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The article critically examines ‘Telling China’s Story Well’ (TCSW), a popular propaganda campaign slogan proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013. Drawing on theories about storytelling and propaganda and using the COVID-19 as a contextualised example, the paper discusses how the slogan was adapted into ‘Telling China’s Anti-pandemic Story Well’ to mobilise domestic and external propaganda of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) during the pandemic. We argue that TCSW should be understood as a well-crafted political watchword which promotes and commands strategic narratives of doing propaganda. It has the rhetorical power to integrate and reinvigorate domestic and external propaganda, and to facilitate their convergence. Adapting this slogan to mobilise propaganda campaigns of national or global importance and interest demonstrates the CCP’s ambition to harness strategic storytelling to improve the coherence, effectiveness and reputation of its propaganda at home and abroad.

We describe MGARD, a software providing MultiGrid Adaptive Reduction for floating-point scientific data on structured and unstructured grids. With exceptional data compression capability and precise error control, MGARD addresses a wide range of requirements, including storage reduction, high-performance I/O, and in-situ data analysis. It features a unified application programming interface (API) that seamlessly operates across diverse computing architectures. MGARD has been optimized with highly-tuned GPU kernels and efficient memory and device management mechanisms, ensuring scalable and rapid operations., Comment: 20 pages, 8 figures

Scientific discoveries are increasingly constrained by limited storage space and I/O capacities. For time-series simulations and experiments, their data often need to be decimated over timesteps to accommodate storage and I/O limitations. In this paper, we propose a technique that addresses storage costs while improving post-analysis accuracy through spatiotemporal adaptive, error-controlled lossy compression. We investigate the trade-off between data precision and temporal output rates, revealing that reducing data precision and increasing timestep frequency lead to more accurate analysis outcomes. Additionally, we integrate spatiotemporal feature detection with data compression and demonstrate that performing adaptive error-bounded compression in higher dimensional space enables greater compression ratios, leveraging the error propagation theory of a transformation-based compressor. To evaluate our approach, we conduct experiments using the well-known E3SM climate simulation code and apply our method to compress variables used for cyclone tracking. Our results show a significant reduction in storage size while enhancing the quality of cyclone tracking analysis, both quantitatively and qualitatively, in comparison to the prevalent timestep decimation approach. Compared to three state-of-the-art lossy compressors lacking feature preservation capabilities, our adaptive compression framework improves perfectly matched cases in TC tracking by 26.4-51.3% at medium compression ratios and by 77.3-571.1% at large compression ratios, with a merely 5-11% computational overhead., Comment: 10 pages, 13 figures, 2023 IEEE International Conference on e-Science and Grid Computing

Scientists conduct large-scale simulations to compute derived quantities-of-interest (QoI) from primary data. Often, QoI are linked to specific features, regions, or time intervals, such that data can be adaptively reduced without compromising the integrity of QoI. For many spatiotemporal applications, these QoI are binary in nature and represent presence or absence of a physical phenomenon. We present a pipelined compression approach that first uses neural-network-based techniques to derive regions where QoI are highly likely to be present. Then, we employ a Guaranteed Autoencoder (GAE) to compress data with differential error bounds. GAE uses QoI information to apply low-error compression to only these regions. This results in overall high compression ratios while still achieving downstream goals of simulation or data collections. Experimental results are presented for climate data generated from the E3SM Simulation model for downstream quantities such as tropical cyclone and atmospheric river detection and tracking. These results show that our approach is superior to comparable methods in the literature., Comment: 7 pages. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2404.18063

We present an approach called guaranteed block autoencoder that leverages Tensor Correlations (GBATC) for reducing the spatiotemporal data generated by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and other scientific applications. It uses a multidimensional block of tensors (spanning in space and time) for both input and output, capturing the spatiotemporal and interspecies relationship within a tensor. The tensor consists of species that represent different elements in a CFD simulation. To guarantee the error bound of the reconstructed data, principal component analysis (PCA) is applied to the residual between the original and reconstructed data. This yields a basis matrix, which is then used to project the residual of each instance. The resulting coefficients are retained to enable accurate reconstruction. Experimental results demonstrate that our approach can deliver two orders of magnitude in reduction while still keeping the errors of primary data under scientifically acceptable bounds. Compared to reduction-based approaches based on SZ, our method achieves a substantially higher compression ratio for a given error bound or a better error for a given compression ratio., Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures

Data compression is becoming critical for storing scientific data because many scientific applications need to store large amounts of data and post process this data for scientific discovery. Unlike image and video compression algorithms that limit errors to primary data, scientists require compression techniques that accurately preserve derived quantities of interest (QoIs). This paper presents a physics-informed compression technique implemented as an end-to-end, scalable, GPU-based pipeline for data compression that addresses this requirement. Our hybrid compression technique combines machine learning techniques and standard compression methods. Specifically, we combine an autoencoder, an error-bounded lossy compressor to provide guarantees on raw data error, and a constraint satisfaction post-processing step to preserve the QoIs within a minimal error (generally less than floating point error). The effectiveness of the data compression pipeline is demonstrated by compressing nuclear fusion simulation data generated by a large-scale fusion code, XGC, which produces hundreds of terabytes of data in a single day. Our approach works within the ADIOS framework and results in compression by a factor of more than 150 while requiring only a few percent of the computational resources necessary for generating the data, making the overall approach highly effective for practical scenarios.

