Bear with me : signs are tricksters, and reality is invisible to the naked eye: a one-person play

The creation of a one-person play is required in order to complete the Master of Fine Arts degree in acting. There are no official guidelines, only twenty to forty minutes in length is required. Although I was very excited about receiving the challenge, I did not breathe a sigh of relief until I found the topic I wanted to explore－Signs and Reality, and the one-person play that followed: Bear With Me. Since I am not a native English speaker, I have been frustrated by miscommunication through words in the English-speaking world, which gave me the eagerness to talk about the problem. Later on, I found out signs and words as well as the meaning of them change based on time and place, in other words, signs and words in themselves are unreliable, and also efficient and effective communication does not need to depend on them. These two thoughts wove into the spine of my play. Ironically, it is impossible to create a play without using words, so using words precisely became a big challenge, especially for the person who tried to create an English play and whose native tongue is not English. I believe theatre can take place anywhere, and either traditional theatre or experimental theatre has been a comfortable, convenient space for theatre creators. I think theatre should not be confined to a small box, but it should try to reach its extremes instead, so I challenged myself to have my play in a forest as the location and the atmosphere of my play. Except for the challenges mentioned above, I needed to figure out the journey of my central character and what I wanted my audience to get from the play. These both are essential questions for the play; if I did not solve the problems, my play would be just making a fuss about nothing. Fortunately, bear with me to say that my performances turned out to be a bare success

Development of Multiplexable Biosensors to Quantify the Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Rho GTPases and Protein Kinases in the Same Living Cell

Cell motility is a highly dynamic and heterogenous cellular process regulated by the coordination of multiple Rho GTPases, Src family kinases, and the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) cascades. However, it has been difficult to monitor more than two protein activities in the same cell due to the overlapping spectra of current biosensors and biological perturbations at high biosensor concentrations. Dye-based biosensors, which rely on an affinity scaffold that binds only to the activated conformation of the endogenous targets and an environment-sensing dye that changes its fluorescence properties to report the specific binder-target interactions, possess great potential to monitor multiple endogenous targets in the same cell. Here, I created novel environment-sensing dyes and exploited novel affinity scaffolds to develop multiplexable dye-based biosensors capable of quantifying the spatiotemporal dynamics of multiple Rho GTPases and protein kinases in the same cell. Src protein kinase is an upstream regulator of the Cdc42 GTPase. The coordination of Cdc42 and Src at the leading edge has not been well characterized due to lack of multiplexable biosensors to monitor Cdc42 and Src activities in the same living cell. Therefore, I developed novel near infrared merocyanine dyes and a red ratiometric merocyanine dye with an intrinsic ratiometric response that can be used to construct multiplexible biosensors. The relative timing and the subcellular localization of active Cdc42 and Src during leading edge dynamics and during pinocytosis were revealed using the new dyes. Src also plays an important role in the MAPK-mediated cell motility. However, the precise roles of MAPKKs and MAPKs at the leading edge remain poorly characterized due to the lack of sensitive biosensors for each target. By taking advantage of the specific interactions between MAPKKs and MAPKs, I developed the first substrate-based biosensor designs to report the activity of endogenous MEK1/2 and MKK3/6. I also developed a sensitive ERK1/2 biosensor based on artificial binders through collaborations with the Plűckthun group. This work will provide a foundation to study the crosstalk between Rho GTPases, Src family kinases and the MAPK cascades via multiplexed live cell imaging.Doctor of Philosoph

An Empirical Study on Consumption Intention of Virtual Tour Streaming

This study employs the social interaction motivation of the audience to explore the social capital dual-model relationship generated by the audience of “Virtual Tour Streaming,” a term that describes virtual tour streaming’s nascent digital economy. This is situated in a virtual tour streaming platform to ascertain how it influences the intention of the audience and to use “Swift Guanxi” as the interaction variable to actual intention behavior. This is done to understand the contributions of virtual tour streaming adoption in a direct dial platform of different audience levels and their consumption behavior. The remaining sections discuss the theoretical and practical implications of the study

Urban solarium : thermal performance in Boston

Thesis (M. Arch.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2012.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 67).This thesis addresses the issue of energy efficiency through the lens of thermal performance in the context of urban housing in the city of Boston. Located in the historic brick row house neighborhood of the South End, the project utilizes brick for its inherent property of high heat capacity - a material's ability to store radiant energy and release it later due to the temperature difference between day and night - as a thermal battery for heating and cooling domestic spaces. In Boston where the temperature frequently goes below freezing in winter time, this thesis challenges existing housing typologies by incorporating thermal mass as a passive solar strategy at the scale of an entire structure. The urban solarium produces an interstitial zone in housing that promotes a new lifestyle by bringing together thermal performance and urban farming.by Juliet Chia-Wen Hsu.M.Arch

Effects of System Characteristics on Adopting Web-Based Advanced Traveller Information System: Evidence from Taiwan

This study proposes a behavioural intention model that integrates information quality, response time, and system accessibility into the original technology acceptance model (TAM) to investigate whether system characteristics affect the adoption of Web-based advanced traveller information systems (ATIS). This study empirically tests the proposed model using data collected from an online survey of Web-based advanced traveller information system users. Con­firmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed to examine the reliability and validity of the measurement model, and structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to evaluate the structural model. The results indicate that three system characteristics had indirect effects on the intention to use through perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and attitude toward using. Information quality was the most im­portant system characteristic factor, followed by response time and system accessibility. This study presents implica­tions for practitioners and researchers, and suggests direc­tions for future research.</p

Complete Polarization Control in Multimode Fibers with Polarization and Mode Coupling

Multimode optical fibers have seen increasing applications in communication, imaging, high-power lasers and amplifiers. However, inherent imperfections and environmental perturbations cause random polarization and mode mixing, making the output polarization states very different from the input one. This poses a serious issue for employing polarization sensitive techniques to control light-matter interactions or nonlinear optical processes at the distal end of a fiber probe. Here we demonstrate a complete control of polarization states for all output channels by only manipulating the spatial wavefront of a laser beam into the fiber. Arbitrary polarization states for individual output channels are generated by wavefront shaping without constraint on input polarizations. The strong coupling between spatial and polarization degrees of freedom in a multimode fiber enables full polarization control with spatial degrees of freedom alone, transforming a multimode fiber to a highly-efficient reconfigurable matrix of waveplates