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Preference Formation in the Taiwan Strait: A Hierarchical and Conditional Model of Public Opinion toward Unification and Independence, 2008–2024
Full text linkThis thesis examines how Taiwanese public opinion on independence, unification, and the status quo has evolved between 2008 and 2024. Drawing on six waves of Taiwan National Security Survey data, I propose the “Cross-Strait Attitude Hierarchy,” a framework combining identity-based predispositions and dynamic, conditional cost-benefit reasoning. Using cross-tabulation and multinomial logistic regression, the analysis shows that external factors—such as perceived Chinese military threats and U.S. defense commitments—consistently shape public attitudes, often more powerfully than demographic or partisan identities. The findings challenge static views of cross-strait preferences, demonstrating that Taiwanese citizens respond pragmatically to shifting political and economic conditions. This research offers important insights for scholars and policymakers seeking to understand the domestic underpinnings of Taiwan’s foreign policy and regional security dynamics
β-glucan induced trained immunity enhances antibody levels in a vaccination model in mice
Full text linkTrained immunity improves disease resistance by strengthening our first line of defense, the innate immune system. Innate immune cells, predominantly macrophages, are epigenetically and metabolically rewired by β-glucan, a fungal cell wall component, to induce trained immunity. These trained macrophages exhibit increased co-stimulatory marker expression and altered cytokine production. Signaling changes from antigen-presenting cells, including macrophages, polarize T-cell responses. Recent work has shown that trained immunity can generally enhance protection against infection, and some work has shown increased protection with specific vaccines. It has been hypothesized that the trained cells themselves potentially modulate adaptive immunity in the context of vaccines. However, the mechanistic link between trained immunity and subsequent vaccinations to enhance antibody levels has not yet been identified. We report that trained immunity induced by a single dose of β-glucan increased antigen presentation in bone-marrow-derived macrophages (BMDMs) and CD4+ T cell proliferation in-vitro. Mice trained with a single dose of β-glucan a week before vaccination elicited higher antigen-specific antibody levels than untrained mice. Further experiments validate that macrophages mediate this increase. This effect persisted even after vaccinations with 100 times less antigen in trained mice. We report β-glucan training as a novel prophylactic method to enhance the effect of subsequent vaccines
Validation of retroactively derived T1 relaxation values from 3D T1-weighted images with clinical and MRI measures of disability in multiple sclerosis
Full text linkBackground: Quantitative T1 mapping is a valuable technique for assessing tissue injury in multiple sclerosis (MS) lesions. We previously introduced a novel methodology for converting high-resolution anatomical 3D T1-weighted (T1W) images into parametric T1 relaxometry maps. Herein, we correlate MS lesion pathology as quantified by retroactive T1 mapping with clinical and MRI metrics of disability and with magnetization transfer ratio (MTR). Methods: 38 subjects with relapsing-remitting MS (RRMS) were examined, contributing to 587 unique lesions for analysis. T1 and MTR values were compared using correlation statistics. Univariate correlations between lesional T1 or MTR and Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) were examined using Spearman’s rho (ρ), and for disease duration and brain parenchymal fraction (BPF), Pearson’s r. Mean T1 values of lesions were compared across different categories of EDSS severity using Kruskal-Wallis test. Ordinal regression model was used to assess the association between EDSS and T1 values of select brain regions. Results: The mean T1 of lesions showed a high correlation with - MTR, r = 0.68. T2 lesion volumes stratified based on different T1 thresholds showed a significant correlation with MS disease metrics: lesion volume threshold at 700 1100 was correlated with EDSS (ρ = 0.41, p = 0.01), disease duration (r = 0.45, p = 0.001), and BPF (r = -0.51, p Conclusions: We provide clinical validation of retroactive T1 mapping as a complementary post-processing technique for monitoring disease activity and disability progression in MS.</p
Microbes with higher metabolic independence are enriched in human gut microbiomes under stress
Full text linkA wide variety of human diseases are associated with loss of microbial diversity in the human gut, inspiring a great interest in the diagnostic or therapeutic potential of the microbiota. However, the ecological forces that drive diversity reduction in disease states remain unclear, rendering it difficult to ascertain the role of the microbiota in disease emergence or severity. One hypothesis to explain this phenomenon is that microbial diversity is diminished as disease states select for microbial populations that are more fit to survive environmental stress caused by inflammation or other host factors. Here, we tested this hypothesis on a large scale, by developing a software framework to quantify the enrichment of microbial metabolisms in complex metagenomes as a function of microbial diversity. We applied this framework to over 400 gut metagenomes from individuals who are healthy or diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). We found that high metabolic independence (HMI) is a distinguishing characteristic of microbial communities associated with individuals diagnosed with IBD. A classifier we trained using the normalized copy numbers of 33 HMI-associated metabolic modules not only distinguished states of health vs IBD, but also tracked the recovery of the gut microbiome following antibiotic treatment, suggesting that HMI is a hallmark of microbial communities in stressed gut environments
