Poverty alleviation consumption, which we call altruistic consumption, has become a new effective way to help vulnerable groups, but there are a few empirical researches on poverty alleviation through consumption. This article takes China's poverty alleviation actions as the research object, investigates and studies the relationship between altruistic consumption motivations and altruistic consumption behaviors that aim for vulnerable groups. It is found that altruistic consumption behavior is mainly affected by benefit group motivation, benefit morality motivation, benefit demander motivation, and benefit (...) supplier motivation. There is a correspondence between the four altruistic consumption motivations and the four altruistic consumption behaviors. The strength of altruistic consumption motivations changes with changes in altruistic buying behavior. The strength of benefit group motivation decreases with the increase in the times of altruistic purchases, while the strength of benefit morality motivation, benefit demander motivation, and benefit supplier motivation increase with the increase in the times of altruistic purchases. Among the four kinds of altruistic consumption motivations that affect the times of altruistic purchases, the benefit demander motivation has a relatively greater influence. The results of this study have important guiding significance for vulnerable groups to formulating targeted proactive marketing strategies, preventing the altruistic consumption relationship dissolution, and realizing sustainable altruistic consumption. (shrink)

Although emerging evidence has implicated structural/functional abnormalities of patients with Autism Spectrum Disorder, definitive neuroimaging markers remain obscured due to inconsistent or incompatible findings, especially for structural imaging. Furthermore, brain differences defined by statistical analysis are difficult to implement individual prediction. The present study has employed the machine learning techniques under the unified framework in neuroimaging to identify the neuroimaging markers of patients with ASD and distinguish them from typically developing controls. To enhance the interpretability of the machine learning model, (...) the study has processed three levels of assessments including model-level assessment, feature-level assessment, and biology-level assessment. According to these three levels assessment, the study has identified neuroimaging markers of ASD including the opercular part of bilateral inferior frontal gyrus, the orbital part of right inferior frontal gyrus, right rolandic operculum, right olfactory cortex, right gyrus rectus, right insula, left inferior parietal gyrus, bilateral supramarginal gyrus, bilateral angular gyrus, bilateral superior temporal gyrus, bilateral middle temporal gyrus, and left inferior temporal gyrus. In addition, negative correlations between the communication skill score in the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule and regional gray matter volume in the gyrus rectus, left middle temporal gyrus, and inferior temporal gyrus have been detected. A significant negative correlation has been found between the communication skill score in ADOS_G and the orbital part of the left inferior frontal gyrus. A negative correlation between verbal skill score and right angular gyrus and a significant negative correlation between non-verbal communication skill and right angular gyrus have been found. These findings in the study have suggested the GM alteration of ASD and correlated with the clinical severity of ASD disease symptoms. The interpretable machine learning framework gives sight to the pathophysiological mechanism of ASD but can also be extended to other diseases. (shrink)

Examining the nature of teachers’ emotions and how they are managed and regulated in the act of teaching is crucial to assess the quality of teacher’s instructions. Despite the essential role emotions play in teachers’ lives and instruction, research on teachers’ emotions has not paid much attention on teachers’ state emotions in the context of daily teaching. Significant portion of literature has described teachers’ emotions by foregrounding trait emotions through deductive methodological approaches. This paper explored elementary teachers’ state and trait (...) emotions while preparing for teaching and during teaching, reasons that underlie these emotions, and the relationship between their emotions and the quality of their mathematics instruction. Participants were seven elementary teachers working in the U.S. who participated in Holistic Individualized Coaching (HIC) professional development that consisted of 5 cycles of coaching over an year. For each coaching cycle pre-coaching conversation and post-coaching conversation data were collected regarding state emotions teachers felt in anticipation of teaching and during teaching retrospectively. Also, teachers responded adapted Teaching Emotion Scale (TES) that was aimed to measure trait emotions. In order to compare teachers’ emotions with instructional quality, coaching session were video recorded and analyzed to determine the quality of instruction. Findings of this study showed that teachers reported 6 categories of emotions (positive, negative, neutral, mixed-positive, mixed-negative, and mixed-complex), and often in non-typical ways (e.g., “not nervous”, “anxious but in a positive way”), and mixed emotions were the most dominant category. Also, teachers had more positive emotions anticipating teaching, than actually teaching the lesson, and there was no noticeable change of emotions across the 5 coaching cycles. The reason teachers felt mixed emotions reflected complex and context-specific nature of teaching, which was not articulated in the literature. There were no clear relationships between emotional experiences and instructional quality. This study allowed participants to freely describe their authentic, complex, overlapping, and ambiguous emotions in the context of active teaching, which contributes opening up the possibilities of diversifying teacher emotion research and shows the significance and usefulness of understanding teachers’ state emotions. (shrink)

Evidence suggests divergent thinking is the cognitive basis of creative thoughts. Neuroimaging literature using resting-state functional connectivity has revealed network reorganizations during divergent thinking. Recent studies have revealed the changes of network organizations when performing creativity tasks, but such brain reconfigurations may be prolonged after task and be modulated by the trait of creativity. To investigate the dynamic reconfiguration, 40 young participants were recruited to perform consecutive Alternative Uses Tasks for divergent thinking and two resting-state scans were used for mapping (...) the brain reorganizations after AUT. We split participants into high- and low-creative groups based on creative achievement questionnaire and targeted on reconfigurations of the two brain networks: default-mode network and the network seeded at the left inferior frontal gyrus because the between-group difference of AUT-induced brain activation located at the left IFG. The changes of post-AUT RSFCs indicated the prolonged effect of divergent thinking. More specifically, the alterations of RSFCIFG−AG and RSFCIFG−IPL in the high-creative group had positive relationship with their AUT performances, but not found in the low-creative group. Furthermore, the RSFC changes of DMN did not present significant relationships with AUT performances. The findings not only confirmed the possibility of brain dynamic reconfiguration following divergent thinking, but also suggested the distinct IFGN reconfiguration between individuals with different creativity levels. (shrink)

Previous studies have reported abnormal amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation and regional homogeneity in patients with migraine without aura using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging. However, how whole brain functional connectivity pattern homogeneity and its corresponding functional connectivity changes in patients with migraine without aura is unknown. In the current study, we employed a recently developed whole brain functional connectivity homogeneity method to identify the voxel-wise changes of functional connectivity patterns in 21 patients with migraine without aura and 21 gender and (...) age matched healthy controls. Moreover, resting-state functional connectivity analysis was used to reveal the changes of corresponding functional connectivities. FcHo analyses identified significantly decreased FcHo values in the posterior cingulate cortex, thalamus, and left anterior insula in patients with migraine without aura compared to healthy controls. Functional connectivity analyses further found decreased functional connectivities between PCC and medial prefrontal cortex, between AI and anterior cingulate cortex, and between THA and left precentral gyrus. The functional connectivities between THA and PCG were negatively correlated with pain intensity. Our findings indicated that whole brain FcHo and connectivity abnormalities of these regions may be associated with functional impairments in pain processing in patients with migraine without aura. (shrink)

A positive attitude toward later life is crucial for wellbeing among older adults. Maintaining a healthy relationship with adult children can help reduce older parents’ sense of loneliness and nurture a positive life attitude. This study aimed to investigate the associations between multidimensional intergenerational relationship quality and attitudes toward later life among aging Chinese adults in Hong Kong and examine the mediating effects of a sense of loneliness. Representative survey data were collected from 801 participants with at least one (...) adult child. Multiple linear regression was employed to investigate the associations between overall intergenerational relationship quality with a sense of loneliness as well as the attitude toward later life. To examine the mediating effects of a sense of loneliness, causal mediational analyses were performed. Results demonstrated that overall intergenerational relationship quality was positively associated with aging parents’ attitude toward later life, and this relationship could be partially mediated by a sense of loneliness. Among the four subdomains of intergenerational relationship quality, the influences of structural-associational solidarity and intergenerational conflict on attitude toward later life were almost fully mediated by a sense of loneliness, whereas the influences of consensual-normative solidarity and affectual closeness were partially mediated. These findings contributed to an improved understanding of the relationship between intergenerational relationship quality, sense of loneliness, and attitude toward later life, and could inform future policies and service programs that promote aging adults’ social integration and positive aging. (shrink)

Differential tractography and correlation tractography are new tractography modalities to study neuronal changes in brain diseases, but their performances in detecting neuronal injuries are yet to be investigated in patients with mild traumatic brain injury. Here we investigated the white matter injury in mTBI patients using differential and correlation tractography. The diffusion MRI was acquired at 33 mTBI patients and 31 health controls. 7 of the mTBI patients had one-year follow-up scans, and differential tractography was used to evaluate injured fiber (...) bundles on these 7 patients. All subjects were evaluated using digital symbol substitution test and trail making test A, and the correlation tractography was performed to explore the exact pathways related to the cognitive performance. Our results showed that differential tractography revealed neuronal changes in the corpus callosum in all 7 follow-up mTBI patients with FDR between 0.007 and 0.17. Further, the correlation tractography showed that the splenium of the corpus callosum, combined with the right superior longitudinal fasciculus and right cingulum, were correlated with DSST in the acute mTBI patients. The cognitive impairment findings in the acute stage and the longitudinal findings in the corpus callosum in the chronic stage of mTBI patients suggest that differential tractography and correlation tractography are valuable tools in the diagnostic and prognostic evaluation of neuronal injuries in mTBI patients. (shrink)

The results of the National Higher Education Entrance Examination have a life-long effect on most Chinese by labeling them clever or not. Some of the following rules of the Gaokao enhance the damage, for example, the rule of Who, What and Where. In general, Who you are and What you have done are of secondary importance, but Where you graduated from, especially the college of first-record is the most important, but discriminatory criterion in the recruitment courses of most of scientific (...) communities and social organizations in China. (shrink)

What is feminist philosophy? A difficult question for feminist scholars in China. Women's studies in the Chinese mainland are characteristically policy‐oriented, geared to practical concerns and moral urgency. Empirical research projects engage many pressing social issues related to the changing situation of women in a rapid marketification of society and commercialization of culture since the post‐1978 reform movement. Here are some examples: migrant female workers and their working conditions in the urban centers; the impact of rural industrialization on women in (...) the countryside: discrimination against women in employment as well as in other aspects of social life; marriage and sexual relations. What follows in this article however, represents an effort to identify and categorize trends in emerging feminist theories. The main questions that might be seen as in one way or another philosophical are located in the historical context of the transformation of Chinese socialism. As we have only very limited access to publications in Hong Kong and Taiwan, to avoid mispresentation we regret that we cannot discuss the feminist work developed in these areas. (shrink)

The flow of high-level talents in China is becoming more and more active and has a profound impact on the innovation and development of cities. Based on the research on the spatial distribution of the school and work stages of high-level talent in China, we study the structure and evolution of China’s high-level talent mobility network by using the data on the flow trajectory of talent among cities in China. The results show that: the spatial distribution of talents in the (...) two stages has greater consistency, but there is a change characteristic of “large dispersion, small agglomeration.” Compared with the school stage, the network in the work stage has much more connections; the centrality gap of cities has narrowed. “Core-periphery” structure of two networks is relatively significant and similar. The core layer in the two networks has not changed, but the subcore layer and the subedge layer have undergone changes. In addition, talents mainly flow to core and subcore cities. The space structure of network is more complex in the work stage, and it is expanding to the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area in southeastern China. (shrink)

Resumo: A civilização ecológica é uma forma de civilização e possui valores culturais. No processo de desenvolvimento econômico e social, devido às diferenças nas práticas sociais, diferentes países, regiões e grupos étnicos são forçados a diferir em sua compreensão da conotação da civilização ecológica e de sua expressão externa. No contexto da diversidade cultural, o desenvolvimento da educação da civilização ecológica na China é um projeto sistemático de longo prazo, que requer a participação conjunta do povo, e pode, de modo (...) geral, ser realizado em três níveis, incluindo o nível social, o nível nacional e o nível escolar. O presente artigo argumenta que toda a sociedade é o solo para desenvolver a educação da civilização ecológica; na China, o governo é a garantia externa e as escolas são o principal campo de batalha. Nesse sentido, o governo confia essencialmente nas escolas para alcançar o objetivo da educação da civilização ecológica. Portanto, o presente artigo se concentrará no nível escolar, baseado na diversidade cultural dos dias atuais, para discutir as contramedidas para o desenvolvimento da educação da civilização ecológica, na China, que inclui o sistema de metas, professores, estudantes, currículo, metodologia e meio ambiente. Além disso, o presente artigo toma a região de Sichuan-Tibet e a cidade de Tianjin como exemplos para elaborar as ações específicas de integração da cultura ecológica étnica com a educação da civilização ecológica nas escolas. (shrink)

