Japan, Britain, and the Maritime Custom Administration during the Founding of the Government of Nationalist China

The administrative ideals concerning maritime custom matters in early modern China indicate in condensed form the political circumstances, both internal and external, of that period. Despite the successive changes in the Inspector General of Customs during the years 1927-1929, from F.A. Aglen, to A.H.F. Edwardes, and finally to F.W. Maze, this remains true without exception. The foreign powers' system of giving precedence to an insured fund of money for the sake of the return of responsibilities for maritime administration became, under heightening Chinese nationalism, a thing of the past, and in its stead, the feeling arose on the Chinese side that a Chinese maritime custom administration which respects Chinese sovereignty in politics and economics must be advanced. F.A. Aglen and A.H.F. Edwardes, who failed to appreciate this, resigned from their position. This led to F. W. Maze, who well discerned the trends of his day, becoming the Inspector General of Customs. Thus arose the Nationalist Government, which, as the political force claiming to be able to effect these changes in maritime customs administration, replaced the Peking Government. Thus the major powers, beginning with Japan and Britain, who were out of step due to disparities in the benefits that they derived from the old system of customs, were forced to accept the changes in maritime customs administration in China

Uncovering temporal structure in hippocampal output patterns.

Place cell activity of hippocampal pyramidal cells has been described as the cognitive substrate of spatial memory. Replay is observed during hippocampal sharp-wave-ripple-associated population burst events (PBEs) and is critical for consolidation and recall-guided behaviors. PBE activity has historically been analyzed as a phenomenon subordinate to the place code. Here, we use hidden Markov models to study PBEs observed in rats during exploration of both linear mazes and open fields. We demonstrate that estimated models are consistent with a spatial map of the environment, and can even decode animals' positions during behavior. Moreover, we demonstrate the model can be used to identify hippocampal replay without recourse to the place code, using only PBE model congruence. These results suggest that downstream regions may rely on PBEs to provide a substrate for memory. Additionally, by forming models independent of animal behavior, we lay the groundwork for studies of non-spatial memory

Heterogeneous Reaction of Gaseous Ozone with Aqueous Iodide in the Presence of Aqueous Organic Species

The fast reaction of gaseous ozone, O_3(g), with aqueous iodide, I−(aq), was found to be affected by environmentally relevant cosolutes in experiments using cavity ring-down spectroscopy (CRDS) and electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESIMS) for the detection of gaseous and interfacial products, respectively. Iodine, I_2(g), and iodine monoxide radical, IO(g), product yields were suppressed in the presence of a few millimolar phenol (pK_a = 10.0), p-methoxyphenol (10.2), or p-cresol (10.3) at pH ≥ 3 but unaffected by salicylic acid (pK_(a2) = 13.6), tert-butanol, n-butanol, or malonic acid. We infer that reactive anionic phenolates inhibit I_2(g) and IO(g) emissions by competing with I−(aq) for O_3(g) at the air/water interface. ESIMS product analysis supports this mechanism. Atmospheric implications are discusse

Circumstances in Farm Rent Payment in the late Qing and early period of Nationalist China : A Statistical Analysis of Rent Registers in Zuzhan 租棧

Using farm rent registers in Zuzhan 租棧 as historical resources, this essay tries to infer the amount of farm rent payments and the circumstances of those payments in modern Suzhou 蘇州 in the following way. Although farm rent payments did not change as they appear in the farm rent registers after the unified tax reduction in Tongzhi (同治) 5, there were many cases of individual reductions, which suggest that there was a trend toward lowering farm rent payments in reality, apart from the farm rent registers. While one shi 石 per one mu 畝 of land was the average, reductions were made depending on the ime of payment, agricultural disasters, and so forth. Thus it became standard that in a good year, tenants would pay about 90 percent, but in a poor year, they would only be expected to pay 80 percent. Though generally tenants paying rent late were expected to pay the full amount, towards the end of the Qing there were many cases of reductions for late payers as well, and records reveal a shift towards "nominal payments" for delinquent tenants. Due to rent resistance on the part of small tenant farmers in modern Suzhou, the rent collection by Suzhou landlords became extremely difficult. At the end of the Qing, tenants paid 80 percent in good years, 70 percent in average years, but only 60 percent in bad ones. Around the time of the Taiping Rebellion 太平天國 and the Republican Revolution 辛亥革命, the rate of farm rent collection was extremely low, while the rate of delinquent rent payments was low at the beginning of Nationalist period, the rate of rent payments did not improve in terms of the percentage of the whole actually paid. In the latter half of the 1920's and afterwards, landlords faced a crisis in rent management as delinquent rents rapidly rose under the influence of agricultural panics and other disastrous events

Weak Acids Enhance Halogen Activation on Atmospheric Water’s Surfaces

We report that rates of I_2(g) emissions, measured via cavity ring-down spectroscopy, during the heterogeneous ozonation of interfacial iodide: I^–(surface, s) + O_3(g) + H+(s) →→ I_2(g), are enhanced several-fold, whereas those of IO·(g) are unaffected, by the presence of undissociated alkanoic acids on water. The amphiphilic weak carboxylic acids appear to promote I_2(g) emissions by supplying the requisite interfacial protons H^+(s) more efficiently than water itself, at pH values representative of submicrometer marine aerosol particles. We infer that the organic acids coating aerosol particles ejected from ocean’s topmost films should enhance I_2(g) production in marine boundary layers

Dry Deposition of Biogenic Terpenes via Cationic Oligomerization on Environmental Aqueous Surfaces

