No Longer 'Sick': Visualizing 'Victorious' Athletes in 1950s Chinese Films

This essay focuses on the narratives and visuals of athletes in several popular sports films produced in 1950s Maoist China, arguing that the Chinese leadership intended such visuals to convey the strength of the new socialist state. Since the early twentieth century in China, modern sports and physical culture (tiyu) has been associated with an official narrative of overcoming national humiliation, in which the nation suffered from "victimization" at the hands of foreigners – often succinctly described using the phrase the "Sick Man of East Asia" (dongya bingfu). Yet more than a decade prior to the release of the popular martial arts film "Fist of Fury" (Hong Kong, 1972) in which Bruce Lee famously destroys a placard reading "Sick Man of East Asia," mainland China's sports film industry was showcasing youthful Chinese athletes who no longer suffered from this past humiliation. On the contrary, the images of jubilant, victorious athletes in Maoist-era films like Girl Basketball Player No. 5, Ice Sisters, and Two Generations of Swimmers served as visual embodiments of a nation that, under Chinese Communist Party leadership, had overcome a century of humiliation and was now no longer "sick.

The Potential Impact of Climate Change on Blue Whale Migration in the Eastern Pacific

Climate change is one of the most pressing problems the world is facing today. Due to human emissions, the amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere is escalating at a concerning rate. This increase is causing ocean temperatures to rise, pH levels to lower, and altering the habitats of countless species. Balaenoptera musculus, or the blue whale, is a highly migratory species that relies on the stability of its’ habitats for foraging and calving grounds. They rely on the upwelling of nutrients and consistent conditions that allow for substantial prey populations to accumulate. With the effects of climate change altering the temperature and pH of these areas, prey populations may shift their distribution, thus altering the blue whales migration patterns. I reviewed numerous papers with a focus on three main topics: current blue whale migration pattern, current conditions for their calving and foraging grounds, and the climate change projections for those key areas. The response to climate change of the blue whales main food source, krill, was additionally looked at. The cold, nutrient rich water of the Northeast Pacific provides a viable habitat for euphausiid crustaceans, such as krill, to flourish in numbers. The blue whales use these feeding grounds in the summer months, and winter in tropical waters. The Costa Rican Dome is an area of significant upwelling and warm waters, which provide suitable waters for birthing their calves. The unprecedented changes to these areas could significantly impact blue whale abundance and distribution

From Soviet Kin to Afro-Asian Leader:: The People’s Republic of China and International Sport in the early 1960s

In den frühen 190er Jahren nutze die chinesische Führung den internationalen Sport für ihr außenpolitisches Ziel der Neupositionierung der Volksrepublik China auf globaler Ebene. Damit versuchte sie auch, die bisherige geopolitische Situation in Asien gemäß ihren Interessen zu revidieren. Der Kulminationspunkt dieser Anstrengungen waren die Ersten Spiele der Neuen Aufstrebenden Kräfte (GANEFO), die im November 1963 in Jakarta abgehalten wurden und als Sport-Großereignis in vielerlei Hinsicht den Olympischen Spielen ähnelten. Die Volksrepublik leistete einen fundamentalen Beitrag zur Entstehung der Spiele, sendete die größte Delegation und gewann die meisten Medaillen. Der Artikel untersucht das Interesse und die Beteiligung Chinas an den GANEFO im Rahmen der Stärkung der chinesisch-indonesischen Beziehungen und des Versuchs, China als sozialistische Führungsmacht der afrikanischen und asiatischen Länder zu stilisieren. Die GANEFO sollten dementsprechend dazu dienen, Ideale des Afro-Asianismus im Sinne des revolutionären Sozialismus Chinas weltweit zu propagieren

Eternal Flames: Living Memories of the Pacific War

Funds requested for an innovative website that provides a living archive of Pacific War memories in multiple languages. Our prototype provides a social media and multi-lingual database structure enabling communication between researchers, war survivors, and the general public in English, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean. This site facilitates research on the circulation of war memories throughout the Pacific region and across linguistic boundaries. Online participants will transcribe, translate, tag, and add context to user-contributed archive posts. The architecture makes transparent the negotiations and contested categories of memory-in-translation. In this online environment, users can confront the cultural embeddedness of language, and researchers can trace the transformations of memory as it travels across cultural boundaries. As an open source tool, our online platform can be applied in various contexts to address the language barrier issue that is so central to the humanities