BackgroundNurses working in the intensive care unit clung tenaciously to their job during the COVID-19 pandemic in spite of enduring stressed psychological and physical effects as a result of providing nursing care for the infected patients, which indicates that they possessed a high degree of professionalism and career calling. The aim of this study was to explain the associations between resilience, thriving at work, and ethical leadership influencing the calling of ICU nurses.MethodsFrom December 2020 to January 2021 during the COVID-19 (...) pandemic, a cross-sectional survey of 15 provinces in China was conducted using an online questionnaire. A total of 340 ICU nurses completed sufficient responses to be used in the study. Sociodemographic factors, job demographic factors, resilience, calling, thriving at work, and ethical leadership were assessed using the questionnaire. General linear modeling, hierarchical linear regression analysis, and generalized additive model were performed to examine all the considered research hypotheses.ResultsResilience was positively and significantly associated with calling. Moreover, thriving at work partially mediated the relationship between resilience and calling. The indirect effect of resilience on calling was 0.204, and the direct effect of resilience on calling through thriving at work was 0.215. The total effect of resilience on calling was 0.419. In addition, ethical leadership played a moderating role in the relationship between resilience and calling.ConclusionGreater resilience can positively predict increased calling among Chinese ICU nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, thriving at work is a mechanism that partly transmits the positive effects of resilience on calling. Overall, nurses possessing greater resilience tend to maintain thriving at work in the face of such adversity, further resulting in subsequently increased calling. Besides, findings suggest that there is stronger influence of resilience on calling among nurses working in an organization managed by an ethical leader. The current findings may offer two insights for nursing practitioners and policymakers in the postpandemic world. First, resilience training and intervention are necessary to foster nurses' sense of thriving at work in the nursing industry, further promoting career calling. Second, better training and effort on the development of ethical leadership for leaders in nursing practice are essential to encourage followers to engage in social learning of ethical behaviors and abiding by normatively appropriate conduct, further enacting prosocial values and expressing moral emotions. (shrink)

ObjectiveThe study aimed to enhance the learning motivation of college physical education students and improve their learning outcomes. Based on the perspective of the self-determination theory, this study explores the influence of “Small Private Online Course + flipped classroom” teaching on the learning motivation of students majoring in physical education and profoundly analyzes the influencing factors and promotion paths of learning motivation using this model.Materials and methodsA total of four classes of physical education majors in a university were selected and (...) randomly divided into an experimental group and a control group. The experimental group received “SPOC + flipped classroom” teaching, the control group received traditional teaching. Before and after the 16-week intervention, learning motivation, teacher support perception, basic psychological need satisfaction, and academic emotions of the 64 students were measured, and the data were analyzed by repeated-measures analysis of variance and partial least square regression.Results The instructional intervention reduced non-regulation, external regulation, and introjected regulation, while increased identified regulation, intrinsic regulation, and self-determination levels in the students. The levels of non-regulation, external regulation, identified regulation, and self-determination were also significantly different from those of the control group. After the intervention, the scores of support for autonomy, support for competence, support for relatedness, and need for relatedness in the experimental group were significantly higher than those in the control group. Support for autonomy, support for competence, support for relatedness, need for competence and need for relatedness positively predicted the self-determination level, and intrinsic regulation and identified regulation negatively predicted non-regulation, external regulation, and introjected regulation.Conclusion“SPOC + flipped classroom” teaching has a positive impact on students’ learning motivation of basketball skills and promotes students’ motivation autonomy. The improvement of support for autonomy, support for competence, support for relatedness, need for competence, and need for relatedness may be related to the improvement of learning motivation of college students majoring in Physical Education. “SPOC + flipped classroom” teaching enables students to obtain more demand satisfaction by giving them more demand support, while demand support and demand satisfaction can promote the internalization of learning motivation so that students can maintain high autonomy motivation. (shrink)