The EXoplanet Climate Infrared TElescope (EXCITE) experiment is a balloon-borne, purpose-designed mission to measure spectroscopic phase curves of short-period extrasolar giant planets (EGPs, or "hot Jupiters"). Here, we present EXCITE's principal science instrument: a high-throughput, single-object spectrograph operating in the 0.8-2.5 mu m and 2.5-4.0 mu m bands with R >= 50. Our compact design achieves diffraction-limited, on-axis performance with just three powered optics: two off-axis parabolic mirrors and a CaF2 prism. We discuss the optical and mechanical design, the expected optical performance of the spectrograph, and summarize the tolerances needed to achieve that performance. We also discuss plans for establishing alignment of the optics and verifying the optical performance.

The EXoplanet Climate Infrared TElescope (EXCITE) experiment is a balloon-borne, purpose-designed mission to measure spectroscopic phase curves of short-period extrasolar giant planets (EGPs, or "hot Jupiters"). Here, we present EXCITE's principal science instrument: a high-throughput, single-object spectrograph operating in the 0.8-2.5 mu m and 2.5-4.0 mu m bands with R >= 50. Our compact design achieves diffraction-limited, on-axis performance with just three powered optics: two off-axis parabolic mirrors and a CaF2 prism. We discuss the optical and mechanical design, the expected optical performance of the spectrograph, and summarize the tolerances needed to achieve that performance. We also discuss plans for establishing alignment of the optics and verifying the optical performance.

This article studies the governance of ‘cyber historical nihilism’ in China. By performing document analysis of the regulatory policies and actions against cyber historical nihilism, we found that cyber historical nihilism is mainly governed as harmful ‘online content’ and a threatening ‘ideological trend’, and its governance has incorporated agencies and measures of China’s ‘internet governance’ and ‘ideological and political education’. We argue that cyber historical nihilism has been securitised by the Chinese Communist Party as an urgent threat to the nation’s ideological and political securities. The governance of cyber historical nihilism aims to maintain the Chinese Communist Party’s authority in history writing and its legitimacy and longevity as the ruling party. The Chinese Communist Party’s emphasis and intensity in governing cyber historical nihilism has not only demonstrated the ideological turn to Maoism in internet governance, propaganda and politics under Xi Jinping’s leadership, but also the Chinese Communist Party’s ability and resilience to adapt to new challenges in the ideological field in the digital age.

Highly tensile-strained Ge quantum dots (TS-Ge-QDs) emitting structures with different size were successfully grown on InP substrates by molecular beam epitaxy. Dislocation-free TS-Ge-QDs were observed by transmission electron microscopy. Finite element modeling indicates a maximum tensile strain of 4.5% in the Ge QDs, which is much larger than the required strain to achieve direct band gap conversion of Ge based on theoretical prediction. Photoluminescence (PL) from a direct band-gap-like transition of TS-Ge-QDs with a peak energy of 0.796 eV was achieved and confirmed by the etch depth-dependent PL, temperature-dependent PL, and excitation-power-dependent PL. In addition, a strong defect-related peak of 1 eV was observed at room temperature. The band structure of the TS-Ge-QDs emitting structures was calculated to support the experimental results of PL spectra. Achieving PL from direct band-gap-like transitions of TS-Ge-QDs provides encouraging evidence of this promising highly tensile strained semiconductor-nanostructure-based platform for future photonics applications such as integrated light sources.

This article examines how Chinese domestic migrants make meaning of destinations using video creation technologies. It considers the example of how interprovincial university students adopt the participatory and creative practice of digital storytelling. The article finds that the students have created stories of the South (Nanfang) in ways that diverge from the mythologization in official discourse. This mythologization of the South is the result of the uneven development strategy in China’s reform period. The article concludes that migrants are provided with opportunities to engage in alternative placemaking through new media technologies, which is crucial in scrutinizing rapid urbanization and economic development in China.

Highly tensile-strained Ge quantum dots (TS-Ge-QDs) emitting structures with different size were successfully grown on InP substrates by molecular beam epitaxy. Dislocation-free TS-Ge-QDs were observed by transmission electron microscopy. Finite element modeling indicates a maximum tensile strain of 4.5% in the Ge QDs, which is much larger than the required strain to achieve direct band gap conversion of Ge based on theoretical prediction. Photoluminescence (PL) from a direct band-gap-like transition of TS-Ge-QDs with a peak energy of 0.796 eV was achieved and confirmed by the etch depth-dependent PL, temperature-dependent PL, and excitation-power-dependent PL. In addition, a strong defect-related peak of 1 eV was observed at room temperature. The band structure of the TS-Ge-QDs emitting structures was calculated to support the experimental results of PL spectra. Achieving PL from direct band-gap-like transitions of TS-Ge-QDs provides encouraging evidence of this promising highly tensile strained semiconductor-nanostructure-based platform for future photonics applications such as integrated light sources.

