Variety shows in the Chinese market: applying uses and gratifications theory and culture theory and to understand audiences’ viewer engagement, motivations and preferences

Master of ScienceDepartment of Journalism and Mass CommunicationsAlec TefertillerAs variety shows are rapidly developing in the Chinese market, brand-new viewer engagement is occurring in the young generation of China. This study applies uses and gratifications theory to understand the motivation and viewer engagement of Chinese audiences. With the development of technology, variety shows break free from cable television; the combination of online players provides audiences a broader platform to consume different styles of variety shows. Thus, this study applies uses and gratifications theory to examine the satisfaction that technology provides to viewers, as well as culture theory as another theory to understand whether cultural orientation has impacts on consuming variety shows

RTVis: Research Trend Visualization Toolkit

When researchers and practitioners are about to start a new project or have just entered a new research field, choosing a proper research topic is always challenging. To help them have an overall understanding of the research trend in real-time and find out the research topic they are interested in, we develop the Research Trend Visualization toolkit (RTVis) to analyze and visualize the research paper information. RTVis consists of a field theme river, a co-occurrence network, a specialized citation bar chart, and a word frequency race diagram, showing the field change through time respectively, cooperating relationship among authors, paper citation numbers in different venues, and the most common words in the abstract part. Moreover, RTVis is open source and easy to deploy. The demo of our toolkit and code with detailed documentation are both available online.Comment: Work submitted to IEEE VIS 2023 (Poster). 2 pages, 1 figure. For our demo page, visit http://www.rtvis.design

The role of IgG N-galactosylation in spondyloarthritis

Spondyloarthritis (SpA) is a group of chronic inflammatory arthritic diseases causing inflammatory back pain and stiffness, leading to irreversible damage of joint and spine, seriously affecting the quality of life. However, the exact pathogenesis of SpA is still unknown, although the blockers of tumor necrosis factor (TNF) are a major therapeutic advance. Of interest is the association between SpA and Immunoglobulin G (IgG) N-glycosylation. IgG N-glycosylation is a process of post-translational modification (PTM) that takes part in regulating anti- and pro-inflammatory effects. A relationship between IgG N-glycosylation and the development of inflammatory arthritic diseases exists, in addition this relationship often occurs before the onset of disease. There are studies reporting the association between IgG N-glycosylation and SpA, leading to a significant amount of data being generated. Analysis of this data in a rigorous form is greatly needed, hence this review will focus on identifying the relationships that exist between IgG N-glycosylation in inflammatory arthritis. More specifically, the modification to the structure of IgG N-glycosylation via TNF blockers as a treatment, the link between disease activity and IgG N-glycosylation, and the predictive capacity of IgG N-glycosylation in SpA. Investigation of IgG N-glycosylation has demonstrated that IgG N-galactosylation plays an important role in the development and prognosis of SpA. This association provides a novel pathway to further research to improve early diagnosis and possible biomarkers for treatment of patients with SpA

Approaching the Intrinsic Bandgap in Suspended High-Mobility Graphene Nanoribbons

We report electrical transport measurements on a suspended ultra-low-disorder graphene nanoribbon(GNR) with nearly atomically smooth edges that reveal a high mobility exceeding 3000 cm2 V-1 s-1 and an intrinsic band gap. The experimentally derived bandgap is in quantitative agreement with the results of our electronic-structure calculations on chiral GNRs with comparable width taking into account the electron-electron interactions, indicating that the origin of the bandgap in non-armchair GNRs is partially due to the magnetic zigzag edges.Comment: 22 pages, 6 figure

Mobility enhancement and highly efficient gating of monolayer MoS2 transistors with Polymer Electrolyte

We report electrical characterization of monolayer molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) devices using a thin layer of polymer electrolyte consisting of poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) and lithium perchlorate (LiClO4) as both a contact-barrier reducer and channel mobility booster. We find that bare MoS2 devices (without polymer electrolyte) fabricated on Si/SiO2 have low channel mobility and large contact resistance, both of which severely limit the field-effect mobility of the devices. A thin layer of PEO/ LiClO4 deposited on top of the devices not only substantially reduces the contact resistance but also boost the channel mobility, leading up to three-orders-of-magnitude enhancement of the field-effect mobility of the device. When the polymer electrolyte is used as a gate medium, the MoS2 field-effect transistors exhibit excellent device characteristics such as a near ideal subthreshold swing and an on/off ratio of 106 as a result of the strong gate-channel coupling.Comment: 17 pages, 4 figures, accepted by J. Phys.

Hydrothermally treated coral scaffold promotes proliferation of mesenchymal stem cells and enhances segmental bone defect healing

Introduction: Synthetic hydroxyapatite (HAp) scaffolds have shown promising therapeutic outcomes in both animals and patients. In this study, we aim to evaluate the chemical and physical phenotype, biocompatibility, and bone repair effects of hydrothermally treated coral with natural coral and synthetic HAp.Methods: The phase composition, surface pattern, 3D structures, and porosity of the scaffolds were characterized, and cell viability, proliferation, and osteogenic differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) after seeding onto the scaffold were determined. The scaffolds were implanted into rats to assess their bone repair effects using micro-CT analysis, mechanical testing, and histological staining.Results: The results showed that the phase composition, porous structure, and porosity of hydrothermally treated coral were comparable to pure HAp scaffold. While only the natural coral happens to be dominantly calcium carbonate. Higher cell proliferation and osteogenic differentiation potential were observed in the hydrothermally treated coral scaffold compared to natural coral and pure HAp. Histological results also showed increased new bone formation in the hydrothermally treated coral group.Discussion: Overall, our study suggests that hydrothermal modification enhances the cytocompatibility and therapeutic capacity of coral without altering its physical properties, showing superior effectiveness in bone repair to synthetic HAp

Room-Temperature High On/Off Ratio in Suspended Graphene Nanoribbon Field Effect Transistors

We have fabricated suspended few layer (1-3 layers) graphene nanoribbon field effect transistors from unzipped multiwall carbon nanotubes. Electrical transport measurements show that current-annealing effectively removes the impurities on the suspended graphene nanoribbons, uncovering the intrinsic ambipolar transfer characteristic of graphene. Further increasing the annealing current creates a narrow constriction in the ribbon, leading to the formation of a large band-gap and subsequent high on/off ratio (which can exceed 104). Such fabricated devices are thermally and mechanically stable: repeated thermal cycling has little effect on their electrical properties. This work shows for the first time that ambipolar field effect characteristics and high on/off ratios at room temperature can be achieved in relatively wide graphene nanoribbon (15 nm ~50 nm) by controlled current annealing.Comment: 19 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in Nanotechnology (2011

Electrical Transport Properties of Graphene Nanoribbons Produced from Sonicating Graphite in Solution

A simple one-stage solution-based method was developed to produce graphene nanoribbons by sonicating graphite powder in organic solutions with polymer surfactant. The graphene nanoribbons were deposited on silicon substrate, and characterized by Raman spectroscopy and atomic force microscopy. Single-layer and few-layer graphene nanoribbons with a width ranging from sub-10 nm to tens of nm and length ranging from hundreds of nm to 1 {\mu}m were routinely observed. Electrical transport properties of individual graphene nanoribbons were measured in both the back-gate and polymer-electrolyte top-gate configurations. The mobility of the graphene nanoribbons was found to be over an order of magnitude higher when measured in the latter than in the former configuration (without the polymer electrolyte), which can be attributed to the screening of the charged impurities by the counter-ions in the polymer electrolyte. This finding suggests that the charge transport in these solution-produced graphene nanoribbons is largely limited by charged impurity scattering.Comment: 19 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in Nanotechnology 201