Multiple margins: sport, gender and nationalism in Taiwan

This article aims to build contextualized and cross-cultural understandings of gender discourses on sport and nationalism. With its multi-colonized history and its multi-ethnic groups, modern Taiwan has a very different ‘national’ story from most western societies. The way that sport is articulated with Taiwanese nationalism is also unique. With the Taiwanese being desperate for every chance to prove their existence and worth, sport becomes an important field for constructing national honour and identity. When sportswomen succeed on the international stage, especially where their male counterparts fail, the discourse on women, sport and nationalism becomes unusual. In sum, the unique character of Taiwanese sport nationalism creates empowerment opportunities for female athletes. But we should bear in mind that men still take the dominant roles in Taiwan's sport field. Gendered disciplinary discourses, such as the beauty myth and compulsory heterosexuality, still dominate Taiwanese female athletes' media representation and further influence their practice and self-identity

Cost-Effective Location Management for Mobile Agents on the Internet

Many mobile agent system-related services and applications require interacting with a mobile agent by passing messages. However, an agent’s mobility raises several challenges in delivering messages to a mobile agent accurately. Consisting of tracking and message delivery phases, most mobile agent location management schemes create or receive many update messages and interaction messages to ensure the effectiveness of the schemes. In addition to downgrading the overall performance of a mobile agent location management scheme, excessive transmission of messages increases the network load. The migration locality of a mobile agent and the interaction rate between mobile agents significantly affect the performance of a mobile agent location management scheme with respect to location management cost. This work presents a novel Dual Home based Scheme (DHS) that can lower the location management costs in terms of migration locality and interaction rate. While the DHS scheme uniquely adopts dual home location management architecture, a selective update strategy based on that architecture is also designed for cost-effective location management of mobile agents. Moreover, DHS is compared with available schemes based on formulations and simulation experiments from the perspective of location management costs. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed DHS scheme performs satisfactorily in terms of migration locality and interaction rate

HEAT TRANSFER IN WAVY DUCT WITH DIFFERENT CORRUGATION ANGLE

ABSTRACT The present study investigates the effects of duct corrugation angle and flow velocity on the convective heat/mass transfer characteristics in wavy ducts applied in a primary surface heat exchanger. Local heat/mass transfer coefficients on the corrugated duct sidewall are determined using a naphthalene sublimation technique. The flow visualization technique is used to understand the overall flow structures inside the duct. The corrugation angles of the wavy ducts are 145º and 130º, and the duct aspect ratio is fixed at 7.3. The Reynolds numbers, based on the duct hydraulic diameter, vary from 1,000 to 5,000. The results show that secondary vortex flow cells, called TaylorGörtler vortices, exist periodically in the wavy duct. Therefore, non-uniform distributions of the heat/mass transfer coefficients are obtained on the duct walls. On the pressure-side wall, high heat/mass transfer cell-shaped regions appear due to the secondary vortex flows for both corrugation angles. On the suction-side wall, the heat transfer coefficients are lower than those on the pressure-side wall. The wavy duct with the corrugation angle of 130º has the stronger strength of the secondary vortex cells resulting in higher heat/mass transfer rates on the duct wall because the sharp turn enhances the development of the secondary flow cells

Generation of T Follicular Helper Cells Is Mediated by Interleukin-21 but Independent of T Helper 1, 2, or 17 Cell Lineages

SummaryAfter activation, CD4+ helper T (Th) cells differentiate into distinct effector subsets. Although chemokine (C-X-C motif) receptor 5-expressing T follicular helper (Tfh) cells are important in humoral immunity, their developmental regulation is unclear. Here we show that Tfh cells had a distinct gene expression profile and developed in vivo independently of the Th1 or Th2 cell lineages. Tfh cell generation was regulated by ICOS ligand (ICOSL) expressed on B cells and was dependent on interleukin-21 (IL-21), IL-6, and signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3). However, unlike Th17 cells, differentiation of Tfh cells did not require transforming growth factor β (TGF-β) or Th17-specific orphan nuclear receptors RORα and RORγ in vivo. Finally, naive T cells activated in vitro in the presence of IL-21 but not TGF-β signaling preferentially acquired Tfh gene expression and promoted germinal-center reactions in vivo. This study thus demonstrates that Tfh is a distinct Th cell lineage

Blocking Effect of an Immuno-Suppressive Agent, Cynarin, on CD28 of T-Cell Receptor

