Preservice teachers' preparedness, perception, and affect toward certain technology systems influence the student acquisition of science knowledge, process skills, teaching innovation, and willingness to use technology in their classroom. The purpose of this study was to explore teachers' affective responses to a virtual reality-enabled scientific experiment system. Fifty-one preservice teachers majoring in educational technology participated in the study. They were divided into two groups, and their reactions were measured separately on two occasions. The first occasion used a standard system following (...) the principle of Donald Norman's affective design model. The VaSE system was then revised with a strict version of ADM before the participants' reactions were measured for a second time. The positive and negative affect scale was utilized for affective state evaluation. Semi-structured interviews that focused on affective experiences were organized using an ADM framework and conducted immediately after the participants used VaSE. The results indicated that the positive affect experienced by the preservice teachers was significantly enhanced, and the negative affect was significantly weakened. Academic level, gender, and prior experience were important random effect factors that impacted the affective experience. It was also revealed that participants were more likely to be affected by immersion and interactivity in terms of enhancing positive affect and were more likely to be affected by behavioral layer elements in terms of weakening negative affect. A conclusion has been drawn to provide theoretical and practical suggestions for training preservice teachers in ways that improve their ability to integrate technology into the classroom. (shrink)

Counterfeiting is common in many industries. For the authenticity of online channel products and to combat counterfeiting, many companies have begun to use blockchain technology to trace product information. This paper investigates a dual-channel supply chain consisting of one manufacturer and one retailer, in which the manufacturer sells its standard products through the retailer and adopts blockchain technology to launch the online channel to sell the traceable products. A Stackelberg game is developed to depict the pricing decision and channel strategy (...) choice for the manufacturer. It shows that both the manufacturer and the retailer can benefit from blockchain adoption. And the longer it takes for product traceability, the lower the price of online traceable products. It is beneficial for the manufacturer when consumers in the market are less concerned about information transparency. For consumer sensitivity, as consumers’ acceptance of direct sales channels increases, the selling prices of online traceable products have risen. Furthermore, as the traceability time-sensitivity coefficient increases, the sales price of the traceable products decreases, and the retail price of offline standard products rises. The conclusion of this paper has a certain guiding role for the dominant manufacturers in choosing whether to apply blockchain technology to improve the demand for traceable products. (shrink)

In previous research comparing the Context-driven Model with the Default Model of meaning processing, the former was preferred. It predicts that contexts play an exclusively decisive role in meaning processing, whereas the latter holds that the inference of literal meaning generally goes through, unless it is subsequently defaulted or cancelled by the context it is associated with. The Standardization Model, which we added to our experiments, highlights that implicatures are figured out from standardized forms typically based on the mutual background (...) belief and speaker’s intention. We tested whether Chinese people’s processing of the gradable adjective scale conformed more to the Context-driven Model, the Default Model, or the Standardization Model. The results demonstrated that the Standardization Model is the most acceptable among the three. The findings of this study, which is the first study using the experimental paradigm on Chinese gradable adjectives, highlighted a need for further studies to investigate the same questions with different languages and cultures. (shrink)

In this article, we study a minimal change approach to preference dynamics. We treat a set of preferences as a special kind of theory, and define minimal change preference contraction and revision operations in the spirit of the Alchourrón, Gärdenfors, and Makinson theory of belief revision. We characterise minimal contraction of preference sets by a set of postulates and prove a representation theorem. We also give a linear time algorithm which implements minimal contraction by a single preference. We then define (...) minimal contraction by a set of preferences, and show that the problem of a minimal contraction by a set of preferences is NP-hard. (shrink)

The purpose of this research is to examine the influence of servant leadership on teachers of moral education degree programs in Pakistan. By utilizing social learning, we propose that servant leadership and perceived coworker support can reduce the knowledge hiding by enhancing the sense of organization-based psychological ownership. The findings of time-lagged and multi-source data indicate that servant leadership has a negative relationship with knowledge hiding. Our results also indicate that psychological ownership mediates the effects of servant leadership on knowledge (...) hiding. Moreover, a higher level of perceived coworker support enhances the sense of psychological ownership which helps to reduce knowledge hiding. This research extends strong support for the proposition that servant leaders who adopt an employee-centered management approach, stressing personal integrity and care for employees significantly affect employee attitudes and behaviors. Moreover, this study suggests that managers should demonstrate care toward their subordinates which helps them to reduce negative behaviors. (shrink)

