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What is Taiwan's overseas community, and how does it connect with Taiwan's diplomacy? The ad hoc organization representing migrants from Taiwall, the Overseas Community Affairs Council, evolved from the Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission (OCAC) of the Republic of China (ROC), established in 1926. The jargon overseas Chinese is the English translation of the Chinese term huaqiao. The latter refers to migrants from China and their descendants who consider themselves sojourners from China, but not all ethnic Chinese residing abroad would accept the huaqiao identity. The ideas concerning huaqiao and Taiwan's diplomacy constitute the theme of this paper. It adapts Joseph Nye's thesis of soft power (cultural diplomacy) and Jacques deLisle's concept of sharp power (political warfare) to interpret the two views on the articulation between Taiwan and migrants from China. It points out the Chinese nationalist embeddedness of the huaqiao concept and the ways in which nationalists drew reference from the history of Chinese migration to Taiwan in the seventeenth century to construct the huaqiao discourses. It also traces the institutional foundation of the Kuomintang's (KMT) huaqiao policies transplanted to Taiwan after 1949. The debate over Taiwan's overseas community policies reflected the twofold question: the competition between Taiwan's cultural diplomacy and the People's Republic of China's political warfare over overseas Chinese mobilization and the construction of Taiwan's national identity after democratization. In conclusion, I highlight the importance of de-nationalizing the huaqiao ideas to ensure a democratic approach for Taiwan to connect with its migrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is a common practice for many studies using the contingent valuation method (CVM) to censor protest responses, but this practice may make data structures incomplete and lead to sample selection bias at the final analysis stage for economic evaluation. This study adopted the CVM to assess the economic value of Qiedong-Wang-Gong (Bischofia javanica) (QWG), the only urban heritage tree over a thousand years old in Taiwan, and analyzed the effect of protest reponses. A total of 307 valid samples were collected and 27% of the respondents were categorized to protest responses. This study used discriminant analysis and multinomial logistic regression to distinguish the types of protest samples. The results showed that the overall classification performance of the multinomial logistic regression is better than that of the discriminant analysis. The Tobit model was applied to deal protest responses as legitimate zero responses and the result showed that the model underestimated the economic values of QWG significantly. The Heckman two-stage model was utilized to evaluate the effect of censoring protest responses. The result revealed that excluding protest responses from further valuation analysis did not lead to significant sample selection bias. In this study, many respondents failed to quantify their preferences toward protecting QWG in terms of willingness to pay. This study suggested further studies could highlight the current policy about ancient urban trees management to decrease respondents' protest beliefs in CVM studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study was conducted during 2009–2010 to observe the concentration variations of metallic elements (Ni, Zn, Cu, and Pb) in the soil samples collected from five characteristic sites in central Taiwan (industrial, science park, urban, wetlands, and rural areas). The collected soil samples were first digested with hydrochloric and nitric acids, and then analyzed through inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES), using a Perkin Elmer Optima 2100 Plasma Emission Spectrometer. The results showed that the highest average concentrations of Zn, Cu, and Pb were found in the soil samples from the industrial area, suggesting that possible emissions of heavy metals from sources of metal industry and industrial processing. The wetland samples suggested possible emissions of heavy metal (Ni) from oil combustion sources. Heavy metal (Pb) was also found in the soils samples, possibly due to vehicle exhaust emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A robust and reliable risk assessment procedure for the determination of transportation hazards between Taiwan and China needs to be developed. These hazards, which are related to mixed types of transport, including both air and maritime routes, play an important role in public security, and their effects need to be taken into consideration. After the implementation of direct cross-strait transportation, it has become necessary to master the spatial characteristics and distributions of maritime space policing cases and to plan effective control strategies in order to maintain public security. This study employs the Geographic Information System (GIS) technology to analyze the spatial locations of maritime cases that arose in the Taichung Harbor area from 2000 to 2010. The characteristics related to the spatial characteristics are surveyed, estimates are made utilizing the gathering and scattering model, hotspots are explored, and planned patrol and monitoring points drafted to provide assignment information for coastal patrol institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The electroencephalographic (EEG) oscillations associated with visuospatial working memory (VSWM) were examined in children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD; 10-11 years; N = 29) and typically developing (TD) children (10-11 years; N = 29). Behaviorally, DCD showed poorer VSWM than TD, which coincided with the diminished ability of DCD in modulating neural oscillations. Furthermore, prestimulus oscillatory alpha activity was correlated with VSWM performance. The results suggest that children with DCD