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This research aims to examine the US–China policy shift from Obama to Biden emphasizing the centrality of Taiwan question in the geostrategic competition with Beijing and its prospect if the US strategy remains unchanged.

A conceptual framework is outlined, illustrating how the US grand strategy is driven by the ideological foundation of Exceptionalism. The paper highlights the associated US policy changes that evolved from Obama to Trump and then Biden to advance Washington's strategic interests in its rivalry with China over Taiwan.

Biden's policy led to an escalating geopolitical competition with Beijing over Taiwan to maintain US supremacy. The Biden administration is more stringent than the previous administrations on the Taiwan question and there is the conviction that the USA must not back down on Taiwan because the alternative will be a retraction of US world primacy to Beijing. With Washington's persistent hegemonic strategy, the US–China confrontation over Taiwan seems inevitable.

The research highlights how the Biden administration managed a perpetuated Ukraine crisis and forged unprecedented high-level ties with Taiwan, indicating the administration's determination to exacerbate contentions with Beijing over Taiwan rather than de-escalate.

This paper aims to examine the regional dynamics that further consolidated Israel’s national security in the Middle East in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, reflecting upon the nuclear challenge between Iran and Israel and Iran's expanding activities in the region.

To prove the central argument, the study uses a conceptual framework that centers on deterrence as the main approach used by states to consolidate their influence in the Middle East region.

Iran's nuclear progress and influence in the region has strengthened Israel’s security and fostered an unprecedented open rapprochement led by USA efforts with the Gulf regimes.

The paper draws particular attention to the Iran–Israel nuclear competency, and the Israeli preferred policy options regarding Iranian activities in the region amid turbulent Middle East. In addition, the paper offers insight to the regional dynamics that further consolidated Israel’s national security in the region while maintaining a status of Arab vulnerability and backwardness.

Studies of inequality in higher education on both undergraduate and graduate levels have rarely examined experiences of Asians and Pacific Islanders (APIs). In this study, we focus on the experiences and outcomes of API students in doctoral education. More specifically, we examine socialization experiences and research productivity of three groups of students: domestic API, international API, and domestic white students. The results, based on a national cohort of PhD students in biology, reveal notable differences in experiences and outcomes of domestic and international API students. Although variation in socialization experiences explains differences in research productivity in the first year, that is not the case in the second year of doctoral study. In the second year, international API students have publication productivity comparable to their white peers, despite less favorable socialization experiences. Domestic API students, however, have lower research productivity than their white peers, even though they have comparable socialization experiences. Given the presumption of APIs’ success, especially in the STEM fields, findings for domestic API students are surprising and not aligned with the model minority stereotype. Contributions to research on API students, doctoral education, and socialization theory are discussed.

The present study proposes coaching as a pedagogical intervention to prepare students for transitioning to the labour market. Taking a competence-based approach, the proposed coaching practice aims to enhance students' employability competences to facilitate a smoother school-to-work transition. However, what transition coaching looks like remains largely unclear. Moreover, in competence-based education, teachers are expected to be highly skilled coaches, facilitating students' transition to the labour market. The present study aims to map the core competencies of a transition coach.

A qualitative design was adopted to map the core competences of a transition coach. Data were collected from two focus groups, consisting of coaches in higher education and in the workplace.

Results show that, to create the necessary support conditions, a coach creates a safe coaching environment and supports students in setting goals, guide them in the activities they undertake to attain these goals, and asks reflective questions. Moreover, the coach stimulates students' ownership by putting the student in the centre of the decision-making process. Furthermore, the results emphasize the importance of the coach's professional attitude and knowledge about the transition process and the labour market.

The article concludes with practical implications for novice transition coaches and teachers in higher education.

The present study adds to the agenda of graduate work readiness by proposing a coaching practice aimed at preparing students for their transition to the labour market.

This article aims to determine how packaging colour (hue, saturation and brightness) for a healthy food product might influence children's evaluation of the packaging and their attitude towards the brand.

An experiment involving 157 children (7–12 years of age) features a within-subject, factorial design. The product selected for this experiment is an unknown brand of orange juice.

Each colour dimension on packaging exerts an impact on children's evaluation of the packaging and attitude towards the brand. Therefore, the colour featured on packaging can be an effective lever for action to ensure and enhance children's healthy diets.

Further research should investigate these effects across additional product categories, brands and colours.

