Browsing by Author "Zhang, Ying"
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Item CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE RISK FACTOR AWARENESS IN AMERICAN INDIAN COMMUNITIES: THE STRONG HEART STUDY(2006) Schweigman, Kurt; Eichner, June; Welty, Thomas K.; Zhang, YingItem ESSAYS ON THE WTO ACCESSION, HOUSEHOLD INCOME AND MULTIDIMENSIONAL POVERTY: EVIDENCE FROM CHINA(2016) Zhang, Ying; Crocker, David A; Afzal, Madiha; Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In the course of integrating into the global market, especially since China’s WTO accession, China has achieved remarkable GDP growth and has become the second largest economy in the world. These economic achievements have substantially increased Chinese incomes and have generated more government revenue for social progress. However, China’s economic progress, in itself, is neither sufficient for achieving desirable development outcomes nor a guarantee for expanding peoples’ capabilities. In fact, a narrow emphasis on GDP growth proves to be unsustainable, and may eventually harm the life quality of Chinese citizens. Without the right set of policies, a deepening trade-openness policy in China may enlarge social disparities and some people may further be deprived of basic public services and opportunities. To address these concerns, this dissertation, a set of three essays in Chapters 2-4, examines the impact of China's WTO accession on income distribution, compares China’s income and multidimensional poverty reduction and investigates the factors, including the WTO accession, that predict multidimensional poverty. By exploiting the exogenous variation in exposure to tariff changes across provinces and over time, Chapter 2 (Essay 1) estimates the causal effects of trade shocks and finds that China’s WTO accession has led to an increase in average household income, but its impacts are not evenly distributed. Households in urban areas have benefited more significantly than those in rural areas. Households with members working in the private sector have benefited more significantly than those in the public sector. However, the WTO accession has contributed to reducing income inequality between higher and lower income groups. Chapter 3 (Essay 2) explains and applies the Alkire and Foster Method (AF Method), examines multidimensional poverty in China and compares it with income poverty. It finds that China’s multidimensional poverty has declined dramatically during the period from 1989-2011. Reduction rates and patterns, however, vary by dimensions: multidimensional poverty reduction exhibits unbalanced regional progress as well as varies by province and between rural and urban areas. In comparison with income poverty, multidimensional poverty reduction does not always coincide with economic growth. Moreover, if one applies a single measure ─ either that of income or multidimensional poverty ─ a certain proportion of those who are poor remain unrecognized. By applying a logistic regression model, Chapter 4 (Essay 3) examines factors that predict multidimensional poverty and finds that the major factors predicting multidimensional poverty in China include household size, education level of the household head, health insurance coverage, geographic location, and the openness of the local economy. In order to alleviate multidimensional poverty, efforts should be targeted to (i) expand education opportunities for the household heads with low levels of education, (ii) develop appropriate geographic policies to narrow regional gaps and (iii) make macroeconomic policies work for the poor.Item Organizational changes in state education agencies: Responses to standards-based accountability(2011) Zhang, Ying; Valli, Linda; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study examines organizational changes in state education agencies (SEAs) in the context of current standards-based accountability policies. It identifies the changing organizational characteristics of SEAs and depicts the organizational motivations and strategies adopted to bring about change. Based on institutional theory and empirical evidence from state departments of education, the study proposes a theoretical framework that explains the organizational change process. The organizational level analysis illustrates the impact of standards-based accountability policy on the structure and networks of SEAs and highlights the importance of organizational analysis in the policy design process. The study employs a mixed-methods design to investigation the changing experience of state departments of education in the past two decades with a focus on the post-No Child Left Behind era. Together with primary and secondary texts and documents, it draws data from interviews with state officials in ten state departments of education and national surveys of 50 states in 2003, 2004 and 2007. The study identifies internal changes regarding organizational structure, staffing, and technology as well as external changes in terms of their functions and working relationships with other educational agencies. To understand the process of organizational change, the study examines the organizational motivations and strategies that state departments of education used to bring about these changes. The study finds that, since early 1990s, state departments of education have gradually changed their role in the U.S. education system from monitoring finance administration to compliance with federal requirements to provide technical assistance. The organizational structure is changed to increase internal efficiency accompanied by a decrease in administrative staff but an increase in the need for technical staff, particularly staff that can help with the increasing technology in the organizations' data systems. State departments of education developed new relationships with local educational agencies with unprecedented attention on student academic performance and school management. These changes were pushed by both state and federal reforms that highlight the positive role state agencies can play to improve school performance. To make these changes happen, state departments have used networking as a way to expand organizational capacity and pushed cross-level collaboration to improve organizational efficiency.Item Regional Clean Energy Innovation(2020-02-20) Surana, Kavita; Williams, Ellen D.; Krawczyk, Wojciech; Montgomery, Michael; O'Neill, Jon; Thomas, Zachary; Zhang, YingThis report provides data-driven approaches and insights for federal and state planning to accelerate clean energy innovation by aligning programs with regional resources and economic development goals.Item Unsupervised discovery of solid-state lithium ion conductors(Springer Nature, 2019-11-20) Zhang, Ying; He, Xingfeng; Chen, Zhiqian; Bai, Qiang; Nolan, Adelaide M.; Roberts, Charles A.; Banerjee, Debasish; Matsunaga, Tomoya; Mo, Yifei; Ling, ChenAlthough machine learning has gained great interest in the discovery of functional materials, the advancement of reliable models is impeded by the scarcity of available materials property data. Here we propose and demonstrate a distinctive approach for materials discovery using unsupervised learning, which does not require labeled data and thus alleviates the data scarcity challenge. Using solid-state Li-ion conductors as a model problem, unsupervised materials discovery utilizes a limited quantity of conductivity data to prioritize a candidate list from a wide range of Li-containing materials for further accurate screening. Our unsupervised learning scheme discovers 16 new fast Li-conductors with conductivities of 10−4–10−1 S cm−1 predicted in ab initio molecular dynamics simulations. These compounds have structures and chemistries distinct to known systems, demonstrating the capability of unsupervised learning for discovering materials over a wide materials space with limited property data.