The music industry and popular song in 1930s and 1940s Shanghai, a historial and stylistic analysis

In 1930s and 1940s Shanghai, musicians and artists from different cultures and varied backgrounds joined and made the golden age of Shanghai popular song which suggests the beginnings of Chinese popular music in modern times. However, Shanghai popular song has long been neglected in most works about the modern history of Chinese music and remains an unexplored area in Shanghai studies. This study aims to reconstruct a historical view of the Shanghai popular music industry and make a stylistic analysis of its musical products. The research is undertaken at two levels: first, understanding the operating mechanism of the ‘platform’ and second, investigating the components of the ‘products’. By contrasting the hypothetical flowchart of the Shanghai popular music industry, details of the producing, selling and consuming processes are retrieved from various historical sources to reconstruct the industry platform. Through the first level of research, it is found that the rising new media and the flourishing entertainment industry profoundly influenced the development of Shanghai popular song. In addition, social and political changes and changes in business practices and the organisational structure of foreign record companies also contributed to the vast production, popularity and commercial success of Shanghai popular song. From the composition-performance view of song creation, the second level of research reveals that Chinese and Western musical elements both existed in the musical products. The Chinese vocal technique, Western bel canto and instruments from both musical traditions were all found in historical recordings. When ignoring the distinctive nature of pentatonicism but treating Chinese melodies as those on Western scales, Chinese-style tunes could be easily accompanied by chordal harmony. However, the Chinese heterophonic feature was lost in the Western accompaniment texture. Moreover, it is also found that the traditional rules governing the relationship between words and the melody was dismissed in Shanghai popular songwriting. The findings of this study fill in the neglected part in modern history of Chinese music and add to the literature on the under-explored musical area in Shanghai studies. Moreover, this study also demonstrates that against a map illustrating how musical products moved from record companies to consumers along with all other involved participants, the history of popular music can be rediscovered systematically by using songs as evidence, treating media material carefully and tracking down archives and surviving participants

Patient-Centered Ehealth Service Design: A Case Study in Chushang Show Chwan Hospital

Taiwan Executive Yuan promote eHealth, as one of the six emerging industries that Taiwan Executive Yuan would fully support and allocate budget. According to the World Health Organization, eHealth is the delivery and support of health care components through the use of information and communications technology. Top down to eHealth operations in one of the Taiwan Island wide Hospitals, ChuShang Show Chwan Hospital, the current trend can be as follows: patient-centric activities and processes, customized solutions, the focus of wellness, inclusion of individuals and families in the decision-making processes, and the focus of service quality. Although previous studies have discussed information and communications technology usage in eHealth, the use of information and communications technology is not the only feature of eHealth. The corresponding service features should also be taken into consideration. From the service organization’s perspective, a service must be designed with an appropriate mix of physical and non-physical components. It is important to know the critical features of a service in order to design appropriate eHealth services. Accordingly, we aim to discover the service features in eHealth that are valued by customers through a case study of ChuShang Show Chwan Hospital. We adopt the concept of symbolic adoption to do this research. We propose that the identification of service features should be differentiated based on different stages of adoption as different service features may have different focuses and utilities. Thus, in this research, we are interested in clarifying service features that have impacts on symbolic adoption, trial, and use adoption. The results can help healthcare organizations to design different strategies to take care of patients in different adoption stages

