A speed-accuracy trade-off (SAT) in behavioural decisions is known to occur in a wide range of vertebrate and invertebrate taxa. Accurate decisions often take longer for a given condition, while fast decisions can be inaccurate in some tasks. Speed-accuracy tactics are known to vary consistently among individuals, and show a degree of flexibility during colour discrimination tasks in bees. Such individual flexibility in speed-accuracy tactics is likely to be advantageous for animals exposed to fluctuating environments, such as changes in predation (...) threat. We therefore test whether individual speed-accuracy tactics are fixed or flexible under different levels of predation threat in a model invertebrate, the bumblebee Bombus terrestris. The flexibility of speed-accuracy tactics in a foraging context was tested in the laboratory using a ‘meadow’ of artificial flowers harbouring ‘robotic’ crab spider predators. We found that while the ranking of bees along the speed and accuracy continuums was consistent across two levels of predation threat, there was some flexibility in the tactics used by individual bees – most bees became less accurate at colour discrimination when exposed to predation threat when flower types were rewarding. The relationship between decision speed and accuracy was influenced by predator detectability and the risk associated with making incorrect choices during the colour discrimination task. Predator crypsis resulted in a breakdown in the relationship between speed and accuracy, especially when making an incorrect floral choice incurred a distasteful quinine punishment. No single speed-accuracy tactic was found to be optimal in terms of foraging efficiency under either predation threat situation. However, bees that made faster decisions achieved higher nectar collection rates in predator free situations, while accurate bees achieved higher foraging rates under predation threat. Our findings show that while individual bees remain relatively consistent in terms of whether they place greater emphasis on speed or accuracy under predation threat, they can respond flexibly to the additional time costs of detecting predators. (shrink)

This paper reflects mainly on three ideas of “political Ruism” in modern China. We first review Mou Zongsan’s idea of “selfnegation of innate moral consciousness良知坎陷,” which embraces universal values and tries to bridge them with Chinese culture. We then re-examine Jiang Qing’s “political Confucianism,” which, while criticizing universal values, attempts to establish a political system based on the Kingly Way. Finally, we discuss the “Kang Youwei-ism康有为主义”, which calls on us to return to Kang Youwei’s idea of state construction and national (...) construction. The three ideas offer some new perspectives into Confucianism, but all turn out unrealistic and unpragmatic. We believe that Confucianism in modern China can still work in both the private sphere and the public sphere, and examine politics from a human, cultural or moral perspective. (shrink)

Theological schools are well situated to create intentional cultures for the purpose of spiritual formation. Indeed, most schools of theology have this goal as an essential part of their mission as well as a requirement for continued accreditation. And yet, the measurement of spiritual formation over time is fraught with challenges. This article seeks to address some of these challenges by means of developing a meta-theory of positive change/growth which would eventually serve as a theoretical basis for the development of (...) a generalizable and reliable measurement tool. (shrink)

UV‐radiation‐induced lesions in DNA result in the formation of: (1) excision gaps (i.e. a lesion is excised, leaving a gap), (2) daughter‐strand gaps (i.e. a lesion can be skipped during replication, leaving a gap), and (3) double‐strand breaks (i.e. the DNA strand opposite a gap can be cut). In Escherichia coli, the recA gene product is involved in repairs of all three types of lesions – repair of daughter‐strand gaps (2) and double‐strand breaks (3) constitutes post‐replication repair. The evidence suggests, (...) furthermore, that recA‐dependent repair of excision gaps (1) produced in DNA replicated prior to UV irradiation (pre‐replication repair) appears to occur by similar mechanisms. (shrink)

During development one mechanism for generating different cell types is asymmetric cell division, by which a cell divides and contributes different factors to each of its daughter cells. Asymmetric cell division occurs through out the eukaryotic kingdom, from yeast to humans. Many asymmetric cell divisions occur in a defined orientation. This implies a cellular mechanism for sensing direction, which must ultimately lead to differences in gene expression between two daughter cells. In this review, we describe two classes of molecules: regulatory (...) factors that are differentially expressed upon asymmetric cell division, and components of a signal transduction pathway that may define cell polarity. The lin‐11 and mec‐3 genes of C. elegans, the Isl‐1 gene of mammals and the HO gene of yeast, encode regulatory factors that determine cell type of one daughter after asymmetric cell division. The CDC24 and CDC42 genes of yeast affect both bud positioning and orientation of mating projections, and thus may define a general cellular polarity. We speculate that molecules such as Cdc24 and Cdc42 may regulate expression of genes such as lin‐11, mec‐3, Isl‐1 and HO upon asymmetric cell division. (shrink)

