ObjectiveNumerous studies have demonstrated that religious belief is associated with prosocial behavior. However, how do they maintain cooperation in societies with a predominating atheist population, such as China? Different primings and a quasi-experiment are used to examine the link between communist authority and prosocial behaviors among college students in China.Materials and methodsIn Study 1, the subjects’ communist authority in the university lab was primed by a communist-authority video. In Study 2, we compared the priming effects of communist authority and religion (...) on prosocial intention. Study 3 investigated the priming effect of communist authority on prosocial behaviors by employing a scrambled sentence task in the university lab. A quasi-experiment was conducted in Study 4.ResultsResults showed that communist-authority, a reminder of secular authorities, increased prosociality among college students. And empathy moderated the relationship between secular authorities and prosociality in Study 3 and Study 4.DiscussionCommunist authority, a secular authority prime, has a positive effect on promoting prosocial behaviors. These results provided a feasible yet novel way to reveal the mechanism of the relationship between secular authorities and prosociality in China. (shrink)

As global warming has received widespread attention, the disclosure of firms’ carbon information has been expected by increasing stakeholders. This study extends the previous literature on the determinants of firms’ carbon information disclosure by examining the influence of academic independent directors and Confucianism on the quality of carbon information disclosure. Using a sample of Chinese listed firms in the CSI 300 Index during the period of 2012–2018, our empirical results show that academic independent directors have a significantly positive association with (...) the quality of carbon information disclosure. The results also reveal that Confucianism positively affects the quality of carbon information disclosure. Moreover, Confucianism positively moderates the relationship between academic independent directors and the quality of carbon information disclosure. The results imply that Confucianism, as an informal system, can promote the governance effect of academic independent directors on firms’ carbon information disclosure behaviour. Our findings offer shareholders, regulators, and other stakeholders an integrating perspective on motivating firms to disclose high quality carbon information. (shrink)

Airway mucin secretion is important pathophysiologically and as a model of polarized epithelial regulated exocytosis. We find the trafficking protein, SNAP23, selectively expressed in secretory cells compared with ciliated and basal cells of airway epithelium by immunohistochemistry and FACS, suggesting that SNAP23 functions in regulated but not constitutive epithelial secretion. Heterozygous SNAP23 deletant mutant mice show spontaneous accumulation of intracellular mucin, indicating a defect in baseline secretion. However mucins are released from perfused tracheas of mutant and wild-type mice at the (...) same rate, suggesting that increased intracellular stores balance reduced release efficiency to yield a fully compensated baseline steady state. In contrast, acute stimulated release of intracellular mucin from mutant mice is impaired whether measured by a static imaging assay 5 min after exposure to the secretagogue ATP or by kinetic analysis of mucins released from perfused tracheas during the first 10 min of ATP exposure. Together, these data indicate that increased intracellular stores cannot fully compensate for the defect in release efficiency during intense stimulation. The lungs of mutant mice develop normally and clear bacteria and instilled polystyrene beads comparable to WT mice, consistent with these functions depending on baseline secretion that is fully compensated. (shrink)

A generalization of a Burridge-Knopoff spring-block model is investigated to illustrate the dynamics of transform faults. The model can undergo Hopf bifurcation and fold bifurcation of limit cycles. Considering the cyclical nature of the spring stiffness, the model with periodic perturbation is further explored via a continuation technique and numerical bifurcation analysis. It is shown that the periodic perturbation induces abundant dynamics, the existence, the switch, and the coexistence of multiple attractors including periodic solutions with various periods, quasiperiodic solutions, chaotic (...) solutions through torus destruction, or cascade of period doublings. Throughout the results obtained, one can see that the system manifests complex dynamical behaviors such as chaos, self-organized criticality, and the transition of dynamical behaviors when it comes to periodic perturbations. Even very small variation of a parameter can result in radical changes of the dynamics, which provides a new insight into the fault dynamics. (shrink)

Background: Cognitive impairment is one of the core symptoms of schizophrenia, which is considered to be significantly correlated to prognosis. In recent years, many studies have suggested that metabolic disorders could be related to a higher risk of cognitive defects in a general setting. However, there has been limited evidence on the association between metabolism and cognitive function in patients with early-stage schizophrenia.Methods: In this study, we recruited 172 patients with early-stage schizophrenia. Relevant metabolic parameters were examined and cognitive function (...) was evaluated by using the MATRICS Consensus Cognitive Battery (MCCB) to investigate the relationship between metabolic disorder and cognitive impairment.Results: Generally, the prevalence of cognitive impairment among patients in our study was 84.7% (144/170), which was much higher than that in the general population. Compared with the general Chinese setting, the study population presented a higher proportion of metabolic disturbance. Patients who had metabolic disturbance showed no significant differences on cognitive function compared with the other patients. Correlation analysis showed that metabolic status was significantly correlated with cognitive function as assessed by the cognitive domain scores (p < 0.05), while such association was not found in further multiple regression analysis.Conclusions: Therefore, there may be no association between metabolic disorder and cognitive impairment in patients with early-stage schizophrenia.Trial Registration: Clinicaltrials.gov, NCT02880462. Registered August 26, 2016. (shrink)

