CULTURE-BASED INTERPRETATION OF PROJECTED DESTINATION IMAGES: A SEMANTIC NETWORK ANALYSIS

This study attempts to explore destination image interpretation in the context of two cultural groups (US and China) and two information sources (Blog and Destination Management Organization website). Semantic Network Analysis was employed to obtain a visual representation and comparison of perceived destination image categories of Marrakesh across groups. Computer-Aided Textual Analysis software, AutoMap3.0 Program and ROST Content Mining System, were used initially for data preparation and keywords analysis, and UCINET 6 was then applied to conduct semantic network analysis such as centrality analysis and network structure measurements. The results indicated that the perceived image of Marrakesh varies by the different online information sources and cultural groups. In addition, features of the two specific information sources and cultures were discussed to explain the discrepancies and similarities. The study also underscores affective attributes in destination image perception by combing both quantitative and qualitative methods in the research. Practical and theoretical implications were demonstrated to shed light on managing and marketing desired destination images

Psychoactive Revolution and Transnational Networks

The connection and clash between Asia and the Anglophone world were, in part, facilitated by what David T. Courtwright calls the “psychoactive revolution,” a process in which hunger, the need for food, was replaced by desire and addiction in the modern world. Networks between these regions deepened and proliferated as stimulants and sedatives such as tea, opium, and coffee became increasingly accessible and popular around the globe

Founding Its Empire on Spells of Pleasure : Brunonian Excitability, the Invigorated English Opium-Eater, and De Quincey\u27s China Question

What light can De Quincey\u27s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821) shed on its author\u27s later advocacy of the First Opium War? To what degree did De Quincey\u27s and other contemporaneous accounts of opium use in Britain influence metaphorical connections between bodily energy and national power in the 1830s and 1840s? Placing Confessions alongside John Brown\u27s 1780 treatise, Elements of Medicine, this essay argues that De Quincey nationalized opium-eating by transforming mental exceptionality in British Romanticism into a medical body\u27s connection with internal energies and external stimuli from China and the Orient. The essay concludes that opium serves in De Quincey\u27s Confessions as a crucial bridge between Romantic sublimity, in which it purportedly acted as a mysterious technology for self-strengthening, and Victorian consumerism, when the drug became both a popular commodity among national and global users

Formation of Lactalbumin Nanoparticles by Desolvation Method

Protein nanoparticles are ideal carriers for bioactive compounds such as nutraceuticals and drugs because they are biodegradable, less immunogenic and non-toxic and can be nanoparticulated. This study focuses on the desolvation method to form lactalbumin protein nanoparticles. Lactalbumin is soluble in water and insoluble in many organic solvents. Different solvent/non-solvent ratios are evaluated in this research project for the effect they have on the size, PDI and stability of protein nanoparticles. Different methods including sonication and centrifugation were used and compared in terms of their effectiveness to produce small nanoparticles during fabrication of the nanoparticles. Data collected including protein nanoparticles average size and zeta potential, also SEM and TEM images were used to study the nanoparticles. It was found that high non-solvent ratio can significantly decrease the average particle size, while it also causes an increase in polydispersity index. Sonication can cause some aggregation of the nanoparticles and makes the average particle size slightly increase. Centrifugation can precipitate the large particles and when the supernatant is collected the average particle size is much smaller. These measurement will contribute to the further understanding of the formation of high quality protein nanoparticles that can serve as efficient drug carriers

Transimperial Networks: East Asia and the ‘Victorian’ World: Introduction

Traditionally, East Asia has been on the margins of Victorian Studies, eclipsed by sites of formal imperialism such as South Asia. However, the region was deeply intertwined with the “Victorian” world through transimperial networks of trade, migration, and geopolitical competition. Rather than locating East Asia at the margins, this cluster of lesson plans explores the figurative and historical centrality of East Asia to Victorian Studies

Transimperial Networks and East Asia: Timeline

To help instructors and students who may be unfamiliar with the history of East Asia and its transimperial exchanges with the Anglophone world, the creators of the “Transimperial Networks and East Asia” lesson plan cluster built this timeline, which includes some major historical events from the fifteenth to the twentieth century. This timeline comes out of our many discussions about the methodological issues that arise when the field of Victorian Studies seeks to expand its traditional geographical scope. As we quickly realized in the process of creating our cluster, the usual boundaries of the long nineteenth century (the French Revolution to World War I) are too limited and Eurocentric for the transimperial connections our lesson plans examine. Thus, we offer this timeline both to orient instructors and students and to illustrate how centering East Asia calls into question our field’s most basic assumptions

Episode 51: The Thing About Lady Bertram\u27s Flower Gardens with Guest Dr. Menglu Gao

An episode of the podcast The Thing About Austen with guest Dr. Menglu Gao of the University of Denver. Participants discuss Regency era gardening and landscaping through the lens of Jane Austen\u27s Mansfield Park

One-Step Preparative Separation of Phytosterols from Edible Brown Seaweed Sargassum horneri by High-Speed Countercurrent Chromatography

Sargassum horneri, a sargassaceae brown alga, is one of the main species in the subtidal seaweeds flora extensively distributed in the Yellow and East China Sea. It has been proven that the phytosterols are an important class of bioactive substances in S. horneri. In this work, a counter-current chromatography approach is proposed for preparative separation of phytol and two analogue sterols from a crude extract of S. horneri. A two-phase solvent system composed of n-hexane-acetonitrile-methanol (5:5:6, v/v) was selected and optimized. The effects of rotary speed and flow rate on the retention of the stationary phase were carefully studied. Under the optimum conditions, phytol and two analogue sterols, fucosterol and saringosterol, were baseline separated, producing 19.8 mg phytol, 23.7 mg fucosterol, and 3.1 mg saringosterol from 300 mg of crude S. horneri extract in one-step separation. The purities of three target compounds were all above 85%. The structures of phytol and two sterols were identified by nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy