The present study examined gender differences in the distribution of creative abilities through the lens of the greater male variability hypothesis, which postulated that men showed greater interindividual variability than women in both physical and psychological attributes. Two hundred and six undergraduate students in Hong Kong completed two creativity measures that evaluated different aspects of creativity, including: a divergent thinking test that aimed to assess idea generation and a creative problem-solving test that aimed to assess restructuring ability. The present findings (...) extended the research of greater male variability in creativity by showing that men generally exhibited greater variance than women in the overall distribution of the creativity scores in both divergent thinking and creative problem solving, despite trivial gender differences in mean scores. The findings further enriched the discourse of the greater male variability hypothesis by showing interesting domain-specific gendered patterns: greater male variability was more likely to occur in figural forms of creativity, with larger effect sizes, when compared to the variability in verbal forms of creativity; and mixed gendered patterns were found in the upper tails of the creativity score distribution with respect to the verbal domain but not the figural one, despite greater male representation being consistently observed in the lower tail of the distribution. Possible underlying mechanisms and implications were discussed. (shrink)

The present study aimed to conduct a cross-cultural comparison of creative thinking among Chinese middle school students from the rice- and wheat-growing areas in China through the lens ofthe rice theory, which postulates that there are major psychological differences among the individuals in these agricultural regions. Differences in cultural mindsets and creativity between the rice group (n= 336) and the wheat group (n= 347) were identified using the Chinese version of (1) the Auckland Individualism and Collectivism Scale (AICS) and (2) (...) the Test for Creative Thinking–Drawing Production (TCT–DP), respectively. Interesting findings were obtained. The results of latent mean analyses indicate that the rice group showed significantly more collectivism and adaptive creativity than the wheat group but less individualism and innovative and boundary-breaking creativity. However, the two groups showed no significant differences in their overall creative performance, as reflected in the TCT–DP composite score. Moreover, results of hierarchical multiple regression analyses revealed that collectivism was positively related to adaptive creativity but negatively related to innovative and boundary-breaking creativity; however, a reverse pattern was found for individualism. These findings enrich the discourse regarding the rice theory and shed important light on the effect of culture on creativity. (shrink)

AimOur study aimed to investigate the effect of social responsibility on the subjective well-being of volunteers for COVID-19 and to examine the mediating role of job involvement in this relationship.BackgroundNowadays, more and more people join volunteer service activities. As we all know, volunteer work contributes to society without any return. Volunteers often have a strong sense of social responsibility and reap subjective well-being in their dedication. Although research shows that social responsibility will drive them to participate in volunteer work actively, (...) it is less clear whether job involvement will impact their subjective well-being.MethodsThe data were collected in the precaution zone in Shanghai, China, from April to May 2022. A sample of 302 volunteers for COVID-19 completed the social responsibility scale, subjective well-being scale and job involvement scale in the form of an electronic questionnaire on their mobile phones. A structural equation model was adopted to verify the research hypotheses.ResultsSocial responsibility was significantly and positively related to volunteers’ subjective well-being and job involvement. Job involvement fully mediates the relationship between volunteers’ social responsibility and subjective well-being.ConclusionSocial responsibility is critical to predicting volunteers’ subjective well-being. Job involvement plays an intervening mechanism in explaining how social responsibility promotes volunteers’ subjective well-being. (shrink)

In the eighth century, Wu Jing selected exchanges between Emperor Taizong and his ministers that he deemed key to good governance. This collection of dialogues has been used for the education of emperors, political elites and general readers ever since, and is a standard reference work in East Asian political thought. Consisting of ten volumes, subdivided into forty topics, The Essentials of Governance addresses core themes of Chinese thinking about the politics of power, from the body politic, presenting and (...) receiving criticism, recruitment, the education of the imperial clan, political virtues and vices, to cultural policy, agriculture, law, taxation, border policy, and how to avoid disaster and dynastic fall. Presented with introductory commentary that offers insights into its historical context and global reception, this accessible and reliable translation brings together ten scholars of Chinese intellectual history to offer a nuanced edition that preserves the organisation, tone and flow of the original. (shrink)

Background: Doctors should disclose the diagnosis to patients according to the principle of autonomy. However, not disclosing the diagnosis and prognosis to cancer patients remains common in mainland China. Objective: The study explored the experiences and attitudes of patients with cancer, family members, and the medical staff in truth-telling. Research design: A quantitative survey with three closed-ended questionnaires was conducted. Participants: In all, 137 patients with cancer, 134 family members caring for cancer cases, and 54 medical staff were surveyed. Descriptive (...) statistics were used to summarize all characteristics, and the chi-square test was performed to analyze group differences in attitudes toward cancer disclosure. Ethical considerations: This study was approved by the Committee on Ethics of Biomedicine Research, at the Second Military Medical University (HJEC-2018-YF-001). Informed consent was obtained from all participants prior to study commencement. Findings: A total of 59.8% of patients were informed about their diagnosis within 1 week, and 19.7% inferred theirs. The medical staff preferred to prioritize family members in informing about patient diagnosis while 77.4% of patients preferred to be told the whole truth at the time of initial diagnosis. More patients than family members and medical staff wanted the patients to be informed about the diagnosis ( p < 0.001). A significant difference was found between the patients and family members regarding who should tell the patients. Discussion: The willingness of patients in knowing the truth was underestimated by their family members as well as the medical staff. Guessing the truth indirectly may exert negative effects on the patients, and not telling the truth is inappropriate in patients who want to be informed. Conclusion: Disclosure of a cancer diagnosis is a complex process involving medical practice, as well as a range of cultural, ethical, and legal factors. The medical staff should first assess each patient’s willingness in truth-telling and inform about disease diagnosis with respect. Emotional support and comfort from family members are encouraged. Anyone in the patient’s care team, especially nurses, could be integrated in the process of truth-telling. (shrink)

BackgroundWeChat is the main social platform in China, characterized by its versatility and ease of communication. This study aimed to explore the effect of a WeChat-platform-based education and care program on relieving anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder in parents of pediatric and adolescent patients with osteosarcoma.MethodsIn total, 48 patients and 86 parents were enrolled in this randomized, controlled study and then assigned to the WBEC program and the usual education and care program for 6 months as a 1:1 ratio.ResultsParents (...) in the WBEC group had lower Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale for anxiety scores at M3 and M6 when compared to the UEC group, while anxiety rate was only decreased at M3 in the WBEC group. Meanwhile, parental HADS for depression scores were reduced at M3 and M6 in the WBEC group when compared with the UEC group; while depression rate remained the same. Parental Impact of Event Scale-Revised scores were slightly reduced among the WBEC group at M6 when compared with the UEC group [12.0 : 10.0–20.8] vs. 15.0 ], but not statistically significant.ConclusionWeChat-platform-based education and care is considered a feasible intervention to reduce anxiety and depression in parents of pediatric and adolescent patients with osteosarcoma, while also providing mild relief from PTSD. (shrink)

In order to deal with high-dimensional distributed data, this article develops a novel and communication-efficient approach for sparse and high-dimensional data with the penalized quantile regression. In each round, the proposed method only requires the master machine to deal with a sparse penalized quantile regression which could be realized fastly by proximal alternating direction method of multipliers algorithm and the other worker machines to compute the subgradient on local data. The advantage of the proximal ADMM algorithm is that it could (...) make every parameter of iteration to have closed formula even in high-dimensional case, which greatly improves the speed of calculation. As for the communication efficiency, the proposed method does not sacrifice any statistical accuracy and provably improves the estimation error obtained by centralized method, provided the penalty levels are chosen properly. Moreover, the asymptotic properties of the proposed estimation and the convergence of the algorithm are convincible. Especially, it presents extensive experiments on both the numerical simulations and the HIV drug resistance data analysis, which all confirm the significant efficiency of our proposed method in quantile regression for distributed data by comparative and empirical analysis. (shrink)

The risk priority number calculation method is one of the critical subjects of failure mode and effects analysis research. Recently, RPN research under a fuzzy uncertainty environment has become a hot topic. Accordingly, increasing studies have ignored the important impact of the random sampling uncertainty in the FMEA assessment. In this study, a fuzzy beta-binomial RPN evaluation method is proposed by integrating fuzzy theory, Bayesian statistical inference, and the beta-binomial distribution. This model can effectively realize real-time, dynamic, and long-term evaluation (...) of RPN under the condition of continuous knowledge accumulation. The major contribution of the proposed model is to use the random uncertainty and fuzzy uncertainty in an integrated model and provide a Markov Chain Monte Carlo method to solve the complex integrated model. The study presented a case study, which presented how to apply this model in practice and indicated the significant influence on the measurement error caused by ignoring the random uncertainty caused by expert evaluation in RPN calculations. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has created an urgent need for volunteers to complement overwhelmed public health systems. This study aims to explore Chinese people’s attitudes toward volunteerism amid the COVID-19 pandemic. To this end, we identify the latent topics in volunteerism-related microblogs on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter using the topic modeling analysis via Latent Dirichlet Allocation. To further investigate the public sentiment toward the topics generated by LDA, we also conducted sentiment analysis on the sample posts using the open-source (...) natural language processing technique from Baidu. Through an in-depth analysis of 91,933 Weibo posts, this study captures 10 topics that are, in turn, distributed into five factors associated with volunteerism in China as motive fulfillment, fear of COVID-19, individual characteristic, government support, and community effect. The results show that motive fulfillment, government support, and community effect are the factors that could enhance positive attitudes toward volunteerism since the topics related to these factors report high proportions of positive emotion. Fear of COVID-19 and individual characteristic are the factors inducing negative sentiment toward volunteerism as the topics related to these factors show relatively high proportions of negative emotion. The provision of tailored strategies based on the factors could potentially enhance Chinese people’s willingness to participate in volunteer activities during the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

◎孔子為何周遊列國？因為沒有一個國君想用儒家治國，他只好到處教書遊說。 ◎秦國用法家統一天下，漢高祖劉邦用道家蓄積國力，直到漢武帝登基，儒家才被注意。 ◎儒學為何從沒人理，轉眼變治國工具？這得從董仲舒的「解釋」說起。 ◎儒學就像作業系統，幾千年來更新過四次版本，孔子的儒學不等於現在的儒學。 作者馬大勇，清華大學、上海交通大學國學特聘教授。 曾被推舉為最受歡迎的中文教授。 在本書中，他將儒家文明分為五個時期： 孔子奠基期、孟子成熟期、兩漢經學期、宋代理學期和明代心學期。 解析儒家思維是如何像電腦作業系統一樣，歷經四次的版本更新， 從原本的中庸之道、民為貴、君為輕的民主思想， 一步步變成君權神授，天人感應， 成為各朝代帝王穩固皇權的最佳推手。 就此儒學變成帝王學，開啟了千年以來人民為皇權奴隸的中央集權體制。 ◎孔子的儒學，是教你如何當君子 《論語》中，仁字出現了104次，禮字出現74次， 孔子的重要理念「中庸之道」，更成為宋元以後科舉考試的必讀書。 這個具有人道主義的思維，為何不被當時的統治者如春秋諸侯或秦國採納？ 因為亂世中，做君子的好處太少，當小人能得到的利益比較多。 ◎孟子是民主思想的啟蒙者，但被後代皇帝刪掉了 孟子思想的最大亮點就是「民為貴，社稷次之，君為輕」， 這套民主思維後來為何會消失？ 因為明太祖朱元璋看到「君為輕」三個字，就把《孟子》一書狠狠摔地上， 刪節版《孟子》就此誕生，往後一百年，學生學到的孔孟儒學知識都是不完整的。 ◎因為董仲舒的「特殊解釋」，從此百家遭罷黜，皇帝獨尊儒術 秦國用法家思想滅六國一統天下，漢高祖劉邦用道家治國，修生養息， 兩大皇權都對儒家思維沒興趣，直到漢武帝劉徹時期， 董仲舒為了拍皇帝馬屁，重新解釋，儒術從此轉化帝王術。 他口中的儒教，跟孔孟闡述的儒學，哪裡不一樣？差在造神。 ◎宋元明清重新詮釋儒學，想當官者必讀四書 宋、元之後，孔子的《中庸》又重新被提起， 因為它教你用大學之道維持國家秩序。 儒學家朱熹更讓《四書集注》成為為官者的必讀聖書。 至於為什麼是宋朝與明朝，跳過了大唐盛世？ 因為東漢黨錮之禍殺害許多知識分子，儒家文化走向低谷； 南北朝興盛佛教；至於唐朝則儒、釋、道並重。 直到韓愈寫的《原道》為儒家文明打下基礎，在宋代發揚光大。 打天下靠武力，龍椅要坐穩就靠統治， 儒家思想如何經過五階段改造，從民主思維變中央集權， 而且延續千年「至今」不墜。 本書特色 儒學為何從沒人理，轉眼變治國工具？這得從董仲舒的「解釋」說起。 孔子的儒學，如何經過五階段改造，從民主思維變中央集權。 名人推薦 淡江大學中文系教授／高柏園.

