426 research outputs found
The Institution of Polygamy in the Chinese Imperial Palace
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2013. This is the published version of the article, made available with the permission of the publisher. The original published version can be found at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0021911813001137This study examines Chinese imperial polygamy under two aspects, as institution and
actual practice. Institution refers to its existence as a set of rules and expectations, practice
to the actual ways in which imperial people carried out polygamy as recorded in both historical
and fictional sources. The key to the institutionalization of polygamy had to do
with the idea that a ruler did not engage in polygamy because he wanted to, but
because he had to in order to fulfill his role as Son of Heaven. He was obligated to
extend the patriline and was as if following a hallowed directive. Practice had to do
with what rules and expectations could not control or predict, including how a man justified
his role as polygamist, his polygamous transgressions, and how he dealt with the
main challenge to polygamous harmony, women’s jealousy and rivalry
Sublime Love and the Ethics of Equality in a Homoerotic Novel of the Nineteenth Century: "Precious Mirror of Boy Actresses"
This is the publisher's version, also available electronically from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156852602100402332.Precious Mirror of Boy Actresses is the most serious piece of fiction about male love
since the late Ming and the lengthiest of all in Chinese literary history. It is remarkable
in its extension of the egalitarian implications of the qing aesthetic that
it inherits from the late Ming and from earlier Qing literature such as Dream of the
Red Chamber. In the homoerotic relationship it idealizes, lovers who are rigidly
separated in terms of status nevertheless experience a sublime love which necessarily
results in the liberation of the man of lower status. The novel makes unique
use of the qing aesthetic's idealization of the feminine to arrive at this ethically
pragmatic conclusion whereby liberation is achieved. The foregrounding of this
sublime love and the qing-perfected characters who embody it, moreover, link the
novel with other works of the period which portray a China that is ultimately a
stable and invulnerable entity. Thus Precious Mirror's interpretation of qing carries
a historical significance in spite of the novel's obliviousness of the social and po¬
litical turmoil of China in the mid-nineteenth century
Opium and Sexuality in Late Qing Fiction
This is the publisher's version, also available electronically from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156852600750072321.This article examines opium smoking in two gendered contexts of the late Qing,
as an activity among socializing men and in situations between men and women.
The method is to use fiction to ask how male and female smokers differed and in
general to show how opium came to symbolize an uncanny and ominous disrup¬
tion of the social fabric. In terms of gender, the obscene enjoyment of the female
smoker was exponentially more threatening in the prohibitionist's eyes than that
of the male. As the sign of an unprecedented type of pleasure, opium addiction
threatened to denaturalize the boundaries of cultural as well as gender identity
Circulating tumor necrosis factor alpha may modulate the short-term detraining induced muscle mass loss following prolonged resistance training
Copyright © 2019 McMahon, Morse, Winwood, Burden and Onambélé. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Introduction: Tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNFα) is a pro-inflammatory cytokine that has been shown to modulate muscle mass, and is responsive to exercise training. The effects of resistance training (RT) followed by a short period of detraining on muscle size, architecture and function in combination with circulating TNFα levels have not been previously investigated in a young, healthy population. Methods: Sixteen participants (8 males and 8 females) were randomly assigned to a training group (TRA; age 20 ± 3 years, mass 76 ± 7 kg), whilst fourteen participants (7 males and 7 females) age 22 ± 2 years, mass 77 ± 6 kg were assigned to a control group (CON). Measures of vastus lateralis (VL) muscle size (normalized physiological cross-sectional area allometrically scaled to body mass; npCSA), architecture (fascicle length; LF, pennation angle Pθ), strength (knee extensor maximal voluntary contraction; KE MVC), specific force, subcutaneous fat (SF) and circulating TNFα were assessed at baseline (BL), post 8 weeks RT (PT), and at two (DT1) and four (DT2) weeks of detraining. Results: Pooled BL TNFα was 0.87 ± 0.28 pg/mL with no differences between groups. BL TNFα tended to be correlated with npCSA (p = 0.055) and KEMVC (p = 0.085) but not specific force (p = 0.671) or SF (p = 0.995). There were significant (p 0.05) changes in SF, specific force or TNFα at any time points. There was a significant correlation (p = 0.022, r = 0.57) between the relative changes in TNFα and npCSA at DT2 compared to PT. Discussion: Neither RT nor a period of short term detraining altered the quality of muscle (i.e., specific force) despite changes in morphology and function. TNFα does not appear to have any impact on RT-induced gains in muscle size or function, however, TNFα may play a role in inflammatory-status mediated muscle mass loss during subsequent detraining in healthy adults
The High Time Resolution Universe Pulsar Survey I: System configuration and initial discoveries
We have embarked on a survey for pulsars and fast transients using the
13-beam Multibeam receiver on the Parkes radio telescope. Installation of a
digital backend allows us to record 400 MHz of bandwidth for each beam, split
into 1024 channels and sampled every 64 us. Limits of the receiver package
restrict us to a 340 MHz observing band centred at 1352 MHz. The factor of
eight improvement in frequency resolution over previous multibeam surveys
allows us to probe deeper into the Galactic plane for short duration signals
such as the pulses from millisecond pulsars. We plan to survey the entire
southern sky in 42641 pointings, split into low, mid and high Galactic latitude
regions, with integration times of 4200, 540 and 270 s respectively.
