The Formation of the Taiwanese Nation-State: A Civilizational-Constitutional View

This is a study of nation-state formation. Theoretically, it demonstrates how the biography of a belated nation can be written in a non-essentialist way by taking a world-historical view. Empirically, it puts forward a civilizational-constitutional thesis of Taiwanese national history – or, to put it simply, a constitutional history of Taiwan. By reviewing and building on two peerless historiographical endeavors, Tsao Yung-ho’s thesis of “History of Taiwan Island” (HTI) and Wu Rwei-ren’s thesis of “Interfacial Nation-State Formation in Taiwan” (INSF), I lay out what is termed the “trilogy of historiography” in writing a non-essentialist Taiwanese national history, with which the present study hopes to make a modest contribution to the unfinished cause initiated by Tsao and taken on by Wu. Adhering to the world-historical tenet implied in Tsao’s thesis of HTI, I propose a civilizational-constitutional perspective, from which civilization is understood as an anthropic system with its own idiosyncratic ways of organizing collective lives, and constitution is conceptualized as a subset that specifically points to the socio-political properties and configuration of a civilization. The merit of taking this civilizational-constitutional view is twofold. Theoretically, it can remedy the logically fatal weakness of skipping political history altogether inherent in Tsao’s HTI, while also solving the three faults, i.e., an overly-filtered geopolitical viewpoint, a lopsided approach leaning toward the political aspect, and an inbuilt settler bias, from which Wu’s INSF suffers. Empirically, we are able to move beyond the deeply ingrained understanding of Taiwan history, whose periodization is done in line with the duration of the island’s successive foreign rule. Instead, through a systematic understanding of civilization and constitution, we develop a tripartite periodization of Taiwan history consisting successively of the Short Seventeenth Century, the Long Eighteenth Century, and the Lasting Nineteenth Century. Each of the three periods is characterized by a particular pattern of civilizational intersection that took place on Taiwan island and that had distinct impacts of the constitutional transformation of Taiwan. First, the Short Seventeenth Century, spanning only around four decades between the mid-1620s and the early 1660s, marks the historic first encounter of Austronesian, European, and Chinese civilizations on Taiwan island. In the first-ever encounter of the three civilizations, the constitutional prototype of contemporary Taiwan – that is, a Western-style political regime established on top of the tense coexistence of aborigines and settlers – was previewed, albeit on a smaller scale, on the island. Second, the Long Eighteenth Century signifies an interval of nearly two hundred years between the first presence and the second arrival of European civilization in Taiwan. Between the mid-seventeenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, Taiwan had witnessed confrontations, fusion, and hostile coexistence between Austronesian and Chinese civilizations in the absence of European civilization. In this historical window created by the withdrawal of the Dutch VOC in the early 1660s, the dual constitution consisting of a stateless Austronesian tribal society and an imperial Confucianized settler society took shape in Taiwan. Third, the Lasting Nineteenth Century, characterized by the second intersection of the three civilizations following the reentry of European civilization into Taiwan in the mid-nineteenth century, has undergone a circuitous course of nation-state building, in which the Taiwanese nation-state as a Western-style political superstructure has been established upon the previously formed dual-constitution social fabric of Taiwan

An action principle for the quantization of parametric theories and nonlinear quantum cosmology

By parametrizing the action integral for the standard Schrodinger equation we present a derivation of the recently proposed method for quantizing a parametrized theory. The reformulation suggests a natural extension from conventional to nonlinear quantum mechanics. This generalization enables a unitary description of the quantum evolution for a broad class of constrained Hamiltonian systems with a nonlinear kinematic structure. In particular, the new theory is applicable to the quantization of cosmological models where a chosen gravitational degree of freedom acts as geometric time. This is demonstrated explicitly using three cosmological models: the Friedmann universe with a massless scalar field and Bianchi type I and IX models. Based on these investigations, the prospect of further developing the proposed quantization scheme in the context of quantum gravity is discussed.Comment: 14 page

Growth of quantum dot coated core-shell anisotropic nanowires for improved thermal and electronic transport

Anisotropic nanowires are promising candidates for electronic thermal management due to their unique electrical and thermal properties.However, eco-friendly solution-processed nanomaterials with an elaborate morphology and microstructure for modulating thermal andcharge transfer are still a considerable challenge. Herein, we present a simple but effective approach for synthesizing pseudo core-shell nano-wires through quantum dot (QD)-like nanostructure coating (p-NW@QD) to generate exceptional electron-phonon transport properties.With the assistance of diphenyl ether as a coordination solvent, high crystallinity lead sulfide NWs can be fabricated with a large aspect ratiotogether with uniform QD coating. Thisp-NW@QD exhibits high electronic mobility (30.65 cm2/Vs) as well as a diameter independent lowthermal conductivity (1.5361 W/m K). Direct charge/heat carrier flow measurements and computational simulations demonstrate that theunusual electrical and thermal transport phenomenon is strongly dependent on the fast charge transport through the QD shell, and a slowphonon migration across the Umklapp process dominated NW cores. These findings indicate a significant step toward colloidal synthesisnanostructures for future high-performance nanoelectronics and thermal energy devices