This study aimed to determine the relationship between acute stress and quality of life and explore their influencing factors on health care workers. A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted, and a sample of 525 health care workers was recruited from 15 hospitals through a convenient sampling method. Participants completed an online self-report questionnaire to assess their acute stress and quality of life. Descriptive and multiple linear regression statistics were used for this analysis. The results regarding acute stress responses varied significantly (...) among the differences in marital status, physical activity, work status, perceived risk of contracting COVID-19, and the expected duration of the pandemic. Moreover, a younger age, lack of physical activity, being a front-line medical staff, and higher acute stress scores indicated a worse quality of life. Healthcare workers’ acute stress was negatively correlated with their quality of life. Therefore, the authorities should pay special attention to health care workers’ mental health and provide them with timely protection during the pandemic. (shrink)

BackgroundThe Basal ganglia (BG) played a crucial role in the brain-level mechanisms of chronic pain disorders. However, the functional changes of BG in chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome (CP/CPPS) are still poorly understood. This study investigated the BG subregions’ resting-state functional connectivity (rs-FC) in CP/CPPS patients compared with healthy controls.MethodsTwenty eight patients with CP/CPPS and 28 age- and education-matched healthy males underwent clinical measurements and 3T brain MR imaging, including T1-weighted structural images and resting-state functional imaging. The data were analyzed (...) by the seeded-based rs-FC analysis. Then, a machine learning method was applied to assess the feasibility of detecting CP/CPPS patients through the changed rs-FC.ResultsCompared with healthy males, patients presented decreased rs-FC between the BG subregions and right middle cingulate cortex, and correlated with pain (r = 0.51, p-uncorrected = 0.005) and urinary symptoms (r = –0.4, p-uncorrected = 0.034). The left superior temporal gyrus and right supramarginal gyrus showed decreased rs-FC with the BG subregions as well. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.943 (accuracy = 80%, F1-score = 80.6%) was achieved for the classification of CP/CPPS patients and healthy males with support vector machine (SVM) based on the changed rs-FC.ConclusionThese findings provide evidence of altered BG subregions’ rs-FC in CP/CPPS, which may contribute to our understanding of the BG’s role in CP/CPPS. (shrink)

In practical application studies of glider formations, ocean currents are a major influencing factor in their path planning. The purpose of this paper is to solve the path planning problem of glider formations in time-varying ocean currents and establish gliders, glider formation, and ocean current models based on existing data. The Doc-CNN architecture is tailored to conform to the operation and environment characteristics of gliders in practical application. After experiments, the algorithm of the improved architecture can be used in the (...) path planning task of glider formation. The algorithm architecture is compared and tested on two datasets, grid maps and ocean maps. Doc-CNN has an advantage over architecture without being tailored to glider characteristics and makes full use of known global information and local information collected by gliders themselves. The results show that the path planning problem of glider formation in ocean currents can be solved by using Doc-CNN. (shrink)

For many energy companies in China, green brand strategy is becoming an important approach to enhance competitive advantage. However, greenwashing behaviors result in a crisis of trust. Existing research focuses on green marketing, but is silent on the institutional view of the trust crisis resulting from greenwashing by energy brands. Thus, this study takes a decoupling perspective from institutional theory and considers legitimacy, energy policy management, and green brand theories to shed light on the path from the decoupling of an (...) energy brand from green promise to green energy brand trust and the role of brand legitimacy and brand loyalty. It then analyzes survey data to conclude that DEBG not only has a direct negative effect on GEBT but also has an indirect influence through the vital mediating role of green energy brand legitimacy. Moreover, brand loyalty is a moderating factor and can alleviate the energy brand trust crisis. These findings not only can enrich the theories of energy brand management and green marketing but also offer important implications for energy policy management. (shrink)

Dissatisfaction with facial appearance is one of the strongest contributors to body image disturbance among young Chinese females and leads to a series of psychological and behavioral disorders. By conducting behavioral and ERP experiments, this study illustrates how young females in China with facial dissatisfaction process different levels of facial attractiveness. Experiments 1 and 2 are behavioral experiments in which the dot-probe paradigm was used to explore the participant’s attentional bias to facial attractiveness. The results showed that regardless of whether (...) the face image was presented above or below the threshold, young females with facial dissatisfaction exhibited attentional orientation toward lowly attractive faces and attentional avoidance to both lowly and highly attractive faces, while the control group showed difficulty in attentional disengagement from highly attractive faces. In experiment 3, the learning-recognition task was used to examine mnemonic bias toward facial attractiveness among females with facial dissatisfaction, and EEG data were also recorded during the encoding and retrieval phases. The study found that young females with facial dissatisfaction exhibited a mnemonic preference for lowly attractive images at both the encoding and retrieving stages, with higher P1, N170, P2, and N300 induced by lowly attractive faces, while the control group preferred highly attractive faces. In conclusion, young females with facial dissatisfaction tend to exhibit attentional orientation and mnemonic bias toward lowly attractive faces. (shrink)

