Experiences and Lessons from Agri-Food System Transformation for Sustainable Food Security: A Review of China’s Practices

Food system transformation has been a widely discussed topic in international society over time. For the last few decades, China has made remarkable achievements in food production and has contributed greatly to the reduction in global hunger and poverty. Examining experiences and lessons from China’s food security practices over the years is helpful to promote a national food system transformation for China, as well as other developing countries. This study systematically reviews the literature on Chinese food security studies, with the aim of assessing China’s food security achievements and examining the remaining and emerging issues in the pursuit of food system transformation. The results show that China has continuously promoted food system transformation in land consolidation, agri-food production technologies, management and organization modes, food reserves, trade governance, and food consumption. These transformations ensure not only food availability, timeliness, and nutrition, but also in terms of the ecological, social, and economic sustainability, feasibility, and justice of food security. However, China is also confronting new challenges in food security, for example, malnutrition, environmental unsustainability, and reductions in diversified agri-food. In the future, China is expected to be committed to promoting healthy diets, sustainable agricultural production, climate change mitigation, and the reduction of food waste and loss to enhance its agri-food system’s resilience.

Post-conflict development, reviewing the water sector in Somalia

Somali post-conflict development faces many challenges that affect the sustainability of the water sector. This paper reviews and analyses the post-conflict development activities in the water sector through local communications and reviewing published materials and databases from international players in Somalia, funding agencies and financial tracking service. The paper has shown that there has been great attention and support given to the country during its post-conflict development. However, most of these initiatives and projects have focused on emerging issues such as tackling food security and water, sanitation and hygiene services. The paper also shows that the continuous funding of emerging issues in Somalia has reduced its long-term sustainability of the water sector and limited its national and long-term benefits but has increased corruption due to increase the gap between actors and local people. Therefore, new transparent cooperative initiatives are needed based on transparent involvement and coordination among donors, local authorities and implementers to improve and develop the water sector and the livelihood in Somalia through a solid water governance system.

Instructing AI Ethics and Human Rights

This chapter will exploit emerging issues of AI and current literature on AI ethics and human rights teaching. The authors will exploit understanding AI ethics and human rights in daily life and offer teaching methodologies to explain how to teach AI ethics and human rights in K-12 learning environments. Furthermore, the chapter will be devoted to the latest trends and issues on how to teach AI ethics and humans rights teaching in K-12 learning environments. Particular emphasis will be made on a survey of existing ethics teaching methodologies and how to adopt existing teaching strategies into AI ethics teaching in order to improve their understanding on AI ethics and human rights.

Emerging Issues in the Internationalization of Librarianship in the Era of Digital Competitive Advantage

This chapter discusses the importance of the concept of internationalization for library and information science education in the growing atmosphere of digital competitive advantage. It has significantly reflected that the rising of transnational corporations and the transformation of knowledge in higher education buzz in various perspectives. Further, it has shown it consists of international and intercultural knowledge, skills, and abilities to interact and share opportunities and unique insights with multi-cultural and international settings. Also, it has shown the importance of engaging in multi-cultural environments to ensure increasing of knowledge and abilities to working in the competitive advantage. However, the results have revealed that education in library and information science has not yet fully understood ways in which to employ the concept of internationalization in the development journey of its progress in establishing the competitive advantage.

Context Analysis of Non-intellective Correlates affecting Future Educators’ Sociolinguistic Competence

The study investigated the non-intellective correlates affecting the sociolinguistic competence of teacher education students, with a focus on the analysis of their contexts relative to social experiences, language attitude, and use of linguistic forms in different situations. It also determined the common difficulties they experience in the use of English in both oral and written forms. Descriptive mixed methods were utilized, with a validated questionnaire serving as primary instrument to gather relevant data from 331 teacher education students from different fields of specialization. Focus group discussions were conducted to activate the students’ awareness of non-intellective correlates and extract emerging issues in language use. The analysis of the quantitative data together with the coded and categorized transcriptions revealed that while the students generally have a positive attitude towards the use of the English language, they rarely use varied linguistic forms adaptive to different social contexts, implying the need to work on their adaptive capacities in using English for various purposes. Most of the issues they encounter are psychological and socio-physical in nature, while limited vocabulary, over-consciousness in grammar use, and lack of confidence affect their skills most. It was recommended that contextualized activities be developed for integration in the communication courses to highlight the authentic use of language in different social contexts.