Search results for "China"
showing 10 items of 502 documents
Data quality oriented procedure, for detailed mapping of heavy metals in urban topsoil as an approach to human health risk assessment
2021
Abstract Urban soils' health is important to the community because of the soils' potential use for recreational activities. A data quality-oriented approach to sampling design is proposed for performing soil representative surveys that gives support to defensible and statistically-based decisions. Krowoderski park in Cracow (Poland) was selected as a study case to investigate heavy metals (HMs) accumulation and to assess human risk exposure according to simulated scenarios. Statistical power was computed for optimizing the number of samples to compare HMs concentration against legal upper tolerance levels (LUTL). The samples' location was iteratively designed as random spatial distribution …
Characteristics of current roadside pollution using test-monitoring plots
2014
Abstract The aim of the study was the qualitative recognition of the existing roadside pollutants deposited in topsoils located close to roads with high traffic volume. So far, the studies have helped to determine the content of pollutants that accumulated over a long period of time. Traditionally, it has been difficult to distinguish between roadside pollution and pollution from other industrial sources. In order to avoid such problems and to accurately recognize present threats originating from road traffic, test-monitoring plots were installed in Poland (Gliwice and Opole), Germany (Tubingen, Ulm and Boblingen), Finland (Helsinki), Tajikistan (Dushanbe) and China (Lanzhou). To install th…
The Impact of Ethnicity on an Employee`s Readiness to comply with a Code of Conduct: Differences between German/Austrian and Chinese Employees
2018
The authors assess how ethnicity impacts ethical choices of an employee towards corporate compliance behaviour as part of the ethical decision making process at work. An employee faces an ethical dilemma in business situations when he/she is caught in an ethical conflict between his/her individual moral standards and a Code of Conduct, representing the moral values of the company. The authors investigate potential connections between ethnicity and individual ethical decision making. This study obtained original data to analyze the potential impact of ethnicity on employees in Germany, Austria and the PR China.
Boys Will Be Boys? Subverting Traditional Power Structures in Asian-American Prose
2013
Leaving one’s home country behind and starting a new life on a different continent may also involve being confronted with behaviors and values completely different from the ones that were deemed the only ones back home. This experience is described by the protagonist of the Asian-American author Amy Tan’s story “The Red Candle”, recalling her arrival in California from a small village in China. In her attempt to bridge the gap between the conflicting worlds of “Old East and New West”, the protagonist uses concepts and metaphors that might be transferred and prove valuable in more than one cultural context. In the hierarchy of the culture which is described, a position of power is most of al…
Navigating Stormy Waters: The Triangular Relationship between the United States, Vietnam and China and the South China Sea Disputes
2016
The growing triangular relationship between the U.S., Vietnam and China represents an interesting case study as to how the smaller powers around the South China Sea try to balance China’s increasing assertiveness in the region by engaging the United States. Analyzing the respective sets of bilateral relationships (U.S.-Vietnam and China-Vietnam) hence seems to be promising in order to understand the conflict dynamics in the South China Sea against the background of an often assumed, to a lesser degree examined regional (and eventually global) power transition dynamic. Vietnam has a checkered history with both the U.S. and China, all the while these countries are its most important economic …
The Determinants of Performance in China: A Study Focused on Cultural and Institutional Drivers in the Area of Shanghai
2015
We base our work on an historical study and on interviews of Chinese managers living in the area of Shanghai. We use the institutional theoretical stream in combination with the impact of national culture, considering that organizations and managers are influenced by cultural and institutional determinants. In a first part, we describe the theoretical background to the research and our method. Then, in a second part, we present the significant cultural and institutional features of China that enable us to justify several hypotheses about our topic. In a third part, we analyze twelve in-depth interviews, trying to answer our research question. Our basic research question focuses on what “Per…
Italian familial defective apolipoprotein B patients share a unique haplotype with other Caucasian patients.
2001
Familial defective apolipoprotein (apo) B-100 together with familial hypercholesterolemia are the two common genetic conditions that cause hypercholesterolemia. Familial defective apolipoprotein B-100 is due to mutations around codon 3500 of the apo B gene. The most-characterized mutation is a G>A transition at nucleotide 10,708 that results in the substitution of arginine by glutamine at codon 3500 (Apo B Arg3500Gln). Two other mutations are caused by a C>T transition, one at nucleotide 10,800 (Apo B Arg3531Cys) and the other at nucleotide 10,707 (apo B Arg3500Trp). In the present study we describe three new Italian cases of familial defective apolipoprotein B-100 (Apo B Arg3500Gln), one f…
Evidence for an instructive role of apoptosis during the metamorphosis of Hydractinia echinata (Hydrozoa)
2011
Apoptosis is a highly conserved mechanism of cell deletion that destroys redundant, dysfunctional, damaged, and diseased cells. Furthermore, apoptotic cell death is essential during the development of multicellular organisms. However, there are only a few examples where the occurrence of apoptosis has been shown to be a direct prerequisite for developmental processes. As described previously by our group, the degradation of larval tissue during the first half of the metamorphosis of Hydractinia echinata involves extensive cell death. A large number of cells are removed, and we observed several cellular features of apoptotic cell death in the dying tissue, e.g., nucleosomal DNA fragmentation…
Geographical variation in the exhaled volatile organic compounds.
2013
Breath-gas analysis has demonstrated that concentration profiles of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) could be used for detecting a variety of diseases, among them gastric cancer (GC) and peptic ulcer disease (PUD). Here, we explore how geographical variation affects the disease-specific changes in the chemical composition of breath samples, as compared to control states (less severe gastric conditions). Alveolar exhaled breath samples from 260 patients were collected at two remotely different geographic locations (China and Latvia), following similar breath-collection protocols. Each cohort included 130 patients that were matched in terms of diagnosis (37 GC/32 PUD/61 controls), average ag…
The Russian Economy: Prospects for Putin 4.0
2020
This project was implemented by the Centre for East European Policy Studies in cooperation with the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung in the Baltic States and European Commission Representation in Latvia