A comparison of aircraft-based surface-layer observations over Denmark Strait and the Irminger sea with meteorological analyses and QuikSCAT winds

A compilation of aircraft observations of the atmospheric surface layer is compared with several meteorological analyses and QuikSCAT wind products. The observations are taken during the Greenland Flow Distortion Experiment, in February and March 2007, during cold-air outbreak conditions and moderate to high wind speeds. About 150 data points spread over six days are used, with each data point derived from a 2-min run (equivalent to a 12 km spatial average). The observations were taken 30–50 m above the sea surface and are adjusted to standard heights. Surface-layer temperature, humidity and wind, as well as sea-surface temperature (SST) and surface turbulent fluxes are compared against co-located data from the ECMWF operational analyses, NCEP Global Reanalyses, NCEP North American Regional Reanalyses (NARR), Met Office North Atlantic European (NAE) operational analyses, two MM5 hindcasts, and two QuikSCAT products. In general, the limited-area models are better at capturing the mesoscale high wind speed features and their associated structure; often the models underestimate the highest wind speeds and gradients. The most significant discrepancies are: a poor simulation of relative humidity by the NCEP global and MM5 models, a cold bias in 2 m air temperature near the sea-ice edge in the NAE model, and an overestimation of wind speed above 20 m s-1 in the QuikSCAT wind products. In addition, the NCEP global, NARR and MM5 models all have significant discrepancies associated with the parametrisation of surface turbulent heat fluxes. A high-resolution prescription of the SST field is crucial in this region, although these were not generally used at this time

The impact of albendazole treatment on the incidence of viral- and bacterial-induced diarrhea in school children in southern Vietnam: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

Anthelmintics are one of the more commonly available classes of drugs to treat infections by parasitic helminths (especially nematodes) in the human intestinal tract. As a result of their cost-effectiveness, mass school-based deworming programs are becoming routine practice in developing countries. However, experimental and clinical evidence suggests that anthelmintic treatments may increase susceptibility to other gastrointestinal infections caused by bacteria, viruses, or protozoa. Hypothesizing that anthelmintics may increase diarrheal infections in treated children, we aim to evaluate the impact of anthelmintics on the incidence of diarrheal disease caused by viral and bacterial pathogens in school children in southern Vietnam.This is a randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial to investigate the effects of albendazole treatment versus placebo on the incidence of viral- and bacterial-induced diarrhea in 350 helminth-infected and 350 helminth-uninfected Vietnamese school children aged 6-15 years. Four hundred milligrams of albendazole, or placebo treatment will be administered once every 3 months for 12 months. At the end of 12 months, all participants will receive albendazole treatment. The primary endpoint of this study is the incidence of diarrheal disease assessed by 12 months of weekly active and passive case surveillance. Secondary endpoints include the prevalence and intensities of helminth, viral, and bacterial infections, alterations in host immunity and the gut microbiota with helminth and pathogen clearance, changes in mean z scores of body weight indices over time, and the number and severity of adverse events.In order to reduce helminth burdens, anthelmintics are being routinely administered to children in developing countries. However, the effects of anthelmintic treatment on susceptibility to other diseases, including diarrheal pathogens, remain unknown. It is important to monitor for unintended consequences of drug treatments in co-infected populations. In this trial, we will examine how anthelmintic treatment impacts host susceptibility to diarrheal infections, with the aim of informing deworming programs of any indirect effects of mass anthelmintic administrations on co-infecting enteric pathogens.ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT02597556 . Registered on 3 November 2015

Targeted Analysis of Serum Proteins Encoded at Known Inflammatory Bowel Disease Risk Loci

Few studies have investigated the blood proteome of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). We characterized the serum abundance of proteins encoded at 163 known IBD risk loci and tested these proteins for their biomarker discovery potential. Based on the Human Protein Atlas (HPA) antibody availability, 218 proteins from genes mapping at 163 IBD risk loci were selected. Targeted serum protein profiles from 49 Crohns disease (CD) patients, 51 ulcerative colitis (UC) patients, and 50 sex- and age-matched healthy individuals were obtained using multiplexed antibody suspension bead array assays. Differences in relative serum abundance levels between disease groups and controls were examined. Replication was attempted for CD-UC comparisons (including disease subtypes) by including 64 additional patients (33 CD and 31 UC). Antibodies targeting a potentially novel risk protein were validated by paired antibodies, Western blot, immuno-capture mass spectrometry, and epitope mapping. By univariate analysis, 13 proteins mostly related to neutrophil, T-cell, and B-cell activation and function were differentially expressed in IBD patients vs healthy controls, 3 in CD patients vs healthy controls and 2 in UC patients vs healthy controls (q <0.01). Multivariate analyses further differentiated disease groups from healthy controls and CD subtypes from UC (P <0.05). Extended characterization of an antibody targeting a novel, discriminative serum marker, the laccase (multicopper oxidoreductase) domain containing 1 (LACC1) protein, provided evidence for antibody on-target specificity. Using affinity proteomics, we identified a set of IBD-associated serum proteins encoded at IBD risk loci. These candidate proteins hold the potential to be exploited as diagnostic biomarkers of IBD.Peer reviewe