Rapid growth in scientific data and a widening gap between computational speed and I/O bandwidth makes it increasingly infeasible to store and share all data produced by scientific simulations. Instead, we need methods for reducing data volumes: ideally, methods that can scale data volumes adaptively so as to enable negotiation of performance and fidelity tradeoffs in different situations. Multigrid-based hierarchical data representations hold promise as a solution to this problem, allowing for flexible conversion between different fidelities so that, for example, data can be created at high fidelity and then transferred or stored at lower fidelity via logically simple and mathematically sound operations. However, the effective use of such representations has been hindered until now by the relatively high costs of creating, accessing, reducing, and otherwise operating on such representations. We describe here highly optimized data refactoring kernels for GPU accelerators that enable efficient creation and manipulation of data in multigrid-based hierarchical forms. We demonstrate that our optimized design can achieve up to 264 TB/s aggregated data refactoring throughput -- 92% of theoretical peak -- on 1024 nodes of the Summit supercomputer. We showcase our optimized design by applying it to a large-scale scientific visualization workflow and the MGARD lossy compression software., Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2007.04457

NEID is a high resolution echelle spectrograph designed to enable extremely precise Doppler radial velocity observations of stars in the 380-930nm wavelength range1. It has recently been installed at the 3.5m WIYN telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory, and is currently being commissioned. The design is based on a white pupil layout with a monolithic parabolic primary mirror and a 195mm pupil size on the R4 Echelle grating. Here we describe the optical and mechanical design, assembly, and alignment of the fiber injection system which converts the native focal ratio of the sky, calibration, and science fibers to the focal ratio required to form the 195mm collimated beam.

In October 2019, the NEID instrument (PI Suvrath Mahadevan, PSU) was delivered to the WIYN 3.5 m Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory. Commissioning began shortly after delivery, but was paused due to a COVID-19 imposed observatory shutdown in March 2020. The observatory has recently reopened and NEID commissioning has resumed. NEID is an optical (380-930 nm), fiber-fed, precision Doppler radial velocity system developed as part of the NN-EXPLORE partnership. While the spectrometer and calibration system are maintained in a highly controlled environment on the basement level of the WIYN, the NEID Port Adapter mounts directly to a bent-Cassegrain port on the telescope and is responsible for precisely and stably placing target light on the science fibers. Here we present a brief overview of the as-built Port Adapter and its sub-components. We then discuss preliminary on-sky performance compared to requirements as well as next steps as we complete commissioning.

Dehua Liao,1,2,* Yun Chen,1,* Yujin Guo,3 Changshui Wang,4 Ni Liu,1 Qian Gong,1 Yingzhou Fu,1 Yilan Fu,1 Lizhi Cao,1 Dunwu Yao,1 Pei Jiang3 1Department of Pharmacy, Hunan Cancer Hospital, Changsha, Hunan 410013, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Pharmacy, Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan 410013, People’s Republic of China; 3Institute of Clinical Pharmacy & Pharmacology, Jining First People’s Hospital, Jining, Shandong 272000, People’s Republic of China; 4Department of Clinical Translational Medicine, Jining Life Science Center, Jining, Shandong 272000, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Pei Jiang Tel/ Fax + 86 537 2106208Email jiangpeicsu@sina.comIntroduction: Depression is one of the most common neuropsychiatric illnesses which leads to a huge social and economic burden on modern society. So, it is necessary to develop an effective and safe pharmacological intervention for depression. Accumulating evidence has shown that adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase/sirtuin 1 (AMPK/SIRT1) signaling pathway plays a pivotal role in the development of depression. Our present study aimed to investigate the antidepressant effect and possible mechanisms of salvianolic acid B (SalB) in a chronic mild stress (CMS)-induced depression model in rats.Materials and Methods: The rats were randomly divided into three groups: control group with no stressor, CMS group and CMS+SalB (30 mg/kg/d) group. After administration for 28 consecutive days, the behavior tests were performed. The rats were sacrificed after behavior tests, and the brain tissues were collected for biochemical analysis.Results: It was observed that the administration of SalB for 28 consecutive days successfully corrected the depressive-like behaviors in CMS-treated rats. SalB could effectively reduce the gene expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines such as i

© The Author(s) 2020. This study investigates the effect of personal investment in the form of learner-generated content (LGC) on the lexical recall of beginning-level learners of Chinese. The study employed a 2 × 2 repeated-measures design with content at two levels – teacher-generated content or TGC, and learner-generated content or LGC – and time at two levels (immediate, delayed). Quantitative results were triangulated with qualitative thematic analyses of follow-up interviews. The study was conducted at an Australian university and aimed to identify a way of modifying current intentional vocabulary learning activities to increase learner investment in the learning process and improve retention. Participants completed two versions of a picture description activity that was commonly used to introduce and practice new vocabulary in the program. The first version (TGC) was based on a picture that Chinese teachers chose to illustrate ten words learners did not know and that were pedagogic targets. The second (LGC) was based on pictures that learners selected as being personally meaningful and that illustrated ten words that they did not know in Chinese but wanted to learn. Findings revealed significant differences in recall for LGC words over TGC words on both immediate and delayed post-tests, and a significant interaction between content and time, demonstrating a faster rate of decay in memory for TGC words than LGC words. Follow-up interviews indicated that LGC words were more meaningful to learners in terms of relevance, interest, emotional value and associations with world knowledge. Results are discussed in terms of how LGC vocabulary activities might be used in second language (L2) courses.

