The growing prevalence of foreign media consumption, including from Japan, among young Chinese has received considerable notice in recent work on PRC youth culture. To date however, few studies have considered how youth of different social backgrounds perceive their consumption of Japanese popular culture in the context of the Party-state's 'patriotic education' campaign waged in schools and in the mass media since the 1990s. Studies have also overlooked the question of how rural and urban youth in China currently juxtapose the images and themes conveyed in the Japanese popular culture that they consume with school and domestic media messages about Japan. Drawing on interviews among senior middle school students in China, the present study addresses this issue. It finds that a majority of youth of different backgrounds profess animosity towards Japan, but readily separate these feelings from their passion for Japanese media. In some cases, consumption of Japanese popular culture allows youth to feel that they 'know' - or even appreciate - the other country better. Amid the anti-Japanese messages youth currently receive at school and through domestic media, consumption of Japanese popular culture products therefore manifests a form of 'expressive individualism' on the part of some Chinese youth, who creatively construct their own notions of patriotism, national memory, and Sino-Japanese relations.
The growing prevalence of foreign media consumption, including from Japan, among young Chinese has received considerable notice in recent work on PRC youth culture. To date however, few studies have considered how youth of different social backgrounds perceive their consumption of Japanese popular culture in the context of the Party-state's 'patriotic education' campaign waged in schools and in the mass media since the 1990s. Studies have also overlooked the question of how rural and urban youth in China currently juxtapose the images and themes conveyed in the Japanese popular culture that they consume with school and domestic media messages about Japan. Drawing on interviews among senior middle school students in China, the present study addresses this issue. It finds that a majority of youth of different backgrounds profess animosity towards Japan, but readily separate these feelings from their passion for Japanese media. In some cases, consumption of Japanese popular culture allows youth to feel that they 'know' - or even appreciate - the other country better. Amid the anti-Japanese messages youth currently receive at school and through domestic media, consumption of Japanese popular culture products therefore manifests a form of 'expressive individualism' on the part of some Chinese youth, who creatively construct their own notions of patriotism, national memory, and Sino-Japanese relations.
Silver nanoparticle based microelectrodes embedded between layers of hydrogel material were successfully fabricated. 3D bioprinting is employed to print the entire bioelectronics platform comprising of conducting silver ink and Gelatin methacryloyl (GelMA) hydrogel. The additive manufg. technique of bioprinting gives design freedom for the circuit, saves material and shortens the time to fabricate the bioelectronics platform. The silver platform shows excellent elec. cond., structural flexibility and stability in wet environment. It is tested for biocompatibility using C2C12 murine myoblasts cell line. The work demonstrates the potential of the fabricated platform for the realization of practical bioelectronic devices. [on SciFinder(R)]
* While marine environments are three-dimensional (3D) in nature, current approaches and tools for planning and prioritising actions in the ocean are predominantly two dimensional. Here, we develop a novel 3D marine spatial conservation prioritisation approach, which explicitly accounts for the inherent vertical heterogeneity of the ocean. This enables both vertical and horizontal spatial prioritisation to be performed simultaneously. To our knowledge, this is the first endeavour to develop prioritisation of conservation actions in 3D. * We applied the 3D spatial conservation prioritisation approach to the Mediterranean Sea as a case study. We first subdivided the Mediterranean Sea into 3D planning units by assigning them a z coordinate (representing depth). We further partitioned these 3D planning units vertically into three depth layers; this allowed us to quantify biodiversity (1,011 species and 19 geomorphic features) and the cost of conservation actions at different depths. We adapted the prioritisation software Marxan to identify 3D networks of sites where biodiversity conservation targets are achieved for the minimum cost. * Using the 3D approach presented here, we identified networks of sites where conservation targets for all biodiversity features were achieved. Importantly, these networks included areas of the ocean where only particular depth layers along the water column were identified as priorities for conservation. The 3D approach also proved to be more cost-efficient than the traditional 2D approach. Spatial priorities within the networks of sites selected were considerably different when comparing the 2D and 3D approaches. * Prioritising in 3D allows conservation and marine spatial planners to target specific threats to specific conservation features, at specific depths in the ocean. This provides a platform to further integrate systematic conservation planning into the wider ongoing and future marine spatial planning and ocean zoning processes.
A hybrid laser scheme for the generation and amplification of mid-IR ultrashort pulses, with a carrier to envelope stable phase, is presented. Seed mid-IR pulses with picojoule energies are obtained via intrapulse difference frequency generation from an 8 fs Ti:sapphire oscillator. The energy of these seed pulses is then amplified in a multipass Cr:ZnSe laser amplifier to more than a nanojoule/pulse level. The duration of the amplified impulses is measured to be 87 fs, and the width of their spectrum supports their compression to ~50 fs.
During considerable part of the twentieth century, the contacts between left-wing groups and the Jews in Brazil were relatively positive and amicable. In certain way, it could be found a kind of a symbiosis between sectors of the Jewish community and some groups of the Brazilian left. At present times, in contrast, any description of the interaction between Jewish organizations (especially Zionist ones) and Brazilian left-wing groups inevitably mentions political tensions and mutual accusations. In the last years suspicion, conflict, and a lack of dialogue have characterized the relations between a segments of the Brazilian Jewish population and some left-wing groups. This article intends to discuss and analyze the changes and processes through which the Brazilian Jews and some Left-wing Brazilian groups have passed.
