Objects: To evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of in-bed wearable elbow robot training for motor recovery in patients with early and late subacute stroke.Methods: Eleven in-patient stroke survivors received 15 sessions of training over about 4 weeks of hospital stay. During each hourly training, participants received passive stretching and active movement training with motivating games using a wearable elbow rehabilitation robot. Isometric maximum muscle strength of elbow flexors and extensors was evaluated using the robot at the beginning and end of (...) each training session. Clinical measures including Fugl-Meyer Assessment of upper extremity, Motricity Index for upper extremities, Modified Ashworth Scale were measured at baseline, after the 4-week training program, and at a 1-month follow-up. The muscle strength recovery curve over the training period was characterized as a logarithmic learning curve with three parameters.Results: At the baseline, participants had moderate to severe upper limb motor impairment {FMA-UE [median ]: 28 } and mild spasticity in elbow flexors {MAS [median ]: 0 }. After about 4 weeks of training, significant improvements were observed in FMA-UE and MI, and the improvements were sustained at the follow-up. The elbow flexors MVC significantly increased by 1.93 Nm and the elbow extensor MVC increased by 0.68 Nm. Muscle strength recovery curve showed that patients with severe upper limb motor impairment had a greater improvement rate in elbow flexor strength than those with moderate motor impairment.Conclusion: In-bed wearable elbow robotic rehabilitation is feasible and effective in improving biomechanical and clinical outcomes for early and late subacute stroke in-patients. Results from the pilot study suggested that patients with severe upper limb motor impairment may benefit more from the robot training compared to those with moderate impairment. (shrink)

Joining the dialogue on the role of management scholars, we propose to cultivate all-round scholars to fulfill the needs of our stakeholders; only by becoming responsible scholars can we achieve responsible scholarship.

Evidence supports predictive roles of non-social smartphone use for smartphone addiction, but the relationship of social smartphone use and smartphone addiction is unclear. This study explored whether social smartphone use has a double-edged impact on smartphone addiction. Using data from a sample of 909 Chinese undergraduates, we tested a parallel mediation model that considered online social support and realistic social support as mediators. As predicted, social smartphone use weakened smartphone addiction through realistic social support and contributed to smartphone addiction through (...) online social support. Moreover, we tested the moderating role of agreeableness in the mediation path of online social support. Agreeableness only moderated the indirect effects. Specifically, the predictive effects of online social support on smartphone addiction was greater for lower rather than higher agreeableness. The results suggest that social needs play an important role in the formation of smartphone addiction. Several limitations and implications are also discussed herein. (shrink)

The effect of authentic leadership and leader competency on employee job performance has received growing attention in the past decades; however, few studies have simultaneously integrated these two leadership perspectives. We have thus developed a mediated moderation model to test the interactive effect of authentic leadership and competency on followers’ job performance through work engagement. Based on a sample of 248 subordinate–supervisor pairs, hierarchical regression analyses reveal that authentic leadership positively relates to followers’ task performance and organizational citizenship behavior ; (...) leader competency moderates the relationship between authentic leadership and OCB; and followers’ work engagement mediates the main effect of authentic leadership and the interactive effect of authentic leadership and competency on followers’ task performance and OCB. All the three results are consistent with our hypotheses. (shrink)

College students have gradually become the main force of entrepreneurship in mass entrepreneurship and innovation. However, their entrepreneurial performance was not as good as expected. We have carried out research to analyze the predictive factors of entrepreneurial performance of college students and put forward targeted suggestions, hoping to be helpful to improve their entrepreneurial performance of them. Based on questionnaire data obtained from 2,097 college student entrepreneurs, this study uses the structural equation model to analyze the predictive factors of the (...) entrepreneurial performance of college students. The survey results of the questionnaire show that both personal and behavioral factors influence the entrepreneurial performance of college students. In this study, personal factors in this study mainly include entrepreneurial willingness, personality, and ability of entrepreneurs. Behavioral factors mainly refer to the positive behaviors of entrepreneurs that can affect entrepreneurial performance. (shrink)

