Taiwan’s democratic progressive party and its mainland china policy

Taiwan has successfully changed its political system from dictatorship into a democracy since the end of 1980s. Some people do not like 'Taiwan's democracy' -some candidates get elected by bribery in election, parliamentary fighting., but the majority of the Taiwanese people really enjoy their freedom in their homeland. They do know, at least, they have the right to oppose the government, no one would be shot by the national military force in a demonstration. The political systems are totally different between Taiwan and Mainland China, one is democracy, another is communism. Even the majority of the Taiwanese people are Chinese in ethnic origin, but their life experience are different over the past 50 years, it is difficult for any side to persuade the other side which one is better. Some Chinese Taiwanese people believe that they can have a better life, if their homeland—Taiwan can be really independent in the international community. Taiwan’s political opposition built Taiwan's first opposition party— Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) 13 years ago, and with the dream of establishing a new independent country on Taiwan. The establishment of the DPP is the result of the political opposition movement in Taiwan. Most of the members of the DPP have a strong Taiwanese identity, which is very different from the ruling KMT in Taiwan and the ruling CCP in China. The DPP gains more influence in Taiwan, the uncertainty across the Taiwan Straits increase at the same time. The DPP waited and saw between being the ruling party and establishing an independent country on Taiwan, finally it chose to complete the political aim of replacing the position of the KMT at present. The purpose of the study is to assess the DPP's policy-making in its Mainland China policy. I try to give a full picture of the policy-making process in the party. The most important factor in the formulation of the mainland China policy is the relationship between the factions within the DPP, therefore, I adopt the historical and document review approach on doing this study, and describe how the interaction between the factions worked and how they made the decisions on the policies? I found that the DPP will insist on its 'one Taiwan, one China' policy before becoming the ruling party in Taiwan. However, the DPP's insistence on the 'one China, one Taiwan' policy could bring conflicts across the Taiwan Straits and obstruct the possibility of replacing the ruling KMT's position. Hence the DPP tried to explain again the party's Taiwan independence platform, and to 'purify' the party’s ideology in order to achieve its present political aim. Because the cross-Straits relationship is still developing, the DPP's mainland policy would be affected by various factors across the Taiwan Straits. There is no final text of the DPP's mainland China policy at present. Therefore, I predict the future development of its China policy could tend in two ways. Firstly, if the cross-Straits exchanges increase, and Beijing reduces its hostility, the DPP's stand of 'one Taiwan, one China' will become more flexible, and it would keep on developing a more perfect China policy. Secondly, if the cross-Straits exchanges decrease, and Beijing increases the force of threatening to Taipei, the DPP's stand of 'one Taiwan, one China' policy will be more radical, even though it would not turn its back on the business affairs. At the end of this work, I suggest the DPP rethink its insistence on a Taiwanese independence position, this could not break Taiwan's isolation in international community, but could endanger Taiwan's security. As the factional fight has reduced the force of the DPP, to condense the powers of the party would be an important issue for the DPP

Improper Ferroelectric Polarisation in a Perovskite driven by Inter-site Charge Transfer and Ordering

It is of great interest to design and make materials in which ferroelectric polarisation is coupled to other order parameters such as lattice, magnetic and electronic instabilities. Such materials will be invaluable in next-generation data storage devices. Recently, remarkable progress has been made in understanding improper ferroelectric coupling mechanisms that arise from lattice and magnetic instabilities. However, although theoretically predicted, a compact lattice coupling between electronic and ferroelectric (polar) instabilities has yet to be realised. Here we report detailed crystallographic studies of a novel perovskite Hg$^{\textbf{A}}$Mn$^{\textbf{A'}}_{3}$Mn$^{\textbf{B}}_{4}$O$_{12}$ that is found to exhibit a polar ground state on account of such couplings that arise from charge and orbital ordering on both the A' and B-sites, which are themselves driven by a highly unusual Mn$^{A'}$-Mn$^B$ inter-site charge transfer. The inherent coupling of polar, charge, orbital and hence magnetic degrees of freedom, make this a system of great fundamental interest, and demonstrating ferroelectric switching in this and a host of recently reported hybrid improper ferroelectrics remains a substantial challenge.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figure