Gene therapy approaches have great promise in the treatment of neurodegenerative disorders and malignant brain tumors. Neuwelt et al. review available viral-mediated gene therapy methods and their blood-brain-barrier (BBB) disruption delivery technique, briefly mentioning nonviral mediated gene therapy methods. This commentary discussed the BBB disruption delivery technique, viral and nonviral mediated gene therapy approaches to Parkinson's disease, and the potential use of antisense oligo to suppress malignant brain tumors.

The optimal design of cables under selfweight and concentrated loads is considered and the maximum feasible span for a given permissible stress is evaluated. All solutions are obtained in a closed analytical form.

Color harmony is the focus of many researchers in the field of art and design, and its research results have been widely used in artistic creation and design activities. With the development of signal processing and artificial intelligence technology, new ideas and methods are provided for color harmony theory and color harmony calculation. In this article, psychological experimental methods and information technology are combined to design and quantify the 16-dimensional physical features of multiple colors, including multi-color statistical features and multi-color (...) contrast features. Eighty-four subjects are invited to give a 5-level score on the degree of color harmony for 164 multi-color materials selected from the screenshots of film and television scenes. Based on the multi-color physical features and the subjective evaluation experiment, the correlation analysis is firstly carried out, which shows that the overall lightness, difference of the color tones, number of multiple colors, lightness contrast, color tone contrast, and cool/warm contrast are significantly correlated with color harmony. On the other hand, the regression prediction model and classification prediction model of color harmony are constructed based on machine learning algorithms. In terms of regression prediction model, the prediction accuracy of linear models is higher than that of nonlinear models, with 63.9% as the highest, indicating that the multi-color physical features can explain color harmony well. In terms of classification prediction model, the Random Forest has the best prediction performance, with an accuracy of 80.2%. (shrink)

In the context of coronavirus pandemic, the face-recognition-based access control system has been intensively adopted to protect students’ and teachers’ health and safety in school. However, the impact of FACS, as a new technology, on students’ attitude toward accepting FACS has remained unknown from the psychological halo effect. Drawn on “halo effect” theory where psychological effects affect the sense of social identity and belonging, the present study explored college students’ sense of school identity and belonging in using FACS during COVID-19 (...) based on the technology acceptance model. Data collected from 391 college students was analyzed using SEM to verify the relationship among perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, intention to use, school identity, and school belonging. The results show that PU and PEU can positively predict IU, and consequentially can positively predict school identity and school belonging. Our study expands the application of halo effect theory to study FACS acceptance based on TAM, and provides strong evidence to support the effect of school FACS during the pandemic. The findings of this study also suggest that FACS acceptance can enhance students’ sense of school identity and belonging. (shrink)

As cable television channel bloomed and grew in Taiwan, more and more teenagers watched a wide variety of foreign TV programmers through hundreds of channels. The impact of this media trend among Taiwanese youth stresses the importance of research to assess whether local college students learn from foreign television programming. In this research, which supports the theoretical discussion in this paper, the nature of these learnings was analyzed as well. In general, this study aims to explore the relevant literature and (...) examine whether college students engage in critical thinking when viewing foreign television programs. This research used a popular Korean series shown in Taiwan to examine various perspectives and views related to the issue. Based from the gathered findings, college students appear to pay more critical attention to the program script, character, rhythm, plot and cultural differences. In relation to aesthetic, ideology and cultural identity issues, less response on the educational impact of the program was obtained from the participants. This confirms the claim that Taiwanese youth view television as an entertainment medium rather than an educational one. For this reason, the role of media education, specifically the integration of visual literacy and critical thinking, is highly significant to generate less passive television viewers. (shrink)

The domestic situation of the past few years shows the practices of employees’ unpaid leave and layoffs and the constant drain on capital, talent, and technologies in hospitality. Owners expect to reduce the losses to as low as possible by saving on human costs. Nevertheless, in face of such a changing environment, hospitality has to accumulate high-quality human capital through systematic investment, sensitive development, and continuous learning and growth to discover competitive advantages through the cultivation of human capital. The pre-service (...) education of new employees could accelerate their familiarity with the operations of the company and their understanding of their job role and duties. More importantly, with good planning, it could make employees feel emphasized with and respected with the result of largely changing their thoughts and working habits. Aiming at supervisors and employees in hospitality in Zhejiang as the research objects, a total of 420 copies of our questionnaire are distributed, and 357 valid copies were retrieved, with a retrieval rate of 85%. According to the results to propose discussions, it is expected to generate systematic and proper education methods for the pre-service education in hospitality, promote the education effectiveness, and promote employees’ capability and organizational performance. (shrink)

