The global signal, which was once regarded as a nuisance of functional magnetic resonance imaging, has been proven to convey valuable neural information. This raised the following question: what is a GS represented in local brain regions? In order to answer this question, the GS topography was developed to measure the correlation between global and local signals. It was observed that the GS topography has an intrinsic structure characterized by higher GS correlation in sensory cortices and lower GS correlation in (...) higher-order cortices. The GS topography could be modulated by individual factors, attention-demanding tasks, and conscious states. Furthermore, abnormal GS topography has been uncovered in patients with schizophrenia, major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, and epilepsy. These findings provide a novel insight into understanding how the GS and local brain signals coactivate to organize information in the human brain under various brain states. Future directions were further discussed, including the local-global confusion embedded in the GS correlation, the integration of spatial information conveyed by the GS, and temporal information recruited by the connection analysis. Overall, a unified psychopathological framework is needed for understanding the GS topography. (shrink)

Background Participants' understanding of clinical trials is important in informed consent. However, little is known about what information participants really want to know. Aims To demonstrate the existence of a discrepancy between participants' understanding and their desire to know. Methods The participants in clinical trials at Seoul National University Hospital were surveyed. The survey consisted of 11 statements based on the essential elements of informed consent. The participants gave two responses to each statement on a five-point Likert scale to rate (...) their subjective understanding and desire to know, respectively. Information discrepancy was defined as the difference between these two ratings: if understanding exceeded desire to know for a particular item, it was defined as ‘over-informed’; if desire to know exceeded understanding for a particular item, it was defined as ‘under-informed’. Results Participants reported good understanding of ‘voluntariness’, ‘duration’, ‘study involves research’ and poor understanding of ‘confidentiality’, ‘compensation’, ‘benefits’, ‘procedures’ and ‘risks or discomforts’. For ‘risks or discomforts’, ‘who to contact’, ‘voluntariness’, ‘duration’ and ‘procedures’, participants reported high desire to know compared with ‘confidentiality’, ‘purpose’, ‘study involves research’ and ‘benefits’. The elements ‘study involves research’, ‘voluntariness’, ‘duration’, ‘purpose’ and ‘who to contact’ were over-informed, while ‘compensation’, ‘risks or discomforts’, ‘procedures’, ‘confidentiality’ and ‘benefits’ were under-informed. Participants over 50 years of age, those without a college education and those whose participation was less voluntary were relatively less informed about the clinical trials. Conclusions An information discrepancy was observed between the participants' understanding and their desire to know. By putting more emphasis on under-informed elements, the quality of informed consent could be improved. (shrink)

The purpose is to solve the problem that the current research on the impact of the microstructure of mental elasticity and its constituent factors on the development of the mental elasticity of children is not comprehensive, and the traditional artificial analysis method of mental problems has strong subjectivity and low accuracy. First, the structural equation model is used to study the microstructure of poor children's mental elasticity, and to explore the structural relationship and functional path between the mental elasticity of (...) children and the self-efficacy of their mental health, psychological anxiety, and attachment. Second, a prediction model of mental problems of children in plight based on the backpropagation neural network is constructed. Finally, middle schools in the representative areas of Northwest China are selected as the research unit. The relevant research data are collected by issuing questionnaires, and the data set is constructed to verify the performance of the model. The experimental results show that the average prediction errors of the BPNN model and the support vector regression model are 1.87 and 5.4, respectively. The error of BPNN is 65.4% lower than that of SVR, so BPNN has a better performance. The prediction results of the test set show that the actual error and the relative error of the BPNN model are controlled in the range of 0.01, and the prediction accuracy is high. The structural equation model has a high fitting degree. The results of the questionnaire analysis show that attachment, self-efficacy, and psychological anxiety exert a significant direct impact on mental elasticity. This exploration aims to conduct a micro investigation on the relationship among the three core variables in the resilience research of children in plight, and analyze their resilience, to provide a theoretical basis for the resilience intervention design of vulnerable groups. (shrink)

The brain-computer interface based on functional near-infrared spectroscopy has received more and more attention due to its vast application potential in emotion recognition. However, the relatively insufficient investigation of the feature extraction algorithms limits its use in practice. In this article, to improve the performance of fNIRS-based BCI, we proposed a method named R-CSP-E, which introduces EEG signals when computing fNIRS signals’ features based on transfer learning and ensemble learning theory. In detail, we used the Independent Component Analysis algorithm for (...) the correspondence between the sources of the two signals. We then introduced the EEG signals when computing the spatial filter based on a modified Common Spatial Pattern algorithm. Experimental results on public datasets show that the proposed method in this paper outperforms traditional methods without transfer. In general, the mean classification accuracy can be increased by up to 5%. To our knowledge, it is an innovation that we tried to apply transfer learning between EEG and fNIRS. Our study’s findings not only prove the potential of the transfer learning algorithm in cross-model brain-computer interface, but also offer a new and innovative perspective to research the hybrid brain-computer interface. (shrink)

Conquering print-sound mappings is vital for developing fluent reading skills. In neuroimaging research, this ability can be indexed by activation differences between audiovisual congruent against incongruent conditions in brain areas such as the left superior temporal cortex. In line with it, individuals with dyslexia have difficulty in tasks requiring print-sound processing, accompanied by a reduced neural integration. However, existing evidence is almost restricted to alphabetic languages. Whether and how multisensory processing of print and sound is impaired in Chinese dyslexia remains (...) underexplored. In this study, we applied a passive audiovisual integration paradigm with functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate the possible dysfunctions in processing character-sound and pinyin-sound associations in Chinese dyslexic children. Unexpectedly, the dyslexic group did not show reduced neural integration compared with typically developing readers in either character or pinyin experiment. However, the results revealed atypical correlations between neural integration and different reading abilities in dyslexia. Specifically, while the neural integration in the left inferior frontal cortex in processing character-sound pairs correlated with silent reading comprehension in both children with and without dyslexia, it was associated with morphological awareness in controls but with rapid naming in dyslexics. This result indicates Chinese dyslexic children may not use the same grapho-semantic processing strategy as their typical peers do. As for pinyin-sound processing, while a stronger neural integration in the direction of “congruent > incongruent” in the left occipito-temporal cortex and bilateral superior temporal cortices was associated with better oral reading fluency in the control group, an opposite pattern was found in dyslexia. This finding may reflect dyslexia's dysfunctional recruitment of the regions in grapho-phonological processing, which further impedes character learning. (shrink)

This paper uses panel OLS, IV, and system GMM methods to empirically study the effects of manufacturing and producer service corporate co-agglomeration on green economy efficiency in China. Chinese panel data from 2000 to 2019 are collected to assess the GEE and co-agglomeration degrees. The regression results show that there is an “inverted U-shaped” relationship between co-agglomeration and GEE. However, regional heterogeneity is found in the effects of corporate co-agglomeration on GEE. The mediating analysis indicates that corporate co-agglomeration could increase (...) GEE through business entrepreneurship and innovation entrepreneurship. Variables such as transportation infrastructure, human capital, foreign direct investment, and environmental regulations are also found to have an elevating effect on GEE, whereas local fiscal expenditure on environmental protection has little effect. The findings in this paper indicate that entrepreneurship plays an important role in the process of co-agglomeration impacting GEE which differs in different regions and thus provide references for corporate and regional sustainable development. (shrink)

In parallel with the rapid rise in breast cancer incidence, there is also a noticeable rise in the number of patients who experience persistent negative body image cognition after breast cancer surgery. This study aimed to explore the differences in illness perception, social support, and body image cognition among breast cancer patients with different surgical methods, and the correlation, regression, and mediation among the three variables. The Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire, the Social Support Rating Scale and the Body Image Cognition (...) after Breast Cancer Questionnaire were used to evaluate breast cancer patients’ illness perception, social support and body image cognition. Data analyses were performed by descriptive statistics, independent samples t-test, analysis of variance, Pearson correlation, and linear regression. The mediation was explored by the PROCESS V3.3. The study found that breast cancer patients undergoing radical mastectomy and modified radical mastectomy demonstrated more negative illness perception, body image cognition, and lower social support compared with the patients receiving nipple-sparing mastectomy. The subscale cognitive representation of BIPQ was strongly positively correlated with BIBCQ. Illness perception positively predicted body image cognition, while social support negatively predicted body image cognition. Social support partially mediated illness perception and body image cognition, exhibiting a positive role in post-operative body image cognition. (shrink)

