中美科幻小说的创作及研究进路考察——基于1990年代以来的科幻文学视域

科幻小说诞生于19世纪的欧洲,是科技与文学的一种融合.这种文学形式,以其特有的叙事方式,承载着人类探求未来世界、认知未来社会的精神寄望与诉求.作为世界的共有资源,中美两国的科幻小说在其创作及研究的进路中有着较大的距离差别.美国的科幻小说虽较晚于启蒙国英国,但作为科学技术大国、强国,其创作和研究的超越提速是较大的,出现了诸如罗伯特·海因莱因及《星船伞兵》、艾萨克·阿西莫夫及"基地"系列、"机器人"系列等等这样的科幻小说巨头及巨作,研究的深入跟进亦趋于世界前列;相对而言,中国科幻文坛虽曾有过20世纪50年代的辉煌,诞生了郑文光等名家,但中国现代科幻小说的创作及研究是滞后的.20世纪90年代以降,刘慈欣的《三体》三部曲、王晋康的《逃出母宇宙》等科幻大作的出现,使中国科幻小说的创作及研究吸引了世界的目光,其影响在改变着这一滞后的局面.世界科幻王国终于有了中国的声音.     

Abusive Supervision and Well-Being of Filipino Migrant Workers in Macau: Consequences for Self-Esteem and Heritage Culture Detachment

Abusive supervision in the workplace has been shown to have important direct consequence in work and work relationship, and also indirect consequences to workers’ well-being and relationships outside work. Consequences of abusive supervision have not been studied among migrant workers whose status in the host country of work is dependent on maintaining the work contract. This study investigates abusive supervision in 247 Filipino migrant workers in Macau, who hold temporary work contracts and work visas to engage in various low-skilled work (e.g., domestic helper, security guard, etc.). The study tests a model representing the indirect consequences of abusive supervision on the self-esteem and acculturation orientation of migrant workers, in particular, on the tendency to reject their heritage culture in their attempt to acculturate in the host country. Mediation analysis indicated that abusive supervisory perceptions led to lower self-esteem (b = ?.19), which in turn relates to tendency to reject their heritage culture as part of acculturation (b = ?.45) [indirect effect = .08, 90 % CI .04, .15]. The rejection of heritage culture is interpreted as a coping response to the negative indirect consequences of abusive supervision perceptions that may be partly attributed to being a migrant Filipino worker. The results are discussed in terms of how the acculturation of migrant workers reflects aspects of their well-being that may be adversely affected by vocational-related stress in the host country.     

The mixed evacuation problem

A dynamic network introduced by Ford and Fulkerson is a directed graph with capacities and transit times on its arcs. The quickest transshipment problem is one of the most fundamental problems in dynamic networks. In this problem, we are given sources and sinks. Then the goal of this problem is to find a minimum time limit such that we can send the right amount of flow from sources to sinks. In this paper, we introduce a variant of this problem called the mixed evacuation problem. This problem models an emergent situation in which people can evacuate on foot or by car. The goal is to organize such a mixed evacuation so that an efficient evacuation can be achieved. In this paper, we study this problem from the theoretical and practical viewpoints. In the first part, we prove the polynomial-time solvability of this problem in the case where the number of sources and sinks is not large, and also prove the polynomial-time solvability and computational hardness of its variants with integer constraints. In the second part, we apply our model to the case study of Minabe town in Wakayama prefecture, Japan.     

The neglected mediating role of self-efficacy in the goal setting process in local public administrations

To analyse the role of self-efficacy in goal setting in public administrations, this study combines goal-setting theory, public service motivation literature and cognitive theory. Using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM), survey data from 105 German civil servants are analysed. The results underline the role of goal setting (represented by goal difficulty and specificity) in determining the self-efficacy of public servants. Public service motivation and goal specificity both increase public servants’ work performance; however, the effects of goal difficulty are negatively mediated by the employee’s self-efficacy. That finding reflects the central role of self-efficacy, which should not be ignored in the goal-setting processes of public administrations.     