Smart grids are rolling out internationally, with the United States nearing completion of a significant USD4-plus-billion federal program funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The emergence of smart grids is widespread across developed countries. Multiple approaches to analyzing the benefits of smart grids have emerged. The goals of this white paper are to review these approaches and analyze examples of each to highlight their differences, advantages, and disadvantages. This work was conducted under the auspices of a joint U.S.-China (...) research effort, the Climate Change Working Group Implementation Plan, Smart Grid. We present comparative benefits assessments of smart grid demonstrations in the U.S. and China along with a BA of a pilot project in Europe. In the U.S., we assess projects at two sites: the University of California, Irvine campus, which consists of two distinct demonstrations: Southern California Edison’s Irvine Smart Grid Demonstration Project and the UCI campus itself; and the Navy Yard area in Philadelphia, which has been repurposed as a mixed commercial-industrial, and possibly residential, development. In China, we cover several smart-grid aspects of the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city and the Shenzhen Bay Technology and Ecology City. In Europe, we look at a BA of a pilot smart grid project in the Malagrotta area west of Rome, Italy, contributed by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission. The Irvine sub-project BAs use the U.S. Department of Energy Smart Grid Computational Tool, which is built on methods developed by the Electric Power Research Institute. The TEC sub-project BAs apply Smart Grid Multi-Criteria Analysis developed by the State Grid Corporation of China based on the analytic hierarchy process with fuzzy logic. The B-TEC and TNY sub-project BAs are evaluated using new approaches developed by those project teams. JRC has adopted an approach similar to EPRI’s but tailored to the Malagrotta distribution grid. (shrink)

At present, with the continuous rise in public consumption level, the pressure on college students’ entrepreneurship or employment is increasingly severe. Under the concept of positive psychological intervention, the present work aims to alleviate the entrepreneurial pressure of college students and improve college students’ entrepreneurial education through the analysis of enterprise management elements. A 3-month intervention experiment, including the pre-test, preventive curriculum intervention, post-test, and delayed test, is conducted on a control group and an experimental group, to investigate entrepreneurial intention, (...) emotional management ability, and ability to deal with entrepreneurial pressure of college students. In addition, based on a complex adaptive system, the enterprise management elements are analyzed, and a three-layer network model is constructed. Meanwhile, new diversified elements of enterprise management are defined to discuss the effectiveness and psychological impact of diversified management, proving that psychological security plays an intermediary role in the cross-layer relationship chain in the three-layer CAS network. The experimental results indicate that on the whole, the positive psychological intervention reduces the pressure of students in the experimental group, significantly ameliorates depression and anxiety, and promotes the positive personality in all directions. Besides, in the delayed test after 3 months, the experimental group can maintain a relatively better state than the control group. By exploring the role effectiveness and characteristics of diversified management, this experiment confirms that the improvement of psychological security under positive psychological intervention has a positive impact on the effectiveness of diversified management. The present work discusses the hierarchical construction in enterprise management and puts forward reasonable suggestions and theoretical development for the influence of the entrepreneurial practice of college students. (shrink)

This paper examines Hume’s formulations and uses of the conceivability principle and the inconceivability principle. In Hume’s works, we identify different versions of CP and ICP, including proper CP, proper ICP, the weak versions of CP and ICP, the epistemic versions of CP and ICP, and show that Hume not only expresses ICP, but also really maintains it. Assuming an axiomatic characterization of modalities, we argue that if there is a sharp distinction between levels of modalities, then Hume’s conceivability arguments (...) do not hold. But, in a rather different way, we also argue that if Hume’s conceivability arguments hold, then there should be no distinction between levels of modalities. Finally, we argue that after Hume, there are lots of endeavors in logic and philosophy to distinguish different levels of modalities, and to accept new concepts of necessity other than logical necessity. (shrink)

