The American Rescue Plan Act Funds and Students With Extensive Support Needs: Three Considerations for Technology Access and Use

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted inequities in technology literacy and access for students with extensive support needs (ESN) in k-12 settings. Technology is critical for students with ESN to continue lifelong learning after graduation. The unprecedented level of funds from the American Relief Plan provides schools opportunities to invest in sustainable and accessible technology which benefits all students. The Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework is used to increase access to learning for all students, and should be applied to decision making surrounding technology investment and purchasing. This essay provides three considerations for schools to reflect on when spending ARP Act funds: (a) use UD to purchase technology, (b) provide UDL professional development to teach technology literacy skills, and (c) provide learning opportunities aimed at technology use among students with ESN.

Moderating Influence That Islamic Law Intensity Of Causal Relationship Between Regional Economic Growth And Determinant: Study Empiricalon District / City In The Province Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam (Nad)

Policy of the Government of the Republic of Indonesia to grant special autonomy to the Provincial Government of Nangroe Aceh Darussalam (NAD) through the concept of asymmetric decentralization accompanied by the issuance of a law on the implementation of Islamic Sharia in a kaffah manner, opening opportunities for the government and the people of NAD Province to increase the pace of development economy based on faith and piety to Allah SWT. How the impact of the implementation of these policies on regional economic growth in the Province of NAD has not been widely studied. The purpose of this dissertation is to analyze the causal relationship between regional economic growth and its determinants and to analyze the moderating role of the intensity of the application of Islamic law on the causal relationship. The target population is districts/cities in NAD Province and the sample consists of 23 units of analysis (5 cities and 18 districts). Secondary data on a ratio scale to measure research variables, namely HDI, technology investment, population, regional development expenditure, intensity of the application of Islamic Sharia, and regional economic growth for the 2010 - 2019 period, sourced from the Central Statistics Agency and the Regional Office of the Ministry of Religion of NAD Province. The data analysis technique used descriptive statistics and panel data regression analysis to test 10 research hypotheses. The results show that simultaneously capital, HDI, technology investment, population, and regional development expenditures have a very large influence on regional economic growth in NAD Province. Partially, capital, technology investment, population, and regional development expenditure are the determinants of regional economic growth in NAD Province. The four determinant variables have an effect on increasing regional economic growth. Regencies/cities that have large capital, moderate and innovative technology investment accompanied by a high population, and are supported by adequate regional development expenditures, have an impact on high economic growth in NAD Province. The intensity of the application of Islamic law moderates the causal relationship between capital, technology investment and population on regional economic growth, while the intensity of the application of Islamic law has not shown a significant role in moderating the causal relationship between the human development index and regional development expenditures on regional economic growth. This indicates that the intensity of the application of Islamic Sharia in the province of Aceh has given a significant role to all sectors in increasing regional economic growth. further research is suggested to use Economic Well Being Theory and include fiscal and regional retribution variables, education and ICT readiness index and electronic-based service system index.

Air Quality and the Spatial-Temporal Differentiation of Mechanisms Underlying Chinese Urban Human Settlements

Urban air has its typical structural characteristics. With the continuous optimization of urban human settlement indicators, the key issue and single system of “air quality” in urban human settlements needs to be further discussed. Based on air conditions, this paper attempts to visually measure the spatial-temporal distribution of human settlements in 283 prefecture-level cities in China using ArcGIS and Matlab and tries to reveal the influencing mechanisms: (1) There is no significant difference between the average of the comprehensive score of human settlements in 6 years. The overall level of those in all cities decreases from 0.6581 to 0.6004 year by year, and the average level order in the seven regions of China is Southern China (0.7310) > Southwest China (0.6608) > East China (0.6515) > Northeast China (0.6496) > Northwest China (0.6049)> Central China (0.5901) > North China (0.5565). (2) The global Moran’s I index of China’s human settlements is between 0.3750–0.7345, showing a positive spatial correlation, and the comprehensive development level has the characteristics of local spatial convergence of low-value clusters in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River and high-value clusters in the south coast and Heilongjiang Province. (3) The spatial econometric model tests the influencing mechanism. There is a significant spatial positive correlation between science and technology investment in each city. The urbanization rate, the degree of advanced industrial structure, and the urban average elevation have a certain spatial spillover, showing a negative correlation. Science and technology investment and the degree of advanced industrial structure have the greatest impact.