Background: There is a growing need to offer appropriate services to persons with mild cognitive impairment and dementia who are faced with depression and anxiety distresses beyond traditional pharmacological treatment. Dance-based interventions as multi-dimensional interventions address persons' physical, emotional, social, and spiritual aspects of well-being. However, no meta-analysis of randomized controlled treatment trials has examined the effectiveness of dance-based interventions on depression and anxiety among persons with MCI and dementia, and the results of RCTs are inconsistent. The study aimed to (...) examine the effectiveness of dance-based interventions on depression and anxiety among persons with MCI and dementia.Methods: A systematic review with meta-analysis was conducted. The inclusion criteria were: population: people of all ages with MCI and dementia; intervention: dance-based interventions; control group: no treatment, usual care, or waiting list group; outcome: depression and anxiety; study design: published or unpublished RCTs. Seven electronic databases were searched from 1970 to March 2021. Grey literature and reference lists from relevant articles were also searched and reviewed. The Cochrane “Risk of Bias” tool was used to assess study quality. RevMan 5.4 was used for meta-analysis and heterogeneity was investigated by subgroup and sensitivity analysis. GRADE was applied to assess the evidence quality of depression and anxiety outcomes.Results: Five randomized controlled trials were identified. Sample sizes ranged from 21 to 204. The risk of bias was low, except for being rated as high or unclear for most included studies in two domains: allocation concealment, blinding participants and personnel. Meta-analysis of depression outcome showed no heterogeneity, indicating that the variation in study outcomes did not influence the interpretation of results. There were significant differences in decreasing depression in favor of dance-based interventions compared with controls [SMD = −0.42, 95% CI, p < 0.0001] with a small effect size ; Compared with the post-intervention data, the follow-up data indicated diminishing effects. Dance-based interventions were more effective in reducing depression for persons with dementia than with those having MCI, and were more effective with the delivery frequency of 1 h twice a week than 35 min 2–3 times a week. Also, one included RCT study showed no significant benefit on anxiety rating scores, which demonstrated small effect sizes at 6 weeks and 12 weeks. GRADE analysis indicated the evidence quality of depression was moderate, and the evidence quality of anxiety was low.Conclusions: Dance-based interventions are beneficial to alleviate depression among persons with MCI and dementia. More trials of high quality, large sample sizes are needed to gain more profound insight into dance-based interventions, such as their effects of alleviating anxiety, and the best approaches to perform dance-based interventions. (shrink)

Ben shu tong guo yin ru xi fang xian dai yu yan zhe xue, mei xue de fang fa yu Zhongguo chuan tong wen hua zhi si zhan dui hua yu jiao liu, shi jie, wen xue de ben zhi guan lian ru shou, jie shi chu xing cheng yan yu yi zhi jian mao dun yu zhang li de ben yuan: cun zai ben shen zi xing xian xian (cheng ming) bing zi xing yin ni (zhe bi) de te (...) xing, shi ta zai xian xiang shang yong yuan cheng xian chu you (zai chang) yu wu (bu zai chang) de dong tai yun dong, er zhe zhong yun dong ben shen qia qia you gou cheng le yan yu yi de yong heng dong neng he zhang li. (shrink)