Han Fei was a famous Legalist in the late Warring States period. During the struggle to criticize the Confucian school, he developed the theory of the "rule of law," which laid a theoretical groundwork on which the newly emerging landlord class could build a centralized feudal state. His works had been appreciated by Ch'in Shih-huang. When Ch'in Shih-huang read the book Han Fei Tzu, he sighed and said, "I would feel no regret about dying if I could meet this person (...) and become his friend." Later Ch'in Shih-huang applied this progressive theory of Han Fei in practice and developed it through practice. (shrink)

In complex systems, agents often interact with others in two distinct types of interactions, pairwise interaction and group interaction. The Deffuant–Weisbuch model adopting pairwise interaction and the Hegselmann–Krause model adopting group interaction are the two most widely studied opinion dynamics. In this study, we propose a novel opinion dynamics by combining pairwise and group interactions for agents and study the effects of the combination on consensus in the population. In the model, we introduce a parameter α to control the weights (...) of the two interactions in the dynamics. Through numerical simulations, we find that there exists an optimal α, which can lead to a highest probability of complete consensus and minimum critical bounded confidence for the formation of consensus. Furthermore, we show the effects of α on opinion formation by presenting the observations for opinion clusters. Moreover, we check the robustness of the results on different network structures and find the promotion of opinion consensus by α not limited to a complete graph. (shrink)

With the growing amount of clinical research, regulations and research ethics are becoming more stringent. This trend introduces a need for quality assurance measures for ensuring adherence to research ethics and human research protection beyond Institutional Review Board approval. Audits, one of the most effective tools for assessing quality assurance, are measures used to evaluate Good Clinical Practice and protocol compliance in clinical research. However, they are laborious, time consuming, and require expertise. Therefore, we developed a simple auditing process and (...) evaluated its feasibility and effectiveness. The screening audit was developed using a routine audit checklist based on the Severance Hospital’s Human Research Protection Program policies and procedures. The measure includes 20 questions, and results are summarized in five categories of audit findings. We analyzed 462 studies that were reviewed by the Severance Hospital Human Research Protection Center between 2013 and 2017. We retrospectively analyzed research characteristics, reply rate, audit findings, associated factors and post-screening audit compliance, etc. Investigator reply rates gradually increased, except for the first year. The studies were graded as “critical,” “major,” “minor,” and “not a finding”, based on findings and number of deficiencies. The auditors’ decisions showed fair agreement with weighted kappa values of 0.316, 0.339, and 0.373. Low-risk level studies, single center studies, and non-phase clinical research showed more prevalent frequencies of being “major” or “critical”. Inappropriateness of documents, failure to obtain informed consent, inappropriateness of informed consent process, and failure to protect participants’ personal information were associated with higher audit grade. We were able to observe critical GCP violations in the routine internal audit results of post-screening audit compliance checks in “non-responding” and “critical” studies upon applying the screening audit. Our screening audit is a simple and effective way to assess overall GCP compliance by institutions and to ensure medical ethics. The tool also provides useful selection criteria for conducting routine audits. (shrink)

This study investigates and compares the impact of spiritual leadership on organizational citizenship behavior in finance and retail service industries to determine the possibility of generalizing and applying spiritual leadership to other industries. This study used multi-sample analysis of structural equation modeling. The results show that values, attitudes, and behaviors of leaders have positive effects on meaning/calling and membership of the employees, and further facilitate employees to perform excellent organizational citizenship behaviors, including the altruism of assisting colleagues and the responsible (...) conscientiousness toward organization. The effect of altruism toward colleagues is especially stronger. Finally, the effect of leaders’ values, attitudes, and behaviors on the spiritual survival of employees is stronger in retail than that in finance. (shrink)