Purpose: Cynarin, a potential immunosuppressant that blocks the interaction between the CD28 of T-cell receptor and CD80 of antigen presenting cells, was found in Echinacea purpurea by a new pharmaceutical screening method: After Flowing Through Immobilized Receptor (AFTIR; Dong et al., J Med Chem, 49:1845-1854, 2006). This Echinacea component is the first small molecule that is able to specifically block "signal 2" of T-cell activation. Methods: In this study, we used the AFTIR method to further confirm that cynarin effectively blocked the binding between CD80 of B-cells and CD28 of T-cells, and provide details of its mechanism of action. Results: The experimental results showed that cynarin blocked about 87% of the CD28-dependent "signal 2" pathway of T-cell activation under the condition of one to one ratio of T-cell and B-cell in vitro. Theoretical structure modeling showed that cynarin binds to the "G-pocket" of CD28 (Evans et al., Nat Immunol, 6:271-279, 2005), and thus interrupts the site of interaction between CD28 and CD80. Conclusions: These results confirm both that AFTIR is a promising method for screening selective active compounds from herbal medicine and that cynarin has great potential as an immuno-suppressive agent

Hierarchical domain structure and extremely large wall current in epitaxial BiFeO3 thin films

Funding: J.F.S. acknowledges the financial support of the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (grant number XDB07030200).Erasable electrical conductive domain walls in an insulating ferroelectric matrix provide novel functionalities for applications in logic and memory devices. The crux of such success requires sufficiently high wall currents to drive high‐speed and high‐power nanodevices. This work provides an appealing strategy to increase the current by two orders of magnitude through the careful selection of current flowing paths along the charged walls. The dense walls come into form through the hierarchical evolution of the 71°, 109°, and 180° domains of epitaxial BiFeO3 films in a planar‐geometry ferroelectric resistance‐switching memory cell. The engineered films grown on SrTiO3 and GdScO3 substrates allow the observation of detailed local configurations and the evolution of the different domain types using vector piezo‐force microscopy. The higher local electrical conductivity near the charged domain walls is identified by conductive atomic‐force microscopy. It is shown that 180° domain reversal proceeds by three‐step 71° rotations of the pristine domains. Surprisingly, a maximum current of ≈300 nA is observed for current paths along charge‐uncompensated head‐to‐head hierarchical domain walls connecting the two electrodes on the film surface. Furthermore, the achievable current level can be conveniently controlled by varying the relative directions of the initial polarization and the applied field.PostprintPeer reviewe

Investigation of Early Protein Changes in the Urinary Bladder Following Partial Bladder Outlet Obstruction by Proteomic Approach

We investigated the pathophysiological mechanism by proteomic approach as a possible tool to detect the marker proteins to develop lower urinary tract symptoms following bladder outlet obstruction (BOO). Rats were randomized into 3 groups; control, sham operation and BOO groups. BOO group was divided into 1, 3, and 5 day-group. Conventional proteomics was performed with high resolution 2-D gel electrophoresis followed by computational image analysis and protein identification using mass spectrometry using rat urinary bladders. A comparison of bladder of BOO group with control bladder showed that three proteins of optineurin, thioredoxin and preprohaptoglobin were over-expressed in the bladder of BOO group. In addition, four proteins, such as peroxiredoxin 2, transgelin, hippocampal cholinergic neurostimulating peptide (HCNP) and beta-galactoside-binding lectin, were under-expressed in the bladder of BOO group. These data supported that down-regulation of HCNP might make detrusor muscle be supersensitive to acetylcholine, up-regulation of optineurin means the protection of nerve injury, and down-regulation of transgelin means the decreased contractility of detrusor muscle. Beside these proteins, other proteins are related to oxidative stress or have a nonspecific function in this study. However more information is needed in human bladder tissue for clinical usage

A Real Space Description of Magnetic Field Induced Melting in the Charge Ordered Manganites: I. The Clean Limit

We study the melting of charge order in the half doped manganites using a model that incorporates double exchange, antiferromagnetic superexchange, and Jahn-Teller coupling between electrons and phonons. We primarily use a real space Monte Carlo technique to study the phase diagram in terms of applied field $(h)$ and temperature $(T)$, exploring the melting of charge order with increasing $h$ and its recovery on decreasing $h$. We observe hysteresis in this response, and discover that the `field melted' high conductance state can be spatially inhomogeneous even without extrinsic disorder. The hysteretic response plays out in the background of field driven equilibrium phase separation. Our results, exploring $h$, $T$, and the electronic parameter space, are backed up by analysis of simpler limiting cases and a Landau framework for the field response. This paper focuses on our results in the `clean' systems, a companion paper studies the effect of cation disorder on the melting phenomena.Comment: 16 pages, pdflatex, 11 png fig