Rethinking representation: shifting relations between museums and the indigenous peoples of Taiwan

The museum is a powerful site of representation; “which” objects and “how” they are displayed engenders issues of ownership and carries a symbolism that has social and political consequences. This article will look at the changing relations between museums and the Indigenous communities of Taiwan and how these relationships are manifest in the museums’ collections, exhibitions, and communication strategies. To provide historical context and trajectories of change, I examine how the Indigenous peoples of Taiwan were represented in museums and exhibitions in early twentieth-century colonial regimes. I then discuss changes in the representations of Indigenous peoples within post-war Taiwan and how these changes relate to the complex search for national identity, which invokes echoes of the Japanese colonial period and the dominance of Han Chinese heritage. I utilize James Clifford’s idea of the museum as a contact zone to explore strategies of “culture-collecting” and the extent to which this can be seen as a response to particular political conditions, such as histories of dominance, hierarchy, and resistance. As contact zones, museums can help communities negotiate difficult cultural and political problems through dialogue and alliances. Furthermore, in order to identify some of the key themes that also relate to Taiwan, the article will draw upon cases of emerging partnerships and collaborations between Indigenous communities and museum sectors to examine how these assist in re-thinking issues around the representation of Indigenous peoples by asserting new political relationships through their material culture

On Deligne's conjecture for symmetric fourth LL-functions of Hilbert modular forms

We prove Deligne's conjecture for symmetric fourth $L$-functions of Hilbert modular forms. We extend the result of Morimoto based on generalization and refinement of the results of Grobner and Lin to cohomological irreducible essentially conjugate self-dual cuspidal automorphic representations of ${\rm GL}_2$ and ${\rm GL}_3$ over CM-fields.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2012.0062

Design, fabrication and characterization of monolithic embedded parylene microchannels in silicon substrate

This paper presents a novel channel fabrication technology of bulk-micromachined monolithic embedded polymer channels in silicon substrate. The fabrication process favorably obviates the need for sacrifical materials in surface-micromachined channels and wafer-bonding in conventional bulk-micromachined channels. Single-layer-deposited parylene C (poly-para-xylylene C) is selected as a structural material in the microfabricated channels/columns to conduct life science research. High pressure capacity can be obtained in these channels by the assistance of silicon substrate support to meet the needs of high-pressure loading conditions in microfluidic applications. The fabrication technology is completely compatible with further lithographic CMOS/MEMS processes, which enables the fabricated embedded structures to be totally integrated with on-chip micro/nano-sensors/actuators/structures for miniaturized lab-on-a-chip systems. An exemplary process was described to show the feasibility of combining bulk micromachining and surface micromachining techniques in process integration. Embedded channels in versatile cross-section profile designs have been fabricated and characterized to demonstrate their capabilities for various applications. A quasi-hemi-circular-shaped embedded parylene channel has been fabricated and verified to withstand inner pressure loadings higher than 1000 psi without failure for micro-high performance liquid chromatography (µHPLC) analysis. Fabrication of a high-aspect-ratio (internal channel height/internal channel width, greater than 20) quasi-rectangular-shaped embedded parylene channel has also been presented and characterized. Its implementation in a single-mask spiral parylene column longer than 1.1 m in a 3.3 mm × 3.3 mm square size on a chip has been demonstrated for prospective micro-gas chromatography (µGC) and high-density, high-efficiency separations. This proposed monolithic embedded channel technology can be extensively implemented to fabricate microchannels/columns in high-pressure microfludics and high-performance/high-throughput chip-based micro total analysis systems (µTAS)