Damaged collateral and firm-level finance: Evidence from Russia’s war in Ukraine
Full text linkHow much has Russia’s war in Ukraine damaged the collateral of Ukrainian firms, and how much damage has that caused the Ukrainian financial system? We address this question using unusually rich high-frequency supervisory data of Ukrainian banks combined with a survey of banks on the location and condition of corporate borrowers’ collateral between February and November 2022. Exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in collateral value resulting from damage to collateral, we find that a 10-percent reduction in the collateral-loan ratio lowers the probability of getting any new loan by nearly eight percentage points; new lending falls by over two percentage points. Our results additionally imply that the same reduction in collateral value raises default rates and banks’ assessment of firms’ probability of default by approximately eight and four percentage points, respectively. The results imply that, in the absence of sufficient aid to repair the damage, Ukraine may experience reduced investment and lower economic growth in the future
The Scientific Origins of Scientists: A Psychological Account of Curiosity and Interest Development
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More Better Choices: A Strategic Proposal for Strengthening Electoral Reform Advocacy and Advancing Partisan Diversification in a Divided America
Full text linkThe crisis in American democracy has reached a breaking point. Public trust in government is collapsing. Congress is paralyzed by factional gridlock and performative polarization. And across the political spectrum, voters feel alienated from a system that no longer reflects the country’s political complexity or offers voters candidates they can truly relate to. This report begins with a simple premise grounded in democratic theory: In a well-functioning democracy, voters should be able to choose from parties and candidates that reflect some approximation of their actual values, interests, and worldviews. And when the ideological or cultural landscape shifts, the system should respond – not with inertia, but with new coalitions, policy concepts, and competing visions for the future. However, the current configuration of the U.S. electoral system tends to short-circuit that process of organic adaptation. Instead, the two-party framework compresses a deeply complex and diverse electorate into a structure that rewards polarization and ultimately makes democratic responsiveness nearly impossible. The resulting stagnation has produced a cascade of institutional and civic dysfunction, and a growing sense among American citizens that representative democracy is no longer capable of solving real problems. Reform advocates have championed a variety of promising structural interventions in the electoral system, including ranked-choice voting (RCV), proportional representation (PR), and nonpartisan primaries. But while these reforms have gained ground in some states, overall progress has been fragmented and slow-moving. One part of the challenge is strategic: the electoral reform ecosystem today for the most part lacks a shared messaging framework or a coordinated strategic roadmap, which makes it difficult to engage allies, persuade skeptics, and sustain public interest across election cycles. Another part of the challenge is rhetorical: electoral reform measures are often framed – in campaign materials, in the media, in public discourse – in fundamentally legal and/or procedural terms that obscure their deeper purpose of revitalizing pluralism in American democracy. Drawing on insights from strategic planning theory, democratic scholarship, and interviews with advocates and stakeholders across the reform landscape, this report proposes two linked initiatives designed to meet these challenges: More Better Choices is a communications campaign framework intended to unify diverse electoral reform efforts under a single, resonant message. It shifts the debate from legal design to democratic legitimacy, and from how votes are counted to whether voters feel that they and their choices matter. And it reframes reform as an opportunity not just for voters, but for legislators and party leaders to build more coherent coalitions and reassert democratic leadership in an era of institutional decay. 6PC is an interactive multimedia project that simulates a functioning six-party Congress and offers a vivid and accessible way for Americans to experience what a more pluralistic democracy could look like. Together, these efforts aim to build narrative momentum, engage a wider range of stakeholders, and lay the groundwork for long-term structural change
Reading the Nation: Literary Culture and Political Allegiance in 1790s Britain
