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Diplomacy of quasi-alliances in the Middle East
Quasi-alliance refers to the ideation, mechanism and behavior of policy-makers to carry out security cooperation through informal political and security arrangements. As a \"gray zone\" between alliance and neutrality, quasi-alliance is a hidden national security statecraft. Based on declassified archives and secondary sources, this book probes the theory and practice of quasi-alliances in the Middle East. Four cases are chosen to test the hypotheses of quasi-alliance, one of which is the Anglo-French-Israeli quasi-alliance during the Suez Canal War of 1956.
Book
Impacts of Tropical North Atlantic and Equatorial Atlantic SST Anomalies on ENSO
The sea surface temperature anomaly (SSTA) in the tropical Atlantic during boreal spring and summer shows two dominant modes: a basin-warming mode and a meridional dipole mode, respectively. Observational and coupled model simulations indicate that the former induces a Pacific La Niña in the succeeding winter whereas the latter cannot. The basin-warming forcing induces a La Niña through a Kelvin wave response and the associated wind–evaporation–SST–convection (WESC) feedback over the northern Indian Ocean (NIO) and Maritime Continent (MC). An anomalous Kelvin wave easterly interacts with the monsoonal westerly, leading to a warm SSTA and a northwest–southeast-oriented heating anomaly in NIO/MC, which further induces easterly and cold SSTAs over the equatorial Pacific. In contrast, the dipole forcing has little impact on the Indian and Pacific Oceans due to the offsetting of the Kelvin wave to the asymmetric Atlantic heating. Further observational and modeling studies of the tropical North Atlantic (TNA) and equatorial Atlantic (EA) SSTA modes indicate that the TNA (EA) forcing induces a CP-type (EP-type) ENSO. In both cases, the Kelvin wave response and the WESC feedback over the NIO/MC are important in conveying the Atlantic’s impact. The difference lies in distinctive Rossby wave responses: a marked westerly anomaly appears in the equatorial eastern Pacific (EEP) for the TNA forcing (due to its westward location) while no significant wind response is observed in the EEP for the EA forcing. The westerly anomaly prevents a cooling tendency in the EEP through anomalous zonal and vertical advection according to a mixed layer heat budget analysis.
Journal Article
The Impact of Social Media Use on Sleep and Mental Health in Youth: a Scoping Review
Purpose of Review
Social media use (SMU) and other internet-based technologies are ubiquitous in today’s interconnected society, with young people being among the commonest users. Previous literature tends to support that SMU is associated with poor sleep and mental health issues in youth, despite some conflicting findings. In this scoping review, we summarized relevant studies published within the past 3 years, highlighted the impacts of SMU on sleep and mental health in youth, while also examined the possible underlying mechanisms involved. Future direction and intervention on rational use of SMU was discussed.
Recent Findings
Both cross-sectional and longitudinal cohort studies demonstrated the negative impacts of SMU on sleep and mental health, with preliminary evidence indicating potential benefits especially during the COVID period at which social restriction was common. However, the limited longitudinal research has hindered the establishment of directionality and causality in the association among SMU, sleep, and mental health.
Summary
Recent studies have made advances with a more comprehensive understanding of the impact of SMU on sleep and mental health in youth, which is of public health importance and will contribute to improving sleep and mental health outcomes while promoting rational and beneficial SMU. Future research should include the implementation of cohort studies with representative samples to investigate the directionality and causality of the complex relationships among SMU, sleep, and mental health; the use of validated questionnaires and objective measurements; and the design of randomized controlled interventional trials to reduce overall and problematic SMU that will ultimately enhance sleep and mental health outcomes in youth.
Journal Article
Finding People with Emotional Distress in Online Social Media
Many people face problems of emotional distress. Early detection of high-risk individuals is the key to prevent suicidal behavior. There is increasing evidence that the Internet and social media provide clues of people’s emotional distress. In particular, some people leave messages showing emotional distress or even suicide notes on the Internet. Identifying emotionally distressed people and examining their posts on the Internet are important steps for health and social work professionals to provide assistance, but the process is very time-consuming and ineffective if conducted manually using standard search engines. Following the design science approach, we present the design of a system called KAREN, which identifies individuals who blog about their emotional distress in the Chinese language, using a combination of machine learning classification and rule-based classification with rules obtained from experts. A controlled experiment and a user study were conducted to evaluate system performance in searching and analyzing blogs written by people who might be emotionally distressed. The results show that the proposed system achieved better classification performance than the benchmark methods and that professionals perceived the system to be more useful and effective for identifying bloggers with emotional distress than benchmark approaches.