Since 2012, hundreds of thousands of people mobilized and demonstrated against a French law that made both marriage and adoption possible for same-sex couples. In these demonstrations, seemingly heterogeneous groups and political traditions came together against those they saw as common enemies, namely Jews, LGBT people and feminists. Are these paradoxical alliances new? How have they transformed the public space and the imaginary of citizenship? The analysis of these activist repertoires shows that the ethos of anti-modernism, which has historically characterized reactionary groups, expressed itself through an obsessive focus and fear of the alleged undoing of gender, which is seen as emblematic of a post-modern society. Whether online or in demonstrations, a collection of political actors, ranging from the far-right to post-colonial second-generation groups, join forces in denouncing mass media, capitalism, and human rights, which they believe to be avatars of the decadence of their postmodern world. Their activism has reshaped the French political landscape.
A pulsed high energy and narrow bandwidth tunable Tm:YLF laser at the milli-Joule level is demonstrated. The spectral bandwidth was narrowed down to 0.15 nm FWHM, while 33 nm of tunability range between 1873 nm and 1906 nm was achieved using a pair of YAG Etalons. The laser was actively Q-switched using an acousto-optic modulator and mJ level pulse energy was measured along the whole tuning range at a repetition rate of 1 kHz. Up to 1.97 mJ of energy per pulse was achieved at a pulse duration of 37 ns at a wavelength of 1879 nm, corresponding to a peak-power of 53.2 kW and at a slope efficiency of 36 &\#x00025;. The combination of both high energy pulsed lasing and spectral tunability, while maintaining narrow bandwidth across the whole tunability range, enhances the laser abilities, which could enable new applications in the sensing, medical and material processing fields.
A sol, aq. soln.-based ink is presented for fabrication of 3D transparent silica glass objects with complex geometries, by a simple 3D printing process conducted at room temp. The ink combines a hybrid ceramic precursor that can undergo both photopolymn. reaction and a sol-gel process, both in a soln. form, without any particles. The printing is conducted by localized photopolymn. with the use of a low-cost 3D printer. Following printing, upon aging and densifying, the resulting objects convert from a gel to a xerogel and then to a fused silica. The printed objects, which are composed of fused silica, are transparent and have tunable d. and refractive indexes. [on SciFinder(R)]
Summary Sensitization is a simple form of behavioral plasticity by which an initial stimulus, often signaling danger, leads to increased responsiveness to subsequent stimuli. Cross-modal sensitization is an important feature of arousal in many organisms, yet its molecular and neural mechanisms are incompletely understood. Here we show that in C. elegans, aversive mechanical stimuli lead to both enhanced locomotor activity and sensitization of aversive chemosensory pathways. Both locomotor arousal and cross-modal sensitization depend on the release of FLP-20 neuropeptides from primary mechanosensory neurons and on their receptor FRPR-3. Surprisingly, the critical site of action of FRPR-3 for both sensory and locomotor arousal is RID, a single neuroendocrine cell specialized for the release of neuropeptides that responds to mechanical stimuli in a FLP-20-dependent manner. Thus, FLP-20 peptides function as an afferent arousal signal that conveys mechanosensory information to central neurons that modulate arousal and other behavioral states.
Adopting an agnotological perspective, this article extends the critical literature on APIs (application programming interfaces) by systematically showing that social media APIs are largely blind to acts of disconnectivity such as unfriending and unliking. We do this through analysis of the traces of social media usage that are not accessible through APIs as gleaned from the technical documentation published for developers by 12 major SNSs. Our findings make two main contributions. First, we show for the first time that APIs offer virtually no access to data about disconnectivity. Second, we show that APIs offer a very limited historical perspective, particularly regarding disconnectivity. However, for types of users that might spend money on advertising, far more historical and disconnectivity-oriented information is accessible through the API. This has practical consequences for research, and contributes to an agnotology of social media that sheds critical light on the advertiser-friendly atmosphere of connectivity that social media try to create.
This article discusses the ways scholars have outlined the process of Jewish adaptation (or lack of it) from their Christian surroundings in northern Europe during the High Middle Ages. Using the example of penitential fasting, the first two sections of the article describe medieval Jewish practices and some of the approaches that have been used to explain the similarity between medieval Jewish and contemporary Christian customs. The last two sections of the article suggest that in addition to looking for texts that connect between Jewish and Christian thought and beliefs behind these customs, it is useful to examine what medieval Jews and Christians saw of each other's customs living in close urban quarters. Finally, the article suggests that when shaping medieval Jewish and Christian identity, the differences emphasized in shared everyday actions and visible practice were no less important than theological distinctions. As part of the discussion throughout the article, the terminology used by scholars to describe the process of Jewish appropriation from the local surroundings is described, focusing on terms such as “influence” and “inward acculturation,” as well as “appropriation.”
