維菁 12/1/07

Time: 12/1 Sat 2PM
Location: 湘韻家 (UT Brackenridge Apt)
Speaker: 王維菁 (Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Radio, TV, Film)
Host: 蕭靜慧

第一階段講題與綱要如下:
Origins of Economic Inequality in the Age of Information Society: Wage Structure, Unemployment, and Occupation Transformation in Taiwan after 1980

本週討論將從批判政治經濟學的認識論—社會變遷與歷史、社會整體性、道德哲學、以及實踐—出發，探討台灣自1980年代進入知識、技術密集的資訊經濟生產時期後，經濟不平等所生的變化，並探究此一演變發生的可能核心因素。在討論中我們也將簡短回顧台灣經濟發展史，以理解政策、經濟生產模式等如何影響財富分配。至於本文中所欲探討的經濟不平等將聚焦於勞動市場結構，包括薪資不平等、失業、以及職業結構變遷等。

Introduction
The purpose of this research is to explore the changes in economic inequality, if any, that occur when a newly industrialized country (NIC) such as Taiwan ushers in an information economy, defined as information intensive and information technology (IT) production-centric; and further, to track the possible origins of this changing inequality. In terms of economy inequality, this dissertation will concentrate on labor market conditions, including wage inequality, unemployment, and occupation structure alteration, to see how the state and its policies, informationalization, industrial transformation, global competition, changed labor market institutions, and other possible economic factors might go hand in hand to shape the changes in wealth distribution and economic inequality in the age of information society. Since the 1980s, Taiwan industries have undergone a dramatic conversion from traditional labor intensive manufacturing to IT, information and skill intensive industries, as well as service industries. Both government and domestic enterprises were eager to promote this industrial upgrade by adopting informationalization and by expanding skill and information intensive industries such as IT, telecommunications, and knowledge-based industries. Consequently, from 1990 on, Taiwan has become a key producer of IT products and ranks highly worldwide in information and communication technology (ICT) penetration. In 2006, Taiwan’s service industry accounted for 73.44% of the total GDP, manufacturing accounted for 24.99%, and agriculture accounted for only 1.57%; among these sectors, knowledge concentrated manufacturing and service industries were estimated to jointly produce at least 45% of the total GDP. At a time when there are few relevant empirical studies of NICs in transition, Taiwan, whose industrial and economic transformation has been complete and well-documented, provides an excellent case study of changes in economic inequality in the transition from a NIC to an “information economy.”
(Data is calculated based on the Output-Input Data provided by the Council for Economic Planning and Development.)

第二部分的台灣聊天室 討論題目為目前台灣經濟發展狀況
Tentative focuses are
1. 目前台灣經濟發展狀況在國際環境下的優勢與劣勢
2. 未來台灣經濟發展的方向與可能性
3. 經濟成長與公平如何平衡，經濟成長對台灣大多數人是否真有獲益？ 進而思考
我們要的是一個什麼樣的社會？

維邦 11/3/2007

Time: 11/3 Sat 2PM
Location: UTC 3.102
Speaker: 王維邦
Host: 陳湘韻

Talk:The Social Causes of Depression: The Example of Aging Vector Model by Wei-Pang Wang (sociology)
Taiwan Chatting Room: "Going to the doctor and paying for the insurance---comparing TW and the US."

第一階段由邦邦哥 主講　講題與綱要如下
The Social Causes of Depression: The Example of Aging Vector Model

健康與病痛社會學 (Sociology of Health and Illness)是西方社會學界與人口學界近年最蓬勃發展的領域之一。該領域認為生老病死不僅是個人的各別生命經驗，更呈現社會因素所塑造的健康與病痛之不平等階層。雖然此觀點已在西方社會獲得廣泛的實證支持，相關議題卻甚少討論於台灣社會學界。
本講題因此試圖介紹教育程度—身為影響台灣社會階層的核心因素—是否亦影響台灣社會心理健康如憂鬱症狀（Depression）的不平等。演講內容將藉由台灣地區中老年身心社會生活狀況長期追蹤調查所提供長達十四年的長期貫時性資料及運用潛在成長曲線模型與老化向量圖(Latent Growth Curve Model with Aging Vectors Graphs)為帥氣又美麗的壇友們提供實證例子。

