• Life and Times of Ephedra — The Quest for a Scientific Use of an Ancient Remedy and TCM’s Long road to modernization

    Life and Times of Ephedra — The Quest for a Scientific Use of an Ancient Remedy and TCM’s Long road to modernization

    In June 1935, a famous medical journal in Shanghai, Yijie Chunqiu (醫界春秋, “Annals of medicine”) published a short essay called “Mahuang zhuan” (麻黃傳, “A biography of ephedra”). …

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  • Tracing Apps and Digital Divide (3): Supplementary Measures, User Involvement, and the Ethical Responsibility of Designers

    Tracing Apps and Digital Divide (3): Supplementary Measures, User Involvement, and the Ethical Responsibility of Designers

    From the designers’ own perspective, ensuring equality, paying attention to diverse concerns from different groups, and preventing potentially adverse social effects should always be a priority in the designing process. …

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  • Tracing Apps and Digital Divide (2): Path Dependency and Unintended Consequences in Technology Design

    Tracing Apps and Digital Divide (2): Path Dependency and Unintended Consequences in Technology Design

    The technological choices in the design of the tracing apps in different societies and countries are contingent upon specific needs and cultural and political environments, and show a strong tendency of path dependency. …

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  • Tracing Apps and Digital Divide (1): Different Technological Designs

    Tracing Apps and Digital Divide (1): Different Technological Designs

    In the first article, we introduce the tracing apps in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Singapore as a set of comparative examples. …

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  • Shuanghuanglian Oral Liquid: TCM Pharmacotherapy in the Time of Coronavirus

    Shuanghuanglian Oral Liquid: TCM Pharmacotherapy in the Time of Coronavirus

    On the evening of January 31, 2020 — the seventh day of the lunar new year — news broke and spread rapidly on the Chinese social media platform WeChat regarding a certain shuanghuanlian koufuye (双黄连口服液, hereafter SHL oral liquid) showing efficacy in inhibiting the “novel coronavirus pneumonia” (xinguan feiyan 新冠肺炎), which had come out of Wuhan and was wreaking havoc. …

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  • 28-Dang — A Bicycle that Moved Socialist and Early-Reform China

    28-Dang — A Bicycle that Moved Socialist and Early-Reform China

    In 1989, U.S. President George H. W. Bush went on an official visit to China just one month after assuming office. …

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  • Health QR Code: Technological and/or Social Infrastructure about Pandemic Control and Privacy

    Health QR Code: Technological and/or Social Infrastructure about Pandemic Control and Privacy

    How can we balance the benefits and risks of such big-scale surveillance systems? This is a tricky problem. …

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  • Facial Recognition: Surveillance with “Artificial” Intelligence

    Facial Recognition: Surveillance with “Artificial” Intelligence

    Hi-tech is often supported by usually invisible, manual, and exhausted workers whose work practice implies something far from hi-tech. …

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  • The Transformation of Hotpot: Towards Convenience and/or Individualization?

    The Transformation of Hotpot: Towards Convenience and/or Individualization?

    Fueled by the pandemic during which people are more or less forced to conduct individual lives, it is no surprise that food exemplified by self-heated hotpot becomes so popular. …

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