Concert recording 2016-03-01

[Track 01]. Oh! Had I Jubal\u27s lyre from Joshua / George Frideric Handel -- [Track 02]. Tu lo sai / Giuseppe Torelli -- [Track 03]. Die Forelle / Franz Schubert -- [Track 04]. Puisque l\u27aube grandit / Gabriel Faure -- [Track 05]. Die Spröde ; [Track 06]. Die Bekehrte / Hugo Wolf -- [Track 07]. Le sommeil ; [Track 08]. Quelle aventure! ; Ba, be, bi, bo, bu ; Lune d\u27Avril / Francis Poulenc -- [Track 09]. New York lights from A view from the bridge / William Bolcom -- [Track 10]. Suleika I / Franz Schubert -- [Track 11]. Summertime from Porty and Bess / George Gershwin

Importance of Tree-and Species-Level Interactions with Wildfire, Climate, and Soils in Interior Alaska: Implications for Forest Change Under a Warming Climate

The boreal zone of Alaska is dominated by interactions between disturbances, vegetation, and soils. These interactions are likely to change in the future through increasing permafrost thaw, more frequent and intense wildfires, and vegetation change from drought and competition. We utilize an individual tree-based vegetation model, the University of Virginia Forest Model Enhanced (UVAFME), to estimate current and future forest conditions across sites within interior Alaska. We updated UVAFME for application within interior Alaska, including improved simulation of permafrost dynamics, litter decay, nutrient dynamics, fire mortality, and postfire regrowth. Following these updates, UVAFME output on species-specific biomass and stem density was comparable to inventory measurements at various forest types within interior Alaska. We then simulated forest response to climate change at specific inventory locations and across the Tanana Valley River Basin on a 2 × 2 km2 grid. We derived projected temperature and precipitation from a five-model average taken from the CMIP5 archive under the RCP 4.5 and 8.5 scenarios. Results suggest that climate change and the concomitant impacts on wildfire and permafrost dynamics will result in overall decreases in biomass (particularly for spruce (Picea spp.)) within the interior Tanana Valley, despite increases in quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) biomass, and a resulting shift towards higher deciduous fraction. Simulation results also predict increases in biomass at cold, wet locations and at high elevations, and decreases in biomass in dry locations, under both moderate (RCP 4.5) and extreme (RCP 8.5) climate change scenarios. These simulations demonstrate that a highly detailed, species interactive model can be used across a large region within Alaska to investigate interactions between vegetation, climate, wildfire, and permafrost. The vegetation changes predicted here have the capacity to feed back to broader scale climate-forest interactions in the North American boreal forest, a region which contributes significantly to the global carbon and energy budgets

Concert recording 2016-02-04

[Track 01]. Der Schmetterling / Franz Schubert -- [Track 02]. Moonshine lullaby from Annie get your gun / Irving Berlin -- [Track 03]. Voi, che sapete from Le Nozze di Figaro / Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart -- [Track 04]. Barcarolle from Les contes d\u27Hoffman / Jacques Offenbach -- [Track 05]. A maiden fair to see from H.M.S. Pinafore / Gilbert and Sullivan -- [Track 06]. Im wunderschönen Monat Mai from Dichterliebe / Robert Schumann -- [Track 07]. L\u27heure exquise / Reynaldo Hahn -- [Track 08]. And this is my beloved from Kismet / Wright ; Forest -- [Track 09]. Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht from Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen / Gustav Mahler -- [Track 10]. Va! Laisse couler mes larmes from Werther / Jules Massenet -- [Track 11]. Give me Jesus / traditional ; arranged by Moses Hogan -- [Track 12]. Il lacerato spirito from Simon Boccanegra / Giuseppe Verdi -- [Track 13]. Giunse alfin il momento...Deh viene, non tardar from Le nozze di Figaro / Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart -- [Track 14]. St. Ita\u27s vision from Hermit songs / Samuel Barber -- [Track 15]. Adele\u27s audition aria from Die Fledermaus / Johann Strauss -- [Track 16]. A part of that from The last five years / Jason Robert Brown -- [Track 17]. Two for the road / Henry Mancini -- [Track 18]. Nel cor piu non mi sento / Giovanni Paisiello -- [Track 19]. Love\u27s minstrels from The house of life / Ralph Vaughan-Williams -- [Track 20]. Der stürmische Morgen / Franz Schubert -- [Track 21]. Die Lotosblume / Robert Schumann -- [Track 22]. Nothing from A chorus line / Hammlisch ; Kleban -- [Track 23]. Spiel auf deiner Geige / Robert Stolz

