赫胥黎在近代科学教育普及和发展中的作用

赫胥黎的科学教育思想引领了英国皇家矿业学院的发展，推动了实验室教学的普及，奠定了科学在学校教育体系中的合法地位，促进了科学教育重心的转移，在一定程度上协调了科学教育和自由教育的关系，深刻影响了19世纪中期以后英国乃至欧美其他国家教育的改革和发展，对于我们当今的科学教育工作仍具有十分重要的启示和借鉴意义。     

A New Model of Trend Inflation

This article introduces a new model of trend inflation. In contrast to many earlier approaches, which allow for trend inflation to evolve according to a random walk, ours is a bounded model which ensures that trend inflation is constrained to lie in an interval. The bounds of this interval can either be fixed or estimated from the data. Our model also allows for a time-varying degree of persistence in the transitory component of inflation. In an empirical exercise with CPI inflation, we find the model to work well, yielding more sensible measures of trend inflation and forecasting better than popular alternatives such as the unobserved components stochastic volatility model. This article has supplementary materials online.     

Defining Nations in Asia and Europe: A Comparative Analysis of Ethnic Return Migration Policy1

We argue that regional comparison of East Asian and European ethnic return migration policy offers important new perspectives on nationhood, nondiscrimination norms, and trans‐nationality. We find that despite international nondiscrimination norms, preferential ethnic return policy is common in both regions. These policies at least implicitly define the nation as existing across borders. However, there are significant regional differences. East Asian states use co‐ethnic preferences instrumentally for economic goals and also offer preferential treatment of co‐ethnic foreign investors. European states offer preferences to coethnics to protect these populations or express symbolic ties, sometimes at great expense. Thus, in Europe the state has an obligation to assist coethnics abroad, but in Asia, foreign coethnics assist the state.     

中国城市群基本概念的再认知

城市群并不是孤立封闭的体系,它是与邻近区域内、特别是经济发达的城镇密集区的特定区域范围内不同规模的城市(镇)有着密切联系,依托优越的自然环境基础和发达的交通运输体系以及信息网络形成的一个比较完整的有机整体。尤其是在全球经济一体化以及新型城镇化的新形势下,城市群区内每一个城市均发挥着区域经济增长点和城市功能的特殊作用,并依托城乡一体化区域发挥着强大的辐射作用(包括集聚与疏散作用)。本文在这一基础上深入分析了中国城市群是由城镇化高度发育而形成这一动力问题;论证城市群与城镇密集区的相似性,并对我国城市群范围的识别标准和城市群基本概念的再认识,比较完整地概括了当前我国城市群研究动态与阶段性成果,以供我国城市地理与经济学工作者参考,以便更加深入地研究中国城市群的特有现象和各类问题。     

Contested news values and media performance during the Umbrella Movement

Social crises are a huge challenge to the performance of the media. The norms and routines of news making with which journalists comply can become problematic in the context of intensive public sentiment and empathy. News values, including the sacred belief in objective reporting, are questioned in the light of controversies over editorial judgment within and outside the newsroom. I examine the contested news values that manifested in the Umbrella Movement of Hong Kong in 2014. In particular, I focus on the arguments and deliberations regarding news objectivity, which involved several parameters of the performance of the media during this social crisis.     

Hedging Barrier Options in GARCH Models with Transaction Costs

This study proposes a modified strike‐spread method for hedging barrier options in generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) models with transaction costs. A simulation study was conducted to investigate the hedging performance of the proposed method in comparison with several well‐known static methods for hedging barrier options. An accurate, easy‐to‐implement and fast scheme for generating the first passage time under the GARCH framework which enhances the accuracy and efficiency of the simulation is also proposed. Simulation results and an empirical study using real data indicate that the proposed approach has a promising performance for hedging barrier options in GARCH models when transaction costs are taken into consideration.     

Risk and its Management in Post-Financial Crisis Hong Kong

In the 1970s and up until the financial crisis occurred in the late 1990s, Hong Kong prospered in a relatively stable social, economic and political context. Since the financial crisis, however, its population has been increasingly exposed to risk: there has been job uncertainty and decreasing capacity for self‐reliance, leading to a growing reliance on public welfare and on families at a time when both are under pressure. The old welfare policies, unable to cope with the new risks, have been replaced by neo‐liberal reforms, redistributing the roles and responsibilities of the individual and the state, with a greater burden falling on the former. Individuals are required to be prudent to manage risk. While these reforms have relieved some of the burden on the state, both new social risk groups and ‘net taxpayers’ considered themselves to have borne disproportional costs. Society is facing serious problems resulting from ineffective old welfare policies, new social risks due to new policies, and the political upheavals arising from increased social conflicts and weakened social cohesion and solidarity. A further complication is that there is no acceptable platform or agent to negotiate a compromise between the polarized groups. This article argues that reliance on publicly funded risk coping strategies or on neo‐liberal risk prevention and mitigation strategies is not a desirable and sustainable policy. A commonly accepted political platform is required to negotiate a compromise which emphasizes shared and balanced roles and responsibilities, and a well‐conceived combination of risk prevention, mitigation and coping strategies.     

Protecting the ageing poor or strengthening the market economy: the case of the Hong Kong Mandatory Provident Fund

The Mandatory Provident Fund (MPF) launched by the Hong Kong government seems to be a residual welfare state's strategy to cope with an ageing population and, at the same time, preserve a minimal welfare state and further enhance economic development. The MPF can only provide limited protection for a limited number of employees; many older people still have to depend on financial support from their families or have to work. On the other hand, the MPF immediately boosts the economy by creating more jobs for the financial services sector and by providing more business opportunities for banks and insurance companies. Thus, the MPF has consolidated the foundation of Hong Kong's capitalism by socialising and incorporating the whole working population in the market economy but has provided little protection for their old age.     

Developing From Tranditional Microscale Chemistry to Microscale Green Chemistry

Microscale chemistry is appealing to all levels of education.In contrast to conventional macroscale chemistry,only minute amount of chemicals are required to undertaking a chemical investigation.