Objectives: The corona virus disease-2019 pandemic spread globally, and we aimed to investigate the psychosocial impact on healthcare workers in China during the pandemic.Methods: In this systematic review and meta-analysis, we searched seven electronic databases for cross-sectional studies on psychosocial impact on HWs in relation to COVID-19 from January 1, 2020 to October 7, 2020. We included primary studies involving Chinese HWs during the pandemic, and data were extracted from the published articles. Our primary outcome was prevalence of anxiety, depression, (...) and stress disorders. We pooled prevalence value with their 95% confidence interval using random effect models and assessed study quality on the basis of an 11-item checklist recommended by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The study protocol was registered in PROSPERO.Results: We identified 25 articles comprising a total of 30,841 completed questionnaires and 22 studies for meta-analysis. The prevalence of anxiety, depression, and stress disorders was 34.4%, 31.1%, and 29.1% for HWs. The pooled prevalence of anxiety disorders for HWs from late January to early February was 46.4%, significantly higher than those in mid-term February and after late February. The pooled prevalence of depression disorders for HWs from late January to early February was 46.5%, significantly higher than those in mid-term February and after late February. HWs working in Hubei Province had a higher prevalence of anxiety and a lower prevalence of depression than those working in other regions. Nurses had a higher prevalence of anxiety and depression than other HWs.Conclusions: About one-third of HWs in China suffered anxiety, depression, and stress at the early epidemic of COVID-19. HWs in Hubei Province, especially nurses, had a higher prevalence of psychological disorders. During the pandemic, a negative psychological state may persist in a proportion of Chinese HWs, fluctuating with the control of the pandemic. The long-term impact should continue to be observed. Attention should be paid to HWs for their psychological impact due to the pandemic.Systematic Review Registration: The study protocol was registered with PROSPERO. (shrink)

To probe the motivational roles of hedonic gratification and social gratification in giving “Like” feedback on social media, we developed a set of novel pictures to simulate WeChat Moments. We subsequently examined how the personality trait of extraversion and stimulus content characteristics influenced “Liking” behavior. A 2 × 3 × 2 -mixed experimental design was applied to data obtained from 56 WeChat Moments users. These participants included 28 individuals with the highest extraversion scale scores, and 28 individuals with the lowest (...) extraversion scale scores, according to the NEO Five-Factor Inventory. Briefly, participants observed pictures on an interface similar to that of WeChat Moments and were given the option to “Like” each picture. “Like” rates and response time were then compared across groups and conditions by applying a mixed-design analysis of variance. Pearson's correlation coefficients were calculated to explore relationships between the “Like” rates under each condition and the scores for each personality trait. Compared with the neutral pictures, the positive and negative pictures were “Liked” more and less frequently, respectively. Compared with the poster-unrelated pictures, the personally related pictures were “Liked” more frequently. In the extrovert group, the frequency of “Likes” given to unrelated negative content positively associated with neuroticism and negatively associated with conscientiousness. No correlations were observed in the introvert group. Compared with not giving “Like” feedback, participants gave “Likes” to positive and negative pictures more quickly and slowly, respectively.These results support the hypothesis that hedonic gratification and social gratification motivate “Like” feedback for positive content and personally related content, respectively. “Liking” behavior was not affected by extraversion, but was related to neuroticism and conscientiousness. Content-related differences in time intervals for giving “Like” feedback in this study suggest that people do not hesitate to give “Like” feedback to positive content on WeChat Moments, yet linger in deciding to give “Like” feedback to negative content. (shrink)

