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He caught a glimpse into a future he never knew existed — a future that was perhaps within his reach too.
As Duan came of age, so did the Chinese internet. Today that number has swelled to more than million, and a vast majority of them are using mobile devices. Whereas Duan once sought out gay communities in small groups and quiet bars, today, as a year-old working in publishing in Beijing, he can join gay meet-ups on WeChat; follow blogs and coming-out stories on Weibo , a Twitter-like platform; and, perhaps most crucial, he can connect and find partners on Blued, a gay social networking app.
There are other options — Grindr operates in China — but Blued is the most popular by far. China is home to an L. But according to a United Nations estimate , less than 5 percent of gay Chinese choose to come out. It is easily among the most popular gay dating apps in the world. Like WeChat, Blued aspires to be a Swiss Army knife for its users, absorbing features from other apps, like newsfeeds and livestreaming functions — as well as real-world resources like H.
Blued is in a peculiar position: It might be the biggest app of its kind, yet it is also the most precarious.
It is a tech company in a society that has been transformed by free-market reforms, but also a gay tech company operating under a one-party government with an ambiguous stance toward L. On one hand, the rise of the Chinese internet, facilitated by the last three decades of market reforms, has allowed for unprecedented connection and visibility for gay communities in China. Popular Chinese shows with gay story lines were removed from screening sites. One gay-dating app, Zank, was shut down by the government, and a lesbian-dating app, Rela, disappeared shortly after.
By staying within the commercial and public-health sectors and framing the fight for gay recognition in terms of business, the company, under the leadership of its founder and chief executive, Geng Le, has cultivated a minority community free of political activism. The company has cultivated strategic relationships within the government and raised L. Blued and its related services operate under the aegis of Blue City, which is also the name of its two-story headquarters in central Beijing. Employees have enjoyed classic start-up benefits like free lunch and company beach retreats, some with a queer twist, like a drag performance at the Lunar New Year; company swag has included plush toys of a unicorn with a rainbow horn.
Danlan was the bare-bones, browser-based website that Geng created nearly two decades ago. In his darker moments, he would sit by the beach and look out into the waves to calm himself down. He broke down in tears while reading it because he realized he was not alone. Like the sea — faraway, yet full of possibility — Danlan would be a sanctuary for gay men to express their hopes and fears.
Historically, Chinese society has neither recognized nor shunned its queer communities. Chinese religious traditions like Buddhism and Confucianism do not overtly condemn homosexuality, which means that cultural attitudes are more malleable there than in other Asian countries like Indonesia or the Philippines. Nor was homosexuality considered by authorities to be a decadent Western import; on the contrary, it is widespread and recognized in Chinese history and culture.
The Amazon rainforest is one of a few regions of the world where continental tropical deep convection occurs. Interpretation of anthropogenic differences between the upwind T0 and downwind T1-T3 sites is complicated by naturally-occurring spatial variability between the sites. In general, the annual and diurnal cycles during were representative of the distributions. The only exceptions were in March when the monthly mean rainrate was above the 95th percentile and September when both rain frequency and intensity were suppressed.
The deep sea still remains virtually unexplored. Human activity, such as oil and gas exploration and deep sea mining, is expanding further into the deep sea , increasing the need to survey and map extensive areas of this habitat in order to assess ecosystem health and value. The technology needed to explore this remote environment has been advancing. Seabed imagery can cover extensive areas of the seafloor and investigate areas where sampling with traditional coring methodologies is just not possible e.
Remotely operated vehicles ROVs are an expensive option, so drop or towed camera systems can provide a more viable and affordable alternative, while still allowing for real-time control. Assessment of seabed imagery in terms of presence, abundance and density of particular species can be conducted by bringing together a variety of analytical tools for a holistic approach. Sixteen deep sea transects located offshore West Africa were investigated with a towed digital video telemetry system DTS. Both digital stills and video footage were acquired. An extensive data set was obtained from over 13, usable photographs, allowing for characterisation of the different habitats present in terms of community composition and abundance.
All observed fauna were identified to the lowest taxonomic level and enumerated when possible, with densities derived after the seabed area was calculated for each suitable photograph. This methodology allowed for consistent assessment of the different habitat types present, overcoming constraints, such as specific taxa that cannot be enumerated, such as sponges, corals or bryozoans, the presence of mobile and sessile species, or the level of taxonomic detail.
Although this methodology will not enable a full characterisation of a deep sea community, in terms of species composition for instance, itt will allow a robust assessment of large areas of the deep sea in terms of sensitive habitats present and community.
A Moessbauer study of deep sea sediments. In order to determine the chemical states of iron in deep sea sediments, Moessbauer spectra of the sediments collected from various areas of the Pacific have been measured. The Moessbauer spectra were composed of paramagnetic ferric, high-spin ferrous, and magnetic components. The correlation of their relative abundance to the sampling location and the kind of sediments may afford clues to infer the origin of each iron-bearing phase. Microplastic pollution in deep-sea sediments.
Microplastics are small plastic particles 3 was observed. With an inter-sensor spacing of about one metre inside the clusters and between 15 and metres between the different clusters, it will cover a wide range of distances as will as provide a considerable lever arm for point source triangulation. Three of these clusters have already been deployed in and have been in operation since, currently yielding around 2GB of acoustic data per day.
Apart from proving the feasibility of operating an acoustic detection system in the deep sea , the main aim of this project is an in-depth survey of both the acoustic properties of the sea water and the acoustic background present at the detector site. It will also serve as a platform for the development and refinement of triggering, filtering and reconstruction algorithms for acoustic particle detection.
In this presentation, a description of the acoustic sensor and read-out system is given, together with examples for the reconstruction and evaluation of the acoustic data. Although the correlation between precipitation over tropical South America and sea surface temperatures SSTs over the Pacific and Atlantic has been documented since the early twentieth century, the impact of each ocean on the timing and intensity of the wet season over tropical South America and the underlying mechanisms have remained unclear.
Numerical experiments have been conducted using the National Center for Atmospheric Research Community Climate Model Version 3 to explore these impacts. The results suggest the following. The eastern side of the Amazon is influenced both by the direct thermal circulation of the Atlantic intertropical convergence zone ITCZ and by Rossby waves. SSTs affect Amazon precipitation much less during the solstice seasons and in the western Amazon.
Without the former, austral spring in the eastern equatorial Amazon would be a wet season, rather than the observed dry season. Consequently, convection in the eastern Amazon is suppressed despite strong surface heating. In spring, subsidence is enhanced not only through a zonal direct circulation, but also through. Deep-sea coral communities are hotspots of deep ocean biomass and biodiversity, providing critical habitat for fish and invertebrates.
Newly applied radiocarbon age date from the deep water proteinaceous corals Gerardia sp. The management and conservation of deep sea coral communities is challenged by their commercial harvest for the jewelry trade and damage caused by deep water fishing practices.
In light of their unusual longevity, a better understanding of deep sea coral ecology and their interrelationships with associated benthic communities is needed to inform coherent international conservation strategies for these important deep-sea ecosystems. Ion transport in deep-sea sediments.
Initial assessment of the ability of deep-sea clays to contain nuclear waste is optimistic. Yet, the investigators have no delusions about the complexity of the natural geochemical system and the perturbations that may result from emplacement of thermally-hot waste cannisters. Deep-sea corals are an extraordinary new archive of deep ocean behavior. The species Desmophyllum cristagalli is a solitary coral composed of uranium rich, density banded aragonite that I have calibrated for several paleoclimate tracers First biological measurements of deep-sea corals from the Red Sea.
It is usually assumed that metabolic constraints restrict deep-sea corals to cold-water habitats, with ' deep-sea ' and 'cold-water' corals often used as synonymous. Low respiration rates, low calcification rates, and minimized tissue cover indicate that a reduced metabolism is one of the key adaptations to prevailing environmental conditions.
We investigated four sites and encountered six species of which at least two appear to be undescribed. One species is previously reported from the Red Sea but occurs in deep cold waters outside the Red Sea raising interesting questions about presumed environmental constraints for other deep-sea corals. Our findings suggest that the present understanding of deep-sea coral persistence and resilience needs to be revisited.
Taxonomic research on deep-sea macrofauna in the South China Sea using the Chinese deep-sea submersible Jiaolong. This paper reviews the taxonomic and biodiversity studies of deep-sea invertebrates in the South China Sea based on the samples collected by the Chinese manned deep-sea submersible Jiaolong. To date, 6 new species have been described, including the sponges Lophophysema eversa, Saccocalyx microhexactin and Semperella jiaolongae as well as the crustaceans Uroptychus jiaolongae, Uroptychus spinulosus and Globospongicola jiaolongi; some newly recorded species from the South China Sea have also been reported.
The Bathymodiolus platifrons-Shinkaia crosnieri deep-sea cold seep community has been reported by Li , as has the mitochondrial genome of the glass sponge L. The population structures of two dominant species, the shrimp Shinkaia crosnieri and the mussel Bathymodiolus platifrons, from the cold seep Bathymodiolus platifrons-Shinkaia crosnieri community in the South China Sea and the hydrothermal vents in the Okinawa Trough, were compared using molecular analysis. The systematic position of the shrimp genus Globospongicola was discussed based on 16S rRNA gene sequences. A new procedure for deep sea mining tailings disposal.
Deep sea mining tailings disposal is a new environmental challenge related to water pollution, mineral crust waste handling, and ocean biology. The objective of this paper is to propose a new tailings disposal procedure for the deep sea mining industry. Through comparisons of the tailings disposal. The dynamics of biogeographic ranges in the deep sea.
Anthropogenic disturbances such as fishing, mining, oil drilling, bioprospecting, warming, and acidification in the deep sea are increasing, yet generalities about deep-sea biogeography remain elusive. Owing to the lack of perceived environmental variability and geographical barriers, ranges of deep-sea species were traditionally assumed to be exceedingly large. In contrast, seamount and chemosynthetic habitats with reported high endemicity challenge the broad applicability of a single biogeographic paradigm for the deep sea.