Journal Article
Atmospheric Dynamic and Thermodynamic Processes Driving the Western North Pacific Anomalous Anticyclone during El Niño. Part I
The western North Pacific anomalous anticyclone (WNPAC) is an important low-level circulation system that connects El Niño and the East Asian monsoon. In this study, the mechanisms responsible for the formation and maintenance of the WNPAC are explored. Part I of this study focuses on the WNPAC maintenance mechanisms during El Niño mature winter and the following spring. Moisture and moist static energy analyses indicated that the WNPAC is maintained by both the remote forcing from the equatorial central-eastern Pacific via the atmospheric bridge and the local air–sea interactions. Three pacemaker experiments by a coupled global climate model FGOALS-s2, with upper-700-m ocean temperature in the equatorial central-eastern Pacific restored to the observational anomalies plus model climatology, suggest that about 60% (70%) intensity of the WNPAC during the winter (spring) is contributed by the remote forcing from the equatorial central-eastern Pacific. The key remote forcing mechanism responsible for the maintenance of the WNPAC is revealed. In response to El Niño–related positive precipitation anomalies over the equatorial central-eastern Pacific, twin Rossby wave cyclonic anomalies are induced to the west. The northern branch of the twin cyclonic anomalies advects dry and low moist enthalpy air into the tropical western North Pacific, which suppresses local convection. The suppressed convection further drives the WNPAC.
Journal Article
Measuring the tilt and slant of Chinese handwriting in primary school students: A computerized approach
\"Horizontal strokes should be level and vertical strokes should be straight\" is a common guideline in the teaching of Chinese handwriting. Measuring deviations in level horizontal and straight vertical strokes in students' Chinese handwriting is usually assessed manually. However, this task is time-consuming and may have inconsistent outcomes when judged by different people. In this paper, we aim to formulate a method to automatically evaluate the tilt and slant degrees of students' Chinese handwriting using digital handwriting tablets. Furthermore, we analyze the relationship between the tilt and slant features of students' Chinese handwriting and other demographic and handwriting features.
Five hundred and ninety-one primary school students from grades 1 to 6 were recruited in Hong Kong. Before the assessment, a grid paper was attached to a digital handwriting tablet. The participants were then asked to copy 90 Chinese characters from a template to the grid paper. Their handwriting processes were recorded as two-dimensional points and then analyzed. The tilt and slant of the students' handwriting were calculated based on the inclination level of their horizontal and vertical strokes. Linear regressions between slant/tilt degree of the manuscripts and other handwriting features were performed. The students' demographic information was also explored.
Slant was found to be significantly correlated to Gender (p < 0.001) and tilt×standard deviation of pen pressure (p < 0.001). Tilt was found to be significantly correlated to ground time (p < 0.001), slant (p < 0.001) and slant×special education need (p = 0.021).
Our results demonstrate the relationship between slant, tilt and Chinese handwriting performance in primary school children. Slant and tilt can be adopted as an indicator in students' special education need diagnosis, as tilt level in the students' Chinese handwriting was related to ground time and slant× special education need, while slant is related to tilt×standard deviation of pen pressure and female students. These findings may also inspire ways to increase special education need students' writing speed.
Journal Article
Enhanced Latent Heating over the Tibetan Plateau as a Key to the Enhanced East Asian Summer Monsoon Circulation under a Warming Climate
Coupled climate system models consistently show that the low-level southerly wind associated with the East Asian summer monsoon (EASM) is enhanced under anthropogenic greenhouse gas forcing, and the enhanced EASM was attributed to the enhanced land–sea thermal contrast by previous studies. Based on a comparison of the global warming scenarios with the present-day climate in an ensemble of 30 coupled models from phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5), we show evidence that changes in land–sea thermal contrast cannot explain the enhanced EASM circulation in terms of the seasonality. Indeed, the enhanced low-level southerly wind over East Asia is associated with a large-scale anomalous cyclone around the Tibetan Plateau (TP), and numerical simulation by the Linear Baroclinic Model suggests that the enhanced latent heating over the TP associated with enhanced precipitation is responsible for this low-level cyclone anomaly and the enhanced EASM circulation projected by the coupled models. Moisture budget analysis shows that enhanced hydrological recycling and enhanced vertical moisture advection due to increased specific humidity have the largest contribution to the increased precipitation over the TP, and more than half of the intermodel uncertainty in the projected change of EASM circulation is associated with the uncertainty in the changes of precipitation over the TP. Therefore, the TP plays an essential role in enhancing the EASM circulation under global warming through enhanced latent heating over the TP.
