The Emergence of a Community-based Social Assistance Programme in Urban China

To many people, the problem of poverty in China was confined mainly to the rural areas, and the situation of urban poverty was regarded as insignificant. Yet in fact, market-orientated economic reforms have created an urban underclass, made up of poorly paid state workers, the unemployed, and migrants from the countryside. In attempting to respond to the mounting needs of the urban poor, the Chinese government has introduced a means-tested social assistance programme in the cities since the mid-1990s. This paper describes the basic philosophy, structure and operation of this programme, and provides a general assessment of its functions and shortcomings.     

Smoothing Spline Estimation for Partially Linear Single-index Models

In this article, the partially linear single-index models are discussed based on smoothing spline and average derivative estimation method. This proposed technique consists of two stages: one is to estimate the vector parameter in the linear part using the smoothing cubic spline method, simultaneously, obtaining the estimator of unknown single-index function; the other is to estimate the single-index coefficients in the single-index part by the using average derivative estimator procedure. Some simulated and real examples are presented to illustrate the performance of this method.     

How effective are the reset tests for omitted variables

In regression analysis, RESET has widely been regarded as an effective diagnostic test especially for omitted variables. This paper investigates the limitations of the existing RESET tests in detecting omitted variables. We analyze the sources from which RESET draws its power and point out the circumstances under which RESET will likely be ineffective. We offer some Monte Carlo evidence as well as an empirical application to illustrate the weaknesses of the RESET tests. A more robust RESET type test is proposed.     

Retrospective and prospective evaluations of environmental quality under urban renewal as determinants of residents’ subjective quality of life

Claims about the impacts of environmental quality associated with urban renewal on the resident’s subjective quality of life are more speculative than empirically grounded. To clarify the impacts of environmental quality under urban renewal, this study surveyed 876 residents living in housing surrounding seven urban renewal sites in Hong Kong. It shows that environmental quality, both perceived (retrospectively) during and expected (prospectively) after urban renewal, exhibited positive effects on the resident’s subjective quality of life. Furthermore, it reveals that the subjective quality of life of the resident with higher education was less responsive to environmental quality perceived during urban renewal. The findings imply that more measures to mitigate the adverse social impact of urban renewal are preferably available to residents with less education.     

Research the mobile phone operation interfaces for vision-impairment

Due to the vision-impaired users commonly having difficulty with mobile-phone function operations and adaption any manufacturer's user interface design, the goals for this research are established for evaluating how to improve for them the function operation convenience and user interfaces of either mobile phones or electronic appliances in the market currently. After applying collecting back 30 effective questionnaires from 30 vision-impairment, the comments have been concluded from this research include: (1) All mobile phone manufactures commonly ignorant of the vision-impairment difficulty with operating mobile phone user interfaces; (2) The vision-impairment preferential with audio alert signals; (3) The vision-impairment incapable of mobile-phone procurement independently unless with assistance from others; (4) Preferential with adding touch-usage interface design by the vision-impairment; in contrast with the least requirement for such functions as braille, enlarging keystroke size and diversifying-function control panel. With exploring the vision-impairment's necessary improvements and obstacles for mobile phone interface operation, this research is established with goals for offering reference possibly applied in electronic appliance design and . Hopefully, the analysis results of this research could be used as data references for designing electronic and high-tech products and promoting more usage convenience for those vision-impaired.     

Towards Body–Mind–Spirit Integration: East Meets West in Clinical Social Work Practice

Contemporary trends in clinical practice are moving more toward an integrative approach that views the mind, the body and the spirit as inter-connected entities. There is an increasing interest in approaches that utilize physical, cognitive, emotional and spiritual components in assessment and treatment. This paper presents an integrative body–mind–spirit approach in clinical social work practice which is informed by the Eastern philosophical traditions of Daoism, Buddhism, and Traditional Chinese Medicine. Our work with a bereaved elderly woman is presented to illustrate how the three key intervention principles: (1) promoting a dynamic balance within the individual through multi-modal intervention; (2) fostering strengths; and (3) facilitating meaning-making can be effective in helping people in a clinical setting.     

The struggle for hegemony: the emergence of a counter-public sphere in post-1997 Hong Kong

The present study examines the struggle for hegemony in the public sphere by two different systems, following Hong Kong’s handover to China in 1997. It has been postulated that the new media, particularly social media, has become an important public sphere for the citizens of Hong Kong to engage in an anti-hegemonic struggle against China’s discursive encroachment into Hong Kong since 1997. Given that the public platform provided by legacy media has been bought out or coopted by China, new media has begun to serve as a subaltern public sphere to enable resisting the hegemony imposed by China. This was analyzed through a survey conducted as part of this study, which showed that people who are young, read the Apple Daily, have high expectations of local autonomy, and a high regard for press freedom are prone to using social media to obtain their social and political information. This article analyzes the implications of the emergence of a counter-China hegemonic public sphere.     

Two-agent scheduling of time-dependent jobs

We consider the problem of scheduling deteriorating jobs or shortening jobs with two agents A and B. We are interested in generating all Pareto-optimal schedules for the two criteria: (1) the total completion time of the jobs in A and the maximum cost of the jobs in B, and (2) the maximum cost of the jobs in A and the maximum cost of the jobs in B. We show that all Pareto-optimal schedules for both problems can be generated in polynomial time, whether the jobs are deteriorating or shortening.     

Separating Type-I Odd-Cycle Inequalities for a Binary-Encoded Edge-Coloring Formulation

In this note, we describe an efficient algorithm for separating a class of inequalities that includes the type-I odd-cycle inequalities for a binary-encoded edge-coloring formulation.