Full text linkThe Age of Revolution was an age of nation-building. From the late-eighteenth to the early nineteenth century, national identities were formed throughout Europe and its colonies. In most cases, the violent overthrow of an established order was followed by the creation of a new government based around radical political ideas. The United Kingdom was not immune from these trends. As on the continent, Britons experienced a tide of radical politics and the patriotic identity-building it provoked. Yet in the British case, the convulsions of the 1790s strengthened the preexisting order. By the early nineteenth century, British culture was more conservative, patriotic, and self-consciously national. How did Britain manage to follow a conservative path to modern national identity? In part, Britain’s unique experience during the period was due to the bourgeoise reading public. During the 1790s, members of this group wrote and read novels which promoted “traditional” British values and denigrated radical ideas. Edmund Burke had provided the intellectual impetus for the British response to revolution. By spreading, condensing, and distorting the ideas of Burke through the accessible medium of literature, authors equated the rejection of revolutionary principles to being a good Briton. Although radical authors also tried to communicate to readers through popular as well as intellectual means, their output was overwhelmed by the popularity of conservative fiction. Novels were not a major source of causation during the 1790s. For the historian, however, they provide insight into the effects events on the continent had on British contemporaries. How did the French Revolution influence how people imagined the nation? In Britain, evidence for how people conceived of their national identity is recorded in literature. Whereas radical novels tended to stress the individual, principles, and utopic futures, conservative novels were more successful in appealing to less intellectual allegiances with which more people were more familiar. More importantly, the conservative novelist tended to unite these pre-revolutionary allegiances through appeals to a greater national allegiance. By building loyalty to the nation around traditional beliefs, Britons contributed to the foundation for a unique form of nineteenth century nationalism
Labor Market Shocks and Heterogeneous Adjustment: A Semi-Nonparametric Approach
No full textThis study examines how labor markets adjust to international trade shocks in recent decades, with a particular focus on the China trade shock that has fundamentally reshaped global manufacturing since the 1990s. To estimate the effect, the project will combine structural economic modeling with semi-parametric machine learning techniques to understand heterogeneous labor market responses across demographic groups and industries. By merging rigorous economic theory with flexible estimation methods, we aim to provide nuanced insights into the transition costs workers face when responding to trade disruption, addressing a gap in the current literature that often treats adjustment frictions as homogeneous across populations. After the estimation, we'll apply agent-based modelling framework on simulated counterfactual sample to experiment with different tariff intervention and agent features to further understand the dynamics and welfare implication
Towards Justifying and Actualising the Political Conception of Justice: Rawlsian Lacunae of Democratic Design and the Path of Plebeian Assemblies
Full text linkPolarisation, a desertion of common political ground broadly held to be deleterious, presently afflicts nigh on all democracies as an existential illness. John Rawls recognised such clashes of irreconcilable comprehensive doctrines as the perennial product of a free society, and prescribed his famous political conception of justice as a resolution to the 'problem of pluralism' underlying polarisation. This thesis starts by identifying lacunae of political design in Rawls's account of actualising his political conception of justice – specifically his eschewal to specify a requisitely radically inclusive and radically efficient political system proffering adequate opportunity for participation. This dearth of democratic design leaves Rawls's political conception of justice unjustified according to his own standards. Part Two advances plebeian assemblies, as theorised in Camila Vergara's Systemic Corruption, as a remedy to Rawls's blueprint-reticence, insofar as they fill his lacunae of political design. Immediate objections – e.g. that plebeian assemblies comprise insufficiently reasonable deliberative environments to instantiate inter alia the public reason component of Rawls's political conception of justice – are rebuffed, in part via a Rawlsian fundamental comparison with the ‘minipublics’ theorised in Hélène Landemore's Open Democracy. The thesis's third and final part elucidates, via the phenomenology of Jacques Rancière’s Disagreement, why plebeian assemblies might instantiate the exceptionally egalitarian politics required to ensure mass participation in plebeian assemblies, and to ensure they would actualise Rawls's exceptionally egalitarian political conception of justice. In summary, I advance a plebeian political liberalism capable of actualising, thereby justifying, an eminent resolution for today's polarisation and its undergirding ‘problem of pluralism’: Rawls's political conception of justice