71 research outputs found
Higher education restructuring and academic freedom in Hong Kong
No full textA former British colony, Hong Kong was reunited with the People's Republic of China in 1997 under the 'one country two systems' model. The Hong Kong Basic Law contains detailed provisions for academic freedom, ensuring that local academics enjoy far greater freedom than their counterparts in mainland China. Hong Kong academics and the broader community have also publicly supported academic freedom when they perceived it to be under threat. The authors argue, however, that the recent restructuring of Hong Kong's universities may ultimately pose a greater threat than any explicit interference from the local or national governments
The 1961 Kampong Bukit Ho Swee fire and the making of modern Singapore
No full textBy 1970, Singapore’s urban landscape was dominated by high-rise blocks of planned public housing built by the People’s Action Party government, signifying the establishment of a high modernist nation-state. A decade earlier, the margins of the City had been dominated by kampongs, home to semi-autonomous communities of low-income Chinese families which freely built, and rebuilt, unauthorised wooden houses. This change was not merely one of housing but belied a more fundamental realignment of state-society relations in the 1960s. Relocated in Housing and Development Board flats, urban kampong families were progressively integrated into the social fabric of the emergent nation-state. This study examines the pivotal role of an event, the great Kampong Bukit Ho Swee fire of 1961, in bringing about this transformation. The redevelopment of the fire site in the aftermath of the calamity brought to completion the British colonial regime’s ‘emergency’ programmes of resettling urban kampong dwellers in planned accommodation, in particular, of building emergency public housing on the sites of major fires in the 1950s. The PAP’s far greater political resolve, and the timing of and state of emergency occasioned by the scale of the 1961 disaster, enabled the government to rehouse the Bukit Ho Swee fire victims in emergency housing in record time. This in turn provided the HDB with a strategic platform for clearing other kampongs and for transforming their residents into model citizens of the nation-state. The 1961 fire’s symbolic usefulness extended into the 1980s and beyond, in sanctioning the PAP’s new housing redevelopment schemes. The official account of the inferno has also become politically useful for the government of today for disciplining a new generation of Singaporeans against taking the nation’s progress for granted. Against these exalted claims of the fire’s role in the Singapore Story, this study also examines the degree of actual change and continuity in the social and economic lives of the people of Bukit Ho Swee after the inferno. In some crucial ways, the residents continued to occupy a marginal place in society while pondering, too, over the unresolved question of the cause of the fire. These continuities of everyday life reflect the ambivalence with which the citizenry regarded the high modernist state in contemporary Singapore
Study of problems in implementing ISO 9000 for contractors
No full textIn this dissertation, the authors have provided background information about ISO and the basic principles required by the ISO 9000 system. They have conducted research, aided with a two-page questionnaire, in two local construction firms to explore the problems encountered in implementing ISO 9000. The author have attempted to recommend some corrective actions on those problems.Master of Science (International Construction Management
Development of a codon optimization strategy using the efor RED reporter gene as a test case
No full textSequencing Regionalism: Theory, European Practice, and Lessons for Asia
No full textFeedback mechanisms are the key to sequencing when it comes to regional integration; can mean that today’s policy or institution alters the political-economy landscape in a way that makes it politically optimal for future governments to take further steps toward integration—even when these steps are not politically optimal from today’s perspective. After outlining the theory, the paper uses feedback mechanisms to organize Europe’s postwar integration narrative, and then draws lessons for today’s integration of East Asia. The paper suggests that the spontaneous cooperation that created “Factory Asia” has not been codified. One starting point for Asian regional institutions would be to institutionalize the spontaneous cooperation that already exists on trade, services, and investment. New, creative thinking is needed on the sort of soft-law commitments and new modes of cooperation that would make this work with limited sovereignty pooling.sequencing regionalism; lessons of European integration; East Asian integration; regionalism
Creating with Care: Co-Designing Immersive Experiences through Art-Making with People Living with Dementia
