Bringing Laughter in Changing Times: Taiwan's Comedy Cinema

Taiwan’s comedy cinema has often been brushed aside as being overly commercial while yielding little intellectual merits. Suffering from such disputable generalization are certain remarkable titles, comedians and filmmakers worthy of attention. Aiming to generate interests to this largely ignored field, this article presents one of the first extensively researched study on Taiwan’s comedy cinema. Analytical emphasis is placed on films deemed most influential, for instance, the Laurel-and-Hardy style comedy Brother Wang and Brother Liu on The Roads in Taiwan. A blockbuster that spawned numerous sequels, this 1958 dialect film is a priceless time capsule for a nostalgic look back at the vistas of pre-industrial Taiwan, and a momentous debut of veteran director Lee Hsing. Through encompassing investigations of historical and biographical records of similar titles that have contributed in facilitating Taiwan’s cinematic progress, the author endeavors to incite awareness that hopefully will lead to broader studies of Taiwan Comedy Cinema

Optimal Linear Network Coding When 3 Nodes Communicate Over Broadcast Erasure Channels with ACK

This work considers the following scenario: Three nodes {1, 2, 3} would like to communicate with each other by sending packets through unreliable wireless medium.We consider the most general unicast traffic demands. Namely, there are six co-existing unicast flows with rates (R1--\u3e2,R1--\u3e3,R2--\u3e1,R2--\u3e3, R3--\u3e1,R3--\u3e2). When a node broadcasts a packet, a random subset of the other two nodes will receive the packet. After each transmission, causal ACKnowledgment is sent so that all nodes know whether the other nodes have received the packet or not. Such a setting has many unique features. For example, each node, say node 1, can assume many different roles: Being the transmitter of the information R1--\u3e2 and R1--\u3e3; being the receiver of the information R2--\u3e1 and R3--\u3e1; and being the relay for the information R2--\u3e3 and R3--\u3e2. This fully captures the fundamental behaviors of 3-node network communications. Allowing network coding (NC) to capitalize the diversity gain (i.e., overhearing packets transmitted by other nodes), this work characterizes the 6-dimensional linear network coding (LNC) capacity of the above erasure network. The results show that for any channel parameters, the LNC capacity can be achieved by a simple strategy that involves only a few LNC choices

Comparative study of microwave radiation-induced magnetoresistive oscillations induced by circularly- and linearly- polarized photo-excitation

A comparative study of the radiation-induced magnetoresistance oscillations in the high mobility GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure two dimensional electron system (2DES) under linearly- and circularlypolarized microwave excitation indicates a profound difference in the response observed upon rotating the microwave launcher for the two cases, although circularly polarized microwave radiation induced magnetoresistance oscillations observed at low magnetic fields are similar to the oscillations observed with linearly polarized radiation. For the linearly polarized radiation, the magnetoresistive response is a strong sinusoidal function of the launcher rotation (or linear polarization) angle, {\theta}. For circularly polarized radiation, the oscillatory magnetoresistive response is hardly sensitive to {\theta}

Parameter-tuning Networks: Experiments and Active Walk Model

The tuning process of a large apparatus of many components could be represented and quantified by constructing parameter-tuning networks. The experimental tuning of the ion source of the neutral beam injector of HT-7 Tokamak is presented as an example. Stretched-exponential cumulative degree distributions are found in the parameter-tuning networks. An active walk model with eight walkers is constructed. Each active walker is a particle moving with friction in an energy landscape; the landscape is modified by the collective action of all the walkers. Numerical simulations show that the parameter-tuning networks generated by the model also give stretched exponential functions, in good agreement with experiments. Our methods provide a new way and a new insight to understand the action of humans in the parameter-tuning of experimental processes, is helpful for experimental research and other optimization problems.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Associations between Aquaglyceroporin Gene Polymorphisms and Risk of Stroke among Patients with Hypertension

Background: Dysregulations ofAQP7andAQP9were found to be related to lipid metabolism abnormality, which had been provento be one of the mechanisms of stroke. However, limited epidemiological studies explore the associations betweenAQP7andAQP9and the risk of stroke among patients with hypertension in China. Aims: We aimed to investigate the associations between genetic variants in AQP7andAQP9and the risk of stroke among patients with hypertension, as well as to explore gene-gene andgene-environment interactions. Methods: Baseline blood samples were drawn from 211 cases with stroke and 633 matched controls. Genomic DNA was extracted by a commercially available kit. Genotyping of 5 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in AQP7 (rs2989924, rs3758269, and rs2542743) and AQP9 (rs57139208, rs16939881) was performed by the polymerase chain reaction assay with TaqMan probes. Results: Participants with the rs2989924 GG genotype were found to be with a 1.74-fold increased risk of stroke compared to those with the AA+AG genotype, and this association remained significant after adjustment for potential confounders (odds ratio (OR): 1.74, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.23-2.46). The SNP rs3758269 CC+TT genotype was found to be with a 33% decreased risk of stroke after multivariate adjustment (OR: 0.67, 95% CI: 0.45-0.99) compared to the rs3758269 CC genotype. The significantly increased risk of stroke was prominent among males, patients aged 60 or above, and participants who were overweight and with a harbored genetic variant in SNP rs2989924. After adjusting potential confounders, the SNP rs3758269 CT+TT genotype was found to be significantly associated with a decreased risk of stroke compared to the CC genotype among participants younger than 60 years old or overweight. No statistically significant associations were observed between genotypes of rs2542743, rs57139208, or rs16939881 with the risk of stroke. Neither interactions nor linkage disequilibrium had been observed in this study. Conclusions: This study suggests that SNPs rs2989924 and rs3758269 are associated with the risk of stroke among patients with hypertension, while there were no statistically significant associations between rs2542743, rs57139208, and rs16939881 and the risk of stroke being observed