Simulations suggest that we will discover 400 pulsars, of which 75 will be
millisecond pulsars. With ~30% of the mid-latitude survey complete, we have
re-detected 223 previously known pulsars and discovered 27 pulsars, 5 of which
are millisecond pulsars. The newly discovered millisecond pulsars tend to have
larger dispersion measures than those discovered in previous surveys, as
expected from the improved time and frequency resolution of our instrument.Comment: Updated author list. 10 pages, 7 figures. For publication in MNRA
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Biofuel Feedstock Assessment for Selected Countries
Findings from biofuel feedstock production assessments and projections of future supply are presented and discussed. The report aims to improve capabilities to assess the degree to which imported biofuel could contribute to meeting future U.S. targets to reduce dependence on imported oil. The study scope was focused to meet time and resource requirements. A screening process identified Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, India, Mexico, and the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) region for initial analysis, given their likely role in future feedstock supply relevant to U.S. markets. Supply curves for selected feedstocks in these countries are projected for 2012, 2017 and 2027. The supply functions, along with calculations to reflect estimated supplies available for export and/or biofuel production, were provided to DOE for use in a broader energy market allocation study. Potential cellulosic supplies from crop and forestry residues and perennials were also estimated for 2017 and 2027. The analysis identified capacity to potentially double or triple feedstock production by 2017 in some cases. A majority of supply growth is derived from increasing the area cultivated (especially sugarcane in Brazil). This is supplemented by improving yields and farming practices. Most future supplies of corn and wheat are projected to be allocated to food and feed. Larger shares of future supplies of sugarcane, soybean and palm oil production will be available for export or biofuel. National policies are catalyzing investments in biofuel industries to meet targets for fuel blending that generally fall in the 5-10% range. Social and environmental concerns associated with rapid expansion of feedstock production are considered. If the 2017 projected feedstock supply calculated as ‘available’ for export or biofuel were converted to fuel, it would represent the equivalent of about 38 billion gallons of gasoline. Sugarcane and bagasse dominate the available supply, representing 64% of the total. Among the nations studied, Brazil is the source of about two-thirds of available supplies, followed distantly by Argentina (12%), India and the CBI region
Microbial Community Shifts in Response to Acid Mine Drainage Pollution Within a Natural Wetland Ecosystem
Natural wetlands are known to play an important role in pollutant remediation, such as remediating acid mine drainage (AMD) from abandoned mine sites. However, many aspects of the microbiological mechanisms underlying AMD remediation within wetlands are poorly understood, including the role and composition of associated microbial communities. We have utilized an AMD-polluted river-wetland system to perform rRNA sequence analysis of microbial communities that play a role in biogeochemical activities that are linked to water quality improvement. Next-generation sequencing of bacterial 16S rRNA gene amplicons from river and wetland sediment samples identified variation in bacterial community structure and diversity on the basis of dissolved and particulate metal concentrations, sediment metal concentrations and other water chemistry parameters (pH and conductivity), and wetland plant presence. Metabolic reconstruction analysis allowed prediction of relative abundance of microbial metabolic pathways and revealed differences between samples that cluster on the basis of the severity of AMD pollution. Global metabolic activity was predicted to be significantly higher in unpolluted and wetland sediments in contrast to polluted river sediments, indicating a metabolic stress response to AMD pollution. This is one of the first studies to explore microbial community structure dynamics within a natural wetland exposed to AMD and our findings indicate that wetland ecosystems play critical roles in maintaining diversity and metabolic structure of sediment microbial communities subject to high levels of acidity and metal pollution. Moreover, these microbial communities are predicted to be important for the remediation action of the wetland
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