Active, Disorienting, and Transitional: The Aesthetic of Boredom(s) in the Multimedia Works of Nam June Paik (1932-2006)

The term boredom has a long and complex history. Boredom has been a topic of interest for both critical theorists and artists from various disciplines since antiquity. In the sixties, the meaning of the term boredom took on new significance as several art critics employed the term “boredom” to describe contemporary artworks. One artist from this period did not hesitate to describe his artworks as boring: Nam June Paik (1932-2006), a multimedia artist known for his avant-garde installations, sculptures, videos, and films. In my study, I argue that an aesthetic of boredom underlies certain works by Paik that employ particular artistic strategies, inducing a constant shift between physical, spatial, and temporal boundaries. Taking a chronological approach, my study focuses on three seminal works by Paik: Zen for Film (1964, film/installation), Global Groove (1973, video), and The More the Better (1988, video/sculpture). In my first chapter, I argue that Paik’s minimalist work Zen for Film puts the viewer in an ambiguous viewing position, allowing the viewer to establish multiple relationships with the installation site that induce an aesthetic of what I call “active boredom.” Then, I turn to Paik’s Global Groove, arguing that its aesthetic of “disorienting boredom” embraces elements of both structure and fragmentation. Finally, in my third chapter, I examine the multiple sets of aesthetic and ideological tension generated by Paik’s The More the Better within the historical context of South Korea’s political transition in 1988—these sets of tension constitute an aesthetic of “transitional boredom.” An aesthetic of boredom promises to provide a new understanding of today’s contemporary artworks, including literary works, films, and videos. My study aims to achieve the following two goals: the development of a distinct aesthetic of boredom, and a new understanding of Paik’s interdisciplinary works through the lens of such an aesthetic category

Be Selfish and Avoid Dilemmas: Fork After Withholding (FAW) Attacks on Bitcoin

In the Bitcoin system, participants are rewarded for solving cryptographic puzzles. In order to receive more consistent rewards over time, some participants organize mining pools and split the rewards from the pool in proportion to each participant's contribution. However, several attacks threaten the ability to participate in pools. The block withholding (BWH) attack makes the pool reward system unfair by letting malicious participants receive unearned wages while only pretending to contribute work. When two pools launch BWH attacks against each other, they encounter the miner's dilemma: in a Nash equilibrium, the revenue of both pools is diminished. In another attack called selfish mining, an attacker can unfairly earn extra rewards by deliberately generating forks. In this paper, we propose a novel attack called a fork after withholding (FAW) attack. FAW is not just another attack. The reward for an FAW attacker is always equal to or greater than that for a BWH attacker, and it is usable up to four times more often per pool than in BWH attack. When considering multiple pools - the current state of the Bitcoin network - the extra reward for an FAW attack is about 56% more than that for a BWH attack. Furthermore, when two pools execute FAW attacks on each other, the miner's dilemma may not hold: under certain circumstances, the larger pool can consistently win. More importantly, an FAW attack, while using intentional forks, does not suffer from practicality issues, unlike selfish mining. We also discuss partial countermeasures against the FAW attack, but finding a cheap and efficient countermeasure remains an open problem. As a result, we expect to see FAW attacks among mining pools.Comment: This paper is an extended version of a paper accepted to ACM CCS 201

Variables Associated with Thermal Emittance of Wall Mural Art in Richmond, Virginia