BackgroundMedical disputes, medical disturbances, verbal and physical violence against physicians, and burnout have reached epidemic levels. They may negatively impact both physicians and the healthcare system. The experience of medical disputes, medical disturbances, verbal, and physical violence, and burnout and the correlates in physicians working in public hospitals in China needed to be investigated.MethodsA nationwide cross-sectional survey study was conducted between 18 and 31 March 2019. An anonymous online questionnaire was administered. The questionnaire included the 22-item Maslach Burnout Inventory-Human Services (...) Survey. We also collected data on demographic and job-related factors, as well as physicians’ experiences of medical disputes, medical disturbances, verbal and physical violence from patients and the patients’ family members.FindingsIn total, 22,213 physicians from 144 tertiary public hospitals in all of China’s 31 provinces completed the survey. The overall burnout rate among the surveyed physicians was 31.28%. Moreover, 33.48% of physicians experienced disputes, 20.86% experienced disturbances, 48.52% experienced verbal violence, and 5.84% experienced physical violence in the past 12 months. Factors found to be significantly associated with burnout included younger age, being divorced or widowed, having a lower educational background, working in internal medicine departments, longer working hours per day, working in general hospitals, being in East China, as well as having experienced disputes, disturbances, and physical and verbal violence.InterpretationClose to a third of the Chinese doctors working in the tertiary hospitals reportedly experienced burnout, and the problem is related to the unsafe working environment caused by the worsening doctor-patient relationship. (shrink)

In response to numerous recent cases involving materially misstated financial information arising from fraudulent financial reporting, companies, auditors, and academics have increased their focus on strengthening internal controls as a means of deterring such unethical behaviors. However, prior research suggests that stronger controls may actually exacerbate the very opportunistic behavior the controls are intended to curb. The current study investigates whether the efficacy of an implemented control is conditioned on not only the strength of the control, but also on how (...) the firm frames the purpose for implementing the control. A monitoring purpose frames controls as reducing managers’ opportunities to engage in self-interested behavior, while a coordinating purpose frames controls as facilitating coordination between the firm and its managers. We posit that the efficacy of stronger controls to reduce unethical fraudulent reporting depends on the control frame. Using an experiment, this study investigates the interactive effect of control strength and control frame on managers’ fraudulent reporting decisions. As predicted, our results show that when controls are framed for monitoring purposes, stronger controls result in less fraudulent reporting than weaker controls. Conversely, when controls are framed for coordinating purposes, stronger controls result in more fraudulent reporting than weaker controls. Our results suggest that an inconsistency between the firm’s choice of the control strength and the control frame reduces the efficacy of the implemented control to curb unethical reporting behaviors. Furthermore, supplemental analysis shows that managers’ rationalization helps explain the interactive effect of control strength and communicated control purpose on fraudulent reporting. (shrink)

Analytic philosophy has been developing in China for over a century, and philosophers shaped by the analytic tradition have grown into an important philosophical community in China. The views of contemporary analytic philosophers in China on central philosophical issues and their similarities and differences with analytic philosophers in English-speaking countries have not been systematically investigated. Bourget and Chalmers have conducted two large-scale online questionnaire surveys on analytic philosophers in English-speaking countries. Inspired by their studies, a survey on analytic philosophers in (...) China was performed. It is found that philosophers in China had no agreement on most issues. According to the comparative analysis with the results of Bourget and Chalmers’ second survey, there were significant differences in views as well as thinking styles between analytic philosophers in China and English-speaking countries. And these differences may be partially explained by cultural factors and academic environments. (shrink)

ObjectiveTo survey the prevalence of burnout in a national sample of endocrinologists in China and to examine its correlates, with a special focus on gender differences.MethodsAn anonymous online survey was conducted among endocrinologists in 31 provincial government-owned “People’s Hospitals” of each province in mainland China. Demographic and work-related factors were collected from participants. The Maslach Burnout Inventory-Human Services Survey was used to assess burnout, including emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment.ResultsA total of 711 endocrinologists completed the survey. Burnout was (...) reported by 32.8% of the participants. There were no significant gender differences in the overall prevalence of burnout or EE, DP, and PA. A multi-level linear regression revealed: In male participants, PA was significantly associated with age, DP was inversely associated with age, EE was significantly associated with shorter sleep duration, and longer work hours. In females, PA was significantly associated with age, EE and DP were both significantly associated with shorter sleep duration. EE and DP were also associated with work hours.ConclusionNearly one-third of endocrinologists in China experienced burnout. Although there were no significant gender differences in the prevalence of overall burnout or EE, DP, and PA scores, male and female participants differed in factors associated with EE, DP, and PA. Interventions need to be tailored to target different aspects in male and female endocrinologists and target different subgroups. (shrink)

