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Despite the rapid development of telecollaboration in foreign language education, telecollaborative exchanges involving Chinese as the target language have not received sufficient attention. Adopting an action research approach, this study focuses on examining the student perceptions as well as the challenges of a carefully designed Chinese-American telecollaborative learning program involving Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) students at a small liberal arts college in the US and Chinese-speaking English majors at a large university in China. This study drew on a variety of data for analysis, including naturally occurring interaction data (i.e., Skype conversations, WeChat group discussion transcripts), students' weekly reflection journals, informal interviews with the students throughout the semester, end-of-program interviews, student responses to an end-of-semester questionnaire, and the teacher-researcher reflective journal. The results showed that this program was, in general, well received among the CFL students at the US college. The intermediate-level CFL students evaluated this program more positively than the elementary-level students. However, this program also faced many challenges, such as scheduling and technological issues with Skype conversations, target language proficiency gap, perceived irrelevance to Chinese proficiency development, heavy workload, lack of depth in WeChat group discussion, and the demanding role of the teacher-researcher.

To explore the potential applications of synchronous technology to enrich student learning, faculty members from an American regional state university and a Chinese regional university collaborated to find appropriate ways to integrate synchronous technology (e.g., Adobe Connect) into an educational technology program in the American university and in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) program in China. The paper reports the collaborative efforts in a project (from Fall 2010 to Spring 2012) using Adobe Connect to enrich student learning at both sites. The report includes the project overview, project implementation and its evaluation framework. Finally, the paper offers practical suggestions for using synchronous technologies such as Adobe Connect for instruction when implementing such an international project in two different countries.

In recent years, China has formed a more perfect emergency management system, and has achieved more significant results. The form of safety production has maintained a continuous good development trend, showing the characteristics of "two declines, one being basically flat, and one zero occurrence". In order to further strengthen the implementation of production safety responsibilities and resolutely prevent and contain extremely major accidents, the recent national production safety teleconference deployed 15 measures to pay close attention to the implementation, seriously pursue accountability, adhere to the red line, and immediately carry out in-depth and solid production safety inspections across the country. In such a high pressure situation, the ways to effectively carry out the security management of enterprises were briefly described in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We inspect the impact of conference call organizers on the quality of analysts' forecasts. Organizers affect the information delivery through conference calls with the composition of audiences, the preparation of managers, and the frame of questions. Using manually collected information of conference calls in China, we discover that conference calls refine analysts' forecast quality. Further evidence indicates that brokerage firms, as the organizer of the call, significantly improve analysts' forecast quality. Specifically, brokerage firms show a positive relationship with forecast accuracy and a negative relationship with forecast dispersion. However, neither top brokerages nor star analysts show a distinct advantage in delivering information when they act as the organizer and the host. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the global telecom operators, mobile data services have gradually taken the part of traditional voice services to become the main revenue growth point. However, during the upgrading period of new generation networks (such as 5G), new mobile data services are still at the stage of exploration; the network capabilities and the application scenarios are unmatured. In this phase, it is incomplete and misleading to simply measure the performance of new services from one dimension, such as data traffic or revenue, and the measurement should be dynamically changed according to the development of the new services. Therefore, telecom operators want to improve the existing performance measurement from the aspect of integrity and dynamics. In this paper, we propose mobile-data-service development index (MDDI) and build a quantitative model to dynamic measure the overall performance of mobile data services. To approach a fuller understanding, we creatively bring investment indicators and networks reliability indicators into performance indicators system and discuss the relationships among subindices and the selection of outcome criteria in MDDI. In the part of empirical research, we use the model to analyze the dynamic characteristics of a new mobile data service in China and summarize the development strategies of every stage. The findings can also give guidelines for new services of 5G and other new generation networks in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Explains the human dimensions of environmental problems. • Depicts sites of intensive ruination and scavenging in China and Japan. • Shows e-waste objects as emergent processes that transform/pollute surroundings. • Gives in-depth perspective of the people actually engaged in scavenging. • Explores the materiality of conversion in our tech-deluged world. Ethnographic portrayals herein of zones of intensive ruination and material conversion foreground the mutable artefacts within environments and their human and nonhuman implications. In highlighting the toxicity of ravaged sites such as post-tsunami Japan and a South China electronic-waste scavenging hotspot, called Guiyu, the article critiques the 'vibrant' materiality promoted by 'new materialist' geographers and others, who tend to neglect the hazardous environmental health externalities of material conversions. The analysis here centres on trade in electronic waste (a.k.a. 