Inked: historic African-American beach site as collective memory and group ‘Third Place’ sociability on Martha’s Vineyard

Using data gained from ethnographic research and interviews, this article examines ‘third place’ sociability in the social interactions of the Polar Bears of Martha’s Vineyard, a group of predominantly but not exclusively middle-aged and senior African-American men and women who swim, exercise and socialise together each morning at ‘the Inkwell’ beach. Using Georg Simmel’s concept of sociability and Ray Oldenburg’s third-place theoretical framework, this study explores the key role of the Monday communal breakfast and the function of conversation in establishing bonds between individuals. It further investigates the promotion of strong feelings of social connectedness, belonging, social support, social capital gains and community among its group members. The ongoing sociability and informal rules of the Polar Bears of Martha’s Vineyard has enabled it to become a model group demonstration of third-place community building. The importance of race, class and place is socio-historically investigated within the broader social context of the popular racialised section of the beach, ‘the Inkwell’, of African-American community life, and within the sub-community milieu of group social interaction.     

抓好共青团建设,让医院充满青春与活力

共青团组织作为我党的助手与后备军,在党发展与战斗的各个阶段都发挥了巨大的作用,在社会转型期的新形势下,继续抓好团建工作,发挥团组织的战斗堡垒作用,让医院充满青春与活力,存在其重要性与必要性。     

How well do conservation auctions perform in achieving landscape‐level outcomes? A comparison of auction formats and bid selection criteria

This paper studies the performance of auction design features regarding pricing mechanisms and bid selection criteria for securing wildlife zones across different holdings. We compare two pricing mechanisms: a discriminatory‐price auction and a uniform‐price ascending auction, and four bid selection criteria on the basis of: total bid, bid‐per‐value ratio, bid‐per‐area ratio and a mixed criterion where bids are formed on the basis of cost but they are selected based on the bid‐per‐value ratio. We develop a best‐response group‐bidding model for a discriminatory‐price auction where bidders form optimal group bids for individual wildlife zones. In the uniform‐price ascending auction, individual landholders respond to prices, which are successively raised by the auctioneer and whenever all the landholders from a single zone agree to participate (i.e. the first zone is formed), the auction stops. Based on numerical simulations using a bio‐economic model of malleefowl conservation, we observe that the discriminatory‐price auction is more cost‐effective than the uniform‐price ascending auction. However, the budgetary cost‐effectiveness of a discriminatory‐price auction is sensitive to bidder uncertainty about the number of competing bidder groups and the highest cost of establishing a wildlife zone among these groups. In terms of bid selection, the mixed bid selection criterion performs best. We discuss the policy implications of these findings.     

Quantitative Analysis of Foreign Trade and Environmental Efficiency in China

This article analyzes the relationships among trade, the economy, and environmental quality in China. First, in the context of these relationships, the Super-SBM model is used to calculate the environmental efficiencies of thirty Chinese provinces and cities to obtain the degrees of regional disparity. Second, China’s provincial panel data from 2003 and 2012 are used to establish an influential factor indicator system of environmental efficiency. A section-weighted fixed effect model then provides insights about influential factors such as spatial heterogeneity. Third, the article establishes a variable coefficient model to identify the relationships among the objects of the study and divides the Chinese regions into four types. The suggestions include enhancing environmental and business regulations to ensure equilibrium between trade, the environment, and local economies.     

集团化办学：一种职业教育集群价值链增值模式的选择

企业集群理论是从价值增值环节研究经济组织和资源配置的管理学理论,企业集群的互利机理与共生机制对指导职业教育集团的发展有着重要的意义。文章结合我国职业教育和职教集团的现状,提出集团化办学是一种职业教育集群升级模式。职教集群升级本质上是集群治理效率的提升。我国职教集团化办学大体处于短距离市场价值链层级,要实现价值链的高移与升级,必须加快从短距离市场价值链到准等级型价值链的演进和从准等级型价值链到网络型价值链的提升。而要实现这种升级,必须基于深度产学合作和资源整合实现职业集团角色转型和准确定位,以实现职业教育与区域经济的良性互动与对接。     

蓝色产业调研及海洋化工专业群建设初探

根据区域产业结构的变化,适时调整专业设置和专业结构,大力培养高端技能型人才是高职院校的立校之本、生命所在。作为首批国家示范性高等职业院校,青岛职业技术学院根据青岛蓝色产业发展需求,调整和申报化工相关专业,建设海洋化工专业群,充分发挥示范引领作用,实现了对接地方经济社会发展与培养高端技能型人才的良性互动。     

The Effectiveness of a Buzz Marketing Approach Compared to Traditional Advertising: An Exploration

Marketers are now willing to go anyplace they can find a captive audience to espouse the virtues of their products. The success of the “buzz” marketing approach is linked to the consumer being lured into doing the advertising by spreading the message to others. This study compares students’ responses to a traditional advertising and a buzz approach. Using a factor analysis to identify variables, the results show that subjects perceive a buzz approach to be more influential than a traditional advertising. However, they do not perceive a buzz approach to be authentic. This finding is consistent with practitioners’ argument that, although a buzz approach may be effective in the short-term, once consumers recognize its selling intent, the program may have a “boomerang effect.”     

Perceptions of facilitators of a keypad‐based group support system

Organizations are using Group Support Systems (GSSs) to improve the quality of group meetings. Keypad‐based GSSs are a widely used form of this technology, yet there has been little research on their use and effects. This paper reports the findings of a survey of facilitators of a particular keypad GSS. Facilitators indicate that keypad technology improves the quality of meetings for a variety of tasks in a range of group settings and cultures. The findings are in general agreement with field studies of workstation‐based systems.     

An alternate approach to modeling the slack season provision of guided tours to tourists

We discuss an approach to modeling the slack season provision of guided tours to tourists that accounts for the twin phenomena of stochastic demand and tourist heterogeneity but is different from the way in which this problem has been modeled in the extant tourism literature. Our discussion uses the theory of discrete-time Markov chains and it models the slack season from a tourist demand perspective. Specifically, we first study a case in which the wait plus tour or the excursion time of an arriving tourist is exponentially distributed with a fixed mean. Next, we focus on a scenario in which the excursion time is exponentially distributed with one of two possible fixed means and these two means arise with specific probabilities.     

金融结构演变、货币政策与银行风险承担异质性

基于2002-2017年165家银行的面板数据,本文采用可行广义最小二乘(FGLS)方法实证检验金融结构演变视角下货币政策对银行风险承担渠道的影响。研究发现:金融结构的变化对银行风险承担具有显著影响,随着直接融资占比的上升,银行资产端风险承担显著减少,但负债端风险承担显著增加;控制住金融结构的作用之后,货币政策对银行资产端风险承担和负债端风险承担也具有显著的异质性影响,具体来说,价格型货币政策的紧缩使得银行资产端风险承担显著减少而导致银行负债端风险承担显著增加,数量型货币政策的紧缩则使得银行资产端风险承担和负债端风险承担同时减少;此外,货币政策与金融结构对银行风险承担具有显著的交互影响,随着直接融资占比的上升,价格型货币政策工具对银行资产端风险承担的影响减弱,对银行负债端风险承担的影响没有表现出显著变化,数量型货币政策工具对银行资产端风险承担和负债端风险承担的影响都受到削弱。研究结论的政策含义对货币当局、监管部门以及商业银行都具有重要意义。