might have a reduced ability to encode and recognize new information, and in particular have difficulty in maintaining task-relevant information, resulting in poorer VSWM. This study thus concludes that changes in oscillatory EEG activity reflect some of the problems leading to cognitive deficits in DCD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last fifty years, Taiwan has been transformed from poverty to riches and from underdevelopment to development. To achieve this, the government and the people have made tremendous contributions. During this period, most American-educated Chinese economists, whether they remained in America or returned to Taiwan to participate in economic construction, have done their duty. These economists uphold liberal economic ideas, attach much importance to market price mechanisms, reject controls and monopolies, and approve of transforming state-run enterprises into privately owned enterprises. These views were not in line with the realities of Taiwan. After having struggled for decades and by dint of practical participation and continuous advice offered through various channels, American-educated Chinese have helped Tai-wan gradually to eliminate various measures of control and to liberalize and internationalize its economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agricultural organic wastes (AOW) have the potential to provide bioenergy particularly found in biogas by anaerobic digestion (AD). In this study, the biogas production (BP) of AOW was obtained by batch AD with anaerobic digesters (500 mL) at 35°C incubator. The results showed that BP values in terms of volatile solids (VS) from rice husk, rice straw, flower residues, fruit and vegetable residues, wasted oyster shell residue (WOSR), fishery residues, livestock and poultry manures, livestock and poultry slaughter wastes (LPSW), and eight equally mixed wastes (EEMW) were 84.03, 193.36, 153.32, 76.27, 150.48, 63.26, 169.63, 615.74, and 172.83 mL/g VS, respectively. LPSW showed the highest μm of 16.99 mL/g VS‐d, the highest BP of 615.74 mL/g VS and the highest bioconversion efficiency of 65.98% compared to the other organic wastes. BP from the most AOW in Taiwan by AD was estimated to be 768,567,753 (743,522,223, excluding WOSR) m3/year. The annual BP of 768,567,753 m3/year of the eight total major AOW by AD was lower (∼20.11%) than 961,989,781 m3/year of the EEMW by anaerobic co‐digestion. Result also showed that modified Gompertz equation was suitable to describe BP accumulation and BP rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Raindrop size distribution (RSD) characteristics of summer and winter seasons over north Taiwan are analyzed by using long‐term (~12 years) raindrop spectra from Joss‐Waldvogel disdrometer located at National Central University (24°58′N, 121°10′E), Taiwan. Along with the disdrometer data, radar reflectivity mosaic from six ground‐based radars, Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission, Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, and ERA‐Interim data sets are used to establish the dynamical and microphysical characteristics of summer and winter rainfall. Significant differences in raindrop spectra of summer and winter rainfall are noticed. Winter rainfall has a higher concentration of small drops and a lower concentration of midsize and large drops when compared to summer rainfall. RSD stratified on the basis of rain rate showed a higher mass‐weighted mean diameter (Dm) and a lower normalized intercept parameter (log10Nw) in summer than winter. Similarly, diurnal variation of RSD showed higher Dm and lower log10Nw values in summer as compared to winter rainfall. In addition, for both seasons, the mean value of Dm is higher in convective precipitation than stratiform. Radar reflectivity (Z) and rain rate (R) relations (Z = A*Rb) showed a clear demarcation between summer and winter rainfall. Higher ground temperatures, deeply extended clouds with intense convective activity in summer modified the RSD through evaporation, drop sorting, and collision‐coalescence processes resulting with higher Dm and lower log10Nw values in summer as compared to winter rainfall. Plain Language Summary: This study details about the raindrop size distribution characteristics variations between summer and winter seasons of north Taiwan using long‐term (12 years) disdrometer data and the possible reasons for the raindrop size distribution variations are also detailed. Key Points: For the first time, long‐term data sets are used to study the summer and winter season RSDRSDs differ considerably between summer and winter rainfall and type of precipitationDynamical and thermodynamical interactions are found to impact the RSD variations between summer and winter rainfall [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A mesophilic, hydrogenotrophic methanogen, strain ML15(T), was isolated from an aquaculture fish pond near Wang-gong, Taiwan. The cells were irregular cocci, non-motile, 1.5-2.0 microm in diameter and Gram-negative. Cells of strain ML15(T) lysed easily in the presence of SDS (0.1 g l(-1)) and the S-layer protein had an M(r) of 138 800. The catabolic substrates utilized by this strain included formate and H(2)/CO(2), but not acetate, methanol, trimethylamine or secondary alcohols. Growth did not occur in minimal medium, but was observed when yeast extract and tryptone were added. Strain ML15(T) grew fastest at 37 degrees C, pH 6.6-7.0 and with 3 % NaCl. Acetate was not required for cell growth. Trace amounts of tungstate promoted cell growth. The G+C contents of DNA of Methanofollis aquaemaris N2F9704(T) and strain ML15(T) were 59.1 and 58.4 mol%, respectively. Sequence analysis of the 16S rRNA genes of strain ML15(T) and selected Methanofollis species revealed similarities of 95-97 %. Based on the data presented here, it is proposed that strain ML15(T) (=OCM 789(T)=DSM 15483(T)) represents a novel species, Methanofollis formosanus sp. nov.