COVID-19 often manifests with different outcomes in different patients, highlighting the complexity of the host-pathogen interactions involved in manifestations of the disease at the molecular and cellular levels. In this paper, we propose a set of postulates and a framework for systematically understanding complex molecular host-pathogen interaction networks. Specifically, we first propose four host-pathogen interaction (HPI) postulates as the basis for understanding molecular and cellular host-pathogen interactions and their relations to disease outcomes. These four postulates cover the evolutionary dispositions involved (...) in HPIs, the dynamic nature of HPI outcomes, roles that HPI components may occupy leading to such outcomes, and HPI checkpoints that are critical for specific disease outcomes. Based on these postulates, an HPI Postulate and Ontology (HPIPO) framework is proposed to apply interoperable ontologies to systematically model and represent various granular details and knowledge within the scope of the HPI postulates, in a way that will support AI-ready data standardization, sharing, integration, and analysis. As a demonstration, the HPI postulates and the HPIPO framework were applied to study COVID-19 with the Coronavirus Infectious Disease Ontology (CIDO), leading to a novel approach to rational design of drug/vaccine cocktails aimed at interrupting processes occurring at critical host-coronavirus interaction checkpoints. Furthermore, the host-coronavirus protein-protein interactions (PPIs) relevant to COVID-19 were predicted and evaluated based on prior knowledge of curated PPIs and domain-domain interactions, and how such studies can be further explored with the HPI postulates and the HPIPO framework is discussed. (shrink)

Host-microbiome interactions (HMIs) are critical for the modulation of biological processes and are associated with several diseases, and extensive HMI studies have generated large amounts of data. We propose that the logical representation of the knowledge derived from these data and the standardized representation of experimental variables and processes can foster integration of data and reproducibility of experiments and thereby further HMI knowledge discovery. A community-based Ontology of Host-Microbiome Interactions (OHMI) was developed following the OBO Foundry principles. OHMI leverages established (...) ontologies to create logically structured representations of microbiomes, microbial taxonomy, host species, host anatomical entities, and HMIs under different conditions and associated study protocols and types of data analysis and experimental results. (shrink)

With the rapid development of Internet of Things technology, RFID technology has been widely used in various fields. In order to optimize the RFID system hardware deployment strategy and improve the deployment efficiency, the prediction of the RFID system identification rate has become a new challenge. In this paper, a neighborhood rough set and random forest combination model is proposed to predict the identification rate of an RFID system. Firstly, the initial influencing factors of the RFID system identification rate are (...) reduced using neighborhood rough set theory combined with the principle of heuristic attribute reduction of neighborhood weighted dependency, thus obtaining a kernel factor subset. Secondly, a random forest prediction model is established based on the kernel factor subset, and a confusion matrix is established using out-of-bag data to evaluate the prediction results. The test is conducted under the constructed RFID experimental environment, whose results showed that the model can predict the identification rate of the RFID system in a fast and efficient way, and the classification accuracy can reach 90.5%. It can effectively guide the hardware deployment and communication parameter protocol setting of the system and improve the system performance. Compared with BP neural network and other prediction models, NRS-RF has shorter prediction time and faster calculation speed. Finally, the validity of the proposed model was verified by the RFID intelligent archives management platform. (shrink)

Understanding the neural basis of schizophrenia (SZ) is important for shedding light on the neurobiological mechanisms underlying this mental disorder. Structural and functional alterations in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), hippocampus, and medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) have been implicated in the neurobiology of SZ. However, the effective connectivity among them in SZ remains unclear. The current study investigated how neuronal pathways involving these regions were affected in first-episode SZ using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Forty-nine patients (...) with a first-episode of psychosis and diagnosis of SZ—according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision—were studied. Fifty healthy controls (HCs) were included for comparison. All subjects underwent resting state fMRI. We used spectral dynamic causal modeling (DCM) to estimate directed connections among the bilateral ACC, DLPFC, hippocampus, and MPFC. We characterized the differences using Bayesian parameter averaging (BPA) in addition to classical inference (t-test). In addition to common effective connectivity in these two groups, HCs displayed widespread significant connections predominantly involved in ACC not detected in SZ patients, but SZ showed few connections. Based on BPA results, SZ patients exhibited anterior cingulate cortico-prefrontal-hippocampal hyperconnectivity, as well as ACC-related and hippocampal-dorsolateral prefrontal-medial prefrontal hypoconnectivity. In summary, spectral DCM revealed the pattern of effective connectivity involving ACC in patients with first-episode SZ. This study provides a potential link between SZ and dysfunction of ACC, creating an ideal situation to associate mechanisms behind SZ with aberrant connectivity among these cognition and emotion-related regions. (shrink)

