Schizophrenia is a serious mental illness characterized by a disconnection between brain regions. Transcranial magnetic stimulation is a non-invasive brain intervention technique that can be used as a new and safe treatment option for patients with schizophrenia with drug-refractory symptoms, such as negative symptoms and cognitive impairment. However, the therapeutic effects of transcranial magnetic stimulation remain unclear and would be investigated using non-invasive tools, such as functional connectivity. A longitudinal design was adopted to investigate the alteration in FC dynamics using (...) a dynamic functional connectivity approach in patients with schizophrenia following high-frequency repeated transcranial magnetic stimulation with the target at the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Two groups of schizophrenia inpatients were recruited. One group received a 4-week high-frequency rTMS together with antipsychotic drugs, while the other group only received antipsychotic drugs. Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging and psychiatric symptoms were obtained from the patients with schizophrenia twice at baseline and after 4-week treatment. The dynamics was evaluated using voxel- and region-wise FC temporal variability resulting from fMRI data. The pattern classification technique was used to verify the clinical application value of FC temporal variability. For the voxel-wise FC temporary variability, the repeated measures ANCOVA analysis showed significant treatment × time interaction effects on the FC temporary variability between the left DLPFC and several regions, including the thalamus, cerebellum, precuneus, and precentral gyrus, which are mainly located within the cortico-thalamo-cerebellar circuit. For the ROI-wise FC temporary variability, our results found a significant interaction effect on the FC among CTCC. rTMS intervention led to a reduced FC temporary variability. In addition, higher alteration in FC temporal variability between left DLPFC and right posterior parietal thalamus predicted a higher remission ratio of negative symptom scores, indicating that the decrease of FC temporal variability between the brain regions was associated with the remission of schizophrenia severity. The support vector regression results suggested that the baseline pattern of FC temporary variability between the regions in CTCC could predict the efficacy of high-frequency rTMS intervention on negative symptoms in schizophrenia. These findings confirm the potential relationship between the reduction in whole-brain functional dynamics induced by high-frequency rTMS and the improvement in psychiatric scores, suggesting that high-frequency rTMS affects psychiatric symptoms by coordinating the heterogeneity of activity between the brain regions. Future studies would examine the clinical utility of using functional dynamics patterns between specific brain regions as a biomarker to predict the treatment response of high-frequency rTMS. (shrink)