Background: Previous systematic review indicated the prevalence of prenatal anxiety as 14–54%. Pregnant women are a high-risk population for COVID-19. However, the prevalence of anxiety symptoms and related factors is unknown in Chinese pregnant women during COVID-19 outbreak.Objective: To investigate the prevalence of anxiety symptoms and the related factors in Chinese pregnant women who were attending crisis intervention during the COVID-19 pandemic.Methods: The data of this cross-sectional study were collected in about 2 months. Data analysis was performed from April to (...) May 2020. Participants completed a set of questionnaires via the Wechat Mini-program before starting the online self-help crisis intervention for COVID-19 epidemic. A total of 2,120 Chinese pregnant women who were attending a self-help crisis intervention participated in this study. A survey was developed to address possible stress-related factors in pregnant women during the COVID-19 outbreak, including demographic, socioeconomic, and pregnancy-related factors, as well as COVID-19 related factors. Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 scale and the 10-item perceived stress scale were, respectively, employed to measure anxiety and stress-related factors.Results: A total of 21.7% of pregnant women reported at least mild anxiety, and only 82 women reported moderate to severe anxiety. Factors associated with at least mild anxiety included living in Hubei province, nobody providing everyday life support, pelvic pain or vaginal bleeding, and higher perceived stress. Having relatives or neighbors with a diagnosis of COVID-19 was not associated with anxiety.Conclusions and Relevance: Our findings indicate that evaluation and intervention for maternal and infant health are necessary in pregnant women with anxiety during COVID-19 epidemic, especially those with higher perceived stress, less everyday life support, or vaginal bleeding. Interactions among these related medical, social and psychological factors need to be investigated in future studies. (shrink)

The pandemic has impacted various industries, including the sports industry. However, corporate social responsibility can mitigate the adverse effects of the crisis and promote the sports industry. To analyze the effect of CSR, the study examined the impact of perceived corporate social responsibility on injury prevention expectation, injury risk perception, and health up-gradation with the mediation of sports safety measures. There are 259 sportsmen of local sports bodies provided the data through a self-administered survey. Data analysis was conducted through Smart-PLS (...) and SEM techniques. The outcome of the analysis showed that perceived corporate social responsibility leads to injury prevention expectation, injury risk perception, and health up-gradation. Also, the study found that sports safety measure mediates the relationship between perceived corporate social responsibility and injury prevention expectation, between perceived corporate social responsibility and injury risk perception, and between perceived corporate social responsibility and health up-gradation among sportsmen of local sports bodies. The theoretical implications were presented related to the significance of CSR and sports safety measure and their impact on sportsmen injury prevention expectation, health, and risk perception. The practical implications were related to the management of local sports bodies and how they can induce CSR initiatives and programs. Some limitations related to sample size, incorporating other variables, examining the model in other contexts, and using different study designs, have also been mentioned in the study. (shrink)

Data envelopment analysis is a popular mathematical tool for analyzing the relative efficiency of homogenous decision-making units. However, the existing DEA models cannot tackle the newly confronted applications with imprecise and negative data as well as undesirable outputs simultaneously. Thus, we introduce undesirable outputs into modified slack-based measure model and propose an interval-modified slack-based measure model, which extends the application of interval DEA in fields that concern with less undesirable outputs. The novelties of the model are that it considers the (...) undesirable outputs while dealing with imprecise and negative data, and it is slack-based. Furthermore, the model with undesirable outputs is proven translation-invariant and unit-invariant. Moreover, a numerical example is provided to illustrate the changes of the lower and upper bounds of the efficiency score after considering the undesirable outputs. The empirical results show that, without considering undesirable outputs, most of the lower bounds of the efficiency scores will be overestimated when the DMUs are weakly efficient and inefficient. The upper bound will also change after considering undesirable outputs when the DMU is inefficient. Finally, an improved degree of preference approach is introduced to rank the DMUs. (shrink)