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)

As a way of human-computer interaction, game-based assessment is more suitable for young children because it is situational, interesting, and effective. National identity is an important factor affecting the overall development of young children and the future development of a country, which has attracted extensive attention from researchers. Nevertheless, the assessment of young children's national identity is still based on traditional evaluation, including questionnaires and interviews, which have the limitations of being inaccurate, dull, and time-consuming. To understand the characteristics of (...) children's national identity, it is necessary to use scientific and interactive assessment methods. The present study investigated whether the game-based assessment we developed specifically would be an appropriate tool to measure young children's national identity. The results show that the game-based assessment had good item discrimination. Exploratory factor analysis demonstrated the game covered three aspects: national cognition mastery, national emotion engagement, and national behavior tendency. The confirmatory factor analysis suggested that the model with three factors fit the data well. The internal consistency, the split-half reliability, and the test-retest reliability meet standards. Overall, the results indicated that this game can be successfully used to assess young children's national identity with acceptable validity and reliability. Our study provides strong evidence for the use of human-computer interaction in child measurement. These findings are the first to demonstrate the promise of game-based assessment in assessing children's national identity reliably and effectively. (shrink)

Most theories of slurs fall into one of two families: those which understand slurring terms to involve special descriptive/informational content (however conveyed), and those which understand them to encode special emotive/expressive content. Our view is that both offer essential insights, but that part of what sets slurs apart is use-theoretic content. In particular, we urge that slurring words belong at the intersection of a number of categories in a sociolinguistic register taxonomy, one that usually includes [+slang] and [+vulgar] and always (...) includes [-polite] and [+derogatory]. Thus, e.g., what distinguishes ‘Chinese’ from ‘chink’ is neither a peculiar sort of descriptive nor emotional content, but rather the fact that ‘chink’ is lexically marked as belonging to different registers than ‘Chinese’. It is, moreover, partly such facts which makes slurring ethically unacceptable. (shrink)

It is interesting to explore the effects of second language acquisition on anatomical change in brain at different stages for the neural structural adaptations are dynamic. Short-term Chinese training effects on brain anatomical structures in alphabetic language speakers have been already studied. However, little is known about the adaptations of the gray matter induced by acquiring Chinese language for a relatively long learning period in adult alphabetic language speakers. To explore this issue, we recruited 38 Indian overseas students in China (...) as our subjects. The learned group included 17 participants who had learned Mandarin Chinese for an average of 3.24 years and achieved intermediate Chinese language proficiency. The control group included 21 subjects who had no knowledge about Chinese. None of the participants had any experience in learning logographic and tonal language before Chinese learning. We found that the learned group had significantly greater gray matter volume in the left lingual gyrus compared with the control group; the Chinese characters’ reading accuracy was significantly and positively correlated to the GMV in the left LG and fusiform gyrus across the two groups; and in the learned group, the duration of Chinese learning was significantly and positively correlated with the GMV in the left inferior frontal gyrus after correction for multiple comparisons with small volume corrections. Our structural imaging findings are in line with the functional imaging studies reporting increased brain activation induced by Chinese acquisition in alphabetic language speakers. The regional gray matter changes reflected the additional requirements imposed by the more difficult processing of Chinese characters and tones. The present study also show that the biological bases of the adaptations induced by a relatively long period of Chinese learning were limited in the common areas for first and foreign language processing. (shrink)