Unraveling the complex interactions between the atmosphere and the biosphere is critical for predicting climate changes. Although it is well-recognized that the large amounts of biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) emitted by plants must play important roles in this regard, current atmospheric models fail to account for their fate due to missing chemical sinks. Here, we applied online electrospray mass spectrometry to monitor aqueous microjets exposed to gaseous monoterpenes (α-pinene, β-pinene, and d-limonene) and found that these BVOCs are readily protonated (to C_(10)H_(17)^+) and undergo oligomerization (to C_(20)H_(33)^+ and C_(30)H_(49)^+) upon colliding with the surface of pH < 4 microjets. By considering that the yields of all products show inflection points at pH ≈ 3.5 and display solvent kinetic hydrogen isotope effects larger than 2, we conclude that the oligomerization process is initiated by weakly hydrated hydronium ions, H_(3)O^+, present at the gas–water interface. Present results provide a universal mechanism for the dry deposition of unsaturated BVOCs and may account for recent observations on the uptake of terpenes in forest canopies and over grassland

Stepwise Oxidation of Aqueous Dicarboxylic Acids by Gas-Phase OH Radicals

A leading source of uncertainty in predicting the climate and health effects of secondary organic aerosol (SOA) is how its composition changes over their atmospheric lifetimes. Because dicarboxylic acid (DCA) homologues are widespread in SOA, their distribution provides an ideal probe of both aerosol age and the oxidative power of the atmosphere along its trajectory. Here we report, for the first time, on the oxidation of DCA(aq) by ·OH(g) at the air–water interface. We found that exposure of aqueous HOOC-R_n-COOH (R_n = C_2H_4, C_3H_6, C_4H_8, C_5H_10, and C_6H_12) microjets to ∼10 ns ·OH(g) pulses from the 266 nm laser photolysis of O3(g)/O_2(g)/H_2O(g) mixtures yields the corresponding (n–1) species O═C(H)-R_(n–1^-)COO–/HOOC-R_(n–1^-)COO^–, in addition to an array of closed-shell HOOC-R_n(-H)(OOH)-COO^–, HOOC-R_n(-2H)(═O)-COO–, HOOC-Rn(-H)(OH)-COO–, and radical HOOC-Rn(-H)(OO·)-COO– species. Oxalic and malonic acids, which are shown to be significantly less hydrophobic and reactive than their higher homologues, will predictably accumulate in SOA, in accordance with field observations

Hippocampal BDNF regulates a shift from flexible, goal-directed to habit memory system function following cocaine abstinence.

The transition from recreational drug use to addiction involves pathological learning processes that support a persistent shift from flexible, goal-directed to habit behavioral control. Here, we examined the molecular mechanisms supporting altered function in hippocampal (HPC) and dorsolateral striatum (DLS) memory systems following abstinence from repeated cocaine. After 3 weeks of cocaine abstinence (experimenter- or self-administered), we tested new behavioral learning in male rats using a dual-solution maze task, which provides an unbiased approach to assess HPC- versus DLS-dependent learning strategies. Dorsal hippocampus (dHPC) and DLS brain tissues were collected after memory testing to identify transcriptional adaptations associated with cocaine-induced shifts in behavioral learning. Our results demonstrate that following prolonged cocaine abstinence rats show a bias toward the use of an inflexible, habit memory system (DLS) in lieu of a more flexible, easily updated memory system involving the HPC. This memory system bias was associated with upregulation and downregulation of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) gene expression and transcriptionally permissive histone acetylation (acetylated histone H3, AcH3) in the DLS and dHPC, respectively. Using viral-mediated gene transfer, we overexpressed BDNF in the dHPC during cocaine abstinence and new maze learning. This manipulation restored HPC-dependent behavioral control. These findings provide a system-level understanding of altered plasticity and behavioral learning following cocaine abstinence and inform mechanisms mediating the organization of learning and memory more broadly

Mass Spectrometric Sampling of a Liquid Surface by Nanoliter Droplet Generation from Bursting Bubbles and Focused Acoustic Pulses: Application to Studies of Interfacial Chemistry

The complex chemistry occurring at the interface between liquid and vapor phases contributes significantly to the dynamics and evolution of numerous chemical systems of interest, ranging from damage to the human lung surfactant layer to the aging of atmospheric aerosols. This work presents two methodologies to eject droplets from a liquid water surface and analyze them via mass spectrometry. In bursting bubble ionization (BBI), droplet ejection is achieved via the formation of a jet following bubble rupture at the surface of a liquid to yield 250 μm diameter droplets (10 nL volume). In interfacial sampling by an acoustic transducer (ISAT), droplets are produced by focusing pulsed piezoelectric transducer-generated acoustic waves at the surface of a liquid, resulting in the ejection of droplets of 100 μm in diameter (500 pL volume). In both experimental methodologies, ejected droplets are aspirated into the inlet of the mass spectrometer, resulting in the facile formation of gas-phase ions. We demonstrate the ability of this technique to readily generate spectra of surface-active analytes, and we compare the spectra to those obtained by electrospray ionization. Charge measurements indicate that the ejected droplets are near-neutral (<0.1% of the Rayleigh limit), suggesting that gas-phase ion generation occurs in the heated transfer capillary of the instrument in a mechanism similar to thermospray or sonic spray ionization. Finally, we present the oxidation of oleic acid by ozone as an initial demonstration of the ability of ISAT-MS to monitor heterogeneous chemistry occurring at a planar water/air interface