Carbon-Trade Price Influence on CarbonRegulation of Tobacco Supply Chain

Carbon emissions exist in all links of tobacco SC, among whichtobacco, acetic acid tow and cigarette production are important links of cigarette carbon emission. Under the background of green economic development, it is very significant to study the coordinated development of economy and environment from the angle of tobacco SC. Carbon-trade is aneffectivechannel to realize reducing carbon emissions by using market mechanism. Take into consideration grandfathering and the goal of carbon regulation, game models of SCwith carbon trading are established. We analyze the influence of three factors including carbon-trade price, decision-making mode, technology emission reduction investment on the degree of carbon regulation and SC profits, the conclusions are verified by numerical illustration. The research shows that: without investment of technology, the three different decision-making modescarbon regulation degreeare the same. In the investment of technology emission reduction, the degree of carbon regulation is the strictest under the centralized decision-making mode while the most relaxed under the retailer led decision-making mode. Different carbon-trade prices have different effects on the investment decisions of three different decision-making modes; technology investment in decentralized decision-making is always conducive to retailer and the total profits.

Reforms of the Science and Technology Management System

China’s science and technology system and its developing history were reviewed by this chapter, including science and technology investment, research institutions, research funds, enterprise transformation, scientific research talents, and so on. In recent years, China has stepped up its reform efforts, clarified the positioning of different types of scientific research institutes, established research and development and service networks, opened up the channel for achievement transformation, and supplemented by talent incentive and integration of scientific research bases, so as to effectively solve the problems affecting innovation efficiency. Facing the future, the direction of further reform is to strengthen the construction of legalization and institutionalization.

Information Technology Investment and Commercialized Innovation Performance: Dynamic Adjustment Costs and Curvilinear Impacts

Firms’ investment in information technology (IT) has been widely considered to be a key enabler of innovation. In this study, we integrate prior findings on the augmenting pathways (where IT investment supports innovation) with a new theory explaining the suppressing pathways (where dynamic adjustment costs associated with large IT investment can be detrimental to innovation) to propose an overall inverted U-shaped relationship between IT investment and commercialized innovation performance (CIP). To test our theory, we analyze a unique panel dataset from the largest economy in Europe and discovered a curvilinear relationship between IT investment and CIP for firms across a broad spectrum of industries. Our research presents empirical evidence corroborating the augmenting and suppressing pathways linking IT investment and CIP. Our findings serve as a cautionary signal to executives, discouraging overinvestment in IT.

How Information Technology Investment Affects Green Innovation in Chinese Heavy Polluting Enterprises

Promoting green innovation is an effective way to solve the increasingly serious environmental pollution problems in emerging economies. Information technology is constantly changing the operation mode of enterprises; however, whether information technology investment helps promote enterprises’ green innovation is still an important issue to be studied. According to resource-based and knowledge integration theory, this study constructs data from Chinese A-share listed heavy polluting enterprises during 2010–2018, adopting the panel data Tobit model to investigate the nexus between information technology investment and green innovation. Our empirical results demonstrate that the amount of information technology investment is positively correlated with the emerging levels of green patents in Chinese heavy polluting enterprises, and this positive correlation only significantly exists in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and enterprises with a strong sense of environmental responsibility and strict environmental regulation. The findings of this study help understand in depth how information technology investment affects enterprises’ green innovation and its boundaries, which also have important policy implications for government departments and enterprises to make better use of information technology to deal with the challenge of environmental pollution.