川东北地区须家河组二段储层差异性分析

随着勘探程度的深入，为了扩大四川盆地天然气勘探领域、寻找新的勘探接替区，四川盆地的勘探区域由盆内逐渐向盆缘延伸。在这种背景下，川东北地区须家河组二段相继取得新的勘探成果，但在勘探开发过程中逐渐暴露了诸如区块之间气井产能差异大，储层的碎屑组分、结构及厚度、物性、孔隙结构差异明显等问题，制约了勘探开发的步伐。针对上述问题，根据岩芯观察描述、分析化验资料及测井解释成果，从沉积、成岩方面入手，对比剖析了川东北龙岗和营山地区须二段储层特征的差异性及其成因，认为远离物源区和高能水体的反复淘洗是造成储层差异性的首要因素，强烈的压实作用和多期石英加大对储层差异性起关键作用，自生绿泥石衬边胶结和长石选择性溶蚀最终决定了储层差异性。从而解释了气藏勘探开发中遇到的诸多问题，对有效指导该区的下一步勘探开发工作具有重要意义。     

Unterstützung dualer Karrieren im Spitzensport

The longstanding focus of elite athletes on top sports entails disadvantages hampering their later entry to the world of work. In order to successfully contribute their outstanding personality traits to a later job, athletes are thus particularly required to care for their employability. Contributing to this, the author carried out a competency balancing with top athletes. This coaching method significantly decreased the athletes’ need for self-information. Evaluation further showed indications of increased clarity and certainty of occupational goals as well as work satisfaction.     

同义词和反义词的几个问题

"浑言则同,析言则异"要根据语言的实际运用情况加以分析。有一个限定性义素不相同,可以是近义词,也可能是同义词。同义词形成的一个原因是一些不同地域、不同时代的词义相同的词进入到同一个语言系统中。反义词如果只是词义相反,而在语言运用中不作反义使用,就不是严格的反义词。     

Gender and the Politics of Death: Female Representation,Political and Developmental Context,and Population Health in a Cross-National Panel

There is considerable speculation that female political empowerment could improve population health. Yet, evidence to date is limited, and explanations for why political empowerment would matter and the conditions under which this might be enhanced or muted are not well understood. In this article, we draw on theoretical work on the politics of representation to frame an investigation of whether increases in the percentage of females in a country’s parliament influence mortality rates. We further examine whether the relationship is conditioned by extent of democracy and economic and social development. Through multivariate longitudinal regression, we analyze four indicators of mortality in 155 countries spanning 1990 to 2014 with controls for initial country conditions, time-stable structural predispositions to higher mortality, and a number of time-varying potential confounders. Results indicate that a high level of female representation—30 % or greater in our models—has large negative associations with mortality, that these are particularly strong in lesser developed and weak democratic contexts, that high female political representation effectively offsets liabilities associated with low development, and that the relationships are robust to various operationalizations of social development. In the end, our research provides a particularly thorough accounting of the relationship between female political representation and population health, particularly by specifying the conditions under which female representation is most salient. In doing so, the research suggests important links between issues of female empowerment, political context, and developmental trajectories of countries more generally.     

Constrained vs unconstrained labor supply: the economics of dual job holding

This paper develops a unified model of dual and unitary job holding based on a Stone-Geary utility function. The model incorporates both constrained and unconstrained labor supply. Panel data methods are adapted to accommodate unobserved heterogeneity and multinomial selection into six mutually exclusive labor supply regimes. We estimate the wage and income elasticities arising from selection and unobserved heterogeneity as well as from the Stone-Geary Slutsky equations. The labor supply model is estimated with data from the British Household Panel Survey 1991–2008. Among dual job holders, our study finds that the Stone-Geary income and wage elasticities are much larger for labor supply to the second job compared with the main job. When the effects of selection and unobserved heterogeneity are taken account of, the magnitudes of these elasticities on the second job tend to be significantly reduced.     

The intergenerational education spillovers of pension reform in China

Economic theory establishes that pension privatization weakens the link between old and young and so reduces the incentive to invest in public education in an economy with lower return rate of capital than growth rate of wage. However, empirical studies of the link change are few. In this paper, we investigate the effects of pension privatization and the central government’s subsidy to individual accounts on public education spending in a three-period overlapping generation model. And then, we take contemporary pension reforms in a number of Chinese provinces as offering natural experiment conditions. Using a difference-in-difference framework and 282 municipal districts panel data over years 1998–2009, we test the pension-education theoretical link change. Both our theoretical and empirical results confirm that pension privatization is adversely associated with local public spending on education in China. Private pension subsidies, moreover, magnify this effect. Our study supports the theoretical assertion and selective empirical findings of a negative intergenerational effect of pension privatization.