International and Area Studies Commons^™

Socioeconomic Challenges Of Patients With Clinical Blindness In Rural China, Yuen Aimee Chan

Kaleidoscope

Clinical blindness of 20/200 vision or greater in both eyes is rampant throughout Africa. Remarkably, most of these cases are either curable or preventable. There are 45 million blind people in the world and those who live in sub-Saharan Africa have a mortality rate four times higher than other areas worldwide [1]. Unite For Sight (UFS) is a non-profit organization that promotes eye health and reduce preventable blindness in communities worldwide. UFS has assisted over 1,000,000 patients and has provided 32,000 sight-restoring surgeries free of charge [2]. An opportunity for combination of volunteer work with research will contribute to this …

Ant Tribe, Yan Zhao

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

"Ant Tribe" describes the post-80s generation university graduates who live together in poor conditions without Social security in communities around China's major metropolises. They dream of a better life in big cities but struggle with low-paying jobs. These struggling "elites" have become the fourth weak Social group, after peasants, migrant workers and unemployed people. The reason why these college graduates are compared to ants is that they are like ants: clever, hardworking, politically weak and living in groups.

The real world is always different from the ideal world of the "Ant Tribe" in China. They often lose their purposes in …

Inspired Living, Gongke Li

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Inspired Living is a juxtaposition of old and new, contemplating the shift of values in contemporary China.

Patriotism used to be one of the key values in the Chinese people's minds, but those values have changed dramatically. Fewer people are thinking about or talking about patriotism, like sacrificing for the country or serving the people. In reality, getting rich and spending money to purchase all kinds of products, either absolute necessities or unnecessary luxuries, has become the key value of many Chinese people.

The images used in this project are all found and come from various sources, including books and …

Weaponizing Tear Gas: Bahrain’S Unprecedented Use Of Toxic Chemical Agents Against Civilians., Richard Sollom, Holly G. Atkinson

Publications and Research

The Bahraini government’s response to the early 2011 pro-democracy protests was brutal, systematic, and violent. In addition to birdshot and rubber bullets, government law enforcement attacked unarmed protestors with toxic chemical agents including tear gas. The government’s crackdown on the medical profession was especially harmful, as security forces arrested and detained doctors, raided health facilities, and obstructed patients from receiving necessary care. This report’s findings are based on field research that the authors conducted in Bahrain (April 2012) to investigate excessive use of force by law enforcement officials since June 2011—the end of Bahrain’s state of emergency. The medico-legal team …

Secondary Cities And The Global Economy, Xiangming Chen, Ahmed Kanna

Faculty Scholarship

Cities operate today in a more complex, indeed, global world. Cities help shape the global economy and culture, and are affected by it as they grow or decline. Cities change in varying ways in response to local and extra-local conditions. In this article, we address the understudied but distinctive conditions and roles of so-called secondary cities in the global economy. The critical importance of many secondary cities stems from and sustains their historical path of development and their shifting positions in national and global urban systems.

Democratic Orientations Among Adolescents In Aspiring And Established Democracies, Natallia Sianko

All Dissertations

Democratic citizen orientation - support for democratic principles and values - appears an important ingredient in making democracies work. However, there is no agreement as to what attitudes and behaviors make up a democratic citizen orientation. The main goals of this dissertation are to: (1) identify and describe factors that characterize adolescents' democratic orientation, (2) explore cross-cultural variation in democratic orientations among adolescents in established and aspiring democracies, (3) investigate the relationship between adolescents' democratic orientations and historical legacies of their countries, (4) investigate the relationship between adolescents' democratic orientations and the current quality of democratic institutions, and (5) analyze …

The Prevention Of Victory: How The U.S. Government Crippled Support For The Iraq War, Jacob M. Petrarca

Pell Scholars and Senior Theses

A history of how the beginning stages of the War in Iraq were handled so poorly, from its misleading onset to the ill-fated concept of De-Ba'athification and the horrors at Abu-Ghraib and how the subsequent public out lash led to the impossibility for a positive outcome.

The Role Of A Non-Executive Director In Smes, Jiwei Wang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

There are not many SMEs in Singapore which employ independent non-executive directors. SMU Associate Professor of Accounting Wang Jiwei advised that there are immense benefits that a non-executive director can bring to an SME as its business grows. These include the credibility that the person can bring to the management team, including the important and useful contacts, as well as different skill sets and experiences. “Understand your needs and then identify the right type of experienced individuals who possess the necessary expertise or business networks. There is a high possibility that your ‘perfect' non-executive director may be someone you already …

Creating Access To Quality Legal Representation – The Queen's Counsel (Re)Appears In Singapore, Kwan Ho Lau

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Litigants coming up against a large banking institution or corporation in Singapore have not always been able to procure quality legal representation. The larger law firms there, with their established dispute resolution practices and stables of Senior Counsel, are often unable or unwilling to act in litigation against their institutional clients. This article investigates the extent of the problem and the Ministry of Law’s soluion of easing the criteria for ad hoc admission of Queen’s Counsel in Singapore. The author then looks, in some detail, at the factors that a court might consider in any foreign lawyer’s application for admission. …

