Art and celebrity : a study of the celebritisation of artists in Taiwan 1987-2010

This thesis examines the emergence of celebrity art in Taiwan in the postmartial law period since 1987. It analyses the different forces that have contributed to the construction of celebrity art as a prevalent phenomenon and explores its changing significance in Taiwan’s contemporary art scene and society. Based on extensive primary evidence from different kinds of materials, including journals and newspaper articles, magazine reports, exhibition catalogues and reviews, television programmes and Internet resources, gallery and museum visits, and interviews with celebrity artists and curators, this thesis argues that the construction of celebrity art in Taiwan demonstrates a constant negotiation between artists’ aspirations for celebrity recognition, media, corporate business and political interests. I argue that in the celebritisation process, businesses and corporations utilise art to cultivate a positive brand image, generate commercial activities, accumulate cultural capital and consolidate their power and influence. In this sense, celebrity art becomes an aspect of business operations, in ways that are similar to those criticised by scholar Julian Stallabrass’s in the Western context. However, the development of corporate art intervention in Taiwan has distinctive features which are associated with the process of democratisation and its strong impact on the emergence of celebrity art. Furthermore, the government’s promotion of celebrity artists has enabled it to promote its national political identity in the global arena. This relates especially to the changing political scene in Taiwan since 1987 in which that celebrity art has become a means for different political parties to express their political concerns. At the same time, these processes have empowered artists to engage with larger social, cultural and political forces, demonstrating the capacity of celebrity art to serve as a vehicle of new social and aesthetic values about issues such as gender and womanhood. Certain aspects of Taiwan’s celebrity art also contribute to a new ‘cool’, largely young, and socially distinctive urban taste culture in Taiwan, by bringing innovative characteristics to Taiwan’s art scene that bridge high and popular culture. The celebritisation of art in Taiwan thus has many similarities with those discussed by Walker, Stallabrass and other Western scholars with reference to Western tendencies, but is distinctive in its political and social-economic causes. The first chapter introduces my aims and arguments, and gives an overview of the historical and political, media, institutional and global changes that facilitated the emergence of celebrity art in Taiwan. This chapter also describes my research methodology. Chapter two provides an analysis of relevant historical and theoretical perspectives on the construction of the celebrity and celebrity art, and examines their social, cultural and economic importance in both Western and East Asian societies. Chapter three to seven respectively examine different cases of celebrity artists, namely Lee Ming-sheng, Chu Cha-ray, Cai Guoqiang, Tang Huang-chen and the VT Artsalon group. Each of the cases exemplifies particular features—overlapping with and distinct from each other—of the concept of celebrity art in Taiwan. Through close examination of these cases, the thesis investigates an important aspect of Taiwan’s changing art scene that has not to date featured in scholarly work on contemporary culture in Taiwan.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data

Search for heavy resonances decaying to two Higgs bosons in final states containing four b quarks

A search is presented for narrow heavy resonances X decaying into pairs of Higgs bosons (H) in proton-proton collisions collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC at root s = 8 TeV. The data correspond to an integrated luminosity of 19.7 fb(-1). The search considers HH resonances with masses between 1 and 3 TeV, having final states of two b quark pairs. Each Higgs boson is produced with large momentum, and the hadronization products of the pair of b quarks can usually be reconstructed as single large jets. The background from multijet and t (t) over bar events is significantly reduced by applying requirements related to the flavor of the jet, its mass, and its substructure. The signal would be identified as a peak on top of the dijet invariant mass spectrum of the remaining background events. No evidence is observed for such a signal. Upper limits obtained at 95 confidence level for the product of the production cross section and branching fraction sigma(gg -> X) B(X -> HH -> b (b) over barb (b) over bar) range from 10 to 1.5 fb for the mass of X from 1.15 to 2.0 TeV, significantly extending previous searches. For a warped extra dimension theory with amass scale Lambda(R) = 1 TeV, the data exclude radion scalar masses between 1.15 and 1.55 TeV

Measurement of the top quark mass using charged particles in pp collisions at root s=8 TeV

Peer reviewe

Ultralight vector dark matter search using data from the KAGRA O3GK run

Among the various candidates for dark matter (DM), ultralight vector DM can be probed by laser interferometric gravitational wave detectors through the measurement of oscillating length changes in the arm cavities. In this context, KAGRA has a unique feature due to differing compositions of its mirrors, enhancing the signal of vector DM in the length change in the auxiliary channels. Here we present the result of a search for U(1)B−L gauge boson DM using the KAGRA data from auxiliary length channels during the first joint observation run together with GEO600. By applying our search pipeline, which takes into account the stochastic nature of ultralight DM, upper bounds on the coupling strength between the U(1)B−L gauge boson and ordinary matter are obtained for a range of DM masses. While our constraints are less stringent than those derived from previous experiments, this study demonstrates the applicability of our method to the lower-mass vector DM search, which is made difficult in this measurement by the short observation time compared to the auto-correlation time scale of DM

Exposição à periodontite no intervalo de um ano antes do tratamento antidiabético e risco de artrite reumatoide em pacientes com diabete mellitus: estudo de coorte populacional