Forecasting blood glucose values for patients can help prevent hypoglycemia and hyperglycemia events in advance. To this end, this study proposes an intelligent ensemble deep learning system to predict BG values in 15, 30, and 60 min prediction horizons based on historical BG values collected via continuous glucose monitoring devices as an endogenous factor and carbohydrate intake and insulin administration information as exogenous factors. Although there are numerous deep learning algorithms available, this study applied five algorithms, namely, recurrent neural network, (...) which is optimized for sequence data, and RNN-based algorithms, stacked LSTM, bidirectional LSTM, and gated recurrent unit). Then, a genetic algorithm was applied to the five prediction models to optimize their weights through ensemble techniques and to yield the final predicted BG values. The performance of the proposed model was compared to that of the autoregressive integrated moving average model as a baseline. The results show that the proposed model significantly outperforms the baseline in terms of the root mean square error and continuous glucose error grid analysis. For the valid 29 diabetic patients for the multivariate models, the RMSE was 11.08, 19.25, and 31.30 mg/DL for 15, 30, and 60 min PH, respectively. When the same data were applied to univariate models, the RMSE was 11.28, 19.99, and 33.13 mg/DL for 15, 30, and 60 min PH, respectively. Both the univariate and multivariate models showed a statistically significant difference compared with the baseline at a 5% statistical significance level. Instead of using a model with a single algorithm, applying a GA based on each output of a model with multiple algorithms was found to play a significant role in improving model performance. (shrink)

Post-stroke depression is a serious complication of stroke that significantly restricts rehabilitation. The use of immersive virtual reality for stroke survivors is promising. Herein, we investigated the effects of a novel immersive virtual reality training system on PSD and explored induced effective connectivity alterations in emotional networks using multivariate Granger causality analysis. Forty-four patients with PSD were equally allocated into an immersive-virtual reality group and a control group. In addition to their usual rehabilitation treatments, the participants in the immersive-virtual reality (...) group participated in an immersive-virtual reality rehabilitation program, while the patients in the control group received 2D virtual reality rehabilitation training. The Hamilton Depression Rating Scale, modified Barthel Index, and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data were collected before and after a 4-week intervention. rsfMRI data were analyzed using multivariate GCA. We found that the immersive virtual reality training was more effective in improving depression in patients with PSD but had no statistically significant improvement in MBI scores compared to the control group. The GCA showed that the following causal connectivities were strengthened after immersive virtual reality training: from the amygdala, insula, middle temporal gyrus, and caudate nucleus to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex; from the insula to the medial prefrontal cortex; and from the thalamus to the posterior superior temporal sulcus. These causal connectivities were weakened after treatment in the control group. Our results indicated the neurotherapeutic use of immersive virtual reality rehabilitation as an effective non-pharmacological intervention for PSD; the alteration of causal connectivity in emotional networks might constitute the neural mechanisms underlying immersive-virtual reality rehabilitation in PSD. (shrink)

Stigmatization associated with the coronavirus disease 2019 is expected to be a complex issue and to extend into the later phases of the pandemic, which impairs social cohesion and relevant individuals' well-being. Identifying contributing factors and learning their roles in the stigmatization process may help tackle the problem. This study quantitatively assessed the severity of stigmatization against three different groups of people: people from major COVID-19 outbreak sites, those who had been quarantined, and healthcare workers; explored the factors associated with (...) stigmatization within the frameworks of self-categorization theory and core social motives; and proposed solutions to resolve stigma. The cross-sectional online survey was carried out between April 21 and May 7, 2020, using a convenience sample, which yielded 1,388 valid responses. Employing data analysis methods like multivariate linear regression and moderation analysis, this study yields some main findings: those from major COVID-19 outbreak sites received the highest level of stigma; factors most closely associated with stigmatization, in descending order, are objectification and epidemic proximity in an autonomic aspect and fear of contracting COVID-19 in a controllable aspect; and superordinate categorization is a buffering moderator in objectification–stigmatization relationship. These findings are important for further understanding COVID-19-related stigma, and they can be utilized to develop strategies to fight against relevant discrimination and bias. Specifically, reinforcing superordinate categorization by cultivating common in-group identity, such as volunteering and donating for containment of the pandemic, could reduce objectification and, thus, alleviate stigma. (shrink)