第二部分的台灣聊天室 討論題目為　「台美看病/保險 經驗/制度 比較」
相信大家對美國的醫療花費昂貴都有相當的感受　在台灣看病相較之下方便又便宜許多
但或許大家也聽說過'健保破產'的說法　甚至親身體驗到從前只要看一次的病　現在醫生要求你去診所兩次
這次的聊天室希望大家能分享自己在台灣跟美國（或是其他地方）的就醫與保險經驗　以及提供對兩地不同制度的認識

龍男 10/20/07 Open House

Time: 10/20/2007 (Saturday), 2:00pm
Place: CMA 3.116
Speaker: 陳龍男（MFA Candidate, RTF- FILM PRODUCTION）
Host: 張凱滿 (Kai-man Chang)

紀錄片欣賞及討論

片名: UTaiwan
紀錄片 / DV / 彩色 / 20分鐘 / 台灣,美國 / 2007 / 世界首映

----導演簡介----

凡亞思‧以撒克（陳龍男），阿美族，執導並製作過多部得獎紀錄片及短片，其中描述年輕搖滾樂團的第六部作品「海洋熱」更分別得到台灣、美國、瑞士、南韓及香港等地影展的高度肯定；和台灣公共電視也曾有多項合作計畫。2005年獲教育部公費，目前正於美國德州大學奧斯汀分校(University of Texas at Austin)就讀電影製作學系碩士。


----影片介紹---- (王佩瑜)

你都用什麼樣的話語在異地他鄉對別人形容故鄉"台灣"呢?

馬德生，曾懷萱，和陳銘駒，三個來自台灣的UT留學生，用行動表達出他們對台灣的情感和認同。這部紀錄片不僅刻畫著他們對家鄉的愛，也描繪出我們每一個人對於家鄉的執著。

台灣聊天室

配合龍男的影片,這禮拜的台灣聊天室就以 "影像台灣" 為主題,台灣是我們的故鄉我們的家, 但在別人眼中又是什麼呢? 美國人看到的台灣是什麼樣子? 沒看到的又是什麼? 台灣是不被聯合國承認的國家, 是全球最大的晶圓代工國, 也是王建民的國家, 還有呢? 下面是我在Youtube上看到有關台灣的影像, 歡迎大家能提供各種不同的台灣影像, 来幫助我們看見其中的異同．

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvA-nKGbgzU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaSqgVIDdHo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_FG_pKH5Q8

http://tw.myblog.yahoo.com/tinyzhan/article?mid=2635&prev=3015&l=f&fid=58

Fall 2007 Schedule

date Speaker/Host
9/22 怡慧/維邦
10/13 guest speaker/志成
10/20 龍男/凱滿 Open house
11/3 維邦/承甫
11/17 維菁/靜慧
12/1 期末聚餐/湘韻

靜慧 3/17/2007

Time: 3/17/2007
Place: Ching-hui's apartment at Brackenridge
Speaker: Ching-hui Hsiao (蕭靜慧), Foreign Language Education
Host: Kaiman Chang


Do family Influences really matter?
--Researching the role of family influences on English education in Taiwan--

The purpose of this study is to investigate family influences on EFL education in Taiwan. Bourdieu (1977) uses the term, social reproduction, to analyze how the various forms of capital tend to transfer from one generation to the next. The children of privilege fit into the world of educational expectations with apparent “ease”, a process he calls “under-selection”. The unprivileged found the process to be “difficult”, presenting “challenges”, a process he calls “over-selection”. Yet both are dictated by their upbringing. Bourdieu regards this “ease” or “natural“ ability as the product of a great social labor, largely on the part of the parents, equipping their children with the dispositions of manner and ensuring they are able to succeed within the educational system and can then reproduce their parent’ class in the wider social system.