The Chinese Aesthetic Tradition touches on all areas of artistic activity, including poetry, painting, calligraphy, architecture, and the "art of living." Right government, the ideal human being, and the path to spiritual transcendence all come under the provenance of aesthetic thought. According to Li this was the case from early Confucian explanations of poetry as that which gives expression to intent, through Zhuangzi’s artistic depictions of the ideal personality who discerns the natural way of things and lives according to it, (...) to Chan Buddhist-inspired notions that nature and words can come together to yield insight and enlightenment. In this enduring and stimulating work, Li demonstrates conclusively the fundamental role of aesthetics in the development of the cultural and psychological structures in Chinese culture that define "humanity.". (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Techniques of the Self:Nourishing Life as Art of LivingLi Manhua (bio)Daoism and Environmental Philosophy: Nourishing Life. By Eric S. Nelson. London and New York: Routledge, 2021.This essay proposes an account of the techniques of the self in early Daoism in light of Eric S. Nelson's Daoism and Environmental Philosophy: Nourishing Life (Routledge, 2021). It argues that the techniques of the self involved in nourishing life (yangsheng 養生) are indispensable (...) to the creation of the interdependent human-nature rapport that Nelson considers. Such interdependence does not require a moralistic stance that negates the self or forsakes individual desires in the cause of the environment—as in some of the existing Western ecological discourse—but a new form of self-relation involving the practice of a set of techniques of the self that relates the human to the non-human. The present contribution begins by arguing that the practice of nourishing life entails a series of bodily and spiritual techniques (shu 術) of the self, with the example of Cook Ding. This is followed by my exposition of different categories of such techniques, and why the techniques of nourishing the spirit (shen 神) are prioritized over those of the preservation of the bodily form (xing 形). Finally, I extend my discussion on the specific techniques of nourishing the spirit with regard to his chapter "Emptying Ecology," where Nelson argues that undoing fixations of the self and being responsive (ying 應) to things are attainable through deconstructive, skeptical, and paradoxical communicative strategies (p. 80).To start with, Nelson regards nourishing life as a way of living and speaking that goes beyond the binary opposition or a hierarchical relation between the human and other forms of life in some Western ecological philosophies:In the current crisis conditions, it appears that humans need every motivating ecology available whether it be light or dark green, anthro- or bio-centric, shallow or deep. All of these contending discourses are equalized in a Daoist ecology of shifting perspectives and ways of speaking. A benefit of dao-centric models—that as inflections of the "way" encompass and extend beyond notions of "bios" (specific life) and "zōe" (life in general)—is that they contest the binary oppositions and stratified hierarchies that have dominated recent Western environmental discourses: anthropocentrism/biocentrism, and humanism/posthumanism [End Page 762] (although the latter finds biocentrism still too anthropocentric in positing the very distinction between them).(p. 31, my emphasis)In other words, a non-hierarchical and non-opposing rapport between the human and the non-human lies in a practice of changing perspectives and, more concretely and importantly, adjusting communicative ways. Such a way of perceiving and speaking beyond boundaries between the individual and the general forms of life (sheng 生) is epitomized by the practice of nourishing life of Cook Ding in the third chapter of the Zhuangzi 庄子, titled "The Master of Nourishing Life" (Yangsheng zhu 養生主). When Ding—Lord Wenhui's chef—cuts up an ox, he avoids violent and forced slaughter, slitting through the tender parts of the animal without touching any bone. As such, by concentrating only on the intestines of the ox, his movement is so agile that the knife produces a musical rhythm.More precisely, Nelson regards the example of Ding as "a cultivated and practiced process in which nature can come to be itself" (p. 36). In the context of the Zhuangzi, nature (tian 天) as an extension of the Dao goes beyond the "one-and-many" anthropocentric paradigm wherein humans have exclusive knowledge of the One, namely the unifying principle of reality (Chai 2018, p. 265). In this sense, specific life forms, bios, are undifferentiated from the wholeness of the One in the generic life, zōe. In other words, as the root of all life lies in Dao in terms of the onto-cosmological attunement of nothingness (wuwei 無為), our bodies (shen 身) mirror Heaven or Nature (tian 天) and the Earth (di 地) in the way they attune to the flow of vital energetic dynamics, responding to the myriad things and Heaven and Earth in an organic totality. This is manifest in Ding, as he nourishes life by turning his daily activity into a practice of encountering non-human life forms... (shrink)

In the following, I will be speaking about my basic views regarding Chinese aesthetics. […] I identify four features that sum up the whole.

Public welfare fundraising has been used to collect donations for medical supplies and has played an important role in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper studies online crowdfunding donations from the Alumni Association of Wuhan University to North American alumni; donation data are used to investigate how individuals' donation behavior is affected by the previous donation amount and information provided by the fundraising platform. First, our results show that one's donation amount is positively affected by the previous donation (...) amount. Second, the donor's positive sentiment in the message that he or she leaves, as measured by either natural language processing or a manual rating, can affect the subsequent anonymity and messages but not the subsequent donation amount. Third, anonymous donations are much smaller than non-anonymous donations. (shrink)

Cambridge Journals Online (CJO) is the online journals publishing service of Cambridge University Press. CJO hosts leading journals across multiple disciplines.