The focus on translational research in clinical trials has the potential to generate clinically relevant genetic data that could have importance to patients. This raises challenging questions about communicating relevant genetic research results to individual patients. An exploratory pharmacogenetic analysis was conducted in the international ovarian cancer phase III trial, AGO-OVAR 16, which found that patients with clinically important germ-line BRCA1/2 mutations had improved progression-free survival prognosis. Mechanisms to communicate BRCA results were evaluated, because these findings may be beneficial to (...) patients and their families. Communicating individual BRCA results was not anticipated during clinical trial design. Consequently, options were not available for patients to indicate their preference for receiving their individual results when they signed pharmacogenetic informed consent. Differences in local requirements, clinical practice, and opinion regarding the ethical aspects of how to convey genetic results to patients are all potential barriers to returning individual BRCA results to patients. Communicating the aggregate BRCA result from this study provided clinical investigators with a mechanism to disseminate the overall study finding to patients while taking individual circumstances, local guidelines and clinical practice into account. This study illustrates the importance of increasing the clarity and scope of informed consent and the need for patient engagement to ensure clinical trial participants can indicate their preference regarding receipt of potentially important individual pharmacogenetic results. This study was registered in the NCT Clinical Trial Registry under NCT00866697 on March 19, 2009, following approval from participating ethics committees. (shrink)

Based on the problem of e-commerce logistics and distribution network optimization, this paper summarizes the solution ideas and solutions proposed by domestic and foreign scholars and designs a method to optimize the B2C e-commerce logistics and distribution network by taking into account the special traffic conditions in the city. The logistics network optimization model is established and solved by combining various methods. Taking into account the new target requirements constantly proposed in the modern logistics environment, the vehicle path problem under (...) the generalized objective function is studied, and the multidimensional impact maximization problem in this type of problem is proposed and modeled. The problem follows from the path planning for emergency material delivery. Given locations, roads, and multiple classes of supplies in a map, each road allows vehicles to deliver each class of supplies with a certain probability. The goal of the problem is how to select a finite number of locations in the map as centers of supplies so that the number of locations that can be effectively covered by vehicle paths from them is maximized with the desired probability. For the first time, we used a hybrid genetic algorithm to optimize the e-commerce logistics path, and the optimized results are more reasonable than other algorithms. (shrink)

With the development of mobile network communication technology, online shopping has further become the mainstream way of mass consumption. To this end, this article attempts to start from the innovation of e-commerce platform, uses today’s Internet of Things, collects relevant information, and collects relevant data through smart sensors, to establish a mobile e-commerce platform and analyze and explore the impact of e-commerce logistics customer satisfaction of factors revolve around e-commerce logistics. This article uses smart sensor technology to mine and analyze (...) e-commerce information data and then design and build a new mobile e-commerce platform. Taking the two major e-commerce platforms of Jingdong and Taobao as examples, through online evaluation surveys, the importance of factors affecting logistics service quality and customer satisfaction under different logistics distribution models was explored and analyzed. Under JD’s selfoperated logistics distribution model, users pay the most attention to the integrity of the delivered goods, the accuracy of the delivery time, and the service attitude of the delivery personnel. The importance is ranked second, first, and third, reaching 48.36%, 50.36%, and 61.64%, respectively. Under the third-party logistics distribution model of Taobao, the main influencing factors are the integrity of the delivered goods, the accuracy of the delivery time, the importance of outer packaging, and the importance of product integrity, reaching 37.52%, 41.1%, and 24.29 %, respectively. (shrink)

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has fueled anti-Asian, especially anti-Chinese sentiments worldwide, which may negatively impact diasporic Chinese youths’ adjustment and prosocial development. This study examined the association between compassion, discrimination and prosocial behaviors in diasporic Chinese youths during the COVID-19 pandemic. 360 participants participated and completed the multi-country, cross-sectional, web-based survey between April 22 and May 9, 2020, the escalating stage of the pandemic. This study found compassion as prosocial behaviors’ proximal predictor, while discrimination independently predicted participation in (...) volunteering, and could potentially enhance the association between compassion and charitable giving. These findings suggest that prosociality among young people is sensitive to social context, and that racial discrimination should be considered in future prosocial studies involving young members of ethnic and racial minorities. (shrink)