The purposes of this study are to extract the essence from the in-depth study of entrepreneurial spirit and the exploration of China’s sports culture construction, find out the beneficial parts in line with China’s sports culture construction, and put forward operational suggestions and countermeasures for dealing with the relationship between entrepreneurial spirit and sports culture to help China’s sports culture construction move toward a new level. This exploration discusses the influence of entrepreneurial spirit on sports culture from the perspective of (...) cognitive regulation, and explores the importance of entrepreneurial spirit from the aspects of social psychology, system, economy, and ethics. The structure of sports culture is analyzed, and the role of entrepreneurial spirit in promoting the construction of sports culture is expounded. Moreover, a questionnaire survey is conducted to investigate the impact of entrepreneurial spirit on the construction of sports culture from the cognitive regulation perspective. The results show that most people agree with the development of the entrepreneurial spirit and positively impact the promotion of entrepreneurial spirit. Most people are not satisfied with the attention and level of sports culture construction. In China’s sports culture, the proportion of the entrepreneurial spirit is still tiny. Thereby, entrepreneurial spirit education must be vigorously promoted to enhance the integration of entrepreneurial spirit and sports culture. The entrepreneurial spirit needs to be introduced in the construction of sports culture. It is essential to do a good job in promoting entrepreneurial spirit, improving the supporting facilities related to sports culture and strengthening the correlation between sports culture and the entrepreneurial spirit. By discussing the influence of entrepreneurial spirit on sports culture, this exploration puts forward relevant opinions for developing sports culture. It is expected that they can have some reference values. This exploration provides new ideas for promoting the combination of sports culture construction and the dissemination of entrepreneurial spirit, which has crucial theoretical and practical significance. (shrink)

ObjectivesTo comprehensively determine the effect of dance activities on the cognitive functions and its sub-domains of older adults with mild cognitive impairment.MethodsWe obtained data from PubMed, Web of Science, EBSCO, China national knowledge infrastructure, Wanfang data, and VIP databases from 2017/01/01 to 2022/03/01. We included trials of older adults with MCI that underwent dance activity intervention and fulfilled the inclusion criteria. Two researchers independently assessed the quality of the study using the Cochrane risk of the bias assessment tool. Meta-analysis was (...) performed when data were available, with further subgroup analysis, using Review Manager 5.4, and sensitivity analysis was performed using Stata software 15.1.ResultsSearch terms yielded 183 articles, of which 12 fulfilled the inclusion criteria. This included 7 high-quality studies and 5 medium-quality studies. A total of 820 older adults were analyzed. Results showed that dance activity had beneficial effects for global cognition [SMDMMSE = 0.65, 95% CIMMSE, pMMSE = 0.004; SMDMoCA = 0.87, 95% CIMoCA, pMoCA < 0.0001], memory [SMD = 0.61, 95% CI, p < 0.00001], visuospatial function [SMD = −0.39, 95% CI, p = 0.0002], cognitive flexibility [SMD = −0.31, 95% CI, p = 0.003], attention [SMD = 0.34, 95% CI, p = 0.01], and balance [SMD = 1.25, 95% CI, p = 0.04]. Further subgroup analysis showed that open-skill dance activity was more effective in promoting global cognition in older adults with MCI than closed-skill dance activity because of the different stimulation provided by the two types of dance activities in the brain regions of the older adults. It could be speculated that dance activity improved cognitive function mainly by affecting the microstructure and function of the cingulate tract, hippocampus, cardiovascular function, and other brain areas of older adults with MCI.ConclusionDance activities can significantly improve global cognition, memory, visuospatial function, cognitive flexibility, attention, and balance in older adults with MCI. However, more trials with rigorous study designs are necessary to provide more concrete evidence in the future. (shrink)

Dynamic multiobjective optimization problems bring more challenges for multiobjective evolutionary algorithm due to its time-varying characteristic. To handle this kind of DMOPs, this paper presents a dynamic MOEA with multiple response strategies based on linear environment detection, called DMOEA-LEM. In this approach, different types of environmental changes are estimated and then the corresponding response strategies are activated to generate an efficient initial population for the new environment. DMOEA-LEM not only detects whether the environmental changes but also estimates the types of (...) linear changes so that different prediction models can be selected to initialize the population when the environmental changes. To study the performance of DMOEA-LEM, a large number of test DMOPs are adopted and the experiments validate the advantages of our algorithm when compared to three state-of-the-art dynamic MOEAs. (shrink)

The unprecedented 2019/20 Australian bushfires prompted this paper to conduct a transitivity analysis on the top three processes (material, relational, and verbal) in selected BBC news reports. Guided by the ecological philosophical view of “harmony with diversity, interaction, and coexistence,” the research aims to interpret ecological meanings in the text and enhance people’s awareness of environment conservation. The findings reveal that these news reports predominantly utilized material and relational processes to depict the devastating impact of the Australian bushfires on wildlife, (...) the efforts of firefighters, volunteer rescue missions for wildlife, and the roles of individuals involved. These reports also conveyed extensive ecological information, highlighting the ecological crisis arising from the fires, the threat to species diversity, and the active social responsibility of various stakeholders. This research contributes to a deeper understanding of the ecological implications of the Australian bushfires and encourages proactive ecological protection measures. (shrink)