Packaging is an important marketing tool that influences children's evaluation of the packaging and attitude towards the brand, especially at the point of sale. To understand and exploit these packaging colour effects appropriately for healthy products, it is crucial to understand the effects of various packaging colour dimensions.

Little prior research has addressed the effects of packaging on children's responses, especially by accounting for multiple colour dimensions. Nor has extant research identified how packaging colour dimensions can affect children's evaluation and brand attitude. Especially in consideration of the growing problem of childhood obesity, it is important to give marketers effective ways to promote healthy products.

The influx of expatriates to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries has led to labor imbalance inducing these countries to initiate workforce nationalization policies. However, despite the policies' emphasis on increasing the presence of nationals in all sectors, employing nationals in the private sector is still a critical challenge for policymakers. This paper explores local job seekers' and employees' perceptions of employment choices in the private and public sectors.

Adopting a qualitative approach, data were collected through in-depth interviews with 28 local job seekers, either not currently employed or employed but seeking another job.

The data revealed a contextualized understanding of positive and negative connotations pertaining to employment in the private and public sectors in Qatar.

Understanding nationals' negative preconceived notions against working in the private sector and the perceived benefits of public sector employment lays the groundwork for developing measures to help policymakers to create labor market-oriented policies that stimulate mobility between the public and private sectors.

This study contributes to the workforce nationalization literature in the GCC countries by examining local job seekers' perceptions associated with employment in the private sector and the public sector. A closer examination of why nationals are hesitant to enter the private sector can propel the pendulum towards higher success rates of workforce nationalization.

The relationship between collective memory and the built environment is a complex relationship. Though the concept of memory is fragile, the maintenance and continuation of urban memory are essential to maintain groups' identities and to support the sense of place and place attachment between community members and the architectural settings they use and/or reside in. Preserving the physical aspects of buildings, spaces and settings that are linked with memory, is important to preserve the memory, however, the mere preservation does not guarantee the continuation of memory. The maintenance and continuation of memory is a process that depends on several factors, where the preservation of the physical aspects is only one among several. This paper aims at a better understanding of the intricate relationship between collective memory and the built environment, focusing on the processes of formation, stimulation and consolidation of memory. The paper sheds the lights on historic houses that are embedded with significant meanings and memories to their social contexts. It claims that historic houses can easily shift from ‘potential cultural memory' to ‘actual cultural memory' that could act as pillars of memory to their surrounding community, if the conservation process is done comprehensively, that is to include not only the physical and spatial aspects of memory but also to tackle the social dimensions of memory as well. The paper is organized into three sections: the first investigates the memory formation process, focusing on the social and the spatial dimension of memory, then the second investigates the possible channels to memory stimulation and consolidation, and finally, as a case study, the third section investigates the memory of two historic houses in Cairo, Egypt. The review of the works undertaken in the two houses highlights the difference and the distance between the concept of restoration and the essence of conservation. Findings yielded that, urban memory is an important aspect of cultural heritage that should to be captured and preserved for current and future generations, an aspect that is missing in local conservation approaches. Moreover, to be maintained, urban memory needs physical, social and moral props.

Academic literature and news media on young people’s activism predominantly champions young people who align with liberal or progressive values, evident most recently in the youth-led climate strikes around the world. Research is often undertaken by scholars who see their work as advocacy for children and young people, countering deficit-based depictions of politically disengaged or ill-informed youth. Yet, this scholarship rarely includes young people whose forms of political activism align with conservative, right-wing, or even alt-right politics. Such ‘selective advocacy’ reinforces a limited picture of the who and what of young people’s political participation. In this chapter, I explore what it might mean for the field of youth studies to provide a more complex picture of young people’s activism and the necessary discomfort that emerges when the desire to advocate for young research participants conflicts with a researcher’s own political and moral concerns. Through a feminist post-structural frame, I examine media and public discourses surrounding instances of young people’s activism in conservative, right-wing, and alt-right spaces. I present the case of a conservative protest organised by a group of university students and targeting a drag queen hosted children’s story time at a library in Brisbane, Australia. This case highlights the importance of maintaining ‘epistemic uncertainty’ when it comes to the complexity of youth and activism. If we are to provide a fuller picture of youth activism, I argue that it is important not to overlook less ‘comfortable’ forms that do not neatly align with the progressive advocacy that dominates the field of youth studies.