Jerry Fodor and Ernest Lepore (1999/2002) frame the debate over meaning holism in terms of a distinction between meaning atomism and meaning anatomism. The former holds that the meaning of an expression E is determined by some relation between E and some extra-linguistic entity. The latter holds that the meaning of E is at least partly determined by some of E’s “inward” relations (IRs) with other expressions in the very language. They (1992) argue that meaning anatomism inevitably collapses into meaning (...) holism, which is the view that the meaning of E is determined by E’s IRs with every other expression in the very language because there is no principled distinction for the anatomist to divide the meaning-determining IRs from the non-meaning-determining ones. In response, the non-holistic anatomist urges that Fodor and Lepore’s no-principled-basis consideration is groundless because the lack of a generally accepted criterion for such a distinction does not undermine the viability of the distinction itself. While this point is well taken, I think that Fodor and Lepore are onto an important question here. That is, what does it make non-holistic anatomism distinctive from its holistic counterpart if without a principled basis for the distinction among IRs? I look into this question and give an alternative argument from Fodor and Lepore’s to suggest that non-holistic anatomism cannot bypass the no-principled-basis consideration. The non-holistic anatomist will need a principled distinction in kind between IRs to back her point. (shrink)

ResumenEl porvenir de Jacques Derrida se juega en su reflexión sobre lo político, la cual gira a su vez sobre este mismo concepto: porvenir. Por lo tanto, pensar en la deconstrucción de lo político llevada a cabo por Derrida necesariamente nos conducirá a analizar algunos ejes que atraviesan la cuestión del porvenir: herencia, aporía, mesianicidad sin mesianismo e invención. Nos proponemos en este recorrido destacar la importancia del pensamiento de Derrida dentro del debate político contemporáneo y la herencia que nos (...) ha legado, la cual nos obliga a seguir pensando la deconstrucción y su vínculo con la democracia por venir.Palabras clavePorvenir – Herencia – Aporía – Mesianicidad sin mesianismo – Democracia por venirAbstractIf there´s a future (à-venir) for Derrida´s philosophy, it depends on his political analysis, where the concept of «à-venir» has a fundamental role. Then, Derrida´s deconstruction of the political issue will take us to analyze some issues related to the à-venir question: inheritance, aporia, messianicity without messianism and invention. In this article we will emphasize the importance of Derrida´s philosophy for the contemporary political debate. This inheritance makes us go on thinking about the deconstruction and its connection with the democracy to come.KeywordsFuture – Inheritance – Aporia – Messianicity without Messianism – Democracy to com. (shrink)

Research on organizational epistemic vice alleges that some organizations are epistemically malevolent, i.e. they habitually harm others by deceiving them. Yet, there is a lack of empirical research on epistemic malevolence. We connect the discussion of epistemic malevolence to the empirical literature on organizational deception. The existing empirical literature does not pay sufficient attention to the impact of an organization’s ability to control compromising information on its deception strategy. We address this gap by studying eighty high-penalty corporate misconduct cases between (...) 2000 and 2020 in the United States. We find that organizations use two different strategies to deceive: Organizations ‘sow doubt’ when they contest information about them or their impacts that others have access to. By contrast, organizations ‘exploit trust’ when they deceive others by obfuscating, concealing, or falsifying information that they themselves control. While previous research has focused on cases of ‘sowing doubt’, we find that organizations ‘exploit trust’ in the majority of cases that we studied. This has important policy implications because the strategy of ‘exploiting trust’ calls for a different response from regulators and organizations than the strategy of ‘sowing doubt’. (shrink)