Acidic microenvironment plays a key role in human melanoma progression through a sustained exosome mediated transfer of clinically relevant metastatic molecules

Background: Microenvironment cues involved in melanoma progression are largely unknown. Melanoma is highly influenced in its aggressive phenotype by the changes it determinates in its microenvironment, such as pH decrease, in turn influencing cancer cell invasiveness, progression and tissue remodelling through an abundant secretion of exosomes, dictating cancer strategy to the whole host. A role of exosomes in driving melanoma progression under microenvironmental acidity was never described. Methods: We studied four differently staged human melanoma lines, reflecting melanoma progression, under microenvironmental acidic pHs pressure ranging between pH 6.0-6.7. To estimate exosome secretion as a function of tumor stage and environmental pH, we applied a technique to generate native fluorescent exosomes characterized by vesicles integrity, size, density, markers expression, and quantifiable by direct FACS analysis. Functional roles of exosomes were tested in migration and invasion tests. Then we performed a comparative proteomic analysis of acid versus control exosomes to elucidate a specific signature involved in melanoma progression. Results: We found that metastatic melanoma secretes a higher exosome amount than primary melanoma, and that acidic pH increases exosome secretion when melanoma is in an intermediate stage, i.e. metastatic non-invasive. We were thus able to show that acidic pH influences the intercellular cross-talk mediated by exosomes. In fact when exposed to exosomes produced in an acidic medium, pH naïve melanoma cells acquire migratory and invasive capacities likely due to transfer of metastatic exosomal proteins, favoring cell motility and angiogenesis. A Prognoscan-based meta-analysis study of proteins enriched in acidic exosomes, identified 11 genes (HRAS, GANAB, CFL2, HSP90B1, HSP90AB1, GSN, HSPA1L, NRAS, HSPA5, TIMP3, HYOU1), significantly correlating with poor prognosis, whose high expression was in part confirmed in bioptic samples of lymph node metastases. Conclusions: A crucial step of melanoma progression does occur at melanoma intermediate -stage, when extracellular acidic pH induces an abundant release and intra-tumoral uptake of exosomes. Such exosomes are endowed with pro-invasive molecules of clinical relevance, which may provide a signature of melanoma advancement

Akutna primjena nikotina ne poboljšava kognitivne funkcije

Chronic smokers often claim that smoking improves their cognitive abilities, such as concentration. However, scientific evidence to support this claim is scarce. Previous studies gave inconclusive results, and some of them had significant methodological flaws. Therefore, the aim of this study was to test whether smoking a single cigarette affects performance across several cognitive domains. It included a group of 22 occasional smokers aged 19–29 years. Attention, working memory, and visuospatial reasoning were assessed using a within-subjects design with a control setting. There were two separate testing sessions two days apart. Half the group started with experimental and the other half with control setting. In the experimental setting, the participants completed the first block of tasks, smoked one cigarette (with a nicotine yield of 0.5 mg), and then completed the second block of tasks. In the control setting, the procedure was the same, except that the participants had a glass of water instead of a cigarette. Repeated measures ANOVA showed no significant effects of cigarette smoking on either reaction time rates or accuracy on any of the three cognitive domains. These results suggest that, at least among young, occasional smokers, smoking does not affect cognition and the claims of its improvement are probably a result of some sort of cognitive bias.Kronični pušači često tvrde da im pušenje, između ostaloga, pozitivno utječe na kognitivne sposobnosti (npr. pomaže im u održavanju koncentracije). Je li doista tako još uvijek nemamo jednoznačan odgovor, budući da su prethodne studije ne samo dale nekonzistentne rezultate nego su bile i metodološki manjkave. Stoga je cilj ovoga istraživanja bio utvrditi utječe li konzumacija jedne cigarete na izvedbu zadataka u nekoliko različitih kognitivnih domena. U istraživanju je sudjelovala skupina povremenih pušača u dobi od 19 do 29 godina. Pomoću računalnog programa E-Prime prezentirani su zadaci koji mjere pažnju, radno pamćenje i obradu vidno-prostornih informacija. Korišten je prije-poslije nacrt, uz kontrolni i eksperimentalni uvjet. Sudionici su iste zadatke rješavali četiri puta: prije i poslije tretmana u kontrolnom uvjetu te prije i poslije tretmana u eksperimentalnom uvjetu. U kontrolnom uvjetu tretman se sastojao od čaše vode koju su sudionici morali popiti, a u eksperimentalnom uvjetu od pušenja jedne cigarete koja otpušta 0,5 mg nikotina. Stanka između kontrolnoga i eksperimentalnoga testiranja bila je dva dana. Redoslijed uvjeta bio je rotiran. Niti u jednom zadatku nije utvrđen značajan utjecaj pušenja ni na vrijeme reakcije ni na točnost rješavanja. Ovi su nalazi u skladu s hipotezom da su samoiskazi o pozitivnom utjecaju pušenja na kognitivnu učinkovitost posljedica neutemeljenih subjektivnih dojmova