Hemispherical Resonator Gyro is a new type gyro with high precision, high reliability, shock resistance, no need of preheating, short start time, and long life. It is a kind of vibrating gyro with standing wave rotating along the sensitive base of annular precession, has a unique application prospect in the field of high precision inertial sensors, and is widely used in unmanned aerial vehicle control in complex environments. Based on the theory of the structure characteristics of the hemispherical resonator, the (...) mathematical model of energy of the resonator is established to research the rule of resonant frequency when the hemispherical resonator is rotated around the central axis. In this paper, the influence of precession factor, which are the top angle, the bottom angle, and wall unevenness of the hemispherical resonator, are analyzed. A series of hemispherical resonator models are constructed by ANSYS software to prove the results of theoretical research. The simulation results show that precession factor of the hemispherical resonator is more sensitive of the top angle than the bottom angle, and the error of angular velocity which is caused by the change of the top angle is larger than that which is caused by the change of the bottom angle. (shrink)

Cognitive and neural processes underlying visual creativity have attracted substantial attention. The current research uses a critical time point analysis to examine how spontaneous activity in the primary visual area is related to visual creativity. We acquired the functional magnetic resonance imaging data of 16 participants at the resting state and during performing a visual creative synthesis task. According to the CTPA, we then classified spontaneous activity in the PVA into critical time points, which reflect the most useful and important (...) functional meaning of the entire resting-state condition, and the remaining time points. We constructed functional brain networks based on the brain activity at two different time points and then subsequently based on the brain activity at the task state in a separate manner. We explore the relationship between resting-state and task-fMRI functional brain networks. Our results found that: the pattern of spontaneous activity in the PVA may associate with mental imagery, which plays an important role in visual creativity; in comparison with the RTPs-based brain network, the CTP-network showed an increase in global efficiency and a decrease in local efficiency; the regional integrated properties of the CTP-network could predict the integrated properties of the creative-network while the RTP-network could not. Thus, our findings indicated that spontaneous activity in the PVA at CTPs was associated with a visual creative task-evoked brain response. Our findings may provide an insight into how the visual cortex is related to visual creativity. (shrink)

As the medium of human-computer interaction, it is crucial to correctly and quickly interpret the motion information of surface electromyography. Deep learning can recognize a variety of sEMG actions by end-to-end training. However, most of the existing deep learning approaches have complex structures and numerous parameters, which make the network optimization problem difficult to realize. In this paper, a novel PSO-based optimized lightweight convolution neural network is designed to improve the accuracy and optimize the model with applications in sEMG signal (...) movement recognition. With the purpose of reducing the structural complexity of the deep neural network, the designed convolution neural network model is mainly composed of three convolution layers and two full connection layers. Meanwhile, the particle swarm optimization is used to optimize hyperparameters and improve the autoadaptive ability of the designed sEMG pattern recognition model. To further indicate the potential application, three experiments are designed according to the progressive process of body movements with respect to the Ninapro standard data set. Experiment results demonstrate that the proposed PLCNN recognition method is superior to the four other popular classification methods. (shrink)

The present study examined the effects of transcranial direct current stimulation using Halo Sport on the time to exhaustion in relation with muscle activities and corticomuscular coupling of agonist and antagonist muscles during a sustained isometric fatiguing contraction performed with the elbow flexors. Twenty healthy male college students were randomly assigned to tDCS group and control group. The two group participants performed two experimental sessions which consisted of pre-fatigue isometric maximal voluntary contraction, sustained submaximal voluntary contractions performed to exhaustion, and (...) post-fatigue MVC with the right elbow flexor muscles. Sham stimulation and tDCS were applied for control and tDCS group participants 20 min prior to the second session test, respectively. MVC strength in pre- and post-fatigue test, TTE, electroencephalogram, and electromyography of biceps brachii and triceps brachii were recorded during the tests. It was found that tDCS using the Halo Sport device significantly increased TTE and thus improved muscular endurance performance. The improvement may be partly related to the improvement of neuromuscular efficiency as reflected by decrease of antagonistic muscle coactivation activities, which may be related to cortical originated central processing mechanism of neuromuscular activities. (shrink)