A major resource expanding the study of early Chinese philosophy, religion, literature, and politics, this book features the first complete English-language translation of the_ Luxuriant Gems of the "Spring and Autumn"_ (_Chunqiu fanlu_),_ _one of the key texts of early Confucianism. The work is often ascribed to the Han scholar and court official Dong Zhongshu, but, as this study reveals, the text is in fact a compendium of writings by a variety of authors working within an interpretive tradition that (...) spanned several generations, depicting a utopian vision of a flourishing humanity that they believed to be Confucius's legacy to the world. The Spring and Autumn (_Chunqiu_) is a chronicle kept by the dukes of the state of Lu from 722 to 481 B.C.E. _The Luxuriant Gems_ follows the interpretations of the _Gongyang Commentary_, whose transmitters belonged to a tradition that sought to explicate the special language of the _Spring and Autumn_. The Gongyang masters believed that the_ Spring and Autumn_ had been written by Confucius himself, employing subtle and esoteric phrasing to indicate approval or disapproval of important events and personages. The _Luxuriant Gems_ augments Confucian ethical and philosophical teachings with chapters on cosmology, statecraft, and other topics drawn from contemporary non-Confucian traditions, reflecting the brilliance of intellectual life in the Han dynasty during the formative decades of the Chinese imperial state. To elucidate the text, Sarah A. Queen and John S. Major divide their translation into eight thematic sections with extensive introductions that address dating, authorship, authenticity, and the relationship between the original text and the evolving _Gongyang_ approach. (shrink)

In this paper, we employ Weibo Index as the proxy for investor attention and analyze the relationships between investor attention and stock market performance, i.e., trading volume, return, and volatility. The empirical results firstly show that Weibo attention is positively related to trading volume, intraday volatility, and return. Secondly, there exist bidirectional causal relationships between Weibo attention and stock market performance. Thirdly, we generally find that higher Weibo attention indicates higher correlation coefficients with the quantile regression analysis.

Whereas using artificial intelligence (AI) to predict natural hazards is promising, applying a predictive policing algorithm (PPA) to predict human threats to others continues to be debated. Whereas PPAs were reported to be initially successful in Germany and Japan, the killing of Black Americans by police in the US has sparked a call to dismantle AI in law enforcement. However, although PPAs may statistically associate suspects with economically disadvantaged classes and ethnic minorities, the targeted groups they aim to protect are (...) often vulnerable populations as well (e.g., victims of human trafficking, kidnapping, domestic violence, or drug abuse). Thus, determining how to enhance the benefits of PPA while reducing bias through better management is important. In this paper, we propose a policy schema to address this issue. First, after clarifying relevant concepts, we examine major criticisms of PPAs and argue that some of them should be addressed. If banning AI or making it taboo is an unrealistic solution, we must learn from our errors to improve AI. We next identify additional challenges of PPAs and offer recommendations from a policy viewpoint. We conclude that the employment of PPAs should be merged into broader governance of the social safety net and audited publicly by parliament and civic society so that the unjust social structure that breeds bias can be revised. (shrink)

The brain processes underlying the distinction between emotion-label words (e.g. happy, sad) and emotion-laden words (e.g. successful, failed) remain inconclusive in bilingualism research. The present study aims to directly compare the processing of these two types of emotion words in both the first language (L1) and second language (L2) by recording event-related potentials (ERP) from late Chinese-English bilinguals during a lexical decision task. The results revealed that in the early word processing stages, the N170 emotion effect emerged only for L1 (...) negative emotion-laden words and L2 negative emotion-label words. In addition, larger early posterior negativity (EPN) was elicited by emotion-laden words than emotion-label words in both L1 and L2. In the later processing stages, the N400 emotion effect was evident for L1 emotion words, excluding positive emotion-laden words, while it was absent in L2. Notably, L1 emotion words elicited enhanced N400 and attenuated late positive complex (LPC) compared to those in L2. Taken together, these findings confirmed the engagement of emotion, and highlighted the modulation of emotion word type and valence on word processing in both early and late processing stages. Different neural mechanisms between L1 and L2 in processing written emotion words were elucidated. (shrink)

Luck egalitarians equalize the outcome enjoyed by people who exemplify the same degree of distributive desert by removing the influence of luck. They also try to calibrate differential rewards according to the pattern of distributive desert. This entails that they have to decide upon, among other things, the rate of reward, i.e., a principled way of distributing rewards to groups exercising different degrees of the relevant desert. However, the problem of the choice of reward principle is a relatively and undeservedly (...) neglected issue among luck egalitarians. The main goal of this paper is to highlight the importance and difficulty of this problem, and to elaborate upon G. A. Cohen's community-oriented response to it. In the last section, I provide a taxonomy of distributive pluralism, contrasting Cohen’s view with other (not so genuine) pluralisms - especially with all-things-considered varieties - while trying to motivate readers to adopt the more robust form of pluralism. (shrink)