Biological pacemakers can be achieved by various gene‐based and cell‐based approaches. Embryonic stem cells (ESCs)‐derived pacemaker cells might be the most promising way to form biological pacemakers, but there are challenges as to how to control the differentiation of ESCs and to overcome the neoplasia, proarrhythmia, or immunogenicity resulting from the use of ESCs. As a potential approach to solve these difficult problems, tissue‐engineering techniques may provide a precise control on the different cell components of multicellular aggregates and the forming (...) of a construct with‐defined architectures and functional properties. The combined interactions between ESC‐derived pacemaker cells, supporting cells, and matrices may completely reproduce pacemaker properties and result in a steady functional unit to induce rhythmic electrical and contractile activities. As ESCs have a high capability for self‐renewal, proliferation, and potential differentiation, we hypothesize that ESCs can be used as a source of pacemaker cells for tissue‐engineering applications and the ambitious goal of biological cardiac pacemakers may ultimately be achieved with ESCs via tissue‐engineering technology. (shrink)

Biological pacemakers can be achieved by various gene‐based and cell‐based approaches. Embryonic stem cells (ESCs)‐derived pacemaker cells might be the most promising way to form biological pacemakers, but there are challenges as to how to control the differentiation of ESCs and to overcome the neoplasia, proarrhythmia, or immunogenicity resulting from the use of ESCs. As a potential approach to solve these difficult problems, tissue‐engineering techniques may provide a precise control on the different cell components of multicellular aggregates and the forming (...) of a construct with‐defined architectures and functional properties. The combined interactions between ESC‐derived pacemaker cells, supporting cells, and matrices may completely reproduce pacemaker properties and result in a steady functional unit to induce rhythmic electrical and contractile activities. As ESCs have a high capability for self‐renewal, proliferation, and potential differentiation, we hypothesize that ESCs can be used as a source of pacemaker cells for tissue‐engineering applications and the ambitious goal of biological cardiac pacemakers may ultimately be achieved with ESCs via tissue‐engineering technology. -/- . (shrink)

The current COVID-19 pandemic and the previous SARS/MERS outbreaks of 2003 and 2012 have resulted in a series of major global public health crises. We argue that in the interest of developing effective and safe vaccines and drugs and to better understand coronaviruses and associated disease mechenisms it is necessary to integrate the large and exponentially growing body of heterogeneous coronavirus data. Ontologies play an important role in standard-based knowledge and data representation, integration, sharing, and analysis. Accordingly, we initiated the (...) development of the community-based Coronavirus Infectious Disease Ontology in early 2020. -/- As an Open Biomedical Ontology (OBO) library ontology, CIDO is open source and interoperable with other existing OBO ontologies. CIDO is aligned with the Basic Formal Ontology and Viral Infectious Disease Ontology. CIDO has imported terms from over 30 OBO ontologies. For example, CIDO imports all SARS-CoV-2 protein terms from the Protein Ontology, COVID-19-related phenotype terms from the Human Phenotype Ontology, and over 100 COVID-19 terms for vaccines (both authorized and in clinical trial) from the Vaccine Ontology. CIDO systematically represents variants of SARS-CoV-2 viruses and over 300 amino acid substitutions therein, along with over 300 diagnostic kits and methods. CIDO also describes hundreds of host-coronavirus protein-protein interactions (PPIs) and the drugs that target proteins in these PPIs. CIDO has been used to model COVID-19 related phenomena in areas such as epidemiology. The scope of CIDO was evaluated by visual analysis supported by a summarization network method. CIDO has been used in various applications such as term standardization, inference, natural language processing (NLP) and clinical data integration. We have applied the amino acid variant knowledge present in CIDO to analyze differences between SARS-CoV-2 Delta and Omicron variants. CIDO's integrative host-coronavirus PPIs and drug-target knowledge has also been used to support drug repurposing for COVID-19 treatment. -/- CIDO represents entities and relations in the domain of coronavirus diseases with a special focus on COVID-19. It supports shared knowledge representation, data and metadata standardization and integration, and has been used in a range of applications. (shrink)

In this paper we investigate whether independent directors’ attendance at board meetings enhances investor protection using a difference-in-difference approach. We find that independent directors’ attendance alleviates tunneling. This effect is more pronounced in non-state-owned enterprises than in state-owned enterprises. The reinforcement of external supervision substitutes for the role of independent directors’ attendance and this substitution effect is more significant in non-SOEs. Together, these results imply that independent directors’ attendance at board meetings can play an important role in protecting investors, especially (...) in non-SOEs and when external supervision is weak. This paper sheds new light on independent directors’ function in corporate governance, and has implications for institutional improvements. (shrink)