Integrating Shared Mobility Services with Transit Could Produce Economic and Environmental Benefits

This research brief summarizes the findings from the associated study, which examined the potential to improve transportation system efficiency by reevaluating and redefining the role of public transit and its design principles in the new context of technology and shared mobility. Specifically, it evaluated the financial feasibility of an integrative, multimodal transportation system where public and private mobility services coexist to maximize economic and environmental benefits and free up public transit resources to be reallocated more efficiently

Enhancing Dining Experiences through Emotional Tableware Design

Positive dining experiences can improve both physical and psychological health. Eating with people and eating slowly can facilitate one’s experience and behavior during the process, owing to the unexpected information from their senses and the surrounding environment. Tableware is a very important bridge between people and food. People get food, share food, and serve food while dining. Therefore, the tableware based on emotional design can to a certain extent affect people\u27s dining behavior and dining experience. This paper firstly introduces the reasons why people are getting hard to get a positive dining experience, and the importance of dining experiences. Then, the author analyzes the factors that influence dining experiences and explains how emotional tableware design to enhance dining experiences by increasing sensory stimulation, interactions, and emotional resonance of users. Finally, based on the three levels of emotional design theory which are visceral level, behavioral level, and reflective level, the author proposes that the integration of sensory stimulation, interaction, and narrative can help people enjoy their positive dining experience

Emotional Synchrony and Viewers’ Consumption: Evidence from Live Streaming of Virtual Idols

Live streaming has become increasingly popular in recent years for users to broadcast live events or experiences to an online audience in real-time. With the prevalence of the metaverse, virtual idols appear on the stage of live streaming. Unlike real human streamers, virtual idols are computer-generated avatars whose appearance does not exist in the physical world. Though existing literature has documented the effect of emotional displays of human streamers on viewers’ behavior, whether emotional displays of avatar streamers affect viewers’ behavior, especially viewers’ consumption behavior has not yet been explored. To fill this gap, we focus on the live streaming of virtual idols and conduct deep learning approaches to investigate the emotional synchrony between avatar streamers and their viewers based on moment-to-moment data. Our analysis of large-scale video data shows that the larger the discrepancy between the streamers’ acoustic- and text- emotions, the more likely the viewers will pay. This study sheds light on how avatars can be designed to leverage emotion to engage viewers in more consumption

Tangible and Intangible Boundaries: The Case of Baoshan Port-City Interface in Shanghai

Instead of stressing that port cities are characterised by institutional fragmentations with many resulting conflicts, we claim that port cities might be highly constructive in terms of changing tangible and intangible boundaries. To capture this quality, we use the concept of ‘penumbral,’ a combination of perceptional aspects as well as tangible and intangible spatial constellations. This perspective is applied in the case of the Shanghai Baoshan port-city interface through the investigation of the changing tangible and intangible boundaries, and how planning relates to boundary changes in a context of spatial, industrial, and institutional multi-layered structures. Tangible refers to physical boundaries between the port and urban structure or district, while intangible refers to immaterial boundaries created by actors’ views on ports. Based on planning documents, direct observations, and 17 in-depth semi-structured interviews with local governments, port authority, planning departments, and companies, we find that one can indeed speak of penumbral boundaries, based on port-related values and ideas, and particularly on perceptions of the port and port businesses. Those perceptions are the initial power of changing and, following the idea of penumbral boundaries, blurring tangible and intangible boundaries. Finally, we suggest that, following the idea of penumbral boundaries, planning can play a stronger role in connecting the port and the city by first investigating how actors view the port and port businesses carefully, paying full attention to the specific relational context before formulating plans in the usual manner

Bioethics and Biosecurity Education in China: Rise of a Scientific Superpower.

This chapter explores ethics, education and the life sciences in China. It is based on work conducted by the authors in two separate but complimentary projects. Barr’s observations derive from interviews and discussions in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou with life scientists and policymakers in infectious-disease hospitals, university-research labs, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Ministry of Health. Zhang’s study focused on China’s governance of stem-cell research and involved interviews with scientists, ethicists and policymakers at more than 25 sites across China. Below, we set the context by describing the role of science in China’s quest to become a leading power and then consider the place of bioethics within China. We follow this with a discussion of three key areas that have impacted our work and describe some of the lessons we have taken from our experience for future research on bioethics education and biosecurity in China. We conclude with a set of suggestions about what can be done to further biosecurity awareness within China

What Do the British and Chinese Governing Visions on Human Genomic Research Tell Us about Biosovereignty?

Genomic research lies at the core of national bioeconomies and is a strategic area for national scientific competitiveness. Drawing on the UK’s latest national vision on genomic research and my participation in one of China’s policy consultations on its implementing rules on human genetic resources, this paper demonstrates how China’s conception of ‘biosovereignty’ may be counterproductive, both to its scientific competitiveness and to the health of its people. The key argument is that ‘biosovereignty’ is not a property of an individual, a community, or an institution. Rather it is a powerful assemblage of ideals, infrastructures and network of capitals that steers our collective future. It is simultaneously a social contract and a social construct, both of which are evolving with socio-technical realities. The paper provokes reflections on the role of the state in promoting equitable genomic research and the question on what ‘biosovereignty’ means and how it should be represented

(Bio)Politics of Existence and Social Change: Insights from the Good Food Movement

How can we break away from a fixation on top-down power dynamics and track the impact of social movement in societies that do not easily fit with Western neoliberal theorisations? Building on Foucault’s insights on governance, this paper proposes an analytical lens of the ‘biopolitics of existence’ to address this problem. The term existence refers not simply to the ‘corporeal’ needs of survival (be it of an individual or an organisation) but also to the freedom to (self-)develop and the ability to interact with others. By examining how the Good Food Movement has transformed the bios of ordinary people into agency and reshaped the governing ethos in China’s food system, this paper demonstrates that to assess the gravity of social change is to first comprehend how actors calculated their action in a particular socio-political ecology. To speak of the politics of existence is to recognise that existence is simultaneously something to be defended and to be established. A ‘biopolitics of existence’ lens is instrumental in making visible social actors’ logic in (re)forming socio-political norms while keeping in sight the entanglement of different stakeholders