This research focuses on students' online purchase intentions in Pakistan toward different products available for sale on numerous e-business websites. This study's main objective is to determine which methodology is better to enhance customer online purchase intention. It also aims to discover how to improve perceived benefits and lower perceived risks associated with any available online product and entrepreneurship. AMOS 24 has been used to deal with the mediation in study design with bootstrap methodology. The study was conducted on 250 (...) students from different educational institutes in Pakistan using a simple random sampling technique. A finding of this study suggests that both methods positively impact online purchase intention of consumers and sustainable digital economy. But social media advertisement is more effective through enhancing the perceived benefits of products. In contrast, product content factors are more effective at lowering the perceived risks associated with available online products. (shrink)

: Governance means the policy and strategy adopted in the process of running a country. In the long history of more than two thousand years, Confucianism had become the cultural core and political doctrine of the imperial autocracy, and the theory of “governance of the whole country” contained in it had become an important category in traditional Chinese culture. We should dig deep into the rich connotation of Confucian governance thought, and build a national governance system that suits society, the (...) overall situation and future through innovative development and creative transformation, so as to let excellent traditional Chinese culture return to open a new road and make the past serve the present, thus providing important theoretical guidance and historical reference for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. Resumo: Governança significa a política e a estratégia adotadas no processo de gestão de um país. Na longa história de mais de dois mil anos, o confucionismo tornou-se o núcleo cultural e a doutrina política da autocracia imperial, e a teoria da “governança de todo o país” contida nele tornou-se uma categoria importante na cultura tradicional chinesa. Deve-se aprofundar na rica conotação do pensamento de governança confucionista e construir um sistema de governança nacional que se adapte à sociedade, à situação geral e ao futuro, por meio de desenvolvimento inovador e transformação criativa, de modo a permitir que a excelente cultura tradicional chinesa retorne à base, para abrir um novo caminho e fazer o passado servir ao presente, fornecendo, assim, importante orientação teórica e referência histórica para o grande rejuvenescimento da nação chinesa. (shrink)

It has limitations to understand “fidelity” of the Analects of Confucius in the thinking pattern of subject-object. The interpretation patterns of self-other and private-public ethics can’t also completely explain the philosophical meaning of “fidelity” in the Analects of Confucius. “Fidelity”, in Confucian theory and practice, has important place, therefore, the paper will try to explore the philosophical meaning of “fidelity” of Confucius from the following suppositions in order to find a new way of philosophical explanation. The suppositions are as the (...) following: First of all, “fidelity” can’t be understood, in Chinese, as a verb which means “faithful to sb”. It is a noun or a gerund. Basing on the distinction of “material world” and “meaning world”, the paper holds that the connotation of “fidelity” has its inner regulation and its meaning is, first of all, regulated not by the material world but by the other contextual logic categories, in this way, it has the characteristic of independence and transcendence. The core meaning of “fidelity” is “center”, the paper calls it as “the centric wisdom” from the epistemological perspective. Wesuppose that Confucius has presupposed that every life has enough wisdom to know what the affirmative value is. For Confucius, his philosophical thinking on “fidelity” has both traditional heritage and personal innovation. We should pay attention to the latter. Basing on the understanding that takes “fidelity ”as “the centric wisdom”, the paper holds that one of the meanings of “fidelity”, as an ethical concept, in the Analects of Confucius, is personal ethics which includes thereorganization of individual values. One part of the individual value is to recognize and practice the value which is independent of social value. Another part of the value is to practice and exhibit the wisdom of “fidelity” in personal speech and behavior including the spiritual activities. The “fidelity” of the Analects of Confucius, as an ethical concept, has another meaning, i.e. the inter-personal relationship which shows the affirmative value under the guidance of wisdom. The inter-personal relationship under the guidance of wisdom can exhibit the affirmative value and can be called as the “ethical” relation. The main requirements are as the following: we have to bring the reflective factor of “wisdom” into inter-personal relation and, under the guidance of wisdom, try to take our social responsibilities required by the social role, or to abide by the public or the professional ethics. We have to maintain positive value direction in the verticalinter-personal relation which means supervision so as to realize the political affirmation. In the horizontal interpersonal relationship, basing on the individual wisdom, we have to keep the keen feeling of morality so as to realize our affirmative values. The understanding of these meanings concerning the word of “fidelity” is naturally resulted from our concern for the inner logic relation in the Analects of Confucius and for the form of idea-expressing of Confucius. (shrink)

