Investigating VTubing as a Reconstruction of Streamer Self-Presentation: Identity, Performance, and Gender

VTubers, or Virtual YouTubers, are live streamers who create streaming content using animated 2D or 3D virtual avatars. In recent years, there has been a significant increase in the number of VTuber creators and viewers across the globe. This practise has drawn research attention into topics such as viewers' engagement behaviors and perceptions, however, as animated avatars offer more identity and performance flexibility than traditional live streaming where one uses their own body, little research has focused on how this flexibility influences how creators present themselves. This research thus seeks to fill this gap by presenting results from a qualitative study of 16 Chinese-speaking VTubers' streaming practices. The data revealed that the virtual avatars that were used while live streaming afforded creators opportunities to present themselves using inflated presentations and resulted in inclusive interactions with viewers. The results also unveiled the inflated, and often sexualized, gender expressions of VTubers while they were situated in misogynistic environments. The socio-technical facets of VTubing were found to potentially reduce sexual harassment and sexism, whilst also raising self-objectification concerns.Comment: Under review at ACM CSCW after a Major Revisio

Select a suitable treatment strategy for Crohn's disease

Crohn’s Disease (CD) is a chronic immune-mediated disorder with progressive and destructive course. Current guidelines on the treatment strategy still recommend a step-up approach with sequential prescription of corticosteroids and immunosuppressives. However, mounting evidences manifested that top-down therapy with early administration of anti-TNF or combination of immunosuppressives can achieve more rapid and higher rate of mucosal healing and has the potential of modifying the natural course of disease. Therefore, who is suitable to accept and when to start anti-TNF therapy have attracted the attention of astroenterologists. And what benefit/risk can be expected from the two strategies should be carefully taken into account by clinicians. Age stratification, special patients, disease location and extension, genetic and serologic testing are predictors of disease progression and complication and thus guide a personalized treatment approach in CD. A definition of early CD has been proposed to select an algorithm for treatment of moderate-to-severe CD with a suitable strategy. To date mucosal healing has been widely used, the Lémann score, which assesses the extent and severity of bowel damage at a specific time-point and over time, and is a new disability index for patients with CD, will be considered as a new endpoint for future studies of treatment strategies. Besides medicines of the two strategies, surgery, vaccine, Leukocytapheresis and stem cell therapy are all effective therapeutic approaches which lead to another thinking about what should they be putted in the conditional pyramid. However, we are trying to answer these questions

An extended study on the supersymmetric SO(10) models with natural doublet-triplet splitting

In the supersymmetric SO(10) models, the doublet-triplet splitting problem can be solved through the Dimopoulos-Wilczek mechanism. This mechanism is extended in the non-renormalizable version. Improvement on the realistic model is also made.Comment: 9 page

Numerical study of trimaran wave load based on time-domain Rankine method

Due to the complex fluid interference between outrigger and main hull, it is difficult to predict the trimaran load fluctuation accurately in different marine environments. Therefore, a time-domain Rankine method is developed to improve the accuracy of trimaran load prediction. This method successfully adds the nonlinear load components in time-domain load simulation by taking into account the factors such as instantaneous hull wetted surface, steady ship waves, green wave and slamming. Additionally, the nonlinear growth of green wave and slamming is also observed at outrigger and wet deck, with the increasing of speeds and wave heights. Finally, the relatively smaller errors in the Rankine method are confirmed by comparison with the values from a trimaran model test and linear time-domain load prediction method. Furthermore, the weakly nonlinear Rankine method is considered to be more suitable for trimaran load prediction under harsh marine environment