Xiqu and modernisation: the transformations of the Chinese traditional theatre in the process of social formation of modern China.

There is an inherent sociality and collectivity in the theatre. Theatrical activities, like other cultural productions, involve a great many elements seeping through, in and out and between the theatrical institutions and other vectors of the social space. Theatre is both a result of and simultaneously one of the many constitutive factors in the process of social formation. This thesis examines the conventions of xiqu and its transformations in relation to the modernisation in China since the second half of the 19th Century. The introduction of Western theatre architecture in the last decade of the 19th Century in Chinese cities was probably the most important catalyst for the metamorphosis of xiqu into its present form. The changed parameters of the newly constructed theatres injected new possibilities into productions and changed the theatrical consciousness of the audience. The jingju form provides a particular case in point. It was initially developed into a distinctive regional xiqu as a consequence of the merging of a number of existing regional forms, the performances of which in the capital were only made possible by modern communications and transportation. Its subsequent popularity in the principal cities was inseparable from its development in the modern theatres. The cinema was introduced to China at about the same time as Western theatre architecture. Xiqu films were first produced as records of performances to extend the commercial possibilities of the xiqu market. As film language improved in its refinement and aesthetic grammar, cinematic aesthetics took over and xiqu films started to take another direction. As more features of its stage aesthetics were replaced by camera treatment, xiqu films ceased to be a genre of xiqu and became instead a genre of cinema. This clear-cut distinction was especially obvious in the xiqu films produced in Hong Kong, where market forces were relentlessly fierce. Nowadays xiqu is facing the same challenges as all other theatre forms in the globalised market-place. To survive it must find a way to remain competitive and commercially viable. At the same time, it must rediscover its artistic edge by offering experimental and innovative productions in order to make itself artistically relevant and attractive to its contemporary audience

Livestock products in the Third World: past trends and projections to 1990 and 2000

Meat industry and trade Developing countries Statistics., Dairy products industry Developing countries Statistics., Meat industry and trade Developing countries Forecasting Statistical methods., Dairy products industry Developing countries Forecasting Statistical methods.,

A Higher-Order Energy Expansion to Two-Dimensional Singularly Neumann Problems

Of concern is the following singularly perturbed semilinear elliptic problem \begin{equation*} \left\{ \begin{array}{c} \mbox{${\epsilon}^2\Delta u -u+u^p =0$ in $\Omega$}\\ \mbox{$u>0$ in $\Omega$ and $\frac{\partial u}{\partial \nu}=0$ on $\partial \Omega$}, \end{array} \right. \end{equation*} where $\Omega$ is a bounded domain in ${\mathbf{R}}^N$ with smooth boundary $\partial \Omega$, $\epsilon>0$ is a small constant and $1< p<\left(\frac{N+2}{N-2}\right)_+$. Associated with the above problem is the energy functional $J_{\epsilon}$ defined by \begin{equation*} J_{\epsilon}[u]:=\int_{\Omega}\left(\frac{\epsilon^2}{2}{|\nabla u|}^2 +\frac{1}{2}u^2 -F(u)\right)dx \end{equation*} for $u\in H^1(\Omega)$, where $F(u)=\int_{0}^{u}s^p ds$. Ni and Takagi (\cite{nt1}, \cite{nt2}) proved that for a single boundary spike solution $u_{\epsilon}$, the following asymptotic expansion holds: \begin{equation*} (1) \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ J_{\epsilon}[u_{\epsilon}]=\epsilon^{N} \left[\frac{1}{2}I[w]-c_1 \epsilon H(P_{\epsilon})+o(\epsilon)\right], \end{equation*} where $I[w]$ is the energy of the ground state, $c_1 >0$ is a generic constant, $P_{\epsilon}$ is the unique local maximum point of $u_{\epsilon}$ and $H(P_{\epsilon})$ is the boundary mean curvature function at $P_{\epsilon}\in \partial \Omega$. Later, Wei and Winter (\cite{ww3}, \cite{ww4}) improved the result and obtained a higher-order expansion of $J_{\epsilon}[u_{\epsilon}]$: \begin{equation*} (2) \ \ \ \ \ \ J_{\epsilon}[u_{\epsilon}]=\epsilon^{N} \left[\frac{1}{2}I[\omega]-c_{1} \epsilon H(P_{\epsilon})+\epsilon^2 [c_2(H(P_\epsilon))^2 +c_{3} R(P_\epsilon)]+o(\epsilon^2)\right], \end{equation*} where $c_2$ and $c_3>0$ are generic constants and $R(P_\epsilon)$ is the scalar curvature at $P_\epsilon$. However, if $N=2$, the scalar curvature is always zero. The expansion (2) is no longer sufficient to distinguish spike locations with same mean curvature. In this paper, we consider this case and assume that $2 \leq p <+\infty$. Without loss of generality, we may assume that the boundary near P\in\partial\Om is represented by the graph $\{ x_2 = \rho_{P} (x_1) \}$. Then we have the following higher order expansion of $J_\epsilon[u_\epsilon]:$ \begin{equation*} (3) \ \ \ \ \ J_\epsilon [u_\epsilon] =\epsilon^N \left[\frac{1}{2}I[w]-c_1 \epsilon H({P_\epsilon})+c_2 \epsilon^2(H({P_\epsilon}))^2 ] +\epsilon^3 [P(H({P_\epsilon}))+c_3S({P_\epsilon})]+o(\epsilon^3)\right], \end{equation*} where H(P_\ep)= \rho_{P_\ep}^{''} (0) is the curvature, $P(t)=A_1 t+A_2 t^2+A_3 t^3$ is a polynomial, $c_1$, $c_2$, $c_3$ and $A_1$, $A_2$,$A_3$ are generic real constants and S(P_\epsilon)= \rho_{P_\ep}^{(4)} (0). In particular $c_3<0$. Some applications of this expansion are given