Many industrial processes are operated in multiple modes due to different manufacturing strategies. Multimodality of process data is often accompanied with nonlinear and non-Gaussian characteristics, which makes data-driven monitoring more complicated. In this paper, statistics pattern analysis is introduced to extract low- and high-order statistics from raw process data. Support vector data description, which can deal with nonlinear and non-Gaussian problems, is applied to monitor multimode process in this paper. To improve detection performance of SVDD for training multimode data with (...) outliers, modified local reachability density ratio is proposed as a weight factor to be embedded in the weighted-SVDD model, in which the local neighbors in terms of both space and time are considered. Finally, the effectiveness and superiority of our proposed method are demonstrated by the Tennessee-Eastman process and wastewater treatment process. (shrink)

We study the jump hierarchy of d.c.e. Turing degrees and show that there exists a high d.c.e. degree d which does not bound any minimal pair of d.c.e. degrees.

This paper addresses variable-time impulsive control for coordinated tracking problem in nonlinear multiagent systems. To make followers coordinately track the leader, a variable-time impulsive controller is designed. Under some well-selected conditions, the comparison system of variable-time impulsive tracking control system is constructed by employing B-equivalence method. And we theoretically demonstrate that the two systems have the same stability property. Coordinated tracking criteria of multiagent systems are obtained by considering the comparison system. Numerical simulation is also provided to illustrate the correctness (...) of theoretical results and the efficiency of the variable-time impulsive controller. (shrink)

Academic discourses regarding teacher motivation have been on-going for decades for those who teach in ethnic minority areas. Yet research findings failed to provide a consistent conclusion regarding if kindergarten teachers’ motivation pattern would vary based on a case-to-case scenario. Therefore, further studies are needed to probe the motivation patterns among this population. The study firstly examined kindergarten teachers’ motivational profiles based on Expectancy Value Theory, and then examined how teachers’ motivation related to outcome variables. Participants included 1,199 kindergarten teachers (...) from ethnic minority areas in China. Latent profile analysis identified three motivation profiles for teachers: low value-high cost, moderate all, and high value-low cost. Teacher with different motivation profiles had significant differences in work engagement, workplace wellbeing, and retention intention. In addition, chain mediation analysis revealed that work engagement and workplace wellbeing mediated the relationship between motivation profiles and retention intention. The implications of the findings for study are discussed. (shrink)

Background An increasing number of studies on physicians’ professionalism have been done since the 2002 publication of Medical Professionalism in the New Millennium: A Physician Charter. The Charter proposed three fundamental principles and ten responsibilities. However, most studies were done in developed countries, and few have been done in China. Additionally, few studies have examined the effect of patient-centered hospital culture (PCHC) on physicians’ professionalism. We aimed to investigate physicians’ medical professionalism in public hospitals in China, and to assess mediating (...) effect of professional attitudes in the relationship of PCHC with professional behaviours. Methods Self-administered questionnaires including professional attitudes (20 items) and behaviours (10 items) survey and PCHC scale (22 items) were given to clinical physicians in five public hospitals, China. The mediating effect of professional attitudes in the relationship of PCHC with professional behaviours was tested. Result 232 valid questionnaires were collected. More than 90% (208) respondents agreed with 15 of 20 specific statements on medical professionalism. As for the responsibility of improving quality of care, 54 (23%) respondents disagreed with reporting of incompetent colleagues and as for the responsibility of maintaining professional competence, 49 (21%) disagreed with recertification. More than 185 (83%) respondents reported that they sometimes, usually, or always showed the four positive behaviours on the questionnaire, and 173 (77%) reported that they never showed the six negative behaviours. Mediating effect analysis revealed that two dimensions of PCHC (i.e. value/institution culture and behaviour/material culture) had a significant positive impact on physicians’ professional behaviour, and professional attitude played a complete mediation role between them, but another dimension of PCHC (i.e. negative evaluation of hospital) directly affected professional behaviour without influencing professional attitude. Conclusion Chinese physicians showed positive professional attitudes and behaviours. Different dimensions of PCHC affected physicians’ attitudes and behaviours in different ways. (shrink)