Research productivity is an important criterion for the university to assess teachers. Studies about factors that affect teachers’ research productivity are increasing nowadays. It is generally agreed that academics’ research productivity depends on how much mentorship is provided to them and how the current working environment is mediated by their research motivation and self-efficacy. Despite the increasing amount of the literature along this line, we know little about what kinds of situations that Chinese university English as a foreign language (EFL) (...) teachers are in and how they regard the importance of mentorship and what roles their working environments would play in affecting their research productivity. To fill the research gap, we utilized the snowball method to collect the survey data from 546 Chinese EFL tertiary teachers. The results show that mentorship is not correlated with research productivity while the working environment has a positive direct correlation with it. Both motivation and self-efficacy mediate the working environment and research productivity significantly. Specifically, only extrinsic motivation has a negative mediation influence on teachers’ research productivity; teachers’ intrinsic motivation and self-efficacy play a positive mediation role in affecting their research productivity. (shrink)

Since the 1990s, grammatical complexity has received substantial research attention in applied linguistics. The representation of grammatical complexity has expanded in L2 writing with the application of diverse measures in empirical studies in the recent three decades. In response to this situation, we found it important to revisit grammatical complexity, and an exploratory factor analysis was applied to explore latent dimensions of grammatical complexity in L2 writing. We analyzed Lu’s 14 grammatical complexity measures in the L2 corpus of the British (...) Academic Written English Corpus. We then proposed a four-factor model with “clausal subordination,” “phrasal construction”, “global length unit” and “others.” The four factors generally align with the types of grammatical complexity proposed in Lu, but differences on six measures are also found. Noteworthy points were discussed to interpret the reasons behind the differences. Research implications are provided to show further research directions. (shrink)

Model predictive control technology can effectively reduce the bad effect caused by inaccurate data prediction in microgrid energy management problem. However, the use of MPC technology needs to dynamically select an optimal solution from the Pareto solution set to implement, which needs the participant of the decision-makers frequently. In order to reduce the burden on decision-makers, we designed a knee point-based evolutionary multiobjective optimization algorithm, termed KBEMO. Knee point is the solution on Pareto front with the maximum marginal utility, which (...) is considered as the preferred solution if there is no other preference. This algorithm focuses on obtaining the knee region and automatically outputs knee points after the optimization. By combining this algorithm with MPC technology, it can effectively reduce the amount of computational consumption and obtain better convergence. Experimental results show that this method is more competitive than the traditional single-objective MPC method. (shrink)

Using listed firms in China over the period 2010–2018, we investigate the association between directors’ network and quality of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure from the lens of resource-based view. We find a significantly positive effect of directors’ network centrality on the CSR disclosure quality, and the effect is more pronounced when the firm (1) invests less in advertising; (2) is followed by less analysts; (3) is less financially constrained; and (4) has no assurance of sustainability report. Furthermore, we document (...) that independent directors’ network centrality is positively associated with CSR disclosure quality. Our findings have important implication for practitioners, policy makers, and regulators. (shrink)

Mental health has been declared as the essential component of overall human wellbeing. However, there has been a very steep rate of depression and anxiety in students that exhibit their social and personal burdens. It has been widely accepted that the wellbeing and mental health of individuals are a mix of psychological, genetic, social, lifestyle factors, and environmental exposure. Due to the pandemic, the shift from traditional classroom learning to e-learning has also disturbed the mental health of students, which consequently (...) affects environmental stability. The current study has also measured the effect on the mental health of e-learning behaviors. The population of the study was the undergraduate students enrolled in the colleges of China, and they were chosen via convenient sampling. The findings of the study show that mental health has a significant positive effect on the e-learning behavior of the students and consequently affects environmental sustainability. Educational institutions are improving their e-learning programs by understanding the preferences and challenges of students regarding online learning. Educational institutions should revise their policies on online education and teaching methodologies. Furthermore, the current study has taken undergraduate students as the sample. In future studies, these relationships can be checked in higher education as well. (shrink)

The impact of integrity on organizational and/or interpersonal relationships is well documented in the literature but its influence on customer relationships such as consumer trust and relationship commitment has been largely overlooked. The present study attempts to fill this research gap by examining the effect of integrity on consumer relationship commitment in a cross-cultural setting. Survey data from the United States and China were used to test the hypothesized relationships. The results show that integrity has significant impacts on both consumer (...) trust and relationship commitment, and culture significantly moderates the effect of integrity on consumer commitment. Specifically, integrity was found to affect American respondents’ relationship commitment both directly and indirectly with the direct effect being greater and the indirect effect being smaller relative to those of Chinese respondents. In contrast, integrity had only indirect effect on relationship commitment with Chinese consumers, highlighting the importance of consumer trust in the integrity-commitment relationship. The implications for research and business practice were discussed. (shrink)