Using the Clinical Frailty Scale to Predict the Length of Stay in Otolaryngology Unit in Taiwan

Frailty was a common syndrome in geriatric clinic and general internal medical wards. Some authors had identified the Clinical Frailty Scale (CFS) as a predictor of length of stay in the acute medicine unit. However, the role of the Clinical Frailty Scale in the length of stay in otolaryngology unit had not been well studied. The objective of this study was to find out the correlation of the CFS in elderly patients admitted to otolaryngology unit and their length of stay. A retrospective medical chart review of 203 elderly patients admitted to the otolaryngology ward from January, 2014 to December, 2018 was performed. These patients were hospitalized for treating otorhinolaryngological (ENT) disease or for otorhinolaryngological surgery except for those of ENT related malignancies at Kaohsiung Municipal United Hospital (KMUH). Patients\u27 demographics, CFS scores, Charlson comorbidities Index (CCI), and length of stay (LOS) were recorded. All the participants were divided into three groups: non-frail (CFS 1- 4), mildtomoderately frail (CFS 5- 6), and severely frail (CFS7- 8). Severely frail group had longer lengths of stay (mean= 8.76±0.97 days), comparing to mild to moderate frail group (mean=6.25±0.72 days), and non-frail group (mean= 3.93±0.38 days, p=0.000). For the length of stay stratified by each individual CFS score, it was significant that patients with higher CFS scores had longer lengths of stay (p=.000). The group with higher CFS scores had higher CCI when compared with non-frail group (6.76±1.35 for severely frail, vs. 5.41±1.10 for mild to moderately frail vs. 3.02±0.95 for non-frail, p=0. 000). The use of the CFS for assessment of the elderly patients could help the otolaryngologist to predict the length of stay in otolaryngology unit in Taiwan

The Association between Virus Prevalence and Intercolonial Aggression Levels in the Yellow Crazy Ant, Anoplolepis Gracilipes (Jerdon).

The recent discovery of multiple viruses in ants, along with the widespread infection of their hosts across geographic ranges, provides an excellent opportunity to test whether viral prevalence in the field is associated with the complexity of social interactions in the ant population. In this study, we examined whether the association exists between the field prevalence of a virus and the intercolonial aggression of its ant host, using the yellow crazy ant (Anoplolepis gracilipes) and its natural viral pathogen (TR44839 virus) as a model system. We delimitated the colony boundary and composition of A. gracilipes in a total of 12 study sites in Japan (Okinawa), Taiwan, and Malaysia (Penang), through intercolonial aggression assay. The spatial distribution and prevalence level of the virus was then mapped for each site. The virus occurred at a high prevalence in the surveyed colonies of Okinawa and Taiwan (100% infection rate across all sites), whereas virus prevalence was variable (30%-100%) or none (0%) at the sites in Penang. Coincidentally, colonies in Okinawa and Taiwan displayed a weak intercolonial boundary, as aggression between colonies is generally low or moderate. Contrastingly, sites in Penang were found to harbor a high proportion of mutually aggressive colonies, a pattern potentially indicative of complex colony composition. Our statistical analyses further confirmed the observed correlation, implying that intercolonial interactions likely contribute as one of the effective facilitators of/barriers to virus prevalence in the field population of this ant species

A Novel Family of Cyst Proteins with Epidermal Growth Factor Repeats in Giardia lamblia