In January 2019, a Duke University administrator’s email titled “To Speak English or To Not Speak English …” warned Chinese international students in a biostatistics master’s program not to use their mother tongue in common areas. The email stirred wide concern across social media in the United States (US) and China (“Outcry after Duke’s Warning”, 2019). In it, the graduate studies director said that speaking Chinese during breaks was a sign of not practicing English, which Chinese students are supposed to do while studying in the US. The director stated that doing so might damage their work opportunities in the faculty and said they should keep these unintended consequences in mind when they choose to speak in Chinese in the building. Rather than seeing Chinese students’ bilingual and intercultural abilities as an intellectual advantage, the director believed English to be the only language useful for study in the US, and any lack of it as equal to academic incompetence. The incident sounds the alarm that a discourse of power is influential for our perception of language, which may result in deeper language inequalities and educational inequalities between the West and the rest of the world. Even Duke University, which is renowned worldwide and is diverse in ethnic representation (65% of students in the program mentioned were from China, as The Guardian’s report said), cannot be an exception.

This White Paper presents a mission concept called MIRECLE - the Mid-InfraRed Exoplanet CLimate Explorer. With a moderately sized aperture of 2 meters, broad wavelength coverage (4 - 25 um), and next generation instruments, MIRECLE will be capable of efficiently characterizing a statistically significant sample of terrestrial planets, many of which will be in their host stars's habitable zones. Spectroscopic characterization of terrestrial atmospheres will provide constraints for the distribution of planets with tenuous vs. substantial atmospheres, on the inner and outer edges of the habitable zone, and climate models to assess the potential for habitability. For the few brightest targets, the detection of specific combinations of molecules would provide evidence of biosignatures. For all other targets, this comprehensive survey would filter out the airless, desiccated, or lifeless worlds, thus providing a subset of potentially habitable worlds ready for in-depth atmospheric characterization using a larger aperture telescope., Comment: Astro2020: Decadal Survey on Astronomy and Astrophysics APC White Paper

This White Paper presents a mission concept called MIRECLE - the Mid-InfraRed Exoplanet CLimate Explorer. With a moderately sized aperture of 2 meters, broad wavelength coverage (4 - 25 um), and next generation instruments, MIRECLE will be capable of efficiently characterizing a statistically significant sample of terrestrial planets, many of which will be in their host stars's habitable zones. Spectroscopic characterization of terrestrial atmospheres will provide constraints for the distribution of planets with tenuous vs. substantial atmospheres, on the inner and outer edges of the habitable zone, and climate models to assess the potential for habitability. For the few brightest targets, the detection of specific combinations of molecules would provide evidence of biosignatures. For all other targets, this comprehensive survey would filter out the airless, desiccated, or lifeless worlds, thus providing a subset of potentially habitable worlds ready for in-depth atmospheric characterization using a larger aperture telescope., Comment: Astro2020: Decadal Survey on Astronomy and Astrophysics APC White Paper

This study adds resources to the current research on computer-aided second language (L2) learning by focusing on a relatively under-explored area of online oral assessment using video recording. It fills the gap of existing literature by looking into the area through the lens of students’ perception. Drawing on data collected through questionnaires and interviews of students from Chinese and Japanese language programs at Curtin University, this study finds that video-recorded oral assessments facilitated L2 learning by improving learners’ motivation and encouraging self-reflection. The study also sheds light on the importance of technical and teamwork guidance in maximising learning outcomes. Data variations between beginners and advanced learners who participated in this study give weight to the argument that a “one size fits all” approach will not be effective in online language learning, and so facilitators may need to carefully evaluate the level of learners’ language competence when they are incorporating online components in their programs.

The NEID spectrometer is an optical (380-930 nm), fiber-fed, precision Doppler spectrometer currently in de- velopment for the WIYN 3.5 m telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory as part of the NN-EXPLORE partnership. Designed to achieve a radial velocity precision of < 30 cm/s, NEID will be sensitive enough to detect terrestrial-mass exoplanets around low-mass stars. Light from the target stars is focused by the telescope to a bent Cassegrain port at the edge of the primary mirror mechanical support. The specialized NEID “Port Adapter” system is mounted at this bent Cassegrain port and is responsible for delivering the incident light from the telescope to the NEID fibers. In order to provide stable, high-quality images to the science instrument, the Port Adapter houses several sub-components designed to acquire the target stars, correct for atmospheric dis- persion, stabilize the light onto the science fibers, and calibrate the spectrometer by injecting known wavelength sources such as a laser frequency comb. Here we provide an overview of the overall opto-mechanical design and system requirements of the Port Adapter. We also describe the development of system error budgets and test plans to meet those requirements.

