3,083 research outputs found
David Henry Hwang’s Yellow Face: Fictional Autoethnography and Parody on Racial Stereotypes
Hwang’s play Yellow Face (2007), a dramaturgically inventive work, combines multiple narrative forms into a plot that blurs the distinction among social science, social commentary, and fiction. The play is simultaneously self-mocking and self-examining in its representation of the Asian American experience in theatre. It both examines Hwang’s own racial identity and boldly redefines conventional theatrical forms as the playwright places himself at the center of a highly embarrassing, fictional racial controversy in order to scrutinize the performativity of an Asian American identity. This article argues that Yellow Face is fictitious autoethnodrama as it acerbically parodies racialization
LayoutLM: Pre-training of Text and Layout for Document Image Understanding
Pre-training techniques have been verified successfully in a variety of NLP
tasks in recent years. Despite the widespread use of pre-training models for
NLP applications, they almost exclusively focus on text-level manipulation,
while neglecting layout and style information that is vital for document image
understanding. In this paper, we propose the \textbf{LayoutLM} to jointly model
interactions between text and layout information across scanned document
images, which is beneficial for a great number of real-world document image
understanding tasks such as information extraction from scanned documents.
Furthermore, we also leverage image features to incorporate words' visual
information into LayoutLM. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time
that text and layout are jointly learned in a single framework for
document-level pre-training. It achieves new state-of-the-art results in
several downstream tasks, including form understanding (from 70.72 to 79.27),
receipt understanding (from 94.02 to 95.24) and document image classification
(from 93.07 to 94.42). The code and pre-trained LayoutLM models are publicly
available at \url{https://aka.ms/layoutlm}.Comment: KDD 202
Constraining work fluctuations of non-Hermitian dynamics across the exceptional point of a superconducting qubit
Thermodynamics constrains changes to the energy of a system, both deliberate
and random, via its first and second laws. When the system is not in
equilibrium, fluctuation theorems such as the Jarzynski equality further
restrict the distributions of deliberate work done. Such fluctuation theorems
have been experimentally verified in small, non-equilibrium quantum systems
undergoing unitary or decohering dynamics. Yet, their validity in systems
governed by a non-Hermitian Hamiltonian has long been contentious, due to the
false premise of the Hamiltonian's dual and equivalent roles in dynamics and
energetics. Here we show that work fluctuations in a non-Hermitian qubit obey
the Jarzynski equality even if its Hamiltonian has complex or purely imaginary
eigenvalues. With post-selection on a dissipative superconducting circuit
undergoing a cyclic parameter sweep, we experimentally quantify the work
distribution using projective energy measurements and show that the fate of the
Jarzynski equality is determined by the parity-time symmetry of, and the
energetics that result from, the corresponding non-Hermitian, Floquet
Hamiltonian. By distinguishing the energetics from non-Hermitian dynamics, our
results provide the recipe for investigating the non-equilibrium quantum
thermodynamics of such open systems.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure
A Response to the United Nations CITES Blockchain Challenge: Incremental and Integrative PoA-based Permit Exchange
The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) negotiated and administered by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) regulates the international trade of endangered species and derived products through a permit-based system. Currently, the permit process is paper-based and hence highly prone to manipulations and errors. Being aware of blockchains' potential, the CITES Secretariat defined a challenge to determine whether a blockchain-based system can address the aforementioned issues and serve as a secure, efficient, and affordable permit processing system.
In this paper, we respond to the CITES Blockchain Challenge. First, we analyze the permit process and discuss how blockchain systems can improve that process in a way traditional systems cannot. Building on these results, we design a blockchain-based system that enables secure, manipulation resistant permit validation, produces an immutable record of processed permits, and is in compliance with the CITES agreement. To evaluate this design, we developed a proof-of-concept implementation compatible with the paper-based permit process and deployed it to a Proof-of-Authority-based blockchain network. This allows incremental adoption and integration with the existing process, thereby increasing acceptance and addressing affordability. Finally, we describe how a blockchain- based system could disruptively improve the established permit process by enforcing quotas and tracking provenance
The Kondo effect in ferromagnetic atomic contacts
Iron, cobalt and nickel are archetypal ferromagnetic metals. In bulk,
electronic conduction in these materials takes place mainly through the and
electrons, whereas the magnetic moments are mostly in the narrow
-electron bands, where they tend to align. This general picture may change
at the nanoscale because electrons at the surfaces of materials experience
interactions that differ from those in the bulk. Here we show direct evidence
for such changes: electronic transport in atomic-scale contacts of pure
ferromagnets (iron, cobalt and nickel), despite their strong bulk
ferromagnetism, unexpectedly reveal Kondo physics, that is, the screening of
local magnetic moments by the conduction electrons below a characteristic
temperature. The Kondo effect creates a sharp resonance at the Fermi energy,
affecting the electrical properties of the system;this appears as a Fano-Kondo
resonance in the conductance characteristics as observed in other artificial
nanostructures. The study of hundreds of contacts shows material-dependent
lognormal distributions of the resonance width that arise naturally from Kondo
theory. These resonances broaden and disappear with increasing temperature,
also as in standard Kondo systems. Our observations, supported by calculations,
imply that coordination changes can significantly modify magnetism at the
nanoscale. Therefore, in addition to standard micromagnetic physics, strong
electronic correlations along with atomic-scale geometry need to be considered
when investigating the magnetic properties of magnetic nanostructures.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure
The immunophenotypic spectrum of primary mediastinal large B‐cell lymphoma reveals prognostic biomarkers associated with outcome
Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/134201/1/ajh24485.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/134201/2/ajh24485_am.pd
Tumor vessel normalization after aerobic exercise enhances chemotherapeutic efficacy.
Targeted therapies aimed at tumor vasculature are utilized in combination with chemotherapy to improve drug delivery and efficacy after tumor vascular normalization. Tumor vessels are highly disorganized with disrupted blood flow impeding drug delivery to cancer cells. Although pharmacologic anti-angiogenic therapy can remodel and normalize tumor vessels, there is a limited window of efficacy and these drugs are associated with severe side effects necessitating alternatives for vascular normalization. Recently, moderate aerobic exercise has been shown to induce vascular normalization in mouse models. Here, we provide a mechanistic explanation for the tumor vascular normalization induced by exercise. Shear stress, the mechanical stimuli exerted on endothelial cells by blood flow, modulates vascular integrity. Increasing vascular shear stress through aerobic exercise can alter and remodel blood vessels in normal tissues. Our data in mouse models indicate that activation of calcineurin-NFAT-TSP1 signaling in endothelial cells plays a critical role in exercise-induced shear stress mediated tumor vessel remodeling. We show that moderate aerobic exercise with chemotherapy caused a significantly greater decrease in tumor growth than chemotherapy alone through improved chemotherapy delivery after tumor vascular normalization. Our work suggests that the vascular normalizing effects of aerobic exercise can be an effective chemotherapy adjuvant
Real-space imaging of acoustic plasmons in large-area CVD graphene
An acoustic plasmonic mode in a graphene-dielectric-metal heterostructure has
recently been spotlighted as a superior platform for strong light-matter
interaction. It originates from the coupling of graphene plasmon with its
mirror image and exhibits the largest field confinement in the limit of a
nm-thick dielectric. Although recently detected in the far-field regime,
optical near-fields of this mode are yet to be observed and characterized.
Direct optical probing of the plasmonic fields reflected by the edges of
graphene via near-field scattering microscope reveals a relatively small
damping rate of the mid-IR acoustic plasmons in our devices, which allows for
their real-space mapping even with unprotected, chemically grown, large-area
graphene at ambient conditions. We show an acoustic mode that is twice as
confined - yet 1.4 times less damped - compared to the graphene surface plasmon
under similar conditions. We also image the resonant acoustic Bloch state in a
1D array of gold nanoribbons responsible for the high efficiency of the
far-field coupling. Our results highlight the importance of acoustic plasmons
as an exceptionally promising platform for large-area graphene-based
optoelectronic devices operating in mid-IR
- …