'e-waste' or WEEE). In communicating the labile materialities of e-waste artefacts as they both drive and transform such sites of ruination and scavenging, this ethnographic account of disarticulation and rearticulation offers an opportunity to consider the 'enmeshed processes' of objects and the apparatuses that both destroy and (re)produce them. To this end, the article asks geographers to imagine objects in emergent sociocultural milieux as already disintegrated. Such an approach can not only facilitate analysis of sites of disarticulation—with their capacity for new formations—but also help ethnographers understand how ruination influences informants' conception of surroundings and their practice within them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The paper discusses how the intercultural knowledge is enhanced in a technology-enabled learning environment. We developed a comparative reflection approach, for an undergraduate course participated by three groups of students, who were globally distributed in the US, Mainland China, and Taiwan. Made possible by the videoconferencing technology, the approach included two group-based tasks of describing, comparing, analyzing, and reflecting on everyday activities and cultural practices. To evaluate the design effectiveness, we conducted a discourse-based ethnographic study to examine the knowledge construction stimulated by the task design. We identified that, while all the three groups constructed cultural-specific knowledge on the first task, some constructed deep cultural knowledge and insightful cross-cultural interpretations on the second task. As student groups undertook the two progressive tasks, they worked through various levels of understandings, hence moving from surface to deep learning. Highlights • Three globally distributed groups of undergraduate students were connected via the videoconferencing technology. • The three groups participated in two progressive tasks to describe, compare, analyze, and reflect on everyday practices. • All the three groups constructed certain cultural-specific knowledge, while two constructed deep cultural knowledge. • The learning gap highlighted the necessity of task clarity and appropriate scaffolding in the teaching and learning design. • The groups also constructed understandings about the presentation format by learning from the best practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] Pedagogically motivated study of oral presentations in Hong Kong’s service industries. [•] Findings based on surveys, interviews, case studies and conference calls. [•] Presenters often need to provide a report or update in less than 5min. [•] Findings reveal fundamental differences between academic and business presentations. [•] Main challenge for Hong Kong presenters is to engage the interest of the audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As virtual teams become more and more important in organizations, understanding how to improve virtual team relational development and meeting outcomes is vital to project success. The objective of this study was to investigate how the dialogue technique that facilitated building of shared understanding in virtual teams can be used to enhance virtual team relational development and decision outcomes in a Chinese cultural context. The results from an experiment demonstrate that the adopted dialogue technique can indeed help team members develop their team relations and enhance their perceived team meeting outcomes. Video-conferencing virtual teams with shared mental models may be engaged as effectively as traditional face-to-face teams. Moreover~ this study reveals that the dialogue technique can enhance face-to-face team outcomes. Therefore, the findings of this study have both theoretical and practical implications for helping teams develop shared understanding of effective communication and enhance decision-making outcomes in the Chinese cultural context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fisheries are one of the most important sources of income for millions of people around the world. This paper examines the impact of financial development on fishermen's poverty reduction in China between 1996 and 2017. The state space model and the comprehensive mediation effect test method are employed to verify the affecting channels, while the threshold panel model is introduced to illustrate the specific performance in this process. Results have confirmed the existence of the indirect effect between financial development, economic growth and fishermen's poverty reduction. This means the influence of financial development on fishermen's poverty reduction in China mainly relies on the intermediary role of economic growth. Furthermore, the empirical evidence also supports an asymmetric inverted U-shaped relationship, which is linked to the Greenwood-Jovanovic (GJ) hypothesis. The findings recommend that policies geared toward generalized expansion of financial resources coverage of fisheries should be adopted to implement differentiated countermeasures according to the distribution of threshold effect and inclusive financial products to help overcome financing difficulties in fisheries. • This paper examined the impact of financial development on fishermen's poverty reduction in China over 1996–2017. • The comprehensive mediation effect test method confirmed the existence of indirect effect between them. • An asymmetric inverted U-shaped relationship was verified, being similar with the Greenwood-Jovanocich hypothesis. • The differentiation countermeasures were recommended according to the threshold effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]