A primary goal of direct imaging techniques is to spectrally characterize the atmospheres of planets around other stars at extremely high contrast levels. To achieve this goal, coronagraphic instruments have favored integral field spectrographs (IFS) as the science cameras to disperse the entire search area at once and obtain spectra at each location, since the planet position is not known a priori. These spectrographs are useful against confusion from speckles and background objects, and can also help in the speckle subtraction and wavefront control stages of the coronagraphic observation. We present a software package, the Coronagraph and Rapid Imaging Spectrograph in Python (crispy) to simulate the IFS of the WFIRST Coronagraph Instrument (CGI). The software propagates input science cubes using spatially and spectrally resolved coronagraphic focal plane cubes, transforms them into IFS detector maps and ultimately reconstructs the spatio-spectral input scene as a 3D datacube. Simulated IFS cubes can be used to test data extraction techniques, refine sensitivity analyses and carry out design trade studies of the flight CGI-IFS instrument. crispy is a publicly available Python package and can be adapted to other IFS designs., United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (contract)

Many state-of-the-art general object detection methods make use of shared full-image convolutional features (as in Faster R-CNN). This achieves a reasonable test-phase computation time while enjoys the discriminative power provided by large Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) models. Such designs excel on benchmarks which contain natural images but which have very unnatural distributions, i.e. they have an unnaturally high-frequency of the target classes and a bias towards a "friendly" or "dominant" object scale. In this paper we present further study of the use and adaptation of the Faster R-CNN object detection method for datasets presenting natural scale distribution and unbiased real-world object frequency. In particular, we show that better alignment of the detector scale sensitivity to the extant distribution improves vehicle detection performance. We do this by modifying both the selection of Region Proposals, and through using more scale-appropriate full-image convolution features within the CNN model. By selecting better scales in the region proposal input and by combining feature maps through careful design of the convolutional neural network, we improve performance on smaller objects. We significantly increase detection AP for the KITTI dataset car class from 76.3% on our baseline Faster R-CNN detector to 83.6% in our improved detector., Comment: Accepted by 2017 IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (IV). Link: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=7995812

In this book the authors take an innovative approach that builds on previously published work in two ways. First, it focuses on a single city and, second, it adopts a multidisciplinary approach to multilingualism.

BOOK REVIEW: Reading Bai Ruoyun’s book Staging Corruption: Chinese Television and Politics is even more fascinating while watching the 55-episode anti-corruption television drama In the Name of the People (Renmin de mingyi 人民的名义). This top-rating serial, created to spotlight Xi Jinping’s crackdown on corruption, attracted millions of viewers. Many saw it as resurrecting a genre that had been in decline since 2004, when the government suddenly slapped a ban on the topic. The popularity of the serial serves as a footnote to how important the anti-corruption genre has been in public discourse, as well as its continuing relevance to Chinese society today. One can’t help but admire Bai’s foresight in writing a book that illuminates the evolution of the anti-corruption genre and how this issue is embedded in Chinese society. Overall, I found Bai’s account insightful, ingenious, and interesting.

A primary goal of direct imaging techniques is to spectrally characterize the atmospheres of planets around other stars at extremely high contrast levels. To achieve this goal, coronagraphic instruments have favored integral field spectrographs (IFS) as the science cameras to disperse the entire search area at once and obtain spectra at each location, since the planet position is not known a priori. These spectrographs are useful against confusion from speckles and background objects, and can also help in the speckle subtraction and wavefront control stages of the coronagraphic observation. We present a software package, the Coronagraph and Rapid Imaging Spectrograph in Python (crispy) to simulate the IFS of the WFIRST Coronagraph Instrument (CGI). The software propagates input science cubes using spatially and spectrally resolved coronagraphic focal plane cubes, transforms them into IFS detector maps and ultimately reconstructs the spatio-spectral input scene as a 3D datacube. Simulated IFS cubes can be used to test data extraction techniques, refine sensitivity analyses and carry out design trade studies of the flight CGI-IFS instrument. crispy is a publicly available Python package and can be adapted to other IFS designs., Comment: 15 pages

The Prototype Imaging Spectrograph for Coronagraphic Exoplanet Studies (PISCES) is a high contrast integral field spectrograph (IFS) whose design was driven by WFIRST coronagraph instrument requirements. We present commissioning and operational results using PISCES as a camera on the High Contrast Imaging Testbed at JPL. PISCES has demonstrated ability to achieve high contrast spectral retrieval with flight-like data reduction and analysis techniques., Comment: Author's copy - Proceedings of SPIE Volume 10400. Citation to SPIE proceedings volume will be added when available