Objetivo:Examinar se uma história de periodontite (PD) antes do tratamento antidiabético está associada a risco de ocorrência de artrite reumatoide (AR) em pacientes com diabetes melittus (DM) tratados de novo.Métodos:Fizemos um estudo retrospectivo populacional com os dados de reivindicações do National Health Insurance (NHI) de 1997-2009 referentes a um milhão de indivíduos representativos da totalidade de matriculados. Adultos com DM (≥ 20 anos) que iniciaram o tratamento antidiabético durante 2001-2009 foram classificados como pacientes DM tratados de novo. Identificamos 7.097 indivíduos DM com história de PD em um intervalo de um ano antes do tratamento antidiabético (data-índice). Na equiparação desses 7.097 indivíduos para idade por ocasião da data-índice, gênero e ano da data-índice, extraímos aleatoriamente 14.194 pacientes DM sem história de PD em um intervalo de um ano antes do tratamento antidiabético. As razões de risco ajustadas (aRR) com um intervalo de confiança (IC) de 95% foram calculadas mediante a aplicação do modelo de riscos proporcionais de Cox com o objetivo de quantificar a associação entre história de PD e risco de AR.Resultados:Em comparação com pacientes DM sem exposição à PD no intervalo de um ano antes do tratamento antidiabético, RR bruta e RR ajustada para AR entre pacientes DM e com exposição à PD no intervalo de um ano antes do tratamento antidiabético foram, respectivamente, 4,51 (IC 95%, 1,39-14,64) e 3,77 (IC 95%, 1,48-9,60).Conclusão:A exposição à PD no intervalo de um ano antes do tratamento antidiabético foi associada a maior risco de AR em pacientes DM tratados de novo. A ausência do status de tabagismo em nível individual é importante limitação desse estudo

A Programmable High-Voltage Compliance Neural Stimulator for Deep Brain Stimulation in Vivo

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is one of the most effective therapies for movement and other disorders. The DBS neurosurgical procedure involves the implantation of a DBS device and a battery-operated neurotransmitter, which delivers electrical impulses to treatment targets through implanted electrodes. The DBS modulates the neuronal activities in the brain nucleus for improving physiological responses as long as an electric discharge above the stimulation threshold can be achieved. In an effort to improve the performance of an implanted DBS device, the device size, implementation cost, and power efficiency are among the most important DBS device design aspects. This study aims to present preliminary research results of an efficient stimulator, with emphasis on conversion efficiency. The prototype stimulator features high-voltage compliance, implemented with only a standard semiconductor process, without the use of extra masks in the foundry through our proposed circuit structure. The results of animal experiments, including evaluation of evoked responses induced by thalamic electrical stimuli with our fabricated chip, were shown to demonstrate the proof of concept of our design

Efficacy and safety of sparsentan versus irbesartan in patients with IgA nephropathy (PROTECT): 2-year results from a randomised, active-controlled, phase 3 trial

BackgroundSparsentan, a novel, non-immunosuppressive, single-molecule, dual endothelin angiotensin receptor antagonist, significantly reduced proteinuria versus irbesartan, an angiotensin II receptor blocker, at 36 weeks (primary endpoint) in patients with immunoglobulin A nephropathy in the phase 3 PROTECT trial's previously reported interim analysis. Here, we report kidney function and outcomes over 110 weeks from the double-blind final analysis.MethodsPROTECT, a double-blind, randomised, active-controlled, phase 3 study, was done across 134 clinical practice sites in 18 countries throughout the Americas, Asia, and Europe. Patients aged 18 years or older with biopsy-proven primary IgA nephropathy and proteinuria of at least 1·0 g per day despite maximised renin–angiotensin system inhibition for at least 12 weeks were randomly assigned (1:1) to receive sparsentan (target dose 400 mg oral sparsentan once daily) or irbesartan (target dose 300 mg oral irbesartan once daily) based on a permuted-block randomisation method. The primary endpoint was proteinuria change between treatment groups at 36 weeks. Secondary endpoints included rate of change (slope) of the estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR), changes in proteinuria, a composite of kidney failure (confirmed 40% eGFR reduction, end-stage kidney disease, or all-cause mortality), and safety and tolerability up to 110 weeks from randomisation. Secondary efficacy outcomes were assessed in the full analysis set and safety was assessed in the safety set, both of which were defined as all patients who were randomly assigned and received at least one dose of randomly assigned study drug. This trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT03762850.FindingsBetween Dec 20, 2018, and May 26, 2021, 203 patients were randomly assigned to the sparsentan group and 203 to the irbesartan group. One patient from each group did not receive the study drug and was excluded from the efficacy and safety analyses (282 [70%] of 404 included patients were male and 272 [67%] were White) . Patients in the sparsentan group had a slower rate of eGFR decline than those in the irbesartan group. eGFR chronic 2-year slope (weeks 6–110) was −2·7 mL/min per 1·73 m2 per year versus −3·8 mL/min per 1·73 m2 per year (difference 1·1 mL/min per 1·73 m2 per year, 95% CI 0·1 to 2·1; p=0·037); total 2-year slope (day 1–week 110) was −2·9 mL/min per 1·73 m2 per year versus −3·9 mL/min per 1·73 m2 per year (difference 1·0 mL/min per 1·73 m2 per year, 95% CI −0·03 to 1·94; p=0·058). The significant reduction in proteinuria at 36 weeks with sparsentan was maintained throughout the study period; at 110 weeks, proteinuria, as determined by the change from baseline in urine protein-to-creatinine ratio, was 40% lower in the sparsentan group than in the irbesartan group (−42·8%, 95% CI −49·8 to −35·0, with sparsentan versus −4·4%, −15·8 to 8·7, with irbesartan; geometric least-squares mean ratio 0·60, 95% CI 0·50 to 0·72). The composite kidney failure endpoint was reached by 18 (9%) of 202 patients in the sparsentan group versus 26 (13%) of 202 patients in the irbesartan group (relative risk 0·7, 95% CI 0·4 to 1·2). Treatment-emergent adverse events were well balanced between sparsentan and irbesartan, with no new safety signals.InterpretationOver 110 weeks, treatment with sparsentan versus maximally titrated irbesartan in patients with IgA nephropathy resulted in significant reductions in proteinuria and preservation of kidney function