In his study conducted in a city in central Taiwan, Broaded (1997) nevertheless finds the standardized test scores of the entrance examination are not significantly correlated with students’ family backgrounds among a sample of 1,098 junior high graduates and concludes that institutional tracking in junior high schools in Taiwan reduces the influence of family background characteristics on the distribution to stratified senior secondary opportunities. Other than institutional factors, cultural (Confucianism) factors also help explain these differences--educational achievement values are more diffused into the lower levels of Taiwan’s class structure than the case in the U.S. because of the cultural legacy of Confucianism.

志成 2/24/2007

Time: 2/24/2007, 2-5pm
Place: UTC 3.102
Speaker: Almond Meng (蒙志成), Department of Government
Host: Cheng-Fu Chen

Help Hindering? The Political Economy of Migrant Remittances Flows to Developing Democracies

This paper proposes to investigate the relative agenda-the impacts of migrant remittances on recipient countries’ politics and economic development. In practice, the study of the impact of remittances has never been more important than it is today. Migrant remittances are the crucial issues that accompany the mobility of migrant labors to many labor-outflow countries. According to the United Nations’ (2002) statistics, migrant remittances in developing countries have played the second-largest source of capital inflows, just behind the FDI. Moreover, a lack of research on migrant remittances has created the theoretical gap. Although migrant remittance is recognized by international financial institutions (IFIs), such as World Bank and IMF, and many development scholars, most of their revealed optimistic perspectives to development are unfounded. The key problem with current research on remittances is that researchers rarely pay attention to the impact that remittances have on politics. Within contemporary theoretical perspective, little study conveys how the substantial remittances affect recipient countries’ democratic ruling and constituents’ political attitudes as well. There is no study working on investigating how the regional or international political economy influence recipient countries’ governance and citizen’s ideas toward democracy through the inflows of remittances.

The objective of the paper is four-fold: to examine whether more inflows of remittances reduce citizens’ willingness of voicing dissent through political channels; to investigate whether more inflows of remittances result in defection of recipient governments’ accountability; to explore whether more inflows of remittances assimilate the citizens’ ideas towards democracy to the emigrant destination countries; and to analyze whether and how more inflows of remittances along with relative actors’ expectation retard the other external capital inflows thereby influencing recipient countries’ macroeconomic and socioeconomic development.

The time-series cross-sectional (TSCS) analysis of global data, vector autoregression (VAR) and spatial econometrics estimation will be conducted to test a series of hypotheses related to the paper’s objectives across 153 developing countries over 1980 to 2003. The results will provide insight into the real-world effects correlated to the dramatic increases of remittances within developing countries during the era of globalization.

Chat room topic: 留與歸 It's either this way or that way...

Happy New Year from Jimmy at Spain

Dear Friends,

I didn't tell all of you about my recent status. Yes, I'm still at Intel and travel a lot. Even today is the Chinese New Year, I'm still in a conference room at Spain. By the way, after this email is sent out, Christine, Chia-chien and I are heading to London for the New Year vacation. Before this, we staid at the Malaga, Spain for a whole week. The Hotel is next to the beach, yes, it's the Mediterranean. And Attachemt are the photo, we went to the Mijas, a small white town.

To Tienming,
I still don't have a chance to Chicago. By the way, maybe in the middle of March, and we don't know what's happen in Intel. Maybe I'll be in the other side of the Mediterranean, Isreal. Who knows.

Happy New Year,
Christine, Chia-chien, and Jimmy

維瑄 02/10/07

Time: Saturday (02/10) 2PM
Location: Park
Speaker: Wei-Hsuan Serena Wang
Topic: Exploring the Fascination of Cross-Cultural Psychology
Taiwan Chatting Room: Me and You and Our Cross-Cultural Experiences
Host: Hsiangyun

Wei-Hsuan (Serena) Wang, a doctoral student in the Area of Human Development and Education, Department of Educational Psychology. I am highly interested in cultural and cross-cultural studies in Psychology. I also love watching Food Channel, especially Emril's show!