The biological goal of Giardia lamblia life cycle is differentiation into a cyst form (encystation) that can survive in the environment and infect a new host. Since cystic stages are key to transmission of parasites, this differentiation may be a target for interruption of the life cycle. Synthesis and assembly of the extracellular cyst wall are the major hallmarks of this important differentiation. During encystation, cyst wall structural proteins are coordinately synthesized and are mainly targeted to the cyst wall. However, only a few such proteins have been identified to date. In this study, we used a combination of bioinformatics and molecular approaches to identify new cyst structural proteins from G. lamblia and found a group of Epidermal Growth Factor (EGF)-like Repeats containing Cyst Proteins (EGFCPs). Interestingly, the levels of EGFCPs proteins increased significantly during encystation, which matches the characteristics of the Giardia cyst wall protein. Further characterization and localization studies suggest that EGFCPs may function like cyst wall proteins, involved in differentiation of G. lamblia trophozoites into cysts. Our results provide valuable information regarding the function of a new group of cyst proteins in parasite differentiation into cysts and help develop ways to interrupt the parasite life cycle

Construction and Characterization of Insect Cell-Derived Influenza VLP: Cell Binding, Fusion, and EGFP Incorporation

We have constructed virus-like particles (VLPs) harboring hemagglutinin (HA), neuraminidase (NA), matrix protein 1 (M1) ,and proton channel protein (M2) using baculovirus as a vector in the SF9 insect cell. The size of the expressed VLP was estimated to be ~100 nm by light scattering experiment and transmission electron microscopy. Recognition of HA on the VLP surface by the HA2-specific monoclonal antibody IIF4 at acidic pH, as probed by surface plasmon resonance, indicated the pH-induced structural rearrangement of HA. Uptake of the particle by A549 mediated by HA-sialylose receptor interaction was visualized by the fluorescent-labeled VLP. The HA-promoted cell-virus fusion activity was illustrated by fluorescence imaging on the Jurkat cells incubated with rhodamine-loaded VLP performed at fusogenic pH. Furthermore, the green fluorescence protein (GFP) was fused to NA to produce VLP with a pH-sensitive probe, expanding the use of VLP as an antigen carrier and a tool for viral tracking

Game Solving with Online Fine-Tuning

Game solving is a similar, yet more difficult task than mastering a game. Solving a game typically means to find the game-theoretic value (outcome given optimal play), and optionally a full strategy to follow in order to achieve that outcome. The AlphaZero algorithm has demonstrated super-human level play, and its powerful policy and value predictions have also served as heuristics in game solving. However, to solve a game and obtain a full strategy, a winning response must be found for all possible moves by the losing player. This includes very poor lines of play from the losing side, for which the AlphaZero self-play process will not encounter. AlphaZero-based heuristics can be highly inaccurate when evaluating these out-of-distribution positions, which occur throughout the entire search. To address this issue, this paper investigates applying online fine-tuning while searching and proposes two methods to learn tailor-designed heuristics for game solving. Our experiments show that using online fine-tuning can solve a series of challenging 7x7 Killall-Go problems, using only 23.54% of computation time compared to the baseline without online fine-tuning. Results suggest that the savings scale with problem size. Our method can further be extended to any tree search algorithm for problem solving. Our code is available at https://rlg.iis.sinica.edu.tw/papers/neurips2023-online-fine-tuning-solver.Comment: Accepted by the 37th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2023

Automatic Learning of A Supervised Classifier for Patent Prior Art Retrieval

Prior art retrieval is the process of determining a set of possibly relevant prior arts for a specific patent or patent application. Such process is essential for various patent practices, e.g. patentability search, validity search, and infringement search. To support the automatic retrieval of prior arts, existing studies generally adopt the traditional information retrieval (IR) approach or extend the IR approach by incorporating additional information such as citations, classes of patents. Those approaches only exploit partial information of patents and thus may limit the performance of prior art retrieval. In response, we propose a novel approach which employs comprehensive information of patents and performs a supervised approach for prior art retrieval. Unlike traditional supervised learning approach which requires manual preparation of a set of positive and negative training examples, the proposed supervised technique includes a simple but effective mechanism for automatic generation of training examples. Our empirical evaluation on a large dataset consisted of 52,311 semiconductor-related patents indicates that the proposed supervised technique significantly outperforms the traditional full-text-based IR approach