Users’ non-sustainable consumption behaviors are affecting the sustainability of access-based services, but ABS firms can utilize messaging strategies to persuade users to curtail their non-sustainable consumption behaviors. Through two online scenario-based experiments in China, this study determined that: Compared with rational appeal messaging, emotional appeal messaging is better able to persuade consumers to curtail non-sustainable consumption behaviors. Furthermore, loss-framed messages are more effective than gain-framed ones. Message appeal and message framing have an interactive persuasive effect on reducing such consumer behaviors. (...) Loss-framed rational appeal messages are more persuasive at reducing non-sustainable consumption behaviors than gain-framed rational appeal messages, and gain-framed emotional appeal messages persuade consumers to reduce non-sustainable consumption behaviors more than loss-framed ones. Consumers’ psychological ownership moderates the persuasive effect of messaging. Among consumers with a high level of psychological ownership of shared goods, only gain-framed emotional appeal messaging is effective at reducing non-sustainable consumption behaviors, whereas among consumers with low psychological ownership, the persuasive effect of loss-framed rational appeal messaging is more effective than gain-framed emotional appeal messaging. This study extends the research on non-sustainable consumption behavior management in ABSs and provides important inspiration for the management of ABSs consumer behavior. (shrink)

In the realistic world, various individuals have distinct personalities, preferences, and attitudes toward new information and behavior acceptance, called population heterogeneity. It is seldom taken into account and theoretically analyzed in information propagation on a weighted network. Therefore, we divide individuals into fashionable and conservative individuals according to their passion degree and willingness for novel behaviors acceptance. Then, we build two behavior adoption threshold models corresponding to fashionable and conservative individuals on the weighted network to explore the effect of population (...) heterogeneity on information propagation. Next, a partition theory based on edge weight and population heterogeneity is proposed to qualitatively analyze the information propagation mechanism. The theoretical analyses and simulation results show that fashionable individuals promote information propagation and behavior adoption. More importantly, the crossover phenomena of phase transition appear. When the fraction of fashionable individuals is relatively large, the increasing pattern of the final adoption size shows a second-order continuous phase transition. In comparison, the increasing pattern alters to first-order discontinuous phase transition with the decrease of the fraction of fashionable individuals. Moreover, reducing weight distribution heterogeneity promotes information propagation and slightly accelerates the change of the phase transition pattern from the first-order discontinuous to the second-order continuous. Besides, increasing the degree distribution heterogeneity accelerates the change of the phase transition pattern. Finally, our theoretical analyses coincide well with the simulation results. (shrink)

The home learning environment includes what parents do to stimulate children’s literacy and numeracy skills at home and their overall beliefs and attitudes about children’s learning. The home literacy and numeracy environments are two of the most widely discussed aspects of the home learning environment, and past studies have identified how socioeconomic status and parents’ own abilities and interest in these domains also play a part in shaping children’s learning experiences. However, these studies are mostly from the West, and there (...) has been little focus on the situation of homes in Asia, which captures a large geographical area and a wide diversity of social, ethnic, and linguistic groups. Therefore, this paper aims to review extant studies on the home literacy and numeracy environments that have been conducted in different parts of Asia, such as China, the Philippines, India, Iran, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates. Specifically, we explore how parents in these places perceive their roles in children’s early literacy and numeracy development, the methods they regard as effective for promoting young children’s literacy and numeracy learning, and the frequency with which they engage their young children in different types of home literacy and numeracy activities. We also examine studies on the relationship of the home literacy and numeracy environment with young children’s developmental outcomes, and the effectiveness of parent training programs to improve the home literacy and numeracy environments in these contexts. By examining potential trends in findings obtained in different geographical areas, we can initially determine whether there are characteristics that are potentially unique to contexts in Asia. We propose future research directions that acknowledge the role of cultural values and social factors in shaping the home learning environment, and, by extension, in facilitating children’s early literacy and numeracy development. (shrink)

Chinese students’ outstanding performance in several rounds of PISA tests has attracted extensive attention on Chinese teacher professional development practices and system. The school-based teachi...

