Shandong Migrants in Harbin During the 1940s

Manchuria, or Northeast China, was a migrant society in which the majority of the population came from Shandong and Hebei during the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. However, Manchuria’s migration history in the period of Manchukuo, a puppet state controlled by Imperial Japan from 1932 to 1945, is a […]

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International student retention and innovation: The UK

This project examines the international mobility of students in sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and the importance of international student retention for innovation. Applying a gender-based analysis and focusing on the Greater London area, the project explores the particular challenges that affect both female and male students’ transition to post-graduate work and permanent residency […]

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Recruiting Global Talent for Innovation: Thuringia & Berlin

This project aims for a regional comparison concerning the current state of affairs and the strategies and policies that exist in recruiting and retaining foreign (‘global’) talent for innovation and growth in the two German regions (‘Laender’) of Berlin and Thuringia. Since the 2000s, Germany and many of its ‘Laender’ have developed various initiatives to […]

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The effect of speaker ethnicity and accent on speech processing and speaker evaluation

There is some evidence that people’s beliefs about how someone is ‘supposed to sound’ may affect how they perceive someone’s speech –to the extent of them hearing an accent that isn’t there. This response time study investigates in what ways “expected” and “unexpected” combinations of speaker ethnicity and accent can affect how speech is processed […]

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Ehrhart Theory on Arrangements of Hyperplanes

Hyperplanes can be thought of as codimension 1 affine subspaces of a given Euclidean space. Given an arrangement A of hyperplanes in R^d, the set of intersections of hyperplanes define a partially ordered set called intersection poset. The characteristic polynomial of A can then be defined using Mobius function of the intersection poset. One can […]

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Synthesis of Nanostructured Mesoporous Nickel Materials for Energy Storage Applications

With the advent of fuel cell technology, people began to believe implementation of a zero-emission energy system through the construction of a hydrogen-based energy infrastructure. The conventional system for hydrogen production is water electrolysis; however, the production cost is far too expensive for widespread adoption due to the usage of noble metals required as electrocatalysts. […]

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Charaterizing Effects of Dye on Microbubble Shells

In photoacoustic (PA) imaging, pulsed light irradiates a sample. Light-absorbing molecules experience a pressure rise and generate an ultrasound wave, from which, an image of the sample is obtained. If the image contrast is insufficient, contrast enhancement is applied by locally introducing stronger light absorbers. In ultrasound imaging (US), shelled gas bubbles are used to […]

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Effect of Exendin-4 on Cognitive Function in Down Syndrome

Down syndrome (DS) is caused by the presence of three copies of chromosome 21, leading to dementia in later life of the patients. DS patients develop characteristic Alzheimer’s pathologies, including the amyloid-beta plaque formation, tau hyperphosphorylationto form neurofibrillary tangles and abnormal synaptic function and plasticity. Growing evidence has shown that impaired insulin signaling plays a […]

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Neonatal Imitation and Language Preference

This study will examine the relationship between language and communication in newborn infants. In the past, it has been found that newborns are able to imitate the facial expressions of adults. It has also been found that newborns generally prefer the sound of their mother’s native language(s). This study proposes to explore the connection between […]

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Investigation of the joint effects of smoking and breastfeeding on maternal postpartum weight retention

The harmful effects of smoking on fetal development, child health, and maternal wellbeing are well described, making smoking cessation during pregnancy and the postpartum period a global health priority. Although a large proportion of expecting mothers will spontaneously quit smoking during pregnancy, the majority will restart smoking within 6 months post-pregnancy. Efforts to reduce smoking […]

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