Photovoltaic power forecasting can provide strong support for the safe operation of the power system. Existing forecasting methods are ineffective for grid scheduling decisions or risk analysis. The novel multicluster interval prediction method is proposed to consider the volatility and randomness of PV power output. First, this method utilizes the sparse autoencoder and Bayesian regularized NARX network for point forecasting of PV power. Second, density peak clustering improved by kernel Mahalanobis distance is applied to classify the dataset into multiple clusters, (...) including forecasting error and meteorological factors. Finally, the joint probability density is established by multivariate kernel density estimation to accomplish the PV power interval prediction. The proposed hybrid method is applied for the interval prediction of PV power at Yulara, Australia. Comparative research of point forecasting is implemented to evaluate the machine learning and deep learning methods, with the proposed SAE-BRNARX under four different periods. Results shows that the average values of nRMSE, MRE, nMAE, and R2 for the four periods are 4.45%, 0.90%, −0.15%, 3.39%, and 95.93%, respectively. Moreover, the results of interval prediction obtained by the other interval prediction approaches are compared with the proposed KMDDPC-MKDE. It shows that the average values of PICP, PINAW, ACE, and nMPICD for four periods are 93.93%, 9.50%, 3.93%, and 7.10% at 90% confidence level, respectively. Outcomes demonstrate that the proposed method can obtain more accuracy, a higher coverage rate, narrower average bandwidth, and a closer distance between the middle of interval and actual value than other methods. (shrink)

This study contributes to our understanding of organizational identity through dichotomous motivations of altruism and egoism in nonprofit organizations. By applying an empirical analysis of NPO members, organizational identity is found to be well explained by altruistic motivation and egoistic motivation. More importantly, this study finds that collectivism positively moderates the relationship between altruistic motivation and organizational identity, and negatively moderates the relationship between egoistic motivation and organizational identity. It is noticeable that altruistic motivations have a stronger impact on organizational (...) identity when collectivism is high, while egoistic motivations have a stronger impact on organizational identity when collectivism is low. Finally, this study generates helpful management implications based on research findings. It is suggested that the managers of NPOs could enhance members’ organizational identity by taking motivations and collectivism into consideration, that is to say, in order to build up organizational identity of NPO members, both righteousness and shared interests matter simultaneously. (shrink)

Nowadays, the development of human society and daily life are inseparable from the power supply. Therefore, people also put forward higher requirements for the reliability of distribution network, but power companies can only passively deal with distribution network failures, which is a bottleneck for the improvement of distribution network reliability. The Internet of Things is the best solution for online equipment status monitoring and basic data sharing for large, widely distributed, relatively fixed, and large numbers of equipment. The construction of (...) the IoT for power distribution equipment faces many important problems, including the selection of networking, equipment selection, and interaction standards. When researching the implementation plan, research on the distribution of IoT market was carried out. Based on the grid, the idea of optimizing the investment selection plan of the power distribution using IoT was discussed, and a result verification model was established. After the completion of the theoretical part, a case study of medium-voltage distribution grid equipment management and medium-voltage distribution network equipment management based on the grid was carried out by taking a real enterprise application situation as an example. Realizing fault diagnosis of distribution network will not only provide decision support for operation and maintenance of distribution network for power companies, but also have great economic and social benefits. Aiming at the shortcomings of single data mining method in distribution network fault diagnosis, hybrid data mining method is proposed. First, rough set theory is used to reduce the original fault data and form a simplified rule set. Because of the non-linearity of distribution network fault and the strong learning ability, adaptability, and robustness of Bayesian network, Bayesian network can be used to classify distribution network faults. Therefore, a simplified fault diagnosis system is established in this paper, and its correctness is confirmed. Then, the learning and training are carried out by using Bayesian network to call the simplest rule set, which has the characteristics of short learning and training time and high diagnostic accuracy. (shrink)

