Re-inventing the Black Box Theatre

I propose the creation of a Re-Invented Black Box Theatre on the premise that the current black box theatre is no longer living to its fullest potential as a small intimate theatre. This Re-Invented Black Box is a space where audience, performer, and dramatized subject is successively integrated with the external world. This type of theatre is an attempt to utilize elements of the original Black Box Theatre – the level of intimacy between audience, performer, and drama – and synthesize it with mediated levels of outside influences and environment. As a result, this will cause the audience and performer to be keenly aware that the drama presented has no independent reality in some fantasy world. By doing this, the mind is kept in the present with full analytic faculties to determine solutions for correlative problems that might actually exist in the real world. The architecture of theatre is key in determining the rapport with the audience, the perception they will have, and the level of critical engagement they will have with the material presented. Currently, the delineation of the audience and performer via the elevated proscenium, changing stage props, and darkened theatre hall creates a perfect environment for the audiences’ mind to slip into a fantasy world. The creation of the more intimate ‘Black Box’ theatre, was designed to remedy the ‘psychic’ distance between audience, performer, and the drama being presented. However, this evolution still remained ineffective to a certain degree, since the darkened room and intimate black box theatre hall separated the audience, performers, and drama from the external reality that existed in the outside world. Such isolation of the entire theatre experience still allowed the audiences’ mind to slip into a distant fantasy world, where the mind cannot completely disassociate real from performance. Most importantly, however, this means that this proposed Re-Invented Black Box Theatre has both new utility and new aesthetic contributions and value to theatre, architecture, and the society for which it comments upon

Cascaded Cross-Module Residual Learning towards Lightweight End-to-End Speech Coding

Speech codecs learn compact representations of speech signals to facilitate data transmission. Many recent deep neural network (DNN) based end-to-end speech codecs achieve low bitrates and high perceptual quality at the cost of model complexity. We propose a cross-module residual learning (CMRL) pipeline as a module carrier with each module reconstructing the residual from its preceding modules. CMRL differs from other DNN-based speech codecs, in that rather than modeling speech compression problem in a single large neural network, it optimizes a series of less-complicated modules in a two-phase training scheme. The proposed method shows better objective performance than AMR-WB and the state-of-the-art DNN-based speech codec with a similar network architecture. As an end-to-end model, it takes raw PCM signals as an input, but is also compatible with linear predictive coding (LPC), showing better subjective quality at high bitrates than AMR-WB and OPUS. The gain is achieved by using only 0.9 million trainable parameters, a significantly less complex architecture than the other DNN-based codecs in the literature.Comment: Accepted for publication in INTERSPEECH 201

A Study on the Flora of 15 Islands in the Western Sea of Jeollanamdo Province, Korea

AbstractThis study aims to investigate the flora of 15 islands in Yeonggwang, Shinan, and Mokpo of the Jeollanamdo province and the distribution of major plants in order to use the results as fundamental data for studies on plants in islands. Field surveys were performed 25 times from 2004 to 2010 to investigate the flora in these regions. A total of 793 taxa including 123 families, 421 genera, 695 species, 2 subspeices, 88 varieties, and 8 forms was found. Korean endemic plants including Hepatica insularis and Galium koreanum were 6 taxa. 25 taxa of rare plants including Trachomitum lancifolium, Daphne kiusiana, and Centranthera cochinchinensis var. lutea were confirmed 120 taxa floristic special plant species were confirmed; 11 taxa of the fifth class, four taxa of the fourth class, 28 taxa of the third class. 78 taxa of naturalized plants were confirmed

Lung cancer with superior vena cava syndrome diagnosed by intravascular biopsy using EBUS-TBNA

AbstractSince superior vena cava syndrome (SVCS) is a critical condition, immediate diagnostic approach and therapy are imperative to avoid potentially life-threatening complications. Here, we report a case of lung cancer with SVCS, which was diagnosed through intravascular tumor biopsy using endobronchial ultrasound-guided transbronchial needle aspiration (EBUS-TBNA). EBUS-TBNA enabled us to obtain tissue sufficient for diagnosis, without significant complications. Prompt diagnosis was followed by appropriate anticancer treatment and improvement in the symptoms. For patients suspected of SVCS and requiring prompt pathologic diagnosis, we can consider EBUS-TBNA to diagnose intravascular or mediastinal tumors and provide an accurate diagnosis

The Effect of Clonidine Pretreatment on Epidural Resiniferatoxin in a Neuropathic Pain Rat Model

Resiniferatoxin (RTX) is an ultrapotent synthetic TRPV1 (transient receptor potential vanilloid subtype 1) agonist with significant initial transient hyperalgesia followed by a prolonged analgesic effect in response to thermal stimulus. Using a rat model of neuropathic pain, we evaluated the effect of pretreatment with clonidine－which has been shown to relieve intradermal capsaicin-induced hyperalgesia－on the initial hyperalgesic response and the thermal analgesic property of RTX. Thirty-six male rats were divided into 6 treatment groups (n＝6 each):RTX 500ng, RTX 1μg, clonidine 20μg (Cl), Cl＋RTX 500ng, Cl＋RTX 1μg, or normal saline 20μL (control). We evaluated the short-term (180min) and long-term (20 days) analgesic effects of RTX after thermal stimulation and mechanical stimulation. RTX had significant initial transient hyperalgesia followed by a prolonged analgesic effect in response to the thermal stimulus, but the RTX 500ng and RTX 1μg groups showed no initial short-term thermal hyperalgesic responses when pretreated with clonidine. The Cl＋RTX 1μg ratsʼ behavior scores indicated that they were more calm and comfortable compared to the RTX 1μg rats. Even though we cannot precisely confirm that pretreatment with clonidine potentiates or adds to the analgesic effect of RTX, clonidine pretreatment with epidural RTX eliminated the initial RTX-associated hyperalgesic response and systemic toxicity in this neuropathic pain rat model

Value of Manganese-Enhanced T1- and T2-Weighted MR Cholangiography for Differentiating Cystic Parenchymal Lesions from Cystic Abnormalities which Communicate with Bile Ducts

We present a case report to show how manganese-enhanced T1- and T2-weighted MR cholangiography could differentiate cystic parenchymal lesions from cystic abnormalities which communicate with the bile ducts