Direct imaging of exoplanets has become a priority in the field of exoplanet discovery and characterization due to its ability to directly obtain evidence about a planet’s atmosphere and some bulk properties. Features such as atmospheric composition, structure and clouds are just some of the planetary properties obtainable from directly imaged spectra. However, detecting and observing spectra of exoplanets using direct imaging is challenging due to the combination of extreme star to planet contrast ratios and the relatively small apparent physical separation between a host star and an orbiting planet. Detection of Earth-sized planets in reflected visible light requires contrast ratios of 10^(10), while even detection of Jupiter-sized planets and large young self-luminous planets requires contrast ratios of 10^8 and 10^6, respectively. Consequently, direct detection of exoplanets requires observing strategies which push the boundaries of high contrast imaging. The use of coronagraphy to occult a host star has been combined with adaptive optics (AO) technology to yield a particularly promising means of potentially achieving the required contrast ratios in regions close-in enough to the host star. Ground based adaptive optics systems such as The Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) and Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) instrument have been able to achieve contrast ratios nearing 10^7 using post-processing techniques and have yielded a number of direct detections of young self-luminous planets. Advancing these technologies onto a space based platform immune to the difficulties posed by the effects of Earth’s atmosphere is the next step in accessing even larger contrast ratios.

A primary goal of direct imaging techniques is to spectrally characterize the atmospheres of planets around other stars at extremely high contrast levels. To achieve this goal, coronagraphic instruments have favored integral field spectrographs (IFS) as the science cameras to disperse the entire search area at once and obtain spectra at each location, since the planet position is not known a priori. These spectrographs are useful against confusion from speckles and background objects, and can also help in the speckle subtraction and wavefront control stages of the coronagraphic observation. We present a software package, the Coronagraph and Rapid Imaging Spectrograph in Python (crispy) to simulate the IFS of the WFIRST Coronagraph Instrument (CGI). The software propagates input science cubes using spatially and spectrally resolved coronagraphic focal plane cubes, transforms them into IFS detector maps and ultimately reconstructs the spatio-spectral input scene as a 3D datacube. Simulated IFS cubes can be used to test data extraction techniques, refine sensitivity analyses and carry out design trade studies of the flight CGI-IFS instrument. crispy is a publicly available Python package and can be adapted to other IFS designs., Comment: 15 pages

The Prototype Imaging Spectrograph for Coronagraphic Exoplanet Studies (PISCES) is a high contrast integral field spectrograph (IFS) whose design was driven by WFIRST coronagraph instrument requirements. We present commissioning and operational results using PISCES as a camera on the High Contrast Imaging Testbed at JPL. PISCES has demonstrated ability to achieve high contrast spectral retrieval with flight-like data reduction and analysis techniques., Comment: Author's copy - Proceedings of SPIE Volume 10400. Citation to SPIE proceedings volume will be added when available

Ode to Yimeng (Yingmeng Song), a major ballet production created in May 1974, was based on the novel of Red Sister-in-Law (Hongsao). It is one of Red Classics that deals with revolutionary “base area,” and in essence, about how Communist Party won the support of the subaltern, the backbone of the Chinese society at a tipping point of modern Chinese history, when CCP triumphed over the Nationalist army. The story of heroine, Sister-in-Law Ying, who saved a seriously wounded Communist soldier with her breast milk and nurtured him back to life, was once metaphoric and metonymic of the symbiotic relationships between army and the people. This paper argues that the post-Mao remake in the format of television drama has significantly re-defined the essence of the “fish-and-water” relationship in the spirit of traditional Chinese values and, in particular, Confucian values.

We describe a detailed radial velocity error budget for the NASA-NSF Extreme Precision Doppler Spectrometer instrument concept NEID (NN-explore Exoplanet Investigations with Doppler spectroscopy). Such an instrument performance budget is a necessity for both identifying the variety of noise sources currently limiting Doppler measurements, and estimating the achievable performance of next generation exoplanet hunting Doppler spectrometers. For these instruments, no single source of instrumental error is expected to set the overall measurement floor. Rather, the overall instrumental measurement precision is set by the contribution of many individual error sources. We use a combination of numerical simulations, educated estimates based on published materials, extrapolations of physical models, results from laboratory measurements of spectroscopic subsystems, and informed upper limits for a variety of error sources to identify likely sources of systematic error and construct our global instrument performance error budget. While natively focused on the performance of the NEID instrument, this modular performance budget is immediately adaptable to a number of current and future instruments. Such an approach is an important step in charting a path towards improving Doppler measurement precisions to the levels necessary for discovering Earth-like planets., Comment: 20 pages, 12 figures, published in Proc. of SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation 2016

We describe a detailed radial velocity error budget for the NASA-NSF Extreme Precision Doppler Spectrometer instrument concept NEID (NN-explore Exoplanet Investigations with Doppler spectroscopy). Such an instrument performance budget is a necessity for both identifying the variety of noise sources currently limiting Doppler measurements, and estimating the achievable performance of next generation exoplanet hunting Doppler spectrometers. For these instruments, no single source of instrumental error is expected to set the overall measurement floor. Rather, the overall instrumental measurement precision is set by the contribution of many individual error sources. We use a combination of numerical simulations, educated estimates based on published materials, extrapolations of physical models, results from laboratory measurements of spectroscopic subsystems, and informed upper limits for a variety of error sources to identify likely sources of systematic error and construct our global instrument performance error budget. While natively focused on the performance of the NEID instrument, this modular performance budget is immediately adaptable to a number of current and future instruments. Such an approach is an important step in charting a path towards improving Doppler measurement precisions to the levels necessary for discovering Earth-like planets., Comment: 20 pages, 12 figures, published in Proc. of SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation 2016