Journal Article
Atmospheric Dynamic and Thermodynamic Processes Driving the Western North Pacific Anomalous Anticyclone during El Niño. Part II
In Part I, the authors showed that northerly anomalies associated with the Rossby wave response to El Niño heating anomalies in the equatorial central Pacific lead to the southward advection of low moist enthalpy air forming the western North Pacific anomalous anticyclone (WNPAC). Why does such a remote forcing not cause the formation of the anomalous anticyclone in El Niño–developing summer? The physical mechanism responsible for the timing of the WNPAC formation is investigated in Part II. Through both an observational analysis and idealized numerical model experiments, the authors find that the onset timing of the WNPAC relies on the following three factors. The first is a sign change (from positive to negative) of the meridional gradient of background low-level specific humidity over the key tropical western North Pacific (WNP) region in November. The second is a sign change (from positive to negative) of the meridional gradient of background relative vorticity, which efficiently reduces the westward stretch of the Rossby wave gyre anomalies west of the equatorial heating through equivalent beta effect. As a result, the northern branch of the twin cyclonic anomalies induced by El Niño heating withdraws eastward, leaving space for the onset of the WNPAC. The third factor is attributed to local sea surface temperature anomaly (SSTA) forcing. Pacemaker experiments with a coupled global model indicate that cold SSTAs in the tropical WNP play an important role in starting the anomalous anticyclone over the WNP in late fall. In the absence of the local cold SSTA forcing, the formation of the WNPAC would be delayed to El Niño mature winter.
Journal Article
Effects of tropical North Atlantic SST on tropical cyclone genesis in the western North Pacific
The tropical cyclone genesis number (TCGN) in July–October (JASO) over the western North Pacific (WNP) exhibits a robust interannual variation. It shows a longitudinally tri-pole pattern with a high in the eastern WNP and South China Sea (SCS) and a low in the western WNP, which explain 42.2 and 23.4 % of total TCGN variance in the eastern WNP and SCS, respectively. The high–low–high pattern is similar to that derived from a TC genesis potential index (GPI). To understand the cause of the longitudinal distribution of the dominant interannual mode, we examine the contributions of environmental parameters associated with GPI. It is found that relative humidity and relative vorticity are important factors responsible for TC variability in the SCS, while vertical shear and relative vorticity are crucial in determining TC activity in eastern WNP. A simultaneous correlation analysis shows that the WNP TCGN in JASO is significantly negatively correlated (with a correlation coefficient of −0.5) with sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTA) in the tropical North Atlantic (TNA). The longitudinal distribution of TC genesis frequency regressed onto TNA SSTA resembles that regressed upon the WNP TCGN series. The spatial patterns of regressed environmental variables onto the SSTA over the TNA also resemble those onto TCGN in the WNP, that is, an increase of relative humidity in the SCS and a weakening of vertical shear in the eastern WNP are all associated with cold SSTA in the TNA. Further analyses show that the cold SSTA in the TNA induce a negative heating in situ. In response to this negative heating, a low (upper)-level anomalous aniti-cyclonic (cyclonic) flows appear over the subtropical North Atlantic and eastern North Pacific, and to east of the cold SSTA, anomalous low-level westerlies appear in the tropical Indian Ocean. Given pronounced mean westerlies in northern Indian Ocean in boreal summer, the anomalous westerly flows increase local surface wind speed and surface evaporation and cool the SST in situ. Cold SSTA in northern Indian Ocean further suppress local convection, inducing anomalous westerlies to its east, leading to enhanced cyclonic vorticity and low surface pressure over the WNP monsoon trough region. Idealized numerical experiments further confirm this Indian Ocean relaying effect, through which cold SSTA in the tropical Atlantic exert a remote impact to circulation in the WNP.
Journal Article