Mesoporous Ni-alumina catalysts (Ni-alumina-pre and Ni-alumina-post) were synthesized by one-step sol-gel method using micelle complex comprising lauric acid and nickel ion as a template with metal source and using aluminum sec-butoxide as an aluminum source. The Ni-alumina catalysts showed relatively high surface areas (303 m 2 /g for Ni-alumina-pre and 331 m 2 /g for Ni-alumina-post) and narrow pore size distributions centered at ca. 4 nm. Highly dispersed Ni particles were observed in the Nialumina catalysts (ca. 5.2 nm for Ni-alumina-pre and ca. 6.8 nm for Ni-alumina-post) after reduction at 550°C, while a catalyst prepared without a template (NiAl-comp) exhibited inferior porosity with large metal particles (ca. 12.3 nm). Mesoporous Nialumina catalysts with different porosity were obtained by employing different hydrolysis step of aluminum source. When aluminum source was hydrolyzed under the presence of micelle complex, a supported Ni catalyst with highly developed framework mesoporosity was obtained (Ni-alumina-post). On the other hand, when aluminum source was pre-hydrolyzed followed by mixing with micelle solution, the resulting catalyst (Ni-alumina-pre) retained high portion of textural porosity. It was revealed that the hydrolysis method employed in this research affected not only textural properties but also metal-support interaction in the Nialumina catalysts. It was also found that the Ni-alumina-pre catalyst exhibited weaker interaction between nickel and alumina than the Ni-alumina-post, leading to higher degree of reduction in the Ni-alumina-pre catalyst. In the hydrodechlorination of o-dichlorobenzene, the Ni-alumina catalysts exhibited better catalytic performance than the NiAl-comp catalyst, which was attributed to higher metal dispersion in the Ni-alumina catalysts. In particular, the Ni-alumina-pre catalyst showing 1.5 times higher degree of reduction and larger amounts of o-dichlorobenzene adsorption exhibited better catalytic performance than the Nialumina-post catalyst.

This study analyzed the research productivity of Saudi academics using the triple-helix model. In the analysis, we combined domestic and international collaboration by three sectors-university, industry, and government-according to the model of the triple-helix. This approach produces better results than by simply including international collaboration as fourth sector. According to the analysis, research collaboration in Saudi Arabia which is measured by the triple-helix, was ''-'' uncertainty (negative T-value) while scientific productivity has been dramatically increasing since the late 2000s. The triplehelix collaboration does not quite differ between domestic collaboration and ''domestic and international'' collaborations. In our further analysis, we found that technological development was not based on scientific research in Saudi Arabia; rather, the technological development relies on prior technology (patent references). From that point, Saudi Arabia's current long-term strategic plan to develop a scientific base for a knowledge-based industry is well aligned to the current contexts of Saudi Arabia.

This paper offers new qualitative insights into ongoing internationalization processes in Japanese higher education. Drawing on ideas from migration studies and informed by analysis of junior international faculty members' (JIFs) experiences in Japanese universities, we posit a novel, actor-centered typology of internationalization that delineates between integration, assimilation, and marginalization of mobile actors, and considers their implications in practice. Twenty-three interviews were conducted with JIFs from a variety of disciplines and institutions across Japan. Findings indicated a pattern of disillusionment with their role in internationalization, as many perceived themselves to be tokenized symbols of internationalization rather than valued actors within it. Participants identified various barriers which prevented them from participating in the academic "mainstream" and confined them to peripheral roles. We argue that their experiences are indicative of assimilative and marginalizing forms of internationalization, which pose persistent barriers to reform in Japanese universities despite decades of state-sponsored internationalization.

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This article analyzes higher education research published in international higher education journals by researchers from China, Hong Kong, Japan, and Malaysia from 1980 to 2013. It does so based on publication counts, and co-authorship and cross-citation mapping, examining these countries' publication patterns in terms of thematic approach and community cohesion. The results show that each country has experienced distinct evolutions of higher education research, both in terms of the number of publications and thematic diversity. The research organization analyzed by co-authorship networks shows that higher education researchers in Hong Kong tend more to integrate two higher education research approaches -teaching and learning, and policy studies -into their research work. It is also in Hong Kong where most higher education researchers focus their research on both teaching and learning, and policy topics. Higher education researchers in China, Japan, and Malaysia are more thematically specialized in terms of both their positioning and their co-authorship preference. These findings suggest that a broader integration of different thematic areas may be linked more to path-dependent and contextual characteristics than to differences related to the development stage of higher education systems. This is confirmed by the crosscitation analysis, which shows that higher education researchers based in Hong Kong tend to cite each other more frequently than do those based in Japan, China, and Malaysia, suggesting a much greater community cohesion in Hong Kong than in these other countries. The findings highlight that while the maturity of a higher education system influences community cohesion, other factors influence thematic leaning and integration.

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The purpose of this study is to analyze doctoral students’ career plans and research productivity, as well as key factors affecting both, based on relevant findings from a 2017 national survey of doctoral students at Japanese universities. The main findings of this study are as follows. First, Japanese doctoral students tend to have diverse post-graduation career plans. They not only consider becoming academics but also expect to be hired in industry and business. This expectation is particularly strong among students from engineering, while more of those studying humanities and social sciences want to become academics. Second, the survey revealed that Japanese doctoral students’ host universities, age, gender, and their marital status, had no significant influence on their research productivity.