Using Shanghai Tennis Masters as an example, this study seeks to explore the psychic income associated with major sports events hosting and whether the psychic income would predict the attitudes of local residents toward events hosting. In addition, the moderating effect of sport involvement on the relationship between psychic income and attitude is also tested. In this study, a questionnaire survey is adopted. The structured questionnaire was developed based on 4 parts, including the demographics of the residents, involvement in the (...) sport event, psychic income from the sport event, and their attitudes toward the sports event, there were 47 items in total. Data were collected from the local residents of Shanghai, as a result, 1,302 valid questionnaires were collected. A series of statistical analyses were conducted by using SPSS25.0 and AMOS 24.0 to examine the reliability and validity of the scales and to test the hypotheses. The results showed that the event has brought a significant level of psychic income to the local community, and the perceived psychic income would predict the attitudes of the residents toward the event hosting. The moderating effect of sports involvement on the relationship between psychic income and attitude is also confirmed. (shrink)

Through the overall situation of athletes’ competition pressure, the pressure level of participating athletes can be understood and revealed. Analyzing the sources of stress and influencing factors of athletes can find measures to relieve and reduce stress and provide theoretical reference for the regulation of athletes’ competition pressure. Based on genetic algorithm and neural network theory, this paper proposes a method of tracing the sports competition pressure based on genetic algorithm backpropagation neural network to solve the problem that traditional neural (...) network learning algorithm is slow and easy to fall into local minimum. There is no significant difference between male and female athletes in the level of competition pressure. Athletes have the same training methods and the same goals, and the competition pressure tends to be the same, with no obvious difference; athletes with different educational backgrounds have no significant differences in training, academics, sports injuries, interpersonal relationships, social expectations, and evaluations. Due to the particularity of the stage, the competition pressure of fourth-year undergraduate and third-year masters is significantly higher than that of other grades. The number of athletes participating in college table tennis tournaments has very significant differences in competition dimensions. There is significant difference in training and self-expectation dimension difference. The competition pressure of athletes who participated in the college table tennis championship for the first time was significantly higher than that of athletes who participated repeatedly. There were significant differences between athletes before and after adapting to the venue. Before adapting to the venue, the competition pressure of athletes is generally greater. After adapting to the venue, the competition pressure of athletes has been relieved. (shrink)

This paper will introduce “lexical silencing” as a new linguistic phenomenon, i.e., positive statements about something are made more difficult to express when the only (or the predominant) word for it in a language is a negative word. A good example is the term “political correctness,” which carries negative connotations in English but has no easy alternative to replace it. Suppose a supporter attempts to explicitly endorse it by saying something like “Political correctness should be a fundamental value of the (...) society.” Positive statements like this sound somewhat weird and even self-defeating to the hearers, and are therefore difficult to be expressed in the public discourse. Moreover, I will identify at least two linguistic mechanisms of lexical silencing: First, slurs can make it difficult to say something positive about a group because slurs provide the illocutionary force of derogation, which conflicts with forces like praising. Second, what I call “loaded words” (e.g., “political correctness”) are not explicitly derogatory like slurs, but they can achieve similar effects by producing perlocutionary effects on the psycho-linguistic process of hearers. This paper will also discuss the various sources of lexical silencing and possible strategies for mitigating them. (shrink)

In two experiments, subjects’ task was to decide whether a binocularly viewed target word was evaluatively good (e.g., fame, comedy, rescue) or bad (e.g., stress, detest, malaria) in meaning. Just prior to this target word, a priming word was presented to the nondominant eye, and masked by an immediately following presentation of a letter—fragment pattern to the dominant eye. (Masking effectiveness was demonstrated by subjects’ failure to discriminate the left vs. right position of a test series of words.) In Experiment (...) 1, which used evaluatively positive or negative words as priming stimuli, judgment latency for the evaluative decision task was facilitated by primes that agreed in evaluation with targets, and was retarded by primes that disagreed in evaluation with targets. This result demonstrated that the evaluative meaning of priming stimuli was processed under conditions that prevented subjects from detecting their presence. Primes in Experiment 2 were 2-word strings for which the evaluative meaning of individual words was orthogonal to the evaluative sentence meaning (e.g., the two evaluatively negative words, "enemy fails,“ make up an evaluatively positive sentence). Results of Experiment 2 indicated that masked priming effects were influenced by the evaluative meanings of individual words, but not by their sentence meanings. This result supported the conclusion that the processing of undetected, dichoptically masked words is limited to analyses that are not powerful enough to extract sentence meanings. (shrink)