The objectives of this research are to determine the factors associated with the minimum, maximum, and average thermal emittance temperatures of wall murals in Richmond, Virginia, and make recommendations for color and location of wall murals. Data for 17 parameters were collected for 64 art murals in downtown Richmond, VA from 28 June 2018 – 19 July 2018. Date, time, solar exposure duration, solar elevation, latitude, longitude, air temperature (C), lux, color, solar cardinal minutes, cardinal direction, minimum, maximum, and average surface thermal emittance temperatures of mural face were recorded for each mural. We reject the hypothesis that minimum, maximum, and average thermal emittance temperatures of wall murals do not vary significantly with temporal, spatial, physical changes, and solar factors. Maximum, minimum, and average emittance temperatures of wall mural art varied significantly with the number of minutes that solar energy directly illuminating mural art for each cardinal direction, lux, solar elevation, total diurnal exposure, maximum mural color, and percent dark colors on murals. Minimum mural wall art temperatures (30.0-37.0 C) occurred on surfaces facing East, North, Northwest, and Northeast which also had the lowest lux values (8,867-14,231); highest temperatures (44.8-49.9 C) were recorded on walls facing South, Southeast, and West, which had the highest lux values (42,517-46,000). Based on results of this study and those investigating mitigation of the urban heat island effect with building materials and coatings on walls and roofs, we recommend a study that uses a systematic approach to locating wall mural art based on specific colors, paint composition, and wall materials to guide local building authorities owners, and artists to maximize albedo. Additionally, we recommend, where possible, mural art should be painted on vertical surfaces facing North, Northeast, and Northwest where lux values and thermal gain are the lowest of all possible cardinal directions. Such locations could accommodate the use of dark colors without significantly increasing the heat load in urban communities. And finally, where mural art is being considered for building walls facing South, Southeast, Southwest and West, we recommend that artists use a palette of primarily light colors with high reflective properties to maximize albedo, and minimize use of dark colors

Human-Elaboration-Object-Construal Contingency Framework for Mobile Decision-Aids (MoDA©) in In-Store Shopping

Mobile migration is under way with online retail shifting to mobile and in-store shoppers increasingly using their smart phones for decision-making. However, the use of mobile devices to acquire product information in-store often results in information overload and decision abandonment, leading to a retailer\u27s lost opportunity for in-store conversion. Hence, there is a critical need to enhance consumers\u27 abilities to make decisions in-stores, when they lack information, time and cognitive resources. To address this need, we propose a conceptual framework for designing conversational, mobile decision-aids (MoDA), mobile-app based intelligent systems, for in-store shopping, grounded in principles of user- and object-adaptive, intelligent information retrieval and decision strategy

III-V Device Integration on Silicon Via Metamorphic SiGe Substrates

A range of high performance minority carrier devices have been successfully fabricated on Si virtual substrates where threading dislocation densities (TDDs) as low as1x10^6 cm^-2 are routinely achieved. Minority carrier lifetime data achieved on GaAs-on-Si layers exploiting this novel SiGe buffer approach to monolithic integration (ζ_p = 10.5 ns and ζ_n = 1.7ns) verifies the high III-V material quality. Single junction GaAs solar cells with high efficiencies for GaAs/Si of 18.1% under AM1.5-G illumination were demonstrated. Further exploiting the novel GaAs/Si material quality, even more complex minority carrier devices including dual-junction solar cells and LEDs were fabricated, yielding high performance consistent with the high III-V/Si mobilities. In both cases, certain device metrics on SiGe outperformed identical GaAs monolithic devices. Finally, a visible laser on Si was achieved, demonstrating the success and further potential of this III-V/Si integration methodology

The Microbe-Derived Short Chain Fatty Acid Butyrate Targets miRNA-Dependent p21 Gene Expression in Human Colon Cancer

Colonic microbiota ferment non-absorbed dietary fiber to produce prodigious amounts of short chain fatty acids (SCFAs) that benefit the host through a myriad of metabolic, trophic, and chemopreventative effects. The chemopreventative effects of the SCFA butyrate are, in part, mediated through induction of p21 gene expression. In this study, we assessed the role of microRNA(miRNA) in butyrate's induction of p21 expression. The expression profiles of miRNAs in HCT-116 cells and in human sporadic colon cancers were assessed by microarray and quantitative PCR. Regulation of p21 gene expression by miR-106b was assessed by 3′ UTR luciferase reporter assays and transfection of specific miRNA mimics. Butyrate changed the expression of 44 miRNAs in HCT-116 cells, many of which were aberrantly expressed in colon cancer tissues. Members of the miR-106b family were decreased in the former and increased in the latter. Butyrate-induced p21 protein expression was dampened by treatment with a miR-106b mimic. Mutated p21 3′UTR-reporter constructs expressed in HCT-116 cells confirmed direct miR-106b targeting. Butyrate decreased HCT-116 proliferation, an effect reversed with the addition of the miR-106b mimic. We conclude that microbe-derived SCFAs regulate host gene expression involved in intestinal homeostasis as well as carcinogenesis through modulation of miRNAs

The Microbe-Derived Short Chain Fatty Acid Butyrate Targets miRNA-Dependent p21 Gene Expression in Human Colon Cancer

