A New Embassy from Taiwan: The Zheng Regime as Extraterritorial Arbiter of Ethnic Peace in Manila, 1662–1683

In 1662, shortly after conquering Taiwan, Zheng Chenggong wrote to the Spanish governor of Manila, threatening to invade the Philippines if the Spanish did not swear vassalage to his new regime. Although the Spanish refused, Chenggong died before he could carry out his threat, and his successor Zheng Jing wrote a second letter offering terms for peace. These exchanges provide some of the only surviving direct recordings of the Zheng leaders’ beliefs regarding the rights, responsibilities, and boundaries of “Chinese” identity, in particular the relationship between Sangleys and Chinese rulers. Both Zhengs claimed rulership over Manila’s Chinese, but where Zheng Chenggong stated a right to direct rule over this population, Zheng Jing compromised by requesting changes to the Spanish laws which governed his “subjects” in the Philippines. These demands recall modern notions of citizenship and extraterritoriality, and provide a rare contemporary Chinese perspective on colonial Manila’s policies of ethnic segregation. The Zheng state’s active pressure, by contrast to Ming and Qing emperors’ customary disinterest in overseas Chinese, forced the Spanish to reduce their oppression of and reliance on the Chinese, but this also involved expelling thousands of migrants and enforcing long-ignored legal limits on immigration. I argue that this period of conflict clarified the Spaniard’s notion of where chinos fit into their empire’s particular ethno-legal system. This episode thus shows how the Chinese experience in the Philippines was shaped not just by European attitudes, but also by the nature of the Sangleys’ political links to China.

АCCOUNTING THE SEISMIC COMPONENT OF THE LATERAL PRESSURE OF AN HETEROGENEOUS ANISOTROPIC SOIL ON MASSIVE HYDROTECHNICAL STRUCTURES

Strength anisotropy is characteristic of layered soil bases and has been confirmed by numerous tests. The relevance and novelty of this research is to study the effect of the seismic factor on the active pressure of the friable soil medium having strength anisotropy. A numerical experiment was carried out using a specially developed computer program, the algorithm of which used the method for determining the lateral pressure of a heterogeneous anisotropic soil, taking into account the seismic effect. The proposed method is based on the solutions of the classical theory of Coulomb, the seismic component is taken into account on the basis of the static theory of the earthquake stability of structures. We considered a vertically ideally smooth wall in contact with a two-layer incoherent soil medium, the anisotropy of the strength properties of which is represented by hodographs of friction angle. The layers are parallel, no surface load. A numerical research was to determine the parameters of the active pressure of the soil of the lower layer during rotation of the hodograph of friction angle with steps of 300. We used 4 hodographs: 1) φ1=150-200; 2) φ2=200-250; 3) φ3=250-300; 4) φ4=300-350 with a horizontal plane of isotropy. Seismic impact was taken into account by the seismicity coefficient, taken equal to depending on the scale 0.025 (7), 0.05 (8), 0.1 (9). The horizontal orientation of the seismic force and with an angle of 200 to the horizontal plane was set. The obtained results make it possible to evaluate the seismic effect on the lateral pressure of anisotropic soil by comparing it with the corresponding indicators obtained earlier without taking into account the seismic factor. An analysis of computer solutions indicates the increase of the active pressure in seismic conditions by 14%-45% compared with the same indicator, which was determined without taking into account the seismic factor.

Application of Rehabilitation and Active Pressure Control Strategies for Leakage Reduction in a Case-Study Network

The paper discusses the results of a simulation analysis to evaluate the potential of rehabilitation measures and active pressure control strategies for leakage reduction in a water distribution network (WDN) in southern Italy. The analysis was carried out by using a simulation model developed under the EPANET-MATLAB environment. The model was preliminarily calibrated based on pressure and flow measurements acquired during a field monitoring campaign in two districts of the WDN. Three different scenarios of leakage reduction including (i) pipe rehabilitation (scenario S1), (ii) implementation of pressure local control (S2), and (iii) introduction of remote real-time pressure control (RTC) (S3) were simulated and compared with the current scenario of network operation (S0). Results of the simulations revealed that a combination of the used strategies can improve network performance by a significant reduction of water leakage. Specifically, 16.7%, 35.0%, and 37.5% leakage reductions (as compared to S0) can be obtained under scenarios S1, S2, and S3, respectively.

A highly reliable, impervious and sustainable triboelectric nanogenerator as a zero-power consuming active pressure sensor

A water proof silicone elastomer based triboelectric nanogenerator for bio-mechanical energy scavenging and a zero-power consuming/self-powered pressure sensor.