In the traditional case, the uncertainty of the ambient temperature measured by the experiential distributed sensor is considered. In this paper, a model based on the moving least square method in the fusion algorithm is proposed to study the optimal monitoring point of the sensor in the greenhouse and determine the most suitable installation position of the sensor in the greenhouse to improve the control effect of the temperature control device of the system. MATLAB simulation software is used to simulate (...) each working condition of the greenhouse. Temperature data measured at 15 locations in the greenhouse were used to evaluate all possible combinations of monitoring locations and to estimate the optimal location for indoor temperature sensors. Compared with the traditional method, the error is reduced to 0.373, and the data are more accurate. (shrink)

AimsAlcohol consumption could lead to a series of health problems and social issues. In the current study, we investigated the resting-state functional brain networks of healthy volunteers before and after drinking through graph-theory analysis, aiming to ascertain the effects of acute alcohol intake on topology and information processing mode of the functional brain networks.Materials and methodsThirty-three healthy volunteers were enrolled in this experiment. Each volunteer accepted alcohol breathalyzer tests followed by resting-state magnetic resonance imaging at three time points: before drinking, (...) 0.5 h after drinking, and 1 h after drinking. The data obtained were grouped based on scanning time into control group, 0.5-h group and 1-h group, and post-drinking data were regrouped according to breath alcohol concentration (BrAC) into relative low BrAC group (A group; 0.5-h data, n = 17; 1-h data, n = 16) and relative high BrAC group (B group; 0.5-h data, n = 16; 1-h data, n = 17). The graph-theory approach was adopted to construct whole-brain functional networks and identify the differences of network topological properties among all the groups.ResultsThe network topology of most groups was altered after drinking, with the B group presenting the most alterations. For global network measures, B group exhibited increased global efficiency, Synchronization, and decreased local efficiency, clustering coefficient, normalized clustering coefficient, characteristic path length, normalized characteristic path length, as compared to control group. Regarding nodal network measures, nodal clustering coefficient and nodal local efficiency of some nodes were lower in B group than control group. These changes suggested that the network integration ability and synchrony improved, while the segregation ability diminished.ConclusionThis study revealed the effects of acute alcohol intake on the topology and information processing mode of resting-state functional brain networks, providing new perceptions and insights into the effects of alcohol on the brain. (shrink)

China is located in the intersection area of two seismic zones. Due to this special geographical location, earthquake disasters occur frequently in China. Earthquake emergency rescue work is one of the key construction works of disaster prevention and mitigation in China. This paper mainly studies the earthquake disaster rescue model based on the complex adaptive system theory and establishes the earthquake disaster rescue model by analyzing the complex adaptive system theory and combining the earthquake rescue process. In this paper, through (...) the task allocation mechanism task, the disaster rescue task is divided into simple task and complex task, and the executive task subject is divided into single task subject and multitask subject. On the basis of considering the shortest emergency rescue time goal and the goal of maximizing the deployment utility of rescue team, the reasonable deployment of a rescue team is realized through a complex adaptive system, that is, the deployment utility of the rescue team is maximized. In this paper, the simulation experiment and comparison of the earthquake disaster rescue model based on the complex adaptive system theory are carried out. The experimental results show that the model used in this paper is better than the other two models in terms of algorithm convergence, rescue number, and overall score; in different scenarios, the relative survival probability of the model in this paper is 58.92%, 67.85%, and 77.46%, and the proportion of the wounded rescued is 66.31%, 76.45%, and 83.06%, which were higher than those of the other two models. The earthquake disaster rescue model based on the complex adaptive system theory proposed in this paper provides an effective theoretical basis and method system for postdisaster emergency rescue decision making and enhances and improves the emergency response ability to deal with large-scale geological disaster events. (shrink)

Sven-Ove Hansson and Erik Olsson studied in Hansson and Olsson, 103–119 1995) the logical properties of an operation of contraction first proposed by Isaac Levi in Levi. They provided a completeness result for the simplest version of contraction that they call Levi-contraction but left open the problem of characterizing axiomatically the more complex operation of value-based contraction or saturatable contraction. In this paper we propose an axiomatization for this operation and prove a completeness result for it. We argue that the (...) resulting operation is better behaved than various rival operations of contraction defined in recent years. (shrink)