Taiwan’s Appearance in the 18th Century Travelogue: Taking the Text of Histoire générale des voyages by Prévost

There are a total of 15 volumes of Histoire générale des voyages written by Antoine François Prévost (1693–1763), which were published between 1746 and 1759. The 6th volume introduced China, in Section 4 of Chapter 1, the part of Fujian Province specially introduced geographic travelogues of Penghu and Taiwan. This thesis is an attempt to probe and criticize the historical European travelogue literature about China and Taiwan, specifically in terms of this Prévost’s travelogue volumes. What are the points of view presented, based on the reports of Jesuits and Protestants from Holland and England? What aspects of different traditional books did Prévost base his work on? Why? What kind ofoutlook on Taiwan was presented in their reports?Skupno obstaja 15 knjig zbirke Histoire générale des voyages avtorja Antoine François Prévost (1693–1763), ki so bile izdane med leti 1746 in 1759. V šesti knjigi, ki predstavi Kitajsko, je v četrtem odstavku prvega poglavja, ki se nanaša na provinco Fujian,predstavljen geografski potopis otočja Penghu in Tajvana. Pričujoč članek skuša raziskati in kritizirati predhodne evropske potopise Kitajske in Tajvana na osnovi te zbirke. Kakšna so bila njihova stališča, ki so temeljila na zapisih jezuitov in protestantov iz Nizozemske in Anglije? Na katerih vidikih različnih tradicionalnih zapisov je Prévost gradil svojo zbirko? Zakaj? Kakšen pogled so imeli njihovi zapisi na Tajvan

Effects of orthographic consistency and homophone density on Chinese spoken word recognition

Studies of alphabetic language have shown that orthographic knowledge influences phonological processing during spoken word recognition. This study utilized the Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) to differentiate two types of phonology-to-orthography (P-to-O) mapping consistencies in Chinese, namely homophone density and orthographic consistency. The ERP data revealed an orthographic consistency effect in the frontal-centrally distributed N400, and a homophone density effect in central-posteriorly distributed late positive component (LPC). Further source analyses using the standardized low-resolution electromagnetic tomography (sLORETA) demonstrated that the orthographic effect was not only localized in the frontal and temporal-parietal regions for phonological processing, but also in the posterior visual cortex for orthographic processing, while the homophone density effect was found in middle temporal gyrus for lexical-semantic selection, and in the temporal-occipital junction for orthographic processing. These results suggest that orthographic information not only shapes the nature of phonological representations, but may also be activated during on-line spoken word recognition

The feedback consistency effect in Chinese character recognition:evidence from a psycholinguistic norm

Researchers have demonstrated the importance of phonology in literacy acquisition and in visual word recognition. For example, the spelling-to-sound consistency effect has been observed in visual word recognition tasks, in which the naming responses are faster and more accurate for words with the same letters that also have the same pronunciation (e.g. -ean is always pronounced /in/, as in lean, dean, and bean). In addition, some studies have reported a much less intuitive feedback consistency effect when a rime can be spelled in different ways (e.g. /ip/ in heap and deep) in lexical decision tasks. Such findings suggest that, with activation flowing back and forth between orthographic and phonological units during word processing, any inconsistency in the mappings between orthography and phonology should weaken the stability of the feedback loop, and, thus, should delay recognition. However, several studies have failed to show reliable feedback consistency in printed word recognition. One possible reason for this is that the feedback consistency is naturally confounded with many other variables, such as orthographic neighborhood or bigram frequency, as these variables are difficult to tease apart. Furthermore, there are challenges in designing factorial experiments that perfectly balance lexical stimuli on all factors besides feedback consistency. This study aims to examine the feedback consistency effect in reading Chinese characters by using a normative data of 3,423 Chinese phonograms. We collected the lexical decision time from 180 college students. A linear mixed model analysis was used to examine the feedback consistency effect by taking into account additional properties that may be confounded with feedback consistency, including character frequency, number of strokes, phonetic combinability, semantic combinability, semantic ambiguity, phonetic consistency, noun-to-verb ratios, and morphological boundedness. Some typical effects were observed, such as the more frequent and familiar a character, the faster one can decide it is a real character. More importantly, the linear mixed model analysis revealed a significant feedback consistency effect while controlling for other factors, which indicated that the pronunciation of phonograms might accommodate the organization of Chinese orthographic representation. Our study disentangled the feedback consistency from the many other factors, and supports the view that phonological activation would reverberate to orthographic representation in visual word recognition