Colonic microbiota ferment non-absorbed dietary fiber to produce prodigious amounts of short chain fatty acids (SCFAs) that benefit the host through a myriad of metabolic, trophic, and chemopreventative effects. The chemopreventative effects of the SCFA butyrate are, in part, mediated through induction of p21 gene expression. In this study, we assessed the role of microRNA(miRNA) in butyrate's induction of p21 expression. The expression profiles of miRNAs in HCT-116 cells and in human sporadic colon cancers were assessed by microarray and quantitative PCR. Regulation of p21 gene expression by miR-106b was assessed by 3′ UTR luciferase reporter assays and transfection of specific miRNA mimics. Butyrate changed the expression of 44 miRNAs in HCT-116 cells, many of which were aberrantly expressed in colon cancer tissues. Members of the miR-106b family were decreased in the former and increased in the latter. Butyrate-induced p21 protein expression was dampened by treatment with a miR-106b mimic. Mutated p21 3′UTR-reporter constructs expressed in HCT-116 cells confirmed direct miR-106b targeting. Butyrate decreased HCT-116 proliferation, an effect reversed with the addition of the miR-106b mimic. We conclude that microbe-derived SCFAs regulate host gene expression involved in intestinal homeostasis as well as carcinogenesis through modulation of miRNAs.</p

Tissue microarrays: one size does not fit all

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Although tissue microarrays (TMAs) are commonly employed in clinical and basic-science research, there are no guidelines for evaluating the appropriateness of a TMA for a given biomarker and tumor type. Furthermore, TMA performance across multiple biomarkers has not been systematically explored.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A simulated TMA with between 1 and 10 cores was designed to study tumor expression of 6 biomarkers with varied expression patterns (B7-H1, B7-H3, survivin, Ki-67, CAIX, and IMP3) using 100 patients with clear cell renal cell carcinoma (RCC). We evaluated agreement between whole tissue section and TMA immunohistochemical biomarker quantification to assess how many TMA cores are necessary to adequately represent RCC whole tissue section expression. Additionally, we evaluated associations of whole tissue section and TMA expression with RCC-specific death.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The number of simulated TMA cores necessary to adequately represent whole tissue section quantification is biomarker specific. Although 2-3 cores appeared adequate for B7-H3, Ki-67, CAIX, and IMP3, even as many as 10 cores resulted in poor agreement for B7-H1 and survivin compared to RCC whole tissue sections. While whole tissue section B7-H1 was significantly associated with RCC-specific death, no significant associations were detected using as many as 10 TMA cores, suggesting that TMAs can result in false-negative findings if the TMA is not optimally designed.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Prior to TMA analysis, the number of TMA cores necessary to accurately represent biomarker expression on whole tissue sections should be established as there is not a one-size-fits-all TMA. We illustrate the use of a simulated TMA as a cost-effective tool for this purpose.</p

Prostate cancer-specific PET radiotracers : a review on the clinical utility in recurrent disease

Prostate cancer-specific positron emission tomography (pcPET) has been shown to detect sites of disease recurrence at serum prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels that are lower than those levels detected by conventional imaging. Commonly used pcPET radiotracers in the setting of biochemical recurrence are reviewed including carbon 11/fludeoxyglucose 18 (F-18) choline, gallium 68/F-18 prostate-specificmembrane antigen (PSMA), and F-18 fluciclovine. Review of the literature generally favors PSMA-based agents for the detection of recurrence as a function of low PSA levels. Positive gallium 68/F-18PSMA positron emission tomography/computed tomography scans detected potential sites of recurrence in a median 51.5% of patients when PSA level is 2.0 ng/mL. Review of carbon 11/fludeoxyglucose 18 (F-18) choline and F-18 fluciclovine data commonly demonstrated lower detection rates for each respective PSA cohort, although with some important caveats, despite having similar operational characteristics to PSMA-based imaging. Sensitive pcPET imaging has provided new insight into the early patterns of disease spread, which has prompted judicious reconsideration of additional local therapy after either prostatectomy, definitive radiation therapy, or postprostatectomy radiation therapy. This review discusses the literature, clinical utility, availability, and fundamental understanding of pcPET imaging needed to improve clinical practice. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. on behalf of American Society for Radiation Oncology