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Over the last decade, the Chinese government has focused on addressing development challenges in rural areas. The &ldquo, Ecological Priority and All-Area Integrated Development&rdquo, concept was thus developed, and it was found to be crucial for rural areas in Eastern Zhejiang Province. A new comprehensive evaluation system was composed by comparing and synthesizing existing Chinese assessment criteria, and landscape performance metrics developed by the Landscape Architecture Foundation. Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Fuzzy Comprehensive Evaluation Method (FCE) were used to conduct post-development evaluation on six cases using the new evaluation system. The results of four cases show that ecology should be considered a high priority when dealing with rural community and small town developments. The other two cases emphasizing infrastructure development verified that &ldquo, coordinating the development of rural communities and small town area&rdquo, is crucial for building sustainable and livable rural communities, and avoiding redundancy and inefficiency. The newly developed comprehensive evaluation system integrates existing systems with a broader vision and is more holistic in its objectives for the region. The development-led intervention (based on landscape performance evaluation) is conducive to the implementation of a more scientific and comprehensive development model, with predictable performance.

Demonstrating and experimenting interdisciplinary teaching and experiential learning, faculty and students across three colleges (Agriculture and Life Sciences, Architecture and Engineering), and 4 departments (Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning, Horticultural Sciences, and Civil, Biological and Agricultural Engineering) designed, implemented, and are monitoring effects of a rain garden. This collaboration presents a model for multi-scalar, interdisciplinary studio instruction involving a project conducted by over 200 undergraduate and graduate students across allied fields. Landscape Architecture students provided designs, construction details, and performance monitoring of the site as well as developed a large-scaled campus master plan. Horticultural Sciences students propagated and produced the plants. Civil engineers assisted with constructed infrastructure design and water quality/quantity assessment. Professional landscape architects, urban planners, horticulturalists, engineers and campus facilities maintenance personnel evaluated student work. This paper specifies lessons learned from the application of a program that sought to educate and train students in LID alternatives to traditional stormwater management through hands-on outdoor classroom activities. While opportunities for interdisciplinary networking, knowledge of the landscape construction process, and the ability to utilize scientific rationale for design decision making all increased, challenges included coordination efforts across disciplines, overcoming unknown nomenclature specific to each field, delays due to unforeseen circumstances, and budgetary increased as a result of maintenance issues. However, Collaboration between multidisciplinary professionals enabled students to experience the professional design process and have a deeper understanding of the positive impacts of green infrastructure through interdisciplinary experiential learning.

A synthetic isoflavone (ISO-S) or genistein was added in culture medium at different concentrations (0, 10, 20, 30, 40, and 80 μmol L −1 ) to investigate the effects of soybean isoflavones on antioxidative capacity of porcine skeletal muscle satellite cells. After 48 h incubation, the suspension was cryopreserved for the determination of Superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT), glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) activities, and malondialdehyde (MDA) content. The mRNA levels of SOD, CAT, and GSH-Px gene in cells were detected with Taqman fluorescent probe method. The results showed that the content of MDA and the activities and the mRNA levels of SOD of porcine skeletal muscle satellite cells were influenced by supplemented soybean isoflavone (P −1 ISO-S or genistein in the medium. The MDA contents, SOD and CAT activities and their mRNA expression levels of porcine skeletal muscle cells responded quadratically ( P −1 elevated the activities and the mRNA expression levels of SOD and CAT in cells concurrently and decreased the cellular content of MDA (P −1 could improve the antioxidative capacity of porcine skeletal muscle satellite cells.

This article shows that a corporate manager compensated in stock options makes corporate decisions to maximize stock option value. Overinvestment is a consequence if risk increases with investment. Facing the choice of hedging corporate risk with forward contracts on a stock market index fund and insuring pure risks the manager will choose the latter. Hedging with forwards reduces weight in both tails of corporate payoff distribution and thus reduces option value. Insuring pure risks reduces the weight in the left tail where the options are out-of-the-money and increases the weight in the right tail where the options are in-the-money; the effect is an increase in the option value. Insurance reduces the overinvestment problem but no level of insurance coverage can reduce investment to that which maximizes the shareholder value. ********** Most of the existing literature on the corporate demand for insurance rests either implicitly or explicitly on the notion that the decisions on corporate account are made to maximize the current shareholder value. Mayers and Smith (1982) began a discussion of the determinants of the demand for corporate insurance by noting that the "... corporate form provides an effective hedge since stockholders can eliminate insurable risk through diversification." Equivalently, the value of the insured firm is equal to that of the uninsured firm and insurance plays no role in the management of corporate risk. (1) The role insurance plays in managing corporate risk has since been clarified by Main (1983), MacMinn (1987), Mayers and Smith (1987), MacMinn and Han (1990), Garven and MacMinn (1993), and Han (1996). MacMinn (1987) shows that the risk-shifting problem can be solved with an insurance contract and so increase the value of the corporation; (2) similarly Mayers and Smith (1987) and Garven and MacMinn (1993) show that the underinvestment problem can be solved with insurance. (3) These results were derived assuming the maximization of current shareholder value. Stock option grants, however, have become an increasingly important component of executive compensation in the last two decades of the twentieth century (Murphy, 1998; Murphy, 1999). Stock options are supposed to align the incentives of management and shareholder since the options give management the incentive to increase the share price. The deductive foundation for this conventional wisdom has not been provided in the literature. Hence, the objective here is first to provide the link between the executive compensation scheme and corporate decision making, second to examine the impact of the executive compensation on the corporate demand for insurance, and third to examine the role insurance plays in aligning the interest of executives and shareholders. The literature on the demand for corporate insurance is one thread of the broader literature on risk management. In the risk management literature, Smith and Stulz (1985) consider a managerial motive that provides a linkage between compensation and corporate decision making. They show that the risk-averse manager compensated with stock will use forward contracts to hedge risk; they also show that when the compensation is stock options, the options will ultimately eliminate the incentive to hedge. (4) There is some empirical support for the managerial theory in Tufano (1996). (5) The Smith and Stulz model differs from that here because they do not allow the corporate executive to hold a portfolio on personal account or diversify that portfolio. The managerial analysis is reframed here and the corporate objective function is explicitly derived for the manager paid in stock options; then the analysis shows that the stock options eliminate the incentive to hedge with forward contracts. (6) This might suggest that neither will the manager use insurance to manage risk but this model shows that not all risk management tools are created equal. The forward contract reduces risk by eliminating weight from the tails of the corporate earnings distribution and this reduces the value of the stock options. …

This paper explores the role of supplemental web-based learning in an undergraduate and a graduate landscape architecture construction studio taught by the same instructors. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected from a total of 32 participating students. These data included surveys of students' perceived satisfaction of the course and preferences on eight different learning vehicles, as well as tracked online course visits of each student. More than two-thirds of students responded that their learning benefited from use of the WebCT (and online education and training software) and that they were satisfied with the courses. This indicates that online delivery of course materials could enhance landscape architecture studio learning, which also implies that off-campus study, study abroad, or internship study, typically required in landscape architecture curricula, can also benefit from the use of WebCT or the like. With the Internet, students scattered globally for off-campus or internship study can be brought back to a local or virtual classroom for monitoring of their learning progress and quality. Therefore, the fine line between global and local classrooms becomes fuzzy and indistinguishable. For those who are interested in developing online landscape architecture courses, interactive student-to-teacher and student-to-student activities, such as chat rooms, online discussions, or white board demonstrations are recommended to encourage participation and, in turn, ensure learning effectiveness., Landscape Review, Vol 9, No 1 (2004)

This study uses the tick data for foreign-currency futures to examine risk–return relationships on macroeconomic announcements. This study—different from previous studies—examines the risk–return relationship by capturing the announcement effect on returns with announcement surprises and on volatilities with announcement dummies simultaneously in a Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (GARCH) model. Strong risk–return relationships are detected for the first min after the announcements. Furthermore, the return–risk tradeoff ratios differ across currencies and across macroeconomic indicators. The same information can be more profitable when acted on the more liquid currency futures. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 22: 729–764, 2002