No full textThis paper explores the integration of co-design and art-making in developing technologies that support personhood in dementia care. While technologies for dementia care have advanced, there remains a gap in creating solutions that are directly informed by the experiences of people living with dementia and support their individuality. In collaboration with the specialist arts organisation Bright Shadow CIO, our work involves engaging people living with dementia in the design process. Over five weeks of co-design sessions, 44 participants worked alongside artists to craft four physical boxes that represent “meaningful places.” The physical boxes were then transformed into VR environments, allowing participants to immerse themselves in and interact with their creations from a first-person perspective. Our findings demonstrate that VR alone is insufficient in dementia care. For VR to be meaningful, it must be be part of a broader intervention that includes trust-building, sensory engagement, and creative involvement. Within this process, art-making serves as both a method and medium, providing a means of self-expression and connection to identity. Our findings challenge conventional approaches to dementia-focused VR, advocating for a shift toward inclusive and care-driven technology design
The China which is here : translating classical Chinese poetry
No full textThe thesis proposes to address how the tradition of translating Chinese poetry
in the English speaking world developed in the early twentieth century and has
continued. Problems relating to this issue, such as the great change in poetics and
intellectual atmosphere since 1915 when Cathay appeared, its impact on the
translation of Chinese poetry, and the universe of discourse of the two cultures
involved, those of the Chinese and the English speaking world, as well as the
constraints of the target system on the translations, will also be discussed.
The introduction provides an overview of the poetics that valued traditional
metres at the turn of the century, and applies polysystem theory to explain the lack of
enthusiasm for translations of classical Chinese poetry before 1915. Chapter 2
discusses the constraints of language, the poetics and universe of discourse in the
target system, suggesting that these constraints handicapped the widespread transfer of
classical Chinese poetry before 1915.
Chapter 3 examines xing, the poetic device in Chinese poetry that emphasizes
the poet's spontaneous response to nature and the merging of scene and feeling. The
very nature of xing defies any attempt to make it explicit. The chapter is divided into
two parts, discussing xing in the encoding and decoding process respectively. Readerresponse
criticism and phenomenology are also incorporated in the discussions. The
chapter is followed by an analysis of various attempts to translate poems that are
presented with zing in Chapter 4, which shows that there is a tendency on the part of
some translators to add logical links between the scene and the feelings expressed.
Chapter 5 looks at the translation strategies of Arthur Waley, investigating
the traditions of translating classical Chinese poetry that he has helped to build up.
The kind of smooth grammatical lines he uses and the Chineseness he conveys have
had great influence on subsequent translators. Chapter 6 studies Ezra Pound, with
special focus on his innovative work Cathay, and his juxtaposition techniques.
Chapter 7 studies Kenneth Rexroth's translations of Du Fu, while Chapter 8
examines Gary Snyder's translations of Cold Mountain. The vehicle of translating
Chinese poetry in general-- language and poetics-- was close to that of modern
poetry in the target culture.
Chapter 9, the conclusion, asserts that various strategies are adopted for
various purposes. It tries to place the position of the translators discussed in a
polysystem context. In the target system, poems are appreciated more for their charm
than their being supposedly faithful to an original. The image of China created
through translators remains distant. To the reader in the West, China is always far out
"there," not here
Protection against lead-free solder in wave-soldering by Ti/TiC coatings prepared by filtered cathodic arc deposition
No full textLead-free solder is increasingly used in the wave soldering but corrosion of the stainless steel holders frequently occurs and produces deleterious effects. To enhance the service life, a Ti/TiC coating is deposited by filtered cathodic vacuum arc (FCVA) on the stainless steel holders. The morphology, structure, composition, microhardness, wear resistance, electron chemical corrosion, and wetting properties against solder are investigated. The results show that not only good frictional properties and corrosion resistance are achieved by the Ti/TiC coatings, but also good tin repelling and hydrophobic characteristics are observed. The Ti/TiC coating provides excellent protection against corrosion of lead-free solder in wave soldering. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Natural Science Foundation of China [51301004, U1330110]; Shenzhen Science and Technology Research [JCYJ20140903102215536, JCYJ20150828093127698]; City University of Hong Kong Applied Research Grant (ARG) [9667104]CPCI-S(ISTP)7-1231
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