

The paper considers multi-hop wireless mesh networks that serve multicast periodic packet traffic. The packets from each packet stream are generated at the stream's source node and traverse a number of wireless nodes in order to reach their multiple destination nodes. Packet periodicity means that a common repeatable frame of time slots is defined and that the packets to be transmitted arrive at t

Background: Antisocial personality and psychopathic traits have constantly been found to accompany criminal and aggressive behaviors, but little attention has been given to aspects of character maturity and its relation to such behaviors. The present study investigated (1) whether level of character maturity (low, medium, and high) is associated with amount of aggressive antisocial behaviors (AABs

A chaos expanded Fourier split-step method is derived and applied to a narrow-angle parabolic equation. The parabolic equation has earlier been used to study deterministic settings. In this paper we develop a spectral-based Fourier split-step method that will take a limited degree of information about the environment into account. Our main focus is on proposing an efficient method for computationa

The purpose of this study is to present and analyze previously unpublished quantitative agricultural data for the area on the shores of Lake Chad in Chad, and explore its relations to hydro-climatic factors (lake levels, rainfall and temperature). This is a rural area with livelihoods based on agropastoral and fishing activities, which are directly dependent on the region's high-varying hydro-clim

Geochronologies of intramontane depression (basin) fluvial sedimentation enable to identify through time periods of alluviation and river erosion, and date fault movement. For these purposes the optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating has been applied to evaluate and to develop a geochronological framework of river terraces. We study the age of river terrace deposits of the Czarny Dunajec R

Measurements of the land-atmosphere exchange of the greenhouse gases methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2) in high Arctic tundra ecosystems are particularly difficult in the cold season, resulting in large uncertainty on flux magnitudes and their controlling factors during this long, frozen period. We conducted snowpack measurements of these gases at permafrost-underlain wetland sites in Zackenbe

To celebrate the research visions and accomplishments of the late Roscoe O. Brady (1923-2016), remembrance commentaries were requested from several of his postdoctoral research fellows and colleagues. These commentaries not only reflect on the accomplishments of Dr. Brady, but they also share some of the backstories and experiences working in the Brady laboratory. They provide insights and perspec

Research has shown that people with psychiatric disabilities who attend a day center rate their satisfaction with daily occupations equally in comparison with non-attendees. The current study investigates which occupations the target group performs and also differences in occupational choices between attendees and non-attendees. Reported occupations were analyzed with content analysis. Day center