Adrian Heathcote has proposed a truth-making account of knowledge that combines traditional conditions of justified true belief with the truth-making condition, which would jointly provide us with the sufficient condition of knowledge, and this truth-maker account of knowledge in turn explains why a gettiered justified true belief fails to be regarded as a genuine instance of knowledge. In this paper, by the comparison of two different casual models that are illustrated by the thermometer and the clock respectively, however, it will (...) be argued that Heathcote’s truth-making account of knowledge fails to cope with the Gettier case of the stopped clock and therefore is called for some further remedy. (shrink)

In order for higher education to provide students with up-to-date knowledge and relevant skillsets for their continued learning, it needs to keep pace with innovative pedagogy and cognitive sciences to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education for all. An adequate implementation of flipped learning, which can offer undergraduates education that is appropriate in a knowledge-based society, requires moving from traditional educational models to innovative pedagogy integrated with a playful learning environment (PLE) supported by information and communications technologies (ICTs). In this (...) paper, based on the design-based research, a task-driven instructional approach in the flipped classroom (TDIAFC) was designed and implemented for two groups of participants in an undergraduate hands-on making course in a PLE. One group consisting of 81 students as the experimental group (EG) received flipped learning instruction, and another group of 79 students as the control group (CG) received lecture-centered instruction. The EG students experienced a three-round study, with results from the first round informing the customized design of the second round and the second round informing the third round. The experimental results demonstrated that students in the EG got higher scores of summative tests and final scores than those in the CG. In particular, students’ learning performance in three domains (i.e., cognitive, affective, and psychomotor) differ significantly between the two groups. (shrink)

Study of Yuktidīpikā, classical commentary on Sānkhyakārikā of Īśvarakr̥ṣṇa.

Based on the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions, this study explored the mediating effect of spiritual intelligence between awe and life satisfaction among Chinese primary school teachers and whether this effect was moderated by ethnicity. Participants comprised 569 teachers from 24 primary schools in southwestern China, where many of the ethnic minority groups of China reside. Awe and spiritual intelligence were found to positively predict life satisfaction among primary school teachers, while awe also indirectly influenced life satisfaction through the partial (...) mediation of spiritual intelligence. Ethnicity was also found to moderate the relation between awe and life satisfaction, i.e., when compared with the Han teachers, there is a more significant and positive relation between awe and life satisfaction in ethnic minority teachers. These findings not only indicate the critical role of awe in promoting life satisfaction of primary school teachers but also especially show that awe embodied in the traditional cultural activities makes it easier to breed life satisfaction in ethnic minority teachers. (shrink)

Circular economy is a critical approach to realize the coordinated development of society, economy, and ecological environment. Given the fact that urban is a complex system in which human beings integrate material, energy, information, and natural environment and interact and influence each other, reviewing the urban circular economy research and development could benefit for having a better and comprehensive understanding on urban complexity. Mainly based on the Chinese literature studies from 1999 to 2020, this study aims to present an in-depth (...) analysis of the research themes, policy systems, and index system of Chinaʼs urban-scale circular economy, discuss the changes and evolution trends of themes, levels, and perspectives in time series, sort out the policy systems at both the national and local levels, and analyze the design principles and application fields of indicators. Finally, we propose that future development of an urban circular economy should be built based on modern techniques, technologies, and models. The construction of development mechanism on the circular economy should be framed as “government-led, market-driven, legal norms, policy support, technological support, and public participation” and inject concepts such as “Internet +,” “sharing economy,” “Internet of Things,” and “artificial intelligence.”. (shrink)

One of the most efficient predator-prey models with spatial effects is the one with ratio-dependent functional response. However, there is a need to further explore the effects of spatial motion on the dynamic behavior of population. In this work, we study a ratio-dependent predator-prey model with diffusion terms. The aim of this work is to investigate the changes in predator’s distribution in space as the prey populations change their mobility. We observe that the frequency diffusion of the prey gives rise (...) to the sparse density of the predator. Moreover, we also observe that the increasing rate of the conversion into predator biomass induces pattern transitions of the predator. Specifically speaking, Turing pattern of the predator populations goes gradually from a spotted pattern to a black-eye pattern, with the intermediate state being the mixture of spot and stripe pattern. The simulation results and analysis of this work illustrate that the diffusion rate and the real intrinsic factor influence the persistence of the predator-prey system mutually. (shrink)

Islamic philosophy; philosophy, Ancient.

