The Contemporary Chinese Art Dilemma: From Communist Government Control to Capitalist Market Control

This thesis will explore the effects of Chinese globalization and modernization on contemporary Chinese art. Contemporary Chinese art is an important case study because of its unusual development. Unlike western art practices, which grew out of gradual historical evolution of the traditional canon, contemporary Chinese art finds its origins in 1976 at the end of the Cultural Revolution. During Mao Zedong’s governance of the Communist Party of China from 1949 to 1976, Chinese culture was virtually eliminated save officially sanctioned propaganda art. Thus at the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, Chinese art found itself at a tabula rasa. The events following the revolution encouraged artists to take inspiration from western art and philosophy, incorporating western techniques into their discussion of the Chinese experience. Although contemporary Chinese art appropriates western practices, the foundational history of the art differs vastly from that of the west. Unlike contemporary western art, which developed as a series of reactions against previous movements, contemporary Chinese art has grown out of a desire to find alternative modes of expression in attempt to discuss the Chinese experience. Central to the discussion of contemporary Chinese art is the introduction of global arts institutions such as the market to artistic concerns. Beyond the country’s new cultural beginnings, China’s shift from a communist to a capitalist state has brought forth significant complications regarding the production, circulation, and distribution of art

Technical Provocations: Material Inventions, Structural Assemblies, and Environmental Responses as Precursors and Design Prompts

The purpose of the study is to develop a studio course that is a precursor to the integrative studio in the University of Florida Master of Architecture curriculum. The studio course introduces each building technology discipline as design concept generators and the course intends to prepare students not to think of building technologies in only practical terms but to integrate a conceptual thinking regarding building technologies in their design work. Our primary goal is for the students to discover poetic approaches for working with building technologies before they need to integrate all disciplines simultaneously in their design work. The studio tests three projects in a 16-week semester: one project generated from materials and construction methods, a second rooted in structural principles at multiple scales, and the third centered on environmental strategies for extreme climates. In the first project, the students were challenged with the connecting their speculative proposals with built reality. In the third project, they had to address places and conditions that are beyond their own experience. In all three projects, we found that the majority of students struggled with the application of building technology principles in their design process. There was a disconnect between practicalities and conceptual thinking. In our analysis, this indicates that building technologies may not be most effective when they are separate studies isolated from studio design

Chapter 7: Social Health: Beyond Absence of Social Isolation and Loneliness

This chapter evaluates key social theories of aging that explain the social health state of older Americans. It examines evidence on social networks and social connectedness as well as social isolation and loneliness in aging experience. It calls to promote and protect the rights of social health of older adults

Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Consistent Reporting of Smoking-Related Behaviors

This study assessed the effect of race/ethnicity on the prevalence of inconsistent reports regarding ever smoking, time since smoking cessation, and age of initiating regular smoking. We used the Tobacco Use Supplement to the Current Population Survey data, which came from a test-retest reliability study, and considered three racial/ethnic subpopulations, Hispanics, Non-Hispanic (NH) Blacks and NH Whites. Initial exploration of highly disagreeing reports of time since smoking cessation and age of onset of regular smoking initiation indicated that the majority of these reports corresponded to NH Whites. However, the proportion of the extremely discrepant reports was very small (less than 0.8%), and these reports were not included in the main analyses. Univariate analyses revealed that for each smoking measure, NH Whites tended to report most consistently when compared to Hispanics and NH Blacks. However, the only statistically significant result was that Hispanics were more likely to report their regular smoking initiation age inconsistently than were NH Whites. Analyses that adjusted for other factors confirmed this finding, i.e., Hispanics were 1.8 times more likely to provide inconsistent reports of their age of onset of regular smoking than were NH Whites. Furthermore, these analyses showed that the impact of race/ethnicity on the prevalence of inconsistent reporting may depend on other factors, e.g., age and employment status. For example, non-employed NH Blacks were 1.9 times more likely to recant ever smoking than were non-employed NH Whites. The lower consistency in reports by Hispanics and NH Blacks underscores the importance of developing new survey design and research strategies for detecting relatively small differences in reporting among the racial/ethnic minorities. Additional efforts to motivate racial/ethnic minorities to participate in national surveys may not only help increase representation of these subpopulations in study samples but also help improve overall data quality

Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Consistent Reporting of Smoking-Related Behaviors

This study assessed the effect of race/ethnicity on the prevalence of inconsistent reports regarding ever smoking, time since smoking cessation, and age of initiating regular smoking. We used the Tobacco Use Supplement to the Current Population Survey data, which came from a test-retest reliability study, and considered three racial/ethnic subpopulations, Hispanics, Non-Hispanic (NH) Blacks and NH Whites. Initial exploration of highly disagreeing reports of time since smoking cessation and age of onset of regular smoking initiation indicated that the majority of these reports corresponded to NH Whites. However, the proportion of the extremely discrepant reports was very small (less than 0.8%), and these reports were not included in the main analyses. Univariate analyses revealed that for each smoking measure, NH Whites tended to report most consistently when compared to Hispanics and NH Blacks. However, the only statistically significant result was that Hispanics were more likely to report their regular smoking initiation age inconsistently than were NH Whites. Analyses that adjusted for other factors confirmed this finding, i.e., Hispanics were 1.8 times more likely to provide inconsistent reports of their age of onset of regular smoking than were NH Whites. Furthermore, these analyses showed that the impact of race/ethnicity on the prevalence of inconsistent reporting may depend on other factors, e.g., age and employment status. For example, non-employed NH Blacks were 1.9 times more likely to recant ever smoking than were non-employed NH Whites. The lower consistency in reports by Hispanics and NH Blacks underscores the importance of developing new survey design and research strategies for detecting relatively small differences in reporting among the racial/ethnic minorities. Additional efforts to motivate racial/ethnic minorities to participate in national surveys may not only help increase representation of these subpopulations in study samples but also help improve overall data quality

A Mathematical Analysis of the Wind Triangle Problem and an Inquiry of True Airspeed Calculations in Supersonic Flight

In the first half of this paper, we present a fresh perspective toward the Wind Triangle Problem in aerial navigation by deriving necessary and sufficient conditions, which we call go/no-go conditions , for the existence/non-existence of a solution of the problem. Although our derivation is based on simple trigonometry and basic properties of quadratic functions, it is mathematically rigorous. We also offer examples to demonstrate how easy it is to check these conditions graphically. In the second half of this paper, we use function theory to re-examine another problem in aerial navigation, namely, that of computing true airspeed — even in supersonic flight — from only three instrument readings obtainable from a basic flight instrument panel: calibrated airspeed, pressure altitude, and total air temperature. We present the first known mathematically rigorous analysis of the use of fixed-point iteration to compute true airspeed and Mach number from the Rayleigh Supersonic Pitot Equation. Our analysis comes with error estimates that are not found anywhere in the literature

Retrieval cues fail to influence contextualized evaluations.

Initial evaluations generalise to new contexts, whereas counter-attitudinal evaluations are context-specific. Counter-attitudinal information may not change evaluations in new contexts because perceivers fail to retrieve counter-attitudinal cue-evaluation associations from memory outside the counter-attitudinal learning context. The current work examines whether an additional, counter-attitudinal retrieval cue can enhance the generalizability of counter-attitudinal evaluations. In four experiments, participants learned positive information about a target person, Bob, in one context, and then learned negative information about Bob in a different context. While learning the negative information, participants wore a wristband as a retrieval cue for counter-attitudinal Bob-negative associations. Participants then made speeded as well as deliberate evaluations of Bob while wearing or not wearing the wristband. Internal meta-analysis failed to find a reliable effect of the counter-attitudinal retrieval cue on speeded or deliberate evaluations, whereas the context cues influenced speeded and deliberate evaluations. Counter to predictions, counter-attitudinal retrieval cues did not disrupt the generalisation of first-learned evaluations or the context-specificity of second-learned evaluations (Experiments 2-4), but the counter-attitudinal retrieval cue did influence evaluations in the absence of context cues (Experiment 1). The current work provides initial evidence that additional counter-attitudinal retrieval cues fail to disrupt the renewal and generalizability of first-learned evaluations