Senior centres in the lives of older Americans: implications for Chinese older adults

As a critical community resource, the senior centre has provided older Americans with a wide array of recreational, nutritional, health, and social service programmes. Funding resources include the Older Americans Act allocations, local organisations and governments, national charities, voluntary associations, and religious associations. The types of programmes offered at a senior centre reflect two models: social agency model or voluntary organisation model. The five most popular programmes are nutrition, health and fitness, recreation, volunteering, and social services. Participation in senior centre activities has positive impacts on the overall well-being of older adult participants. With the rapid growth in the ageing population and improved life expectancy in China, senior centres may serve as a focal point for Chinese older adults by providing a broad spectrum of social services to enhance the well-being of community-dwelling older adults, to support their independence and dignity, and to facilitate ageing in place in later life.     

北美汉学界的《沧浪诗话》研究述评——以华裔族群为中心

北美汉学界的《沧浪诗话》研究在主体构成上包括华裔族群和本土学者两个群体。华裔族群的代表人物是刘若愚、叶维廉、叶嘉莹、欧阳桢等人，本土学者的代表人物是加拿大的林理彰，美国的宇文所安、费维廉等人。整体上看。华裔族群的研究凸显出如下四个主要特点：一是注重影响研究，包括严羽诗论对前代文论的承传及其对后代文论（文学理论和文学批评）的影响；二是对严羽诗论系统中“以禅喻诗”批评方法及“兴趣”、“妙悟”等概念进行了阐释：三是方法上移西释中和中西对话并用；四是注意吸纳中国和日本“严学”家的研究成果。     

What is Mentoring?

What is mentoring? Is it just a buzz word or is this really valuable? How can mentoring help one to grow and advance personally and professionally? How and where does one even begin? Many of us have these questions. In this article, I will share my perspective and provide some reflections on these questions based on my own personal and professional journey.     

Bayesian ratemaking under Dirichlet process mixtures

Experience ratemaking plays a crucial role in general insurance in determining future premiums of individuals in a portfolio by assessing observed claims from the whole portfolio. This paper investigates this problem in which claims can be modeled by certain parametric family of distributions. The Dirichlet process mixtures are employed to model the distributions of the parameters so as to make two advantages: to produce exact Bayesian experience premiums for a class of premium principles generated from generic error functions and, at the same time, provide robust and flexible ways to avoid possible bias caused by traditionally used priors such as non informative priors or conjugate priors. In this paper, the Bayesian experience ratemaking under Dirichlet process mixture models are investigated and due to the lack of analytical forms of the conditional expectations of the quantities concerned, the Gibbs sampling schemes are designed for the purpose of approximations.     

抗战时期陕甘宁边区学前教育建设的经验与启示

抗战时期，陕甘宁边区在中国共产党的领导下进行了独具特色的学前教育建设活动，形成了独特的建设经验，主要包括提供保障措施、建立精简高效的组织架构、注重保教队伍的建设、关爱幼儿的身体健康、开展科学的教育教学工作。重现边区学前教育活动，探寻其成功经验，继承与发扬红色教育精神，对新时期幼儿的培养与培育有积极的现实指导意义。     

美国犹太教“极化”进程中的以色列因素

自20世纪末以来,美国犹太教正统派和非正统派之间呈现出明显的“极化”趋势,以色列是加剧这一“极化”进程的“分化剂”。以色列在全球犹太人中“精神中心”地位的凸显、全球化时代流散地犹太人群体对以色列关联的增强以及不同宗派群体在对以关联中的地位差异,导致以色列成为美国犹太教不同宗派间竞争的关键“战场”。籍由此种紧密但不平衡的关联,以色列的社会政治冲突和“极化”得以“外溢”至美国犹太人群体。美国犹太教不同宗派以“受邀”或“回旋镖”模式卷入以色列社会政治的纷争。进入21世纪以来,右倾化和“民主危机”使以色列犹太人正统派在身份认同、政党归属和政策倾向等方面与美国正统派犹太人趋近,同时却更加疏远非正统派群体。日趋右倾化的以色列加剧了美国犹太教不同宗派间的“身份冲突”。     

Social network and content analysis of the North American Carbon Program as a scientific community of practice

The North American Carbon Program (NACP) was formed to further the scientific understanding of sources, sinks, and stocks of carbon in Earth's environment. Carbon cycle science integrates multidisciplinary research, providing decision-support information for managing climate and carbon-related change across multiple sectors of society. This investigation uses the conceptual framework of communities of practice (CoP) to explore the role that the NACP has played in connecting researchers into a carbon cycle knowledge network, and in enabling them to conduct physical science that includes ideas from social science. A CoP describes the communities formed when people consistently engage in shared communication and activities toward a common passion or learning goal. We apply the CoP model by using keyword analysis of abstracts from scientific publications to analyze the research outputs of the NACP in terms of its knowledge domain. We also construct a co-authorship network from the publications of core NACP members, describe the structure and social pathways within the community. Results of the content analysis indicate that the NACP community of practice has substantially expanded its research on human and social impacts on the carbon cycle, contributing to a better understanding of how human and physical processes interact with one another. Results of the co-authorship social network analysis demonstrate that the NACP has formed a tightly connected community with many social pathways through which knowledge may flow, and that it has also expanded its network of institutions involved in carbon cycle research over the past seven years.     

美国公民教育方法对我国思政教育的启示

美国作为世界上最发达的资本主义国家，其公民教育是成功的，美国公民教育的成功源于其方法的成功。探究美国公民教育方法，借鉴其宝贵经验，对建立一套符合我国实际的思想政治教育方法体系，促进我国思想政治教育的健康发展，具有重要的现实意义。     

‘Miss mum’: mind and affective experience of Korean learners identified with autism spectrum and cognitive difficulties

Responding to the call for culturally informed research on autism spectrum (AS) to allow for the provision of appropriate services, this paper qualitatively explores the affective experience of five Korean learners identified with AS and cognitive difficulties by listening to their voices. The learners, supported by the use of visual aids and a choice of their preferred mode of communication, expressed the complexity of their inner experience that encompassed abilities as well as difficulties. The findings highlight the commonalities of experience between Korean and non-Korean individuals with AS, along with some aspects specific to the Korean cultural context.     

Social cohesion in Rwanda: Results from a public good experiment

We describe a public good experiment, a type of economic experiment commonly used to examine feelings of prosociality—that is, behaviour which is positive, helpful and intended to promote social acceptance and friendship—and community cohesion, carried out in Rwanda. Contributions in different parts of the country are affected by the local intensity of the 1994 genocide, with more generous contributions being made in areas where violence was greater. This supports earlier research indicating that conflict experience leads to greater prosociality. However, we also find that people who have not, themselves, been targets of violence give lower contributions than people who have. The considerable group‐related and regional differences in social behaviour may have implications for the country's policies to deal with social cohesion.