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This dissertation reopens the study of visual orientalism from the vantage point of the German imperial project by analyzing how cartographers, geographers, and photographers depicted China during the long nineteenth century. Orientalism is treated as a process of observation in addition to being a representational style, the visual expression of which takes on functional meaning. This research is situated within a set of historiographical and analytical folds. First, it traces the locations of orientalist critique—if “Orient” and “Occident” are not only analytically unstable, but forms of what Edward Said calls “imaginative geography,” how do we address the specificity of its German manifestation? Second, it considers the utility of orientalist critique in China—what does it offer this terrain, and where are its limits? This dissertation takes on these questions in turn. The first two chapters historicize the geography of orientalism by examining maps and drawings of China’s landscape and coastlines. I argue that Germany’s ability to see and know this territory during the second half of the nineteenth century hinged not only on the systematic fieldwork of German surveyors, but was reliant upon sedimented and trans-imperial knowledge created decades prior. The third and fourth chapters analyze photographs created by German bureaucrats and diplomats of China, focusing on how they stress visual perception and personal response, while being conditioned by both technical means and latent cultural understanding. Taken together, this dissertation reformulates visual orientalism from a static mode of dominating representation to account for more fluid and contingent processes of perception and encounter.

The products of trithorax group (trxG) genes maintain active transcription of many important developmental regulatory genes, including homeotic genes. Many trxG proteins act in multi-protein complexes that modify chromatin structure to regulate transcription. One such trxG protein is Absent, small, or homeotic discs 2 (ASH2), which localizes to multiple loci on polytene chromosomes of larval salivary glands. The molecular defects of five ash2 mutant alleles, including four that are heat-sensitive, were determined to be point mutations. ASH2 chromosomal localization of the heat-sensitive alleles at non-permissive temperature was found to be reduced or completely lost, despite the fact that ASH2 protein still accumulates in these mutants at non-permissive temperature. ASH2 and another trxG protein, Absent, small, or homeotic discs 1 (ASH1) co-localize at some loci on polytene chromosomes. ASH1 localization on ash2 mutant chromosomes is not affected, while ASH2 accumulation is completely absent on ash1 mutant chromosomes, even though ASH2 protein accumulates in the salivary glands of ash1 mutant larvae. These results suggest that ASH2 requires ASH1 to bind to polytene chromosomes. In addition, ASH2 binds directly to Skittles (SKTL), a Drosophila phosphatidylinositol 4-phosphate 5-kinase. ASH2 and SKTL co-localize at multiple loci on polytene chromosomes, and mutations in ash2 and skt1 display intergenic non-complementation. Both ash2 and skt1 mutant polytene chromosomes show increases in histone H1 accumulation and hyperphosphorylation. These results suggest that members of the phosphoinositide signaling pathways are involved in chromatin modification and transcription regulation, and that this involvement may be through histone H1.

In recent years, the international community has witnessed many crisis events, and the Russia-Ukraine war, which broke out on 24 th February 2022, has increased international policy uncertainty and impacted the current world commodity and financial markets. Thus, we try to capture how the Russia-Ukraine war has affected the correlation structure of international commodity and stock markets. We study six groups of commodity daily returns and one group of stock daily returns and select the sample from 24 th February 2022 to 1 st June 2022 as the sample during the Russia-Ukraine war; in addition, we select the sample from 1 st December 2019 to 31 st December 2020 as the sample during COVID-19 control group, and the sample from 1 st January 2014 to 31 st December 2017 as the non-extreme event control group, to explore the correlation structure of international commodity and stock markets before the war, and to compare and uncover the impact of the uncertain event of the Russia-Ukraine war on the commodity and stock markets. In this paper, the marginal density function of each series is constructed using the ARMA-GARCH-std method, and the R-Vine copula model is built based on the marginal density function to analyze the correlation relationship between each market. From the Tree1 of the Vine copula, it is found that crude oil becomes the core connecting each commodity market and the stock market during the Russia-Ukraine war. The price fluctuations of crude oil may be contagious to agricultural and precious metal markets in the same direction, while the stock market price fluctuations are inversely correlated with commodity markets. Comparison with the selected control group sample reveals that the Russia-Ukraine war increases the correlation between the markets and enhances the possibility of risk transmission. The core of the correlation structure shifts from agricultural commodities and precious metals to crude oil after the Russia-Ukraine war.

The ternary chalcogenide Cu3VSe4 (CVSe) with sulvanite structure has been theoretically predicted to be a promising candidate for photovoltaic applications due to its suitable bandgap for solar absorption and the relatively earth-abundant elements in its composition. To realize the absorber layer via an inexpensive route, printed thin-films could be fabricated from dispersions of nano-sized Cu3VSe4 precursors. Herein, cubic Cu3VSe4 nanocrystals were successfully synthesized via a hot-injection method. Similar with reported Cu3VS4 nanocrystals, Cu3VSe4 nanocrystals with cubic structure exhibit three absorption bands in the UV-Visible range indicative of a potential intermediate bandgap existence. A thin film fabricated by depositing the nanoparticles Cu3VSe4 on FTO coated glass substrate, exhibited a p-type behavior and a photocurrent of ~ 4 μA/cm2 when measured in an electrochemical cell setting. This first demonstration of photocurrent exhibited by a CVSe nanocrystals thin film signifies a promising potential in photovoltaic applications.