Many scholars have conducted in-depth research on the evaluation and prediction of scholars’ scientific impact and meanwhile discovered various factors that affect the success of scholars. Among all these relevant factors, scholars’ ages have been universally acknowledged as one of the most important factors for it can shed light on many practical issues, e.g., finding supervisors, discovering rising stars, and research funding or award applications. However, due to the inaccessibility or the privacy issues of acquiring scholars’ personal data, there is (...) little research to explore the true ages of scholars currently. Alternatively, scholars’ publications’ information can be obtained through various digital libraries. Inspired by this fact, we propose a novel scholar’s age prediction method based on their articles’ information. Our method first classifies factors that affect scholars’ ages into intuitive and complex types according to their computational complexity and then apply machine learning algorithms to predict the ages of scholars based on these factors. The experimental results on the real dataset demonstrate that our method can effectively predict the true ages of scholars. Given that there is no completely accurate dataset because of the continuous publication of academic papers, we then apply our method on the incomplete dataset. Nevertheless, our method still has high prediction accuracy in such situations. (shrink)

BackgroundPrevious studies on voxel-based morphometry have found that there were gray matter alterations in patients with hepatic encephalopathy. However, the reported results were inconsistent and lack a quantitative review. Therefore, this study aims for a quantitative meta-analysis of VBM analysis on patients with HE.MethodsThe studies in our meta-analysis were collected from Pubmed, Web of Science, and Embase, which were published from January 1947 to October 2021. The seed-based d mapping method was applied to quantitatively estimate the regional gray matter abnormalities (...) in patients with HE. A meta-regression analysis was applied to evaluate the relationship between plasma ammonia and gray matter alteration.ResultsThere were nine studies, with sixteen datasets consisting of 333 participants with HE and 429 healthy controls. The pooled and subgroup meta-analyses showed an increase in gray matter volume in the bilateral thalamus and the calcarine fissure but a decrease in the GMV in the bilateral insula, the basal ganglia, the anterior cingulate gyrus, and the cerebellum. The meta-regression showed that plasma ammonia was positively associated with the GMV in the left thalamus but was negatively associated with the GMV in the cerebellum and the bilateral striatum.ConclusionGray matter volume in patients with HE largely varied and could be affected by plasma ammonia. The findings of this study could help us to better understand the pathophysiology of cognitive dysfunction in patients with HE. (shrink)

There exists a serious shortage of organs for transplantation in China, more so than in most Western countries. Confucianism has been commonly used as the cultural and ethical reason to explain the reluctance of Chinese and other East-Asian people to donate organs for medical purposes. It is asserted that the Confucian emphasis on xiao (filial piety) requires individuals to ensure body intactness at death. However, based on the original texts of classical Confucianism and other primary materials, we refute this popular (...) view. We base our position on the related Confucian norms of filial piety and ren (humaneness, humanity or benevolence), the tension between differentiated love and universal love, and belief in the goodness of human nature. In light of this, we argue that the Confucian ethical outlook actually calls for organ donation at an individual level, and supports an opt-out (presumed consent) system at the level of social policy. Furthermore, because the popular view is based on a number of dominant but misleading modes of thinking about cultural differences, our revisionist account of Confucian moral duties regarding organ donation has implications for developing a more adequate transcultural and global bioethics. These will be discussed and expanded upon. (shrink)

Reinforcement learning relies on the reward prediction error (RPE) signals conveyed by the midbrain dopamine system. Previous studies showed that dopamine plays an important role in both positive and negative reinforcement. However, whether various reinforcement processes will induce distinct learning signals is still unclear. In a probabilistic learning task, we examined RPE signals in different reinforcement types using an electrophysiology index, namely, the feedback-related negativity (FRN). Ninety-four participants were randomly assigned into four groups: base (no money incentive), positive reinforcement (presentation (...) of money rewards), negative reinforcement (removal of money losses), and combined reinforcement (money rewards and removal of money losses) groups. In addition, in order to evaluate the engagement of emotional activity in the different reinforcement processes, Positive and Negative Affect Schedule-Expanded Form (PANAS-X) scales were applied before and after the experiment to detect the emotional changes. The results showed that there was no difference between groups in the dopamine-related learning bias. However, compared to the other three groups, negative reinforcement elicited smaller FRN (the difference-wave measure) during the learning, stronger positive affect and joviality, and less fatigue after the learning, in which the difference between the negative and positive reinforcement groups was smaller. The results indicated that pure avoidance motivation may induce distinct emotional fluctuations, which influence the feedback processing. (shrink)

Ben shu gong fen san bu: di yi bu hui gui zhen wo, di er bu hui gui tian di, di san bu hui gui tai ji. Nei rong bao kuo: lun sheng ming; sheng ming yu shi ge; sheng ming yu yin yue; xian dai ren sheng ming de yan bian; wo shi shui, tian di yu wo deng.

本书写作受中山大学人文社会科学发展基金重大项目资助,本书出版受华夏英才基金资助。.

现代医学在技术上高度发展,却与因人文精神的失落造成的职业冷漠形成巨大反差。本书呼吁对医学的功能与本质进行反思,呼唤医学保持应有的人性温度。.

本书以中国历史发展为线索,对各历史时期有代表性的思想家、思想流派和著名文人的人生理论进行了深入的探讨。.

Ben shu fen li shi yu wen hua nei han,Shan zong li shi yu wen hua,Dao jiao li shi yu wen hua,Tian ren he yi de si xiang nei han deng duo ge lan mu lai jie shao ru jia si xiang.

本书分为两篇,第一篇:中国人精神世界的历史概括——究天人之际,通古今之变;第二篇:王船山《读通鉴论》(包括《宋论》)启动了现代年青人走上革命道路。.

本书收胡适的《一念》之诗引发奇想,进入时间遂道,直面当今公众,与中外哲人对话。书中融记叙、议论、描写于一体,图文并茂,实中领略到深刻的人生哲理。.

本书从生存论角度对人文科学与自然科学之间的关系进行研究,以大陆的理性主义和英美的经验主义这西方哲学的两大传统的为背景,把握人文科学与自然科学的本质,并做出批判。.