Measuring the mode volume of plasmonic nanocavities using coupled optical emitters

Metallic optical systems can confine light to deep sub-wavelength dimensions, but verifying the level of confinement at these length scales typically requires specialized techniques and equipment for probing the near-field of the structure. We experimentally measured the confinement of a metal-based optical cavity by using the cavity modes themselves as a sensitive probe of the cavity characteristics. By perturbing the cavity modes with conformal dielectric layers of sub-nm thickness using atomic layer deposition, we find the exponential decay length of the modes to be less than 5% of the free-space wavelength (\lambda) and the mode volume to be of order \lambda^3/1000. These results provide experimental confirmation of the deep sub-wavelength confinement capabilities of metal-based optical cavities.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figure

The Researcher Social Network: a social network based on metadata of scientific publications

Scientific journals can capture a scholar’s research career. A researcher’s publication data often reflects his/her research interests and their social relations. It is demonstrated that scientist collaboration networks can be constructed based on co-authorship data from journal papers. The problem with such a network is that researchers are limited within their professional social network. This work proposes the idea of constructing a researcher’s social network based on data harvested from metadata of scientific publications and personal online profiles. We hypothesize that data, such as, publication keywords, personal interests, the themes of the conferences where papers are published, and co-authors of the papers, either directly or indirectly represent the authors’ research interests, and by measuring the similarity between these data we are able to construct a researcher social network. Based on the four types of data mentioned above, social network graphs were plotted, studied and analyzed. These graphs were then evaluated by the researchers themselves by giving ratings. Based on this evaluation, we estimated the weight for each type of data, in order to blend all data together to construct one ideal researcher’s social network. Interestingly, our results showed that a graph based on publication’s keywords were more representative than the one based on publication’s co-authorship. The findings from the evaluation were used to propose a dynamic social network data model

Coarsening Dynamics of a One-Dimensional Driven Cahn-Hilliard System

We study the one-dimensional Cahn-Hilliard equation with an additional driving term representing, say, the effect of gravity. We find that the driving field $E$ has an asymmetric effect on the solution for a single stationary domain wall (or `kink'), the direction of the field determining whether the analytic solutions found by Leung [J.Stat.Phys.{\bf 61}, 345 (1990)] are unique. The dynamics of a kink-antikink pair (`bubble') is then studied. The behaviour of a bubble is dependent on the relative sizes of a characteristic length scale $E^{-1}$, where $E$ is the driving field, and the separation, $L$, of the interfaces. For $EL \gg 1$ the velocities of the interfaces are negligible, while in the opposite limit a travelling-wave solution is found with a velocity $v \propto E/L$. For this latter case ($EL \ll 1$) a set of reduced equations, describing the evolution of the domain lengths, is obtained for a system with a large number of interfaces, and implies a characteristic length scale growing as $(Et)^{1/2}$. Numerical results for the domain-size distribution and structure factor confirm this behavior, and show that the system exhibits dynamical scaling from very early times.Comment: 20 pages, revtex, 10 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Dynamics of Ordering of Heisenberg Spins with Torque --- Nonconserved Case. I

We study the dynamics of ordering of a nonconserved Heisenberg magnet. The dynamics consists of two parts --- an irreversible dissipation into a heat bath and a reversible precession induced by a torque due to the local molecular field. For quenches to zero temperature, we provide convincing arguments, both numerically (Langevin simulation) and analytically (approximate closure scheme due to Mazenko), that the torque is irrelevant at late times. We subject the Mazenko closure scheme to systematic numerical tests. Such an analysis, carried out for the first time on a vector order parameter, shows that the closure scheme performs respectably well. For quenches to $T_c$, we show, to ${\cal O}(\epsilon^2)$, that the torque is irrelevant at the Wilson-Fisher fixed point.Comment: 13 pages, REVTEX, and 19 .eps figures, compressed, Submitted to Phys. Rev.