People often judge trustworthiness based on others’ faces (e.g., facial expression and facial gender). However, it is unclear whether social context plays a moderating role in forming trustworthiness judgments. Based on the emotions as social information (EASI) model, differing contexts may impact the effect of facial expression; however, there is no evidence demonstrating that differing contexts will or will not influence the effect of facial gender. In this study, we used two experiments to examine how facial expression and facial gender (...) affect facial trustworthiness judgments and whether the effects on facial trustworthiness judgments are consistent in cooperative and competitive settings. Twenty-seven undergraduates (14 female; Mage = 21.81 years, SD = 2.66) participated in experiment 1. The results showed significant main effects of facial expression and facial gender as well as the interaction between them. To examine the social context effect, 28 undergraduates (18 female; Mage = 20.93 years, SD = 2.94) participated in experiment 2. The results showed the main effects of facial expression, facial gender, and social context. Moreover, there was a significant interaction between facial gender and facial expression and a marginally significant interaction between social context and facial expression. These results suggest that in the process of judging facial trustworthiness, individuals’ judgments are affected by both facial expression and facial gender. Furthermore, the effect of facial gender on facial trustworthiness judgments presents cross-situational stability, and the role of facial expression is influenced by the settings. These findings support and expand the EASI model. (shrink)

This paper selected Vanke as the case to study the governance problems of Vanke and the protection of the interests of small and medium shareholders under the situation of equity disputes. At the same time, the study further explored the advantages and disadvantages of the dispersed ownership structure, the long-term impact on the company’s development and the choice of the involved corporate governance methods under the current Chinese capital market conditions. This paper adopted the event research method and selected the (...) period from June 2015 to June 2017 as the observation period to analyze the market performance impact of Vanke in the equity disputes. At the same time, this paper also measured Vanke’s individual stock rate of return and market rate of return, and calculated Vanke’s normal rate of return [E], abnormal rate of return, and cumulative abnormal rate of return during different event windows. Vanke’s shareholding was too dispersed and the stock price had been sluggish for a long time, which had greatly reduced the acquisition difficulty and cost of Baoneng, thus triggering the “barbarian invasion” of Baoneng. In the struggle for control, whether it was Vanke’s anti-takeover measures or China Resources, Baoneng, and Evergrande’s competition for equity, their actions had harmed the interests of small and medium shareholders. The market supervision department was too lenient to supervise and punish the interests of small and medium shareholders, and opportunism made behaviors that infringe on the interests of others more reckless. However, small and medium shareholders cannot actively participate in the company’s management decision-making to safeguard their legitimate rights and interests, which intensifies the violations of all parties in the equity disputes, thus forming a vicious circle. Therefore, the protection of the interests of small and medium shareholders required the joint efforts and consciousness of regulators, small and medium shareholders, and acquirers. (shrink)

Customer engagement behavior is a critical success factor for community e-commerce. While many community e-commerce websites are currently improving service quality to enhance customer engagement behavior, little is known about how such e-services affect customer engagement behavior. Building upon the stimulus-organism-response model, this study developed a research model to explain how e-service quality of community e-commerce platform affects customer engagement behavior through customer trust and perceived risk. The research model was empirically evaluated by surveying 326 customers who have shopped through (...) the community e-commerce platforms. The results indicate that e-service quality positively affects customer engagement behavior. Besides, customer trust and perceived risk play a mediating role between e-service quality and customer engagement behavior. This study offers recommendations to managers on how to build an attractive community e-commerce platform to stimulate customer engagement behavior. (shrink)