Background and purposeThis study aimed to analyze the feasibility and safety of endovascular therapy (EVT) in patients with acute posterior circulation stroke and vertebrobasilar dolichoectasia (VBD).Materials and methodsBASILAR was a national prospective registry of consecutive patients with symptomatic and imaging-confirmed acute stroke in the posterior circulation within 24 h of symptom onset. We evaluated EVT feasibility and safety in patients with VBD. Primary outcomes included improvement in modified Rankin Scale scores (mRS) at 90 days and mortality within 90 days. The (...) secondary outcome was the rate of favorable functional outcome, defined as mRS ≤ 3 (indicating independent ambulation) at 90 days. Safety outcomes included surgery-related complications and other serious adverse events.ResultsA total of 534 cases were included: 159 with VBD and 375 controls. No significant difference in mRS at 90 days was found between groups, but patients with VBD had a higher baseline National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) score [30 (19–33) vs. 25 (15–32)] and were older [65 (59–74) vs. 63 (55–72) year]. After propensity score matching, there were no significant differences in baseline NIHSS score between the two groups, and the efficacy and safety of EVT were similar between patients with or without VBD. Furthermore, the prognostic effect of puncture-to-recanalization time on the probability of mortality within 90 days in EVT-treated patients with VBD was significant {adjusted odds ratio, 1.008 [95% confidence interval (1.001–1.015)]}.ConclusionEndovascular therapy is safe and feasible in patients with acute posterior circulation stroke and VBD. The puncture-to-recanalization time is important for predicting the prognosis of EVT-treated patients with VBD. (shrink)

Based on the perspective of the regional innovation system, this study constructs an analytical framework for the influence of government R&D funding on regional innovation quality and uses 283 Chinese cities as research samples to empirically test the influence of government R&D funding methods such as subsidies and tax preferences on regional innovation quality by the spatial Durbin model. According to the study, China’s regional innovation quality has a positive spatial correlation. Subsidies can improve regional innovation quality, which is mainly (...) realized by increasing the input of innovation resources from local direct innovation subjects, attracting the inflow of innovation resources from neighboring areas, and increasing the innovation support from local indirect innovation subjects. Besides, spatial competition for subsidies makes it beneficial to improve the regional innovation quality in neighboring regions, while the promotion effect of tax preferences is not significant. When considering the heterogeneity of the city location and administrative hierarchy, it shows that the government R&D funding cannot improve the innovation quality of the Eastern cities and higher-administrative-hierarchy cities, while it can improve that of the Middle and Western cities and general-administrative-hierarchy cities. Furthermore, government R&D funding widens the gap of regional innovation quality, which may be related to the existing “insufficient intervention” and “excessive intervention” of government R&D funding. This study provides insights into the implementation of R&D funding by the government to promote the development of regional innovation quality. (shrink)

Proactive personality is a key determinant of entrepreneurial intention. Few studies have explored the mediating and moderating mechanisms underlying this relationship. This study investigates the association between proactive personality and entrepreneurial intention and examines the mediating role of perceived entrepreneurial support and the moderating role of gender. Using a cross-sectional design, 1,515 senior students from Chinese private colleges were recruited using random cluster sampling. They completed a battery of self-reported online questionnaires on proactive personality, perceived entrepreneurial support, and entrepreneurial intention. (...) The results revealed that perceived entrepreneurial support mediates the association between proactive personality and entrepreneurial intention. Moderated mediation analysis indicated that the relationship between proactive personality and perceived entrepreneurial support and that between perceived entrepreneurial support and entrepreneurial intention are moderated by gender. Specifically, the positive association between proactive personality and entrepreneurial intention was stronger in male students, and the positive association between perceived entrepreneurial support and entrepreneurial intention was stronger in female students. This study contributes to the understanding of how proactive personality predicts entrepreneurial intention in Chinese private college students and bears implications for higher education institutions and policymakers that entrepreneurship promotion agenda should focus on improving perceived entrepreneurial support and considering the gender of students. (shrink)