Expressions of Visual Tension on Poster of Performing Arts

[[abstract]]Whether it is in the expression format or from aesthetical concern, modern arts seems to be in the trend of pursuing visual tension. A good design for performing arts poster must possess both transmitting function and aesthetical values simultaneously, especially with a kind of mixing in tension and athletic feeling for visual expression effect. Simply put, these are relative contrasts for each word and image element within the composition of picture, in addition to various interactions interplayed from standpoints of conflict, balance, fusion and disintegration. People can acquire the dynamic visual effect from still and static state of the picture itself. Therefore besides instantaneously still frames during athletic events, the balance and contrast are also the causes for creation of dynamic feelings. If following interpretations and theories from Gestalt psychology in principles for tension and movement, the whole idea was anchored on the assumption to destroy the visual balance of humans so as to trigger instinctively balancing tendency from human as result. This research therefore intends to apply these tension concepts unto the playbill design to enhance the transmission aspect of it, and the aestheticism. Lastly this research summarized into the following three categories for conclusion: (1) Through documentation exploration, this research summarized in concrete fashion regarding the occurrences for visual tension. This is determined and triggered by positioning, coloring, outer shape and movements, etc. Nevertheless those are responsible of generating the sources for each and every tension residing at consciousness level. Thus, the inducement of visual tension for any layout can be properly arranged to produce guidelines for contrast and coloring demands through the balancing quality for static display, and dynamic feeling for dynamic tension and the emotional tension. Amid all of these, the most effective one resides at the tension for picture composition. Even for those pictures lacking dynamics can be rectified through proper cutting and placed at the right location to achieve the effect for visual tension. (2) Through collecting and analyzing Taiwan’s performing arts posters, it came to our attention that there were more than one single cause and characteristic accounting for any posters to possess visual tension. It normally possesses the dynamic and balancing attributes or all three of them. And the expression also exhibits different characteristics as well. For these characteristics to be able to really generate the desired visual tension, it must achieve the unity effect first. And the purpose of this guiding principle for achieving unity resides at having the layout possessing a kind of design through expression of main body with sense of unity in addition to the layering expression of the layout. Therefore this can integrate the overall visual expressions so as to enhance the transmission efficiency for imbedded messages. (3) Through posters creation, it discovers the demands for “balancing” on the picture composition with tension are so vital, even exceeding the anticipation as result. If the playbill’s composition loses the balancing feeling or may even acquires an Instantaneous effect of dynamic and attention grabbing, nonetheless, this attention would not even come close to the esthetics feeling, but also lacks the capability of maintaining people’s attention span. Nevertheless, balancing lacking dynamic feeling would fall flat on It face. Thus, both the dynamic feeling and visual balance exhibit some kind of coexistence relationship in the end, just like the commonly known “balance of terror”. Consequently, this must be handled with utmost delicateness.

Novel Posttranslational Modification in LKB1 Activation and Function

Cancer cells display dramatic alterations in cellular metabolism to meet their needs of increased growth and proliferation. In the last decade, cancer research has brought these pathways into focus, and one emerging issue that has come to attention is that many oncogenes and tumor-suppressors are intimately linked to metabolic regulation (Jones and Thompson, 2009). One of the key tumor-suppressors involved in metabolism is Liver Kinase B1 (LKB1). LKB1 is the major upstream kinase of the evolutionarily conserved metabolic sensor—AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK). Activation of the LKB1/AMPK pathway provides a survival advantage for cells under energy stress. LKB1 forms a heterotrimeric complex and is activated through binding of the two regulatory proteins, STRAD and MO25. LKB1 has been shown to be a tumor-suppressor in various mouse models; however, recent studies suggest that LKB1 has pro-oncogenic functions. How the LKB1 activity and the LKB1-STRAD-MO25 complex are maintained and regulated and how LKB1 regulates cancer development are largely unclear. Here we show that K63-linked LKB1 polyubiquitination by the Skp1-Cul1-F-box-protein/Skp2 (Skp2-SCF) ubiquitin ligase complex is critical for LKB1 activation by a mechanism of maintaining the LKB1-STRAD-MO25 complex integrity. We further demonstrate that oncogenic Ras acts upstream of Skp2 to promote LKB1 polyubiquitination by activating the Skp2-SCF ubiquitin ligase complex. Moreover, Skp2-mediated LKB1 polyubiquitination is required for energy stress-induced cell survival. We also detected upregulation and positive correlation of Skp2 and LKB1 expression in late-stage hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), and their overexpression predicts poor survival outcome of HCC patients. Finally, we show that Skp2-mediated LKB1 polyubiquitination is important for HCC tumor growth in a mouse subcutaneous xenograft tumor model. Our study provides new insights into the upstream regulation of LKB1 activation and suggests a potential target, the Ras/Skp2/LKB1 axis, for cancer therapy