The development of a fluorescent probe for homocysteine (Hcy) has received great attention in recent years because abnormal levels of Hcy in the blood is a risk factor for cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases. We herein report a tetraphenylethene derivative, TPE-Py, with aggregationinduced emission (AIE) characteristics. It contains an alpha,beta-unsaturated ketone unit and can react with biothiols through the 1,4-addition reaction route, which results in the disruption of molecular conjugation and thus leads to the change of its fluorescence. Due to the intrinsic AIE property of TPE-Py, only Hcy triggers an obvious ratiometric change from yellow emission to blue, whereas the quenching of fluorescence was observed in the case of cysteine (Cys) and glutathione (GSH), respectively. It enables TPE-Py to serve as a highly selective and sensitive probe for distinguishing Hcy over Cys and GSH.

The development of a fluorescent probe for homocysteine (Hcy) has received great attention in recent years because abnormal levels of Hcy in the blood is a risk factor for cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases. We herein report a tetraphenylethene derivative, TPE-Py, with aggregationinduced emission (AIE) characteristics. It contains an alpha,beta-unsaturated ketone unit and can react with biothiols through the 1,4-addition reaction route, which results in the disruption of molecular conjugation and thus leads to the change of its fluorescence. Due to the intrinsic AIE property of TPE-Py, only Hcy triggers an obvious ratiometric change from yellow emission to blue, whereas the quenching of fluorescence was observed in the case of cysteine (Cys) and glutathione (GSH), respectively. It enables TPE-Py to serve as a highly selective and sensitive probe for distinguishing Hcy over Cys and GSH.

Cinema, an extremely popular and useful cultural form during the Maoist era, played a big role in shaping working class subjectivity. This article argues that despite their highly politicised and formalised content, industrial-themed films made during the Cultural Revolution created a “masters of the nation” subjectivity that still resonates with workers who grew up watching these films. In doing so, this article brings together two bodies of scholarship that rarely make reference to one another: filmmaking in the Cultural Revolution period and post-Mao workers’ subjectivity. Post-Mao scholarship has gone beyond simply dismissing films from the Cultural Revolution period as crude propaganda designed to create a highly politicised mass mind. It has drawn our attention to the more complicated nature of this body of filmmaking, particularly the “model play” films. However, new features made during the Cultural Revolution are often seen as “too ideological” to warrant academic attention. This paper attempts to find out how the “masters of the nation” discourse still resonates with workers who grew up watching these films. It argues that, despite the valorisation of workers as the privileged class and an excessive focus on class struggle, these films have indeed endowed the subaltern with the kind of agency that is lacking in contemporary media representations of workers.

Along with the rise of China, Chinese language education has become increasingly important. However, the tally of students studying Chinese in Australian schools resembles a rollercoaster: until Year 10 it streams upwards, but at Years 11 and 12 it plunges down. Drawing on interviews and focus group discussions with school teachers in Western Australia, this paper investigates the rollercoaster phenomenon through the lens of Relevance Theory. In particular, it explores students' motivations and the priorities of schools and the government, to build a better understanding of the causal factors underpinning the poor retention of students in Year 11/12 Chinese. The findings show that the three major stakeholders- students, school authorities and government - take a relevance-driven and effect/cost-guided approach to language learning, seeking minimum costs and maximum benefits. The implication is that to retain students in their senior years, the optimal relevance of Chinese language education needs to be asserted. This study calls for policies and practices based on Relevance Theory, if Chinese, and other language programmes, are to be successful in the future.

Recent developments in high-contrast imaging techniques now make possible both imaging and spectroscopy of planets around nearby stars. We present the conceptual design of the Coronagraphic High Angular Resolution Imaging Spectrograph (CHARIS), a lenslet-based, cryogenic integral field spectrograph (IFS) for imaging exoplanets on the Subaru telescope. The IFS will provide spectral information for 140x140 spatial elements over a 1.75 arcsecs x 1.75 arcsecs field of view (FOV). CHARIS will operate in the near infrared (lambda = 0.9 - 2.5 microns) and provide a spectral resolution of R = 14, 33, and 65 in three separate observing modes. Taking advantage of the adaptive optics systems and advanced coronagraphs (AO188 and SCExAO) on the Subaru telescope, CHARIS will provide sufficient contrast to obtain spectra of young self-luminous Jupiter-mass exoplanets. CHARIS is in the early design phases and is projected to have first light by the end of 2015. We report here on the current conceptual design of CHARIS and the design challenges.