Use of sodium bicarbonate for acute dizziness after minor head injury

AbstractObjectiveDizziness after minor head injury (mHI) is common. In some eastern countries, it is treated with 7% sodium bicarbonate solution (SB). This prospective study evaluated the clinical efficacy of SB compared with normal saline (NS).Material and methodsFrom April 2009 to April 2010, we performed a prospective observational study on 228 patients (68% female, 32% male) with acute dizziness after mHI. At the emergency physician’s discretion, intravenous SB (1 mL/kg) in NS (250 mL) or NS (250 mL) was administered to 166 patients and 62 patients, respectively, as empiric antidizziness therapy. Outcome measures were severity of dizziness and treatment response, which were measured by a visual analog scale. Various characteristics were compared between treatment groups. Any continued dizziness of the patients during follow-up was also compared with their pre-injury condition, such as prior psychiatric disorders and the presence of vertigo.ResultsThe SB group had their visual analog scale scores reduced by 25.4% compared with 24.6% in the NS group. Both groups showed a statistically significant reduction in dizziness (p < 0.001); however, the dizziness improvement did not differ significantly between the two treatment groups (p = 0.699). Sixty-four patients (28.1%) suffered from continued dizziness during follow-up (mean period, 22.4 ± 28.9 days). The prevalence of continued dizziness was higher in patients with prior psychiatric disorders, although this was not statistically significant (40% vs. 27.2%, p = 0.276), whereas patients with prior vertigo did not experience a higher dizziness relapse rate (27% vs. 28.2%).ConclusionsSB and NS administrations are both effective individually when treating patients with acute dizziness from mHI; however, both results may be attributable to the placebo effect. Therefore more research is necessary to understand the complex conditions that determine the effects of SB on this disorder

BHDPC Is a Novel Neuroprotectant That Provides Anti-neuroinflammatory and Neuroprotective Effects by Inactivating NF-κB and Activating PKA/CREB.

Microglia-mediated neuroinflammatory responses are inevitable and important pathological processes in several kinds of disorder of the central nervous system (CNS). Therefore, alleviating activated microglia-induced inflammatory process might be a valuable therapeutic approach to neuroinflammation-related diseases. In the present study, we investigated BHDPC, a novel neuroprotectant discovered in our previous study that had anti-inflammatory effects under neuroinflammatory conditions. First, we found that BHDPC could inhibit neuroinflammatory responses and promote microglial M2 phenotype polarization in both lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-activated BV-2 microglia l cells. Furthermore, BHDPC provided protective actions against neuroinflammation-induced neurotoxicity in HT22 mouse hippocampal cells co-cultured with activated BV-2 microglia. Further experiments demonstrated that BHDPC could suppress LPS-induced activation of transcription factor nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB) via interfering with the degradation of the inhibitor of kappa B (IκB) and phosphorylation of IκB, the IκB kinase (IKK). Moreover, we also found that BHDPC could induce phosphorylation of cAMP-dependent protein kinase A (PKA) and cAMP-response element-binding protein (CREB) in BV-2 microglial cells. Also, using the PKA-specific inhibitor, we found that BHDPC-induced CREB phosphorylation was dependent on PKA, which also contributed to BHDPC-mediated anti-inflammation and neuroprotection

Inverse Melting of an Electronic Liquid Crystal

Inverse melting refers to the rare thermodynamic phenomenon in which a solid melts into a liquid upon cooling, a transition that can occur only when the ordered (solid) phase has more entropy than the disordered (liquid) phase, and that has so far only been observed in a handful of systems. Here we report the first experimental observation for the inverse melting of an electronic liquid crystalline order in strontium-doped lanthanum nickelate, a compound isostructural with the superconducting cuprates, with a hole doping concentration of 1/3. Using x-ray scattering, we demonstrate that the isotropic charge modulation is driven to nematic order by fluctuating spins and shows an inverse melting transition. Using a phenomenological Landau theory, we show that this inverse melting transition is due to the interlayer coupling between the charge and spin orders. This discovery points to the importance of the interlayer correlations in the system, and provides a new perspective to study the intricate nature of the electronic liquid crystal phases in strongly correlated electronic systems, including possibly the Cu- and Fe-based high-Tc superconductors.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figure

Inverse order-disorder transition of charge stripes

We report an unusual transition behavior of charge stripes in La1.67Sr0.33NiO4 using x-ray scattering. The segregated holes in La1.67Sr0.33NiO4 are observed to form anisotropic stripes in the a × b plane of the crystal space below the transition temperature T 238 K, and at the same time, display an unusual inverse order-disorder transition along the c axis. Using a phenomenological Landau theory, we show that this inverse transition is due to the interlayer coupling between the charge and spin orders. This discovery points to the importance of the interlayer correlations in the strongly correlated electrons system

An earthquake slip zone is a magnetic recorder

International audienceDuring an earthquake, the physical and the chemical transformations along a slip zone lead to an intense deformation within the gouge layer of a mature fault zone. Because the gouge contains ferromagnetic minerals, it has the capacity to behave as a magnetic recorder during an earthquake. This constitutes a conceivable way to identify earthquakes slip zones. In this paper, we investigate the magnetic record of the Chelungpu fault gouge that hosts the principal slip zone of the Chi-Chi earthquake (Mw 7.6, 1999, Taiwan) using Taiwan Chelungpu-fault Drilling Project core samples. Rock magnetic investigation pinpoints the location of the Chi-Chi mm-thick principal slip zone within the 16-cm thick gouge at ~1 km depth. A modern magnetic dipole of Earth magnetic field is recovered throughout this gouge but not in the wall rocks nor in the two other adjacent fault zones. This magnetic record resides essentially in two magnetic minerals; magnetite in the principal slip zone, and neoformed goethite elsewhere in the gouge. We propose a model where magnetic record: 1) is preserved during inter-seismic time, 2) is erased during co-seismic time and 3) is imprinted during post-seismic time when fluids cooled down. We suggest that the identification of a stable magnetic record carried by neoformed goethite may be a signature of friction-heating process in seismic slip zone