Currently due to the COVID-19 pandemic, young people are experiencing a decrease in self-efficacy and an increase in mental illness. Though previous studies have shown that self-efficacy and divergent thinking training are positively related, little is known about the impact of divergent thinking training on self-efficacy and emotions. Therefore, our study seeks this answer to support teenagers injured psychologically during disastrous periods. We randomly assigned 70 students to a 2 × 2 mixed design. Participants in the experimental group were given (...) a 9-day divergent thinking training with the theme of “writing down 10 novel functions of the mask,” while those in the control group spent 10 min each day recording what they ate. The self-efficacy, anxiety, depression, and stress of two groups were measured before and after training. Results showed that, compared to the control group, self-efficacy ceased decreasing while anxiety decreased for the experimental group. These findings confirm the positive effect of divergent thinking on teenagers. Implications and limitations are discussed. (shrink)

Cell‐based therapies for degenerative diseases of the musculature remain on the verge of feasibility. Myogenic cells are relatively abundant, accessible, and typically harbor significant proliferative potential ex vivo. However, their use for therapeutic intervention is limited due to several critical aspects of their complex biology. Recent insights based on mouse models have advanced our understanding of the molecular mechanisms controlling the function of myogenic progenitors significantly. Moreover, the discovery of atypical myogenic cell types with the ability to cross the blood‐muscle (...) barrier has opened exciting new therapeutic avenues. In this paper, we outline the major problems that are currently associated with the manipulation of myogenic cells and discuss promising strategies to overcome these obstacles. (shrink)

We study whether greater social trust is associated with a lower incidence of corporate misconduct. Both social norm and network theory suggest that social trust can affect managerial behavior and reduce the likelihood of misconduct behavior. Consistent with this prediction, we find that social trust is negatively associated with corporate misconduct behavior. Moreover, we show that, when media coverage is higher, the negative relation between social trust and corporate misconduct behavior is more pronounced. Further analyses suggest that social trust can (...) help mitigate both disclosure-related and nondisclosure-related misconduct. (shrink)

Given the complexity of teams involved in creating AI-based systems, how can we understand who should be held accountable when they fail? This paper reports findings about accountable AI from 26 interviews conducted with stakeholders in AI drawn from the fields of AI research, law, and policy. Participants described the challenges presented by the distributed nature of how AI systems are designed, developed, deployed, and regulated. This distribution of agency, alongside existing mechanisms of accountability, responsibility, and liability, creates barriers for (...) effective accountable design. As agency is distributed across the socio-technical landscape of an AI system, users without deep knowledge of the operation of these systems become disempowered, unable to challenge or contest when it impacts their lives. In this context, accountability becomes a matter of building systems that can be challenged, interrogated, and, most importantly, adjusted in use to accommodate counter-intuitive results and unpredictable impacts. Thus, accountable system design can work to reconfigure socio-technical landscapes to protect the users of AI and to prevent unjust apportionment of risk. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 30.4 (2000) 15-37 [Access article in PDF] Kant's Strange LightRomanticism, Periodicity, and the Catachresis of Genius Orrin N. C. Wang We might say that in deconstruction history is always posed as a question, at once urgent, ubiquitous, and insoluble, whereas ideological demystification conceives of its relation to history as an answer, a solution, to its critical hermeneutic. Certainly, this critical truism has special force in Romantic studies, (...) a field very much shaped by the complex relation between deconstruction and ideological critique over the last twenty-five years. But it could just as well be said that the full implications of this relation are especially clarified by the field of Romantic studies, not least because its object of study replays the tensions between these two modes of inquiry. Studying Romanticism means knowing it as a historical period but also knowing it as a figure that stands for something else: an aesthetic practice, a form of consciousness, a political aspiration, an ideology, the possibility of historicity itself. That as a figure Romanticism can be either transhistorical or tied to its historical identity makes its situation all the more complicated and compelling. Romanticism especially dramatizes the interlocking relation between period identity and trope, and the investment of literary studies in that dynamic. Romanticism is the period metaphor that both stabilizes and disrupts the very concept of period metaphors.1 The deconstruction and demystification of Romanticism is very much about the deconstruction and demystification of history, its existence as either question or calculation, trope or immanent being.But even as Romanticism asserts its special relation to history it must also confront an opposite trajectory, how its meaning is best understood through a constellation of other, larger historical identities, such as the Enlightenment and modernity itself. At present the potential disciplinary reorganization of Romanticism into the long eighteenth century is the most vivid academic expression of the question, where does the historical specificity of Romanticism reside, within itself or something larger, or both?Sorting this issue out is certainly a historical proposition, but as Romanticism's special relation to history reminds us, it is also, in Paul de Man's sense, rhetorical. Which is to say, Romanticism's relation to history is, paradoxically, not special-or, more precisely, it is a trope for something pervasive among all the period fields of literary studies, insofar as they remain particular and distinct from one another. This includes those historical entities that might subsume or entangle with Romanticism itself, that would enact historicity by absorbing a field so intent on both the enabling and worrying of historical thought. Approached tropologically, the relation of Romanticism to these larger historical periods is not simply about events and formations that constitute [End Page 15] the boundaries of historical identities. It is also about best identifying and clarifying the workings of figure that create the intelligence of such periodicity.Such labor, what de Man designated innocently enough by the term "reading," calls for its own crossing of a particular set of boundaries. A philosophical text, generated by the entanglement between Romanticism and the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, might contain sections exemplary in their recording of the interstice between trope and historical periodization. Immanuel Kant's short meditation on genius in the third Critique is, like the rest of his book, about the limits and possibilities of the judging subject; his words on genius are also specifically about the artistically creative subject. In resolving the contradictions between aesthetic judgment and creation, Kant transforms the solar light of human genius into the historical genius of the Enlightenment, which is very much the linguistic genius of Romanticism. This all occurs in a register not of consciousness or of historical truth, but of something else before either's constative realization.Kant's text is especially telling in its reflexive expression of this situation, so much so that it helps illuminate the sharp distinction between deconstruction and ideological demystification. For if deconstruction always poses history as the pressure of an insoluble, omnipresent question, it does so through figure, before truth. In contrast, ideological demystification, with... (shrink)