The Role Of A Non-Executive Director In Smes, Jiwei Wang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

There are not many SMEs in Singapore which employ independent non-executive directors. SMU Associate Professor of Accounting Wang Jiwei advised that there are immense benefits that a non-executive director can bring to an SME as its business grows. These include the credibility that the person can bring to the management team, including the important and useful contacts, as well as different skill sets and experiences. “Understand your needs and then identify the right type of experienced individuals who possess the necessary expertise or business networks. There is a high possibility that your ‘perfect' non-executive director may be someone you already …

"Christian World Community And The Cold War" Projects Statement, Norman A. Hjelm

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

No abstract provided.

Religious Revitalization Among Bulgarians During And After The Communist Time, Dr. Velislav Altanov

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

No abstract provided.

Frazee's "Christian Churches Of The Eastern Mediterranean", Patrick Connelly

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

No abstract provided.

The Regime Legitimacy Of One-China: How The Vatican Can Make China Whole Again, Jonathan David Bradley

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Currently, the sovereign state of Vatican City does not formally recognize the People's Republic of China. Nor does the Vatican recognize the Chinese Communist Party as the legitimate regime over China. Instead the Vatican recognizes the Republic of China on the island of Taiwan. There are 23 countries in the world who share the Vatican's legitimization of the Republic of Taiwan. The largest concentration of those countries is in heavily Catholic Central America. This thesis looks at the dynamics of the Sino-Vatican relationship in three areas: political tension management of the Chinese people by the CCP, improved relations between the …

A Timely Look At Those ‘Other’ Issues, Tan K. B. Eugene

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

SMU Assistant Professor of Law and Nominated MP Eugene Tan wrote that there was something in the National Day Rally speech for different segments of Singaporeans. Furthermore, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong shared the presentation with three other government leaders, signalling a more inclusive style of leadership and encouraging openness to different perspectives.

Changes Reflect A Maturing S’Pore’S Priorities, Tan K. B. Eugene

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

SMU Assistant Professor of Law and Nominated MP Eugene Tan wrote about the recent restructuring of socially oriented government ministries and the Cabinet reshuffle. “The changes demonstrate how the Government and governance in Singapore have to evolve since the... General Election. The Government is called upon to be more responsive and sensitive to the intangibles like society and community issues as they impact profoundly upon the well-being of Singaporeans”, he said.

Ask What Your Country Can Do For You: Social Spending And Satisfaction With Democracy In Latin America, Kenneth Retzl

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Past research on social policy in Latin America has primarily focused on how each countries' policies were formed, the institutional framework that bred the policies, or the economic constraints that necessitated certain reforms. Little work has been done to examine the effects those policies have had on the populace. This thesis attempts to determine if there is a relationship between social spending and satisfaction with democracy. The research takes two forms. First I present case studies of Brazil, Ecuador, and Venezuela. The second is an ordered logit hierarchical linear model utilizing survey responses from the 2005 Latinobarometer survey. In total …

Detecting Bubbles In Hong Kong Residential Property Market, Matthew S. Yiu, Jun Yu, Lu Jin

Research Collection School Of Economics

This study uses a newly developed bubble detection method (Phillips, Shi and Yu, 2011) to identify real estate bubbles in the Hong Kong residential property market. Our empirical results reveal several positive bubbles in the Hong Kong residential property market, including one in 1995, a stronger one in 1997, another one in 2004, and a more recent one in 2008. In addition, the method identifies two negative bubbles in the data, one in 2000 and the other one in 2001. These empirical results continue to be valid for the mass segment and the luxury segment. However, the method finds a …

The Evangelical Churches In The Gdr And Their Participation In East-West Cooperation, Christa Grengel

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The Evangelical Regional Churches in the GDR had to deal with the problem that they experienced directly living on the borderline between East and West which divided their own country. They understood this situation to be the result of National-Socialism and World War II, confessed to having been partly responsible for it and became convinced, therefore, that they had a unique responsibility for reconciliation and for overcoming this division on the borderline between the great power blocs. Based on the shared notion of “Christianity in Germany” all Evangelical Regional Churches remained parts of a pan-German institution, the “Evangelical Church in …

Between Active Opposition, Dialogue And Loyalty: Churches In The German Democratic Republic 1970-1989/90, Katharina Kunter

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

When we survey the situation in East Germany during the Cold War we find at the beginning of the decade of the 1980s an increasingly deteriorating economic situation. The GDR’s growing indebtedness to the West, the restriction of its imports and widely felt shortages of food and other goods made for a desolate economic situation. Demoralization and resignation dominated the emotional tone of the country, drawing a large part of the population into a sort of “collective depression.”One consequence of this was the increasing number of people who sought to leave the GDR and relocate in the Federal Republic of …