Paths for Increasing Effective Input to Urban Agriculture

The problem of insufficient agricultural input has been restricting China's agricultural development. When the expansion of the use of capital has become a bottleneck restricting the agricultural development,the effective use of agricultural input resources will become an important way to increase agricultural input. Through building the value chain of interactive development between urban agriculture and other industries,it is expected to promote the reasonable allocation of resources,realize the conservation of resources and increase the efficiency of resource utilization,and promote the urban agricultural input to become an effective input. In this way,it can realize the transformation of agricultural development and the innovation of financing method of urban agriculture.

Numerical investigation of the effects of soil-structure and granular material-structure interaction on the seismic response of a flat-bottom reinforced concrete silo

In this work,a numerical study of the effects of soil-structure interaction(SSI)and granular material-structure interaction(GSI)on the nonlinear response and seismic capacity of flat-bottomed storage silos is conducted.A series of incremental dynamic analyses(IDA)are performed on a case of large reinforced concrete silo using 10 seismic recordings.The IDA results are given by two average IDA capacity curves,which are represented,as well as the seismic capacity of the studied structure,with and without a consideration of the SSI while accounting for the effect of GSI.These curves are used to quantify and evaluate the damage of the studied silo by utilizing two damage indices,one based on dissipated energy and the other on displacement and dissipated energy.The cumulative energy dissipation curves obtained by the average IDA capacity curves with and without SSI are presented as a function of the base shear,and these curves allow one to obtain the two critical points and the different limit states of the structure.It is observed that the SSI and GSI significantly influence the seismic response and capacity of the studied structure,particularly at higher levels of PGA.Moreover,the effect of the SSI reduces the damage index of the studied structure by 4%.

The Collaborative Study in the Form of Group Works

Over the past decades, the rapid development has taken place in the teaching and research of English writing throughout the nation. However, due to the drawbacks in traditional teaching of English writing, especially the lack of effective information input （EII）, it is not an easy task for students to improve their writing level in conventional classes. This paper focuses on the study on group work from the perspective of information input. Unlike previous research, this paper intends to demonstrate the role of group work in obtaining effective information input. It starts with a brief introduction to problems in traditional teaching of English. Then it states the definition of group work and the ZPD theory applied in the paper. In the third part, it proposes a case study to testify how group work may improve the effective information input and terminate the study with the conclusion that group work can help to enhance students＇ effective information input. Based on the results of the study, we may suggest that applying group work in an English writing class will finally help students to elevate their writing level.

Human Capital Expansion and Global Value Chain Upgrading:Firm-level Evidence from China

Firms actively participate in the production of the global value chain(GVC),which is an important driving force for economic development.Using a difference-in-difference method,our research shows that industries that are relatively more human-capital intensive experienced a larger GVC position upgrading after 2003 than they had in prior years.Second,mechanism analysis shows that human capital expansion increases firms’GVC position not only through an imported intermediate input effect but also through an innovation effect.Third,this study shows that increases in the college-educated labor force have a heterogeneous effect on a firm's GVC position across firms’various characteristics.Human capital expansion has the largest positive effect on state-owned firms relative to foreign and domestic private firms.Human capital expansion has also significantly improved the GVC position of firms located in China's eastern and central regions.The findings of this study indicate that it helps upgrading the GVC position of Chinese firms.