At the beginning of 2020, to stop the spread of the coronavirus disease to the campus, the Ministry of Education of China launched a policy “Suspension of classes without suspending schooling” for the spring semester of 2020. However, the drawbacks of online teaching forced us to modify teaching strategies during this special period, especially developing courses that are suitable for student learning at home and improving their key competencies. In order to solve these problems, this study introduces some theoretical exploration (...) and practical work of curriculum design under the guidance of thinking-based instruction theory during the pandemic. We firstly introduce TBIT, and elaborate on the curriculum design under the TBIT theoretical frame. Then we describe a series of TBIT-based micro-courses with the pandemic as background. A descriptive study is reported to illustrate the effects of three micro-courses. Results showed that, compared to national curricula, the TBIT-based micro-courses not only improved the course quality but also enhanced students’ motivation and facilitated their online learning behavior for the online courses. The current study has important implications for how to design effective and interesting online courses suitable under pandemic and capable of improving students’ thinking abilities and key competencies. (shrink)

This study investigated a conceptual model by testing how parental romantic relationships influenced the depressive symptoms of grown-up children and whether the constructive communication patterns of grown-up children and romantic relationships played mediation effects within it. A total of 421 Chinese participants were enrolled in the study. The level of depressive symptoms, romantic relationship satisfaction and closeness, couple communication patterns, and parental romantic relationships were measured via self-report questionnaires. According to the results, the structural equation modeling analysis verified that the (...) severity of participants’ depressive symptoms was negatively associated with the parental romantic relationship and that the association was mediated by participants’ constructive communication patterns and their own romantic relationships. Furthermore, compared with nondepressed participants, depressed participants were less satisfied with their parental romantic relationships, exhibited fewer constructive communication patterns, and were more distant and unsatisfied with current romantic relationships. (shrink)

Resumen: La ola creciente de la China-chic proporciona un nuevo modo de presentación para la excelente cultura tradicional, permitiendo a la gente volver a ser testigo de la vitalidad innovadora de la cultura local y brindando una nueva vía de creación para la cultura popular rural. En este contexto, el diseño con el tema de la cultura popular rural se enfrenta tanto a nuevas oportunidades como a nuevos retos. En este artículo, basado en el estudio de caso del diseño folclórico (...) rural del Templo señorial del condado de Hexian, en la provincia de Anhui, se analizan brevemente la relación dialéctica y la práctica de la herencia y la innovación en el trabajo de diseño bajo el trasfondo del China-chic. Se propusieron estrategias de diseño innovador para revitalizar el énfasis de la gente en la cultura tradicional, reavivar la atención de la gente hacia la cultura tradicional y ampliar la vía de diseño innovador de una vía de comunicación de la cultura tradicional para promover la transformación creativa y el desarrollo innovador de la cultura tradicional china. (shrink)

Prospect theory predicts a four-fold risk attitude, which means that people are risk seeking for low-probability gain and high-probability loss and risk averse for low-probability loss and high-probability gain because they overweight probability when it is low. The four-fold pattern of risk attitude has been supported by several former studies with mainstream industrialized populations but has never previously been tested in a non-industrialized society. In this work, we examined the robustness of the four-fold risk attitude in the DuLong minority ethnicity (...) in China, which is a small society with only 4,000 members that is isolated from modern civilization. We used simple lotteries for gain and loss with different probabilities to elicit the risk attitude of 37 DuLong villagers. Our results support prospect theory predictions in that DuLong people are risk seeking for low-probability gain and risk averse for low-probability loss. However, although they showed a tendency to decrease their degree of risk seeking for gain, their risk attitude did not reverse when the probability of the prospect increased to 50%. In summary, our results suggest a right-shifted weighting function in this non-industrialized small society. The deviation might be caused by the particular living situation of the DuLong people, their sensitivity to monetary payoffs, and the elicitation procedure. (shrink)

Adopting free word association test, the present study investigated the developmental features of Yi students’ Chinese mental lexicon. Eighty primary school students and 85 senior high school students in two typical Yi-Han bilingual schools in Yuexi County were recruited as the research subjects. With Yi language as their L1, all the participants started learning Chinese after entering primary school. The stimuli were 108 words selected from the 9,000 most frequently used words in modern Chinese, including 36 nouns, 36 verbs, and (...) 36 adjectives. The responses were analyzed using the framework proposed by the responses were analyzed using a three-layer framework. The results showed that the mental lexicon of Yi primary and middle school students were mainly connected with each other by meanings, with form-based connection followed. Compared with previous studies, their phonological associations accounted for a relatively higher proportion, while