"Yang Xiong is the most useless of all. He was truly a rotten Confucian."Zhu Xi (11301200 A.D.)With this comment from Song Dynasty Neo-Confucian Zhu Xi, the work of Han Dynasty philosopher Yang Xiong (53 B.C.18 A.D.) was effectively relegated to the dustbin of Chinese intellectual history. While influential in the Later Han as the clearest expression of the Old Text Confucian school, Yang's Fa yan has received little attention from Western scholars and appears here in a rare (...) annotated English translation.Written during the transition between the Former and Later Han Dynasties, the Fa yan is a notoriously elusive text that was stylistically modeled on the Analects of Confucius. Denigrated by later Neo-Confucians for his association with Han usurper Wang Mang, Yang Xiong served both the Former Han and Xin imperial courts as a court poet and scholar, and was well known for being a reclusive personality, earning him a reputation as a "hermit at court." Most famous for his position that human nature is a mixture of good and evil, Yang Xiong's philosophy stands in clear contrast to the syncretic Confucianism of his day as a reformer's vision of proper self-cultivation and statecraft.This volume presents an annotated translation of the entire text, focusing on the passages that elucidate Yang's discussion of the core concepts of the Confucian school. The translator's commentary traces the text's major philosophical concepts to their roots in Warring States era philosophy, noting stylistic and conceptual allusions to the Analects and Mencius, among other texts. Also included are a discussion of Yang's biography and the influence of the eremitic ideal on his life and thought. (shrink)

Chinese philosophy of religion is a less discussed and less clearly formed area in the study of Chinese philosophy. It is true that there is virtually no discussion in Chinese philosophy about rationality or justification of religious beliefs comparable to the discussion of the same issues in Western philosophy of religion. The inquiry about rationality and justification of religious beliefs has shaped Western philosophy of religion. However, the scope of philosophy of religion in the Western context has been widened since (...) Hume and Kant. When the West began to be exposed to non-Western religions, philosophical reflection on non-Western religions is also brought into the scope of philosophy of Religion. We can expect that the concept of religion will become much broader, the scope of philosophy of religion will expand and new issues, especially, issues concerning specific and non-Western religions, will be framed. When we look at philosophy of religion in a broad sense, the field of Chinese philosophy of religion begins to emerge. In this survey paper, I will focus on several issues which, in a broad sense of philosophy of religion, can be construed as the issues of Chinese philosophy of religion. One of the issues is about the religiosity of Confucianism. The second issue is about the concept of Tian. The third is the issue regarding the origin and nature of Chinese state religion and its characteristics which also have caught the attention of scholars, especially, in China. Is Confucianism a religion? How should we construe the religiosity of Confucianism if it does have a religious dimension? Is Tian a theological term? How does Tian differ from Western God? Is the sacrifice to Tian religious and a form of monotheism? What is the nature of state religion in traditional China? What is the relation between the state religion and Confucianism in traditional China? The debates on the issues addressing these questions will be introduced and discussed in this paper. (shrink)

Relational reasoning is a higher-order executive function that involves the ability to perceive meaningful patterns within a body of seemingly unrelated information. In this study, the ability of 749 fourth (Mage= 10), sixth (Mage= 12), eighth (Mage= 14), and tenth graders (Mage= 16) to identify meaningful relational patterns was investigated. This general cognitive ability was assessed by means of the Test of Relational Reasoning-Junior (TORRjr), a 32-item measure organized into four 8-item scales that assess analogical, anomalous, antinomous, and antithetical reasoning. (...) Students’ performance on the TORRjr was analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis, measurement invariance test, and non-parametric median-based analyses. The confirmatory factor analysis supported that the higher-order factor model was the best fit for the TORRjr data for the Korean students. The measurement was determined to be invariant by gender but variant across grade levels. The non-parametric analysis resulted in an asymptotic (a constant increasing up to grade 6 and then a level off witnessed from grades 8 to 10) development pattern in overall relational reasoning across the grades. In comparison to analogy and anomaly, antinomy and antithesis scores were more fully developed by grade 8 and that level of performance was maintained at grade 10. The TORRjr appeared to be a viable measure for the Korean samples up to approximately 15 years of age. The significance of these findings for research and instructional practice are discussed. (shrink)