We present a novel method, called graph sparse nonnegative matrix factorization, for dimensionality reduction. The affinity graph and sparse constraint are further taken into consideration in nonnegative matrix factorization and it is shown that the proposed matrix factorization method can respect the intrinsic graph structure and provide the sparse representation. Different from some existing traditional methods, the inertial neural network was developed, which can be used to optimize our proposed matrix factorization problem. By adopting one parameter in the neural network, (...) the global optimal solution can be searched. Finally, simulations on numerical examples and clustering in real-world data illustrate the effectiveness and performance of the proposed method. (shrink)

Background: Interpersonal sensitivity is a prominent mental health problem facing college students today. Trait mindfulness is a potential positive factor that may influence interpersonal relationships. However, the precise relationship between trait mindfulness and interpersonal sensitivity remains elusive, which limits the optimization and further application of mindfulness-based intervention schemes targeting interpersonal sensitivity. This study aimed to explore whether negative emotions mediate the relationship between trait mindfulness and interpersonal sensitivity and whether the relationship among trait mindfulness, negative emotions, and interpersonal sensitivity is (...) moderated by effectiveness/authenticity. We hypothesize that negative emotions mediate the relationship between trait mindfulness and interpersonal sensitivity, and effectiveness/authenticity moderates the indirect association between trait mindfulness and interpersonal sensitivity through negative emotions.Methods: One thousand four hundred nineteen Chinese college students, aged from 17 to 23, participated in this study. Their trait mindfulness, negative emotions, the effectiveness/authenticity, and interpersonal sensitivity were measured using well-validated self-report questionnaires.Results: Correlational analyses indicated that both trait mindfulness and effectiveness/authenticity were significantly and negatively associated with interpersonal sensitivity. Mediation analyses uncovered a partial mediating role of negative emotions in the relationship between trait mindfulness and interpersonal sensitivity. Moderated mediation analyses showed that in college students with high effectiveness/authenticity, the relationship between trait mindfulness and negative emotions was stronger, whereas the relationship between negative emotions and interpersonal sensitivity was weaker.Conclusion: Negative emotion is a mediator of the relationship between trait mindfulness and interpersonal sensitivity, which in turn is moderated by effectiveness/authenticity. These findings suggest a potential mechanism through which trait mindfulness influences interpersonal sensitivity. Mindfulness-based interventions have the potential to decrease interpersonal sensitivity and offer a basis for predicting individual differences in response to mindfulness-based interventions among individuals. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to examine the moderating effects of goal orientations and self-efficacy between competitive cognitive anxiety and motor performance under conditions featuring different levels of ego-threat. Eighty-one collegiate-level basketball players completed Sport Competitive Anxiety Test, Ego Orientation in Sport Questionnaire, and General Self-Efficacy Scale prior to the experiment. Athletes participated in two sessions of free-throw tasks. After the first session, which was under a control condition, participants performed in a free-throw competitive session while being provided opponents’ (...) scores that induced different levels of competitive cognitive anxiety. Performance is defined as the accuracy in two free-throw sessions. A hierarchical multiple regression showed that high level of task-orientation and low level of ego-orientation can buffer the impairment of competitive cognitive anxiety on motor performance. The relationship between competitive cognitive anxiety and motor performance did not vary with self-efficacy. An a repeated-measured analysis of covariance after cluster analysis revealed that a high-task/low-ego profile benefited athletes the most regarding the impairment of competitive cognitive anxiety. Together, ego- and task-orientations and “goal profile” moderate the relationship between competitive cognitive anxiety and motor performance; however, self-efficacy may not serve as a moderator variable in between. (shrink)