Rationale: Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the hippocampus is proposed for enhancement of memory impaired by injury or disease. Many pre-clinical DBS paradigms can be addressed in epilepsy patients undergoing intracranial monitoring for seizure localization, since they already have electrodes implanted in brain areas of interest. Even though epilepsy is usually not a memory disorder targeted by DBS, the studies can nevertheless model other memory-impacting disorders, such as Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). Methods: Human patients undergoing Phase II invasive monitoring for (...) intractable epilepsy were implanted with depth electrodes capable of recording neurophysiological signals. Subjects performed a delayed-match-to-sample (DMS) memory task while hippocampal ensembles from CA1 and CA3 cell layers were recorded to estimate a multi-input, multi-output (MIMO) model of CA3-to-CA1 neural encoding and a memory decoding model (MDM) to decode memory information from CA3 and CA1 neuronal signals. After model estimation, subjects again performed the DMS task while either MIMO-based or MDM-based patterned stimulation was delivered to CA1 electrode sites during the encoding phase of the DMS trials. Each subject was sorted (post hoc) by prior experience of repeated and/or mild-to-moderate brain injury (RMBI), TBI, or no history (control) and scored for percentage successful delayed recognition (DR) recall on stimulated vs. non-stimulated DMS trials. The subject’s medical history was unknown to the experimenters until after individual subject memory retention results were scored. Results: When examined compared to control subjects, both TBI and RMBI subjects showed increased memory retention in response to both MIMO and MDM-based hippocampal stimulation. Furthermore, effects of stimulation were also greater in subjects who were evaluated as having pre-existing mild-to-moderate memory impairment. Conclusion: These results show that hippocampal stimulation for memory facilitation was more beneficial for subjects who had previously suffered a brain injury (other than epilepsy), compared to control (epilepsy) subjects who had not suffered a brain injury. This study demonstrates that the epilepsy/intracranial recording model can be extended to test the ability of DBS to restore memory function in subjects who previously suffered a brain injury other than epilepsy, and support further investigation into the beneficial effect of DBS in TBI patients. (shrink)

Metaphysicians of causation have long debated the existence of primitive causal modalities (e.g., powers), with reductionists and realists taking opposing stances. However, little attention has been given to the legitimacy of the metaphysical question itself, despite our longstanding awareness of Rudolf Carnap’s critique of metaphysics. This article develops a (broadly) Carnapian-pragmatist approach to causation as an alternative to existing metaphysical approaches. Within this pragmatist approach, metaphysical questions about causation are reinterpreted as practical questions about the choice of causal frameworks. To (...) motivate and justify this new approach, I argue that, in emphasizing the priority of ontology over methodology, metaphysical approaches to causation fail to adequately capture the interplay between causal ontology and causal methodology in scientific practice. In contrast, the Carnapian approach provides a more appealing alternative that emphasizes the mutual dependence and ‘balance’ between the two in an ongoing process of scientific inquiry. I use the recent controversy over ‘What counts as a cause’ in statistical causal inference as a case study to demonstrate how the Carnapian approach can help us better understand the role of ontological issues in methodological practices. (shrink)

The Region Connection Calculus (RCC theory) is a well-known spatial representation of topological relations between regions. It claims that the connection relation is primitive in the spatial domain. We argue that the connection relation is indeed primitive to the spatial relations, although in RCC theory there is no room for distance relations. We first analyze some aspects of the RCC theory, e.g. the two axioms in the RCC theory are not strong enough to govern the connection relation, regions in the (...) RCC theory cannot be points, the uniqueness of the $$\iota $$ operation in the theory is not guaranteed, etc. To solve some of the problems, we propose an extension to the RCC theory by introducing the notion of region category and adding a new axiom which governs the characteristic property of the connection relation. The extended theory is named as RCC++. We support the claim that the connection relation is primitive to spatial domain by showing how distance relations, size relations are developed in RCC++. At last we revisit a sub-family of un-intended models in RCC theory, argue that RCC++ is more suitable than RCC with regards to its original intended model, and discuss the representation limitation of the RCC, as well as RCC++. (shrink)