Exploring the Fascination of Cross-Cultural Psychology

Introduction:

"Like the fish that is unaware of water until it has left the water, people often take their own community's ways of going things for granted." – Barbara Rogoff

Do you still remember the cultural shock you had experienced when you first stepped onto the land of the U.S.? Have you ever pondered that how your cross-cultural experiences of studying abroad has influenced your way of thinking, perceiving, and behaving? Have you ever thought that each individual is actually the product of culturally-shaping process? We are just like the fish which has left the original water (Taiwan) and have immersed into another different water region (U.S.)., and culture is like the water or lens which affect the ways we view and evaluate the world.

In this talk, I will try to bring you to explore the fascination of cross-cultural psychology. I'll talk about some basic ideas of cross-cultural psychology, the relation between cultural background and the formation of self-concept, and the application of cross-cultural psychology to the real life.

Taiwan Chatting Room

I suggest the two following topics concerning the cross-cultural issues:

a) Taiwanese students' cross-cultural adaptation – Sharing your own experiences and your observation of other Taiwanese students.

b) Multicultural education in Taiwan – Please refer to the attachment which is a piece of interesting news from China Times in this January, regarding foreign spouses and their children's educational issues in Taiwan. I got this news when I was back to Taiwan in January and thought it can be a facilitating material for our chatting room.

Winter 06 Graduations

Proudly present our great forumers...


(click on pics to see the complete albums)

德生 01/27/07

Details of the talk:
Time: 1/27/2007, 2:00PM
Place: UTC 3.110
Speaker: Teh-Sheng Ma (馬德生)
Host: Sheng-Cheng Huang (黃聖程)

Title:
Listening to what you cannot hear: from Parkinson's Disease to Rat Ultrasound Vocalization

Abstract:
Parkinson's Disease is a neurodegenerative disease that targets a certain type of neurons in the human brain. The death of these neurons result in the lost of muscle coordination in the human body. Tremors during hand movements are the most obvious symptoms in Parkinson's patients. Other symptoms like speech loss also brings detriments to the social life of patients.

Unlike other disease that can be treated with medicine, Parkinson's Disease is a progressive disease that torments patients for their remaining days. Dreaded by this irreversible result, researchers have been trying to find ways to relieve the symptoms or early detect this deadly disease.

My talk will be focused on the rat vocalization model that I have developed to help tackle this issue. In this talk, you will learn about the most recent clinical therapy for speech loss in Parkinson's patients and also how the rat model parallels the speech loss in human patients. You will also learn why patients are not aware of their speech loss and how this vocalization model might become an early detector for future Parkinson's Disease translational studies.

Spring 2007 Talk schedules

Hello TT Forumers,

2007 New year represents new hope, new resolutions. For this Forum, it also represents a new era for our new blood to present their professions to others. Being the oldest member in the Forum right now(hopefully not long), I will head start the series and setup a model for the new ones to follow.
If you have any questions regarding the arranged schedule, please talk to the next coming host, 聖誠, and he'll help you exchange dates with other presenters. His email is: huangsc@mail.utexas.edu

Have a great holiday!!

Teh-Sheng Ma

日期 Speaker
1/29 德生(Neuroscience) <聖誠>
2/10 志成(Government) <湘韻>
(2/18) (農曆新年)(暫停一周)
2/24 維瑄(EduPsychology) <承甫>
3/17 靜慧(Foreign Language) <凱滿>
3/31 怡礽(Early Childhood) <家誠>
4/14 怡慧(C & I) <維邦>
4/28 國維(AMD)
5/12 期末聚餐

力榕 12/2/06

Time: Saturday (12/2) 2PM
Location: UTC 3.102.
Speaker: Li-Jung Chen (MBA, School of Business)
Topic: How to read a financial report...


Li-Jung, a MBA student in business school, will share with us from her professional training of how to fully grasp useful information hidden within financial reports of large corporations.

Following this session, house business will take place and schedules for next semester's speakers and hosts will be discussed.





posted by Teh-Sheng Ma