We present a new and innovative near-infrared multi-band ultraprecise spectroimager (NIMBUS) for SOFIA. This design is capable of characterizing a large sample of extrasolar planet atmospheres by measuring elemental and molecular abundances during primary transit and occultation. This wide-field spectroimager would also provide new insights into Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNO), Solar System occultations, brown dwarf atmospheres, carbon chemistry in globular clusters, chemical gradients in nearby galaxies, and galaxy photometric redshifts. NIMBUS would be the premier ultraprecise spectroimager by taking advantage of the SOFIA observatory and state of the art infrared technologies. This optical design splits the beam into eight separate spectral bandpasses, centered around key molecular bands from 1 to 4 microns. Each spectral channel has a wide field of view for simultaneous observations of a reference star that can decorrelate time-variable atmospheric and optical assembly effects, allowing the instrument to achieve ultraprecise calibration for imaging and photometry for a wide variety of astrophysical sources. NIMBUS produces the same data products as a low-resolution integral field spectrograph over a large spectral bandpass, but this design obviates many of the problems that preclude high-precision measurements with traditional slit and integral field spectrographs. This instrument concept is currently not funded for development., Comment: 14 pages, 9 figures, SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation 2012

We present a new and innovative near-infrared multi-band ultraprecise spectroimager (NIMBUS) for SOFIA. This design is capable of characterizing a large sample of extrasolar planet atmospheres by measuring elemental and molecular abundances during primary transit and occultation. This wide-field spectroimager would also provide new insights into Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNO), Solar System occultations, brown dwarf atmospheres, carbon chemistry in globular clusters, chemical gradients in nearby galaxies, and galaxy photometric redshifts. NIMBUS would be the premier ultraprecise spectroimager by taking advantage of the SOFIA observatory and state of the art infrared technologies. This optical design splits the beam into eight separate spectral bandpasses, centered around key molecular bands from 1 to 4 microns. Each spectral channel has a wide field of view for simultaneous observations of a reference star that can decorrelate time-variable atmospheric and optical assembly effects, allowing the instrument to achieve ultraprecise calibration for imaging and photometry for a wide variety of astrophysical sources. NIMBUS produces the same data products as a low-resolution integral field spectrograph over a large spectral bandpass, but this design obviates many of the problems that preclude high-precision measurements with traditional slit and integral field spectrographs. This instrument concept is currently not funded for development., Comment: 14 pages, 9 figures, SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation 2012

Recent developments in high-contrast imaging techniques now make possible both imaging and spectroscopy of planets around nearby stars. We present the conceptual design of the Coronagraphic High Angular Resolution Imaging Spectrograph (CHARIS), a lenslet-based, cryogenic integral field spectrograph (IFS) for imaging exoplanets on the Subaru telescope. The IFS will provide spectral information for 140x140 spatial elements over a 1.75 arcsecs x 1.75 arcsecs field of view (FOV). CHARIS will operate in the near infrared (lambda = 0.9 - 2.5 microns) and provide a spectral resolution of R = 14, 33, and 65 in three separate observing modes. Taking advantage of the adaptive optics systems and advanced coronagraphs (AO188 and SCExAO) on the Subaru telescope, CHARIS will provide sufficient contrast to obtain spectra of young self-luminous Jupiter-mass exoplanets. CHARIS is in the early design phases and is projected to have first light by the end of 2015. We report here on the current conceptual design of CHARIS and the design challenges.

This paper explores the tensions between the security that access to satellite television programming from mainland China lends its 'new migrants' (xin yimin) and the vulnerability the consumption of 'foreign' media leaves them open to in Perth. The indiscreet 2-3 metre satellite dishes are an increasingly common sight in Perth's suburban backyards and on first glance, their presence might be (mis)interpreted as attempts to turn Perth into the China's next province. However, it is our argument these attempts to manage multiple belongings can be better understood within a context of conditions. These include Perth's geographical and metaphoric distance from the metropolitan centres of Sydney and Melbourne; the intense media scrutiny of China in recent times; the rapid closeness and synchronicity between China and Perth for reasons of trade, the dynamics of China's media environment and the mainland Chinese's care for and regard for themselves as mobile, global citizens of contemporary society.

The Advanced Technology Large-Aperture Space Telescope (ATLAST) is a set of mission concepts for the next generation of UVOIR space observatory with a primary aperture diameter in the 8-m to 16-m range that will allow us to perform some of the most challenging observations to answer some of our most compelling questions, including "Is there life elsewhere in the Galaxy?" We have identified two different telescope architectures, but with similar optical designs, that span the range in viable technologies. The architectures are a telescope with a monolithic primary mirror and two variations of a telescope with a large segmented primary mirror. This approach provides us with several pathways to realizing the mission, which will be narrowed to one as our technology development progresses. The concepts invoke heritage from HST and JWST design, but also take significant departures from these designs to minimize complexity, mass, or both. Our report provides details on the mission concepts, shows the extraordinary scientific progress they would enable, and describes the most important technology development items. These are the mirrors, the detectors, and the high-contrast imaging technologies, whether internal to the observatory, or using an external occulter. Experience with JWST has shown that determined competitors, motivated by the development contracts and flight opportunities of the new observatory, are capable of achieving huge advances in technical and operational performance while keeping construction costs on the same scale as prior great observatories., Comment: 22 pages, RFI submitted to Astro2010 Decadal Committee