Concert recording 2013-11-15

[Track 01]. Amarilli, mia bella / Guilio Caccini ; [Track 02]. Dein blaues auge / Johannes Brahms -- [Track 03]. Come raggio di sol / Antonio Caldara -- [Track 04]. Come ready and see me / Richard Hundley -- [Track 05]. La promessa / Giacchino Rossini -- [Track 06]. Se tu m\u27ami / Giovanni Pergolesi -- [Track 07]. Sonntag / Johannes Brahms -- [Track 08]. Le colibri / Ernest Chausson -- [Track 09]. Paulus. Jerusalem! / Felix Mendelssohn -- [Track 10]. Gia il sole dal Gange / Alessandro Scarlatti -- [Track 11]. Go, lovely Rose / Roger Quilter -- [Track 12]. Si mes vers avaient des ailes / Raynaldo Hahn -- [Track 13]. I\u27m a person too / Leonard Bernstein -- [Track 14]. Les chemins de l\u27amour / Francis Poulenc -- [Track 15]. La Boheme. Donde lieta usci al tuo... / Giacomo Puccini -- [Track 16]. Plum pudding / Leonard Bernstein -- [Track 17]. Queues de boeuf / Leonard Bernstein -- [Track 18]. Tavouk gueunksis / Leonard Bernstein -- [Track 19]. Civet a toute vitesse / Leonard Bernstein -- [Track 20]. When I have sung my songs to you / Ernest Charles -- [Track 21]. Linda di chamournix. Ah! Tardai troppo...o luce di quest\u27anima / Gaetano Donizetti

Concert recording 2017-04-29

[Track 1]. When the children are asleep from Carousel / Richard Rogers & Oscar Hammerstein -- [Track 2]. Quartet from The secret garden / Lucy Simon -- [Track 3]. Agony from Into the woods / Stephen Sondheim -- [Track 4]. Stepsister\u27s lament from Cinderella / Rogers & Hammerstein -- [Track 5]. Only love from The scarlet pimpernel / Frank Wildhorn -- [Track 6]. Schroeder from You\u27re a good man Charlie Brown / Clark Gesner -- [Track 7]. Where in the world from The secret garden [Track 8]. How could I ever know from The secret garden / Lucy Simon -- [Track 9]. Who am I from Peter Pan / Leonard Bernstein -- [Track 10]. Some things are meant to be from Little Women / Jason Howland -- [Track 11]. With you from Ghost / Bruce Joel Rubin -- [Track 12]. When he sees me from Waitress [Track 13]. Never ever getting rid of me from Waitress / Sara Bareilles -- [Track 14]. Sepia life from Grateful / John Bucchino -- [Track 15]. Thank you for the music from Mamma mia / Benny Andersson & Björn Ulvaeus -- [Track 16]. Agony reprise from Into the woods / Stephen Sondheim -- [Track 17]. If I loved you from Carousel / Rodgers & Hammerstein

Insights into the accuracy of social scientists' forecasts of societal change

How well can social scientists predict societal change, and what processes underlie their predictions? To answer these questions, we ran two forecasting tournaments testing the accuracy of predictions of societal change in domains commonly studied in the social sciences: ideological preferences, political polarization, life satisfaction, sentiment on social media, and gender–career and racial bias. After we provided them with historical trend data on the relevant domain, social scientists submitted pre-registered monthly forecasts for a year (Tournament 1; N = 86 teams and 359 forecasts), with an opportunity to update forecasts on the basis of new data six months later (Tournament 2; N = 120 teams and 546 forecasts). Benchmarking forecasting accuracy revealed that social scientists’ forecasts were on average no more accurate than those of simple statistical models (historical means, random walks or linear regressions) or the aggregate forecasts of a sample from the general public (N = 802). However, scientists were more accurate if they had scientific expertise in a prediction domain, were interdisciplinary, used simpler models and based predictions on prior data