Xuefei Ren,Governing the Urban in China and India: Land Grabs,Slum Clearance,and the War on Air Pollution

Journal of Chinese Political Science -     

Raising Seoul's global competitiveness: developing key performance indicators

This paper develops a set of key performance indicators (KPIs) for Seoul city administration, inaugurated in 2006. Proper establishment and application of the KPIs into its administration would not only help in accomplishing municipal leadership's strategic initiations but also enhance Seoul's global competitiveness. At the same time, the KPIs can be a good communication tool through which the leadership and city customers can communicate with each other.     

The influence of suspect gender in domestic violence arrests

This study examines heterosexual domestic violence incidents involving male and female suspects. The sample includes 428 incident reports filed at the Columbia (South Carolina) Police Department between 1993 and 1997. Police officers appear to use different arrest determinants for women than for men. The implications of these differential law enforcement practices are discussed.     

Confessions in the Criminal Process

This article undertakes a theoretical exploration of the roles that confessions can play in the criminal process and of the importance that is placed on their voluntariness. It draws on contemporary and historical sources, as well as materials from different legal systems and traditions. Three possible perspectives on the topic are identified: the moral, the epistemic and the political. Adopting each of these perspectives in turn, I set out three distinct dimensions of confessions in the criminal process. In my account of each dimension, voluntariness is construed in the light of a particular understanding of confessions that is conceptually tied to a particular understanding of the criminal process. The conclusion remarks on the interplay of the three dimensions.     

Deep learning for sex determination: Analyzing over 200,000 panoramic radiographs

The objective of this study is to assess the performance of an innovative AI-powered tool for sex determination using panoramic radiographs (PR) and to explore factors affecting the performance of the convolutional neural network (CNN). The study involved 207,946 panoramic dental X-rays and their corresponding reports from 15 clinical centers in São Paulo, Brazil. The PRs were acquired with four different devices, and 58% of the patients were female. Data preprocessing included anonymizing the exams, extracting pertinent information from the reports, such as sex, age, type of dentition, and number of missing teeth, and organizing the data into a PostgreSQL database. Two neural network architectures, a standard CNN and a ResNet, were utilized for sex classification, with both undergoing hyperparameter tuning and cross-validation to ensure optimal performance. The CNN model achieved 95.02% accuracy in sex estimation, with image resolution being a significant influencing factor. The ResNet model attained over 86% accuracy in subjects older than 6 years and over 96% in those over 16 years. The algorithm performed better on female images, and the area under the curve (AUC) exceeded 96% for most age groups, except the youngest. Accuracy values were also assessed for different dentition types (deciduous, mixed, and permanent) and missing teeth. This study demonstrates the effectiveness of an AI-driven tool for sex determination using PR and emphasizes the role of image resolution, age, and sex in determining the algorithm's performance.     

A new perspective to explore the technology transfer efficiencies in US universities

Universities play a critical role in the complex technology transfer process that facilitates technology transformation from pure research activities to commercialization. The literature has recently focused on whether universities are efficient in this process. With a two-stage perspective, this study explores the required capabilities for universities to be efficient in technology transfer process. To explore the efficiencies in different stages of technology transfer, we apply a 2-stage process DEA method. The model considers 2 inputs, 2 intermediate variables, and 3 output variables from the Association of University Technology Management database. These variables represent funding resource, patenting activities, and licensing and entrepreneurships. Technology transfer in the 2-stage perspective includes the research innovation stage and the value creation stage. The results show that achieving efficiency in the 2 technology-transfer stages requires many different innovation capabilities; thus, most efficient universities only perform efficiently in one of the two stages. When mapping the relative site of universities in the reference network, we found that efficient universities in the research innovation stage are in a more centralized location than those in the value creation stage. By contrast, in the value creation stage, efficient universities can be identified as different reference groups for specific inefficient universities. The network visualization also helps to explain that universities must consider their relative advantages and capabilities to reach efficiency goals in different stages. The comparison between the large-scale group and the small-scale group also showed that a resource scale is critical for universities to accumulate different required capabilities for efficiencies in both stages.     

Uncertain allies or uncomfortable neighbors? Making sense of China–North Korea Relations, 1949–2010

Abstract

This study is based upon two premises: (1) the available literature, though voluminous, fails to provide systematic understandings of the complex and evolving relations between China and North Korea; and (2) China and North Korea had been short of being trusted allies bound in blood and belief even before the launch of post-Mao reforms and the normalization of Beijing–Seoul relations. This article dissects this curious relationship into four questions: (1) What does history inform us about China's relations with (North) Korea? (2) Has China communicated effectively with North Korea? (3) Have China and North Korea been ‘trusted allies’? (4) How effective has China been in inducing North Korea to comply with its demands over the years? The authors argue that, geo-strategically, China can hardly afford to put North Korea in an adversarial position. Furthermore, residues of the Factional Incident of 1956 and North Korea's deep-rooted suspicion of China still linger on. These have been the sources of Beijing's dilemma in consistently opting for ‘soft’ measures despite that North Korea's provocative acts and nuclear weapons programs have negatively affected China's interests. From the outset, China and North Korea had been more uncertain allies who had to cooperate with each other under the ideological and geopolitical imperatives of the difficult times. The authors also suggest that it would be misleading to put Sino–North Korean dynamics in a usual category of big power–small nation relations where power asymmetry generally works against the latter. North Korea has undoubtedly been an atypical ‘small nation’. It is due to these limitations that China's pressurizing has not been always effective and that Beijing's reactions have been continuously cyclical. This cyclical trend is not likely to be broken since the upcoming drama of Sino–American rivalry is bound to close the window of such opportunities for China, which will nevertheless regard North Korea increasingly as a liability, if not uncomfortable neighbor.     

From Resistance to Accommodation: Taiwanese Working Class in the Early Postwar Era (1945–55)

This article explores Taiwan’s worker activism in the early postwar era (1945–55) in the attempt to revise the received perception of labour quiescence under high authoritarianism. Rather than a passive victim of state repression, workers mounted two rounds of resistance, first in the form of factory-defending worker-militias during the February 28 Incident of 1947 and later in the subsequent clandestine communist movement. With the case of sugar industry workers, it is argued the postwar ethnic domination was the triggering factor for worker resistance, which was severely repressed. Their consecutive failures as well as the lure of the privileged status of state-owned enterprise employees eventually persuaded them to accept a subordinate role.     

Rangeland Degradation in North China Revisited? A Preliminary Statistical Analysis to Validate Non-Equilibrium Range Ecology

Over the past decades, the concepts of carrying capacity and Clementsian vegetation succession have come under attack from the theory of Non-Equilibrium Range Ecology. The new theory hypothesises that in arid regions with high rainfall variability the ecology is mainly determined by climatic and not biotic factors, such as animal grazing. The argument carried further implies that 'rangeland degradation' or 'desertification' are not caused by overgrazing but are part of a natural process of vegetation decline and growth in response to rainfall, which ruminant numbers merely follow. Few empirical studies involving time-series data have been executed to substantiate Non-Equilibrium Range Ecology. This article, hopes to make a contribution to the current debate with a statistical validation of one of its main postulates: the correlation between ruminant numbers and rainfall. The analysis is conducted with figures from the People's Republic of China: a state in which rangeland policy is an outstanding example of management on the basis of carrying capacities and Clementsian succession theory.