Television coverage of the 1995 legislative election in Taiwan: Rise of cable television as a force for balance in media coverage

This research examines how television reported the campaign, parties, and candidates during the 1995 Legislative Election in Taiwan. Results of this study showed that state‐owned broadcast television stations were far more likely than privately owned cable television channels to give greater coverage to the ruling party and its candidates, to use ruling party officials as news sources, and to offer more news coverage favorable to the ruling party than to other parties. We conclude that cable television has become a force for balance in coverage, diluting a pervasive pro‐government party bias. The rise of cable television from virtual “outlaw” status to government‐licensed status appears to have responded to a more liberal society and made a contribution to the development of democracy, as have the expanded elections themselves.     

Directions for the future of schooling in Hong Kong: Vision and reality in a post-colonial society

The study reported here used the OECD scenarios on the future of schooling to probe the views of a sample of educators identified as having the potential to influence education policy formation in Hong Kong. The results indicated that among this sample, there were multiple perspectives on the future of schooling and these were related to the very public education reform agenda that was currently being implemented in Hong Kong schools. The future of schooling was seen to be dependent on the role of the political process in articulating a clear vision, school leadership and teacher capacity. Lack of any one of these was seen as an impediment to achieving change in Hong Kong schools.     

论民族地区人口与经济发展问题

我国民族地区的人口增长状况与这些地区的经济发展有着紧密联系，合理调节民族地区的人口分布、控制民族地区的人口增长，会极大地推动本地区经济的快速稳定增长。     

Investigating the Sensitivity of Goodness-of-Fit Indices to Detect Measurement Invariance in a Bifactor Model

A Monte Carlo simulation study was conducted to evaluate the sensitivities of the likelihood ratio test and five commonly used delta goodness-of-fit (ΔGOF) indices (i.e., ΔGamma, ΔMcDonald’s, ΔCFI, ΔRMSEA, and ΔSRMR) to detect a lack of metric invariance in a bifactor model. Experimental conditions included factor loading differences, location and number of noninvariant items, and sample size. The results indicated all ΔGOF indices held Type I error to a minimum and overall had adequate power for the study. For detecting the violation of metric invariance, only ΔGamma and ΔCFI, in addition to Δχ², are recommended to use in the bifactor model with values of ?.016 to ?.023 and ?.003 to ?.004, respectively. Moreover, in the variance component analysis, the magnitude of the factor loading differences contributed the most variation to all ΔGOF indices, whereas sample size affected Δχ² the most.     

Reading and Spelling Chinese Among Beginning Readers: What Skills Make a Difference?

The contributions of six important reading-related skills (phonological awareness, rapid naming, orthographic skills, morphological awareness, listening comprehension, and syntactic skills) to Chinese word and text reading were examined among 290 Chinese first graders in Hong Kong. Rapid naming, but not phonological awareness, was a significant predictor of Chinese word reading and writing to dictation (i.e., spelling) in the context of orthographic skills and morphological awareness. Commonality analyses suggested that orthographic skills and morphological awareness each contributed significant amount of unique variance to Chinese word reading and spelling. Syntactic skills accounted for significant amount of unique variance in reading comprehension at both sentence and passage levels after controlling for the effects of word reading and the other skills, but listening comprehension did not. A model on the interrelationships among the reading-related skills and Chinese reading at both word and text levels was proposed.     

Effects of shear stresses and antioxidant concentrations on the production of reactive oxygen species in lung cancer cells

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are known to be a key factor in the development of cancer, and many exogenous sources are supposed to be related to the formation of ROS. In this paper, a microfluidic chip was developed for studying the production of ROS in lung cancer cells under different chemical and physical stimuli. This chip has two unique features: (1) five relative concentrations of 0, 1/8, 1/2, 7/8, and 1 are achieved in the culture regions; (2) a shear stress gradient is produced inside each of the five culture areas. Lung cancer cells were seeded inside this biocompatible chip for investigating their response to different concentrations of H₂O₂, a chemical stimulus known to increase the production of ROS. Then the effect of shear stress, a physical stimulus, on lung cancer cells was examined, showing that the production of ROS was increased in response to a larger shear stress. Finally, two antioxidants, α-tocopherol and ferulic acid, were used to study their effects on reducing ROS. It was found that high-dose α-tocopherol was not able to effectively eliminate the ROS produced inside cells. This counter effect was not observed in cells cultured in a traditional chamber slide, where no shear stress was present. This result suggests that the current microfluidic chip provides an in vitro platform best mimicking the physiological condition where cells are under circulating conditions.     

Academic work within a mode of mixed governance: perspectives of university professors in the research context of western China

Chinese higher education institutions have been subjected to the intensive bureaucratic governance led by the central authorities since 1949. Since the new public management has been a burgeoning social discourse, some reforms have been conducted recently, centering on the competitive contract-centered employment of staff, integration of industrial sectors, universities, and research institutes, and the evaluation of teaching quality at the undergraduate level. By embracing the ideas of new public management, a mode of mixed governance has evolved within the larger milieu of Chinese higher education. By in-depth interviews with 36 university teachers from a university in western China, this study finds that the distribution of income within the academic community has been polarized, so that the career development of new teachers and those in low priority disciplines is curtailed. Additionally, research is assigned more priority than teaching; institutional service has made distracted academics from knowledge. Lastly, Chinese academics’ work has been greatly affected by a mixed mode of governance spawned by the unique integration between paternalistic governance, bureaucratic management, and new public management.     

Third‐person effect,gender differences,pornography exposure and support for restriction of pornography

The interrelationship of the factors that influence attitudes in support of restrictions on pornography are explored in this study. From data gathered in a survey of Taiwanese high school students, a model is constructed to depict these relationships. Although both male and females subjects perceived pornography to have greater negative influence on others than on themselves, females who had a lower level of past exposure to pornography perceived greater negative effects of pornography on others than did male respondents. Findings also supported the hypotheses that gender, lower level of past exposure and perceived negative effects all are related to an attitude that favours control of pornography.     

Self-efficacy,information-processing strategies,and acquisition of health knowledge

Informed by the Cognitive Mediation Model of media learning, this study explores how self-efficacy and information-processing strategies jointly impact the learning of health knowledge. Using survey data (N=1409), the study examines the roles that self-efficacy, motivation of media use, news attention, and elaboration play in acquiring knowledge about swine flu during the 2009 global pandemic crisis. Results support the hypothesized relationships among self-efficacy, motivation, attention to and elaboration of swine flu news, and knowledge about the flu. Implications of the findings to advance the research in mediated cognitive learning are discussed.