MULTI-SCALE NUMERICAL APPROACH TO THE POLYMER FILLING PROCESS IN THE WELD LINE REGION

In this paper, a multi-scale coupling mathematical model is suggested for simulating the polymer filling process in the weld line region on a micro scale. The model considers two aspects: one is the coupling model based on stresses in the whole cavity region; the other is the multi-scale coupling model of continuum mechanics (CM) and the molecular dynamics (MD) in a weldline region. A weak variational formulation is constructed for the finite element method (FEM), which is coupled with the Verlet algorithm based on the domain decomposition technique. Meanwhile, an overlap region is designed so that the FEM and the MD simulations are consistent with each other. The molecular backbone orientation of the whole cavity is illustrated and the position of the weld line is determined by the characteristics of the molecular backbone orientation. Finally, the properties of the polymer chain in the weld line region are studied conformationally and dynamically. The conformational changes and movement process elucidate that the polymer chains undertake stretching, entangling and orientating. Moreover, the effect of the number of chains and melt temperature on the spatial properties of chain conformation are investigated

An Account of Development of Performance Art in China from 1979-2010

The research study aims to raise questions about and gain new insights into the development of performance art in China. The development of performance art in China is set out in a chronological account of the events and art works that illustrate the development of a permissive, open-ended medium with endless variables. The events and works included in this study are executed by Chinese artists impatient with the limitations of traditional or established forms and determined to take their performance art works directly to the public. Following the rapid socio-economic development that started in the late 1970's, soon after the end of the Cultural Revolution and the start of economic reform. The chronological account of the development of Chinese performance art explains how Chinese artists, in creating their work, draw freely on a number of disciplines and media including literature, poetry, theatre, music, dance, architecture and painting, as well as video, film, slides and narrative. The account also illustrates how Chinese performance art has gradually moved away from the traditions of Chinese performance and how performance art works often promote interpretive individualism. Research shows that Chinese artists choose performance art to break free from the dominant media and the constraints of working within the evolving social and political environment in China. Research further shows that artists use performance art as a provocation to respond to changes. Finally, performance art is gaining acceptance from the public in recent Chinese socio-economic development

The silk roads, from the imperial dinasties to the world empire = Las rutas de la seda, de las dinastías imperiales al imperio mundial

El nuevo proyecto impulsado por el gobierno chino se ha posicionado como el camino a seguir por China para aumentar su influencia política y consolidarse como la primera potencia mundial. Este proyecto busca incrementar el comercio y el potencial económico de la región, así como alcanzar mayores niveles de riqueza y bienestar en aquellos países que formen parte de la Nueva Ruta de la Seda. Con este objetivo en mente, ya son mas de 60 países junto con China que han realizado una docena de proyectos que canalizarán la mayor parte de las inversiones, principalmente en infraestructuras, y que servirán de conductor entre Europa, África y Asia, así como los puntos marítimos asociados. El proyecto One Belt, One Road (OBOR) se compone de numerosas inversiones en diferentes sectores económicos lo que hace que la necesidad de financiación sea continua y de una gran magnitud. Por ello numerosas instituciones financieras ofrecen una financiación ventajosa para la realización de estos proyectos, principalmente lideradas por China a través de entidades gubernamentales, lo que puede afianzar el crecimiento del país o acabar con su fortaleza financiera, con gran cantidad de divisas pero que es extremadamente dependiente del comercio internacional ya que su mercado interno no esta del todo desarrollado. Todo esto con la sombra de la reciente pandemia que todavía está por ver cómo afectará al proyecto

Negotiating Culture: The Discourse of Art and the Position of the Artist in 1980s China.

This thesis deals with fine art in China in the eighties. It aims to set out the problems and choices artists faced in creation, by examining the artist's self-positioning in regard to the current discourse of art. This was the decade of the Four Modernisations and the "emancipation of thought", a period of intense social and cultural change. As the Party sought to steer a path away from the ideology of the Cultural Revolution, a greater cultural pragmatism emerged, and the question of what was to be the future of Chinese art and culture became hot topics of debate. The various clashes of narratives - between history and art. East and West, tradition and modernisation, the individual, the region and the nation/state - made up a rich and diverse range of opinions as to the current situation, the role and value of art in China. The thesis examines the eighties both in terms of art works and in terms of opinions that were expressed about art. The decade began with the idea that "theory guides practice" and this was reflected in the many official conferences that took place. However, by the mideighties, practice was setting the agenda, and art works could no longer easily be contained within the existing theoretical framework. We examine how the debate unfolded in the main periodicals in the eighties, how artists positioned themselves in relation to this discourse, how their work questioned existing theoretical frameworks and notions of art history. The very different life experience (and political outlook) of the successive generations of artists in China had a huge influence on their view of life and art. In order to give as broad a perspective as possible of this diversity artists and artworks have been selected according to different combinations of the following criteria: temporal location: age and education (which "generation" they belong to); Location within culture (what media/tradition they work in); and location within the discourse of "national identity" (whether they are in the centre or periphery, Han or ethnic minorities)

Villager Responses to Drought:An Ethnographic Study in Southwest China

This thesis explores the social underpinnings of disasters associated with natural hazards. In existing disaster studies, it is common to classify people into different vulnerable groups and examine the vulnerabilities that limit them. Rather than take this approach, which I argue reinforces stereotyped images of vulnerable people as weak and passive, this thesis examines people’s experiences of and responses to a drought in Yunnan Province, southwest China. Building on existing literature, my ethnographic fieldwork and a broad understanding of Chinese society, I have analysed and explained different forms of social institutions, power relations and sets of practices based on China’s rural-urban divide, intra-rural inequality, ethnicity, gender, and social age and life course, and have examined how these forms of inequality and difference shaped communities’, households’, and individuals’ experiences of and responses to drought. I argue that villagers exercise agency, and actively manage the challenges of drought in their daily life. However, their choices are made within the confines of institutional constraints. Different social institutions and relations interact with each other to shape variations in people’s experiences of and responses to drought. At the community level, the existence of village infrastructure and the help of external agencies are key. Obtaining funds for infrastructure construction and drought relief largely depends on personal connections between the village communities and external agencies. At the household level, patterns of social inequalities, in particular the inequalities between ordinary households and those of village cadres, combines with the life course of households to shape experiences of and responses to drought. Within the household, gender intersects with individuals’ life courses to shape people’s experiences of drought and their responses to it

A journey of the repressed in Zhang Xianling's self-fictionalization.

The dissertation studies the fictional journey of Zhang Xianliang from the viewpoint of political unconscious. Zhang has been under different kinds of labour reform and re-education in mainland China for twenty-two years. The experience is too painful to recall, yet too feared to be forgotten. The repressed trauma of Zhang is therefore displaced and disguised in the fictional language of reform, remembrance, love, sex and death. Each language fulfils one layer of Zhang's hidden wishes. Yet the desiring chain moves on with new forms of substitutions until death. The study investigates his unconscious psyche from the Historical subtexts of conflicting impulses between body and mind, self and Other, individual and socialist Ideological State Apparatuses, and the residual, dominant and emerging modes of production

Not afraid of ghosts: stories of the spectral in modern Chinese fiction

This study explores literary representations of ghosts and the spectral in Mainland Chinese fiction from the Republican period (1912-1949) to the present. The first two chapters trace the politicization of Chinese ghost culture and literature within intellectual debates and fictional writings from the early 20th century. I argue that ghosts and narratives of haunting provided writers with a powerful metaphor and script to reflect on and negotiate a modernization project caught between the rejection and the strategic appropriation of China's cultural history. Reading ghosts as a fictional space, which challenges normative hierarchies between the past and the present, China and the West, chapter three discusses the phantom romance plot in late Republican Shanghai fiction and the representation of female phantoms as gendered reflections of, and on, Shanghai's commodity culture, cosmopolitanism, and the changing real and symbolic roles of women. Chapter four focuses on the conjunction of Chinese ghost culture and classism in Mao-era literary production an analyzes the socialist adaptation of the anomaly account collection in “Stories About Not Being Afraid of Ghosts” (1961). Lastly, chapter five discusses two urban ghost novels from the post-Tiananmen period (1989-) which reimagine older models of cosmography to reflect on critical issues in China today, such as heritage destruction, migration and air pollution

Mo Yan in Context: Nobel Laureate and Global Storyteller

In 2012 the Swedish Academy announced that Mo Yan had received the Nobel Prize in Literature for his work that “with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history, and the contemporary.” The announcement marked the first time a resident of mainland China had ever received the award. This is the first English-language study of the Chinese writer’s work and influence, featuring essays from scholars in a range of disciplines, from both China and the United States. Its introduction, twelve articles, and epilogue aim to deepen and widen critical discussions of both a specific literary author and the globalization of Chinese literature more generally. The book takes the “root-seeking” movement with which Mo Yan’s works are associated as a metaphor for its organizational structure. The four articles of “Part I: Leaves” focus on Mo Yan’s works as world literature, exploring the long shadow his works have cast globally. Howard Goldblatt, Mo Yan’s English translator, explores the difficulties and rewards of interpreting his work, while subsequent articles cover issues such as censorship and the “performativity” associated with being a global author. “Part II: Trunk” explores the nativist core of Mo Yan’s works. Through careful comparative treatment of related historical events, the five articles in this section show how specific literary works intermingle with China’s national and international politics, its mid-twentieth-century visual culture, and its rich religious and literary conventions, including humor. The three articles in “Part III: Roots” delve into the theoretical and practical extensions of Mo Yan’s works, uncovering the vibrant critical and cultural systems that ground Eastern and Western literatures and cultures. Mo Yan in Context concludes with an epilogue by sociologist Fenggang Yang, offering a personal and globally aware reflection on the recognition Mo Yan’s works have received at this historical juncture.https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/purduepress_ebooks/1039/thumbnail.jp

PREMIUM DESIGN Enhancing Synergies between Design and Business in Education and Practice

In today’s globalised era, the concept of “affordable luxury” has continuously challenged the traditional luxury business, leading to a broader expansion of democratic luxury meaning. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly raised awareness of the crucial importance of such a market segment. Alongside the flourishing growth of the premium sector, academia and practitioners have addressed the urgent need to engage in closer university-industry collaboration to yield synergistic results. In this book, visionary experts across the globe share their opinions on the shifting paradigm of the luxury world, from discussing aspects of the new cultural rendering of “premium-ness” to inquiring about challenges and possibilities that the design education sector is facing, proposing solutions to enhance the synergies between design and business, strengthening universityindustry ties for a future higher education landscape