Building on attribution theory, this study investigates the antecedents of corporate annual report text manipulation from the perspective of managerial performance pressure. Using a data set comprising 15,076 samples from companies listed on China's Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share markets between 2009 and 2021, we reveal that as management faces performance pressure, they tend to increase content about external environmental risk and policy uncertainty in annual reports due to actor–observer bias. When incorporating Confucian cultural factors into the research framework, the study (...) found that the strength of Confucian culture mitigates the correlation between the pressure of management performance and annual report manipulation. However, the level of marketization where a corporation is located can undermine the ethical norms upheld by Confucian culture. In additional analysis, we also discovered that the longer the duration of performance pressure, the greater the extent of manipulation within the annual reports initiated by the management. Interestingly, the social performance pressure generated from ESG performance also positively influences annual report textual manipulation, compared to operational performance pressure. This study explores the impact of management performance pressure on information disclosure decisions from the perspective of performance attribution, not only extending the boundaries of attribution theory but also providing guidance for policymakers to enhance the supervision of annual report disclosures and for capital market investors to optimize investment decisions. (shrink)

This book addresses one of the most urgent questions in American society today, one that is currently in the spotlight and hotly debated on all sides: Who shall rule the schools--parents or educators? _School Choice or Best Systems: What Improves Education?_ presents an overview of research and practical applications of innovative--even radical--school reforms being implemented across the United States. These fall along a continuum ranging from "parental choice" to "best systems." At the one extreme are schools of choice, which allow (...) parents to choose and even govern schools for their children. These include charter schools, traditional private and parochial schools, schools that are privately governed but publicly funded through vouchers, and those that are funded by private scholarships provided by both corporations and wealthy individuals. At the other extreme are centralized state or district systems, based on reform initiatives and new systems of education that have been developed in response to views of citizens and legislators that schools can do much better. These schools, which specify uniform goals, policies, and programs for each school, are highly innovative systems based on research or representing advanced thinking about "what works," and have attracted wide interest. Important questions related to schools of choice and best systems are addressed: How can we choose among schools of choice and best systems? Among the various approaches within each of these alternatives? How can we understand their guiding principles and operational practices? What results do they produce? How can we evaluate their claims? In choosing among the alternatives, how should issues of student achievement, accountability, costs, feasibility, and equity be factored in? This volume brings together leading researchers and education leaders who have carried out the latest studies and advances in the field, providing a forum for them to set forth the arguments and evidence that will be most helpful in making choices for tomorrow's schools. It does not provide a single "right" answer--values and preferences differ across parents, schools, districts, and states. However, there are benefits for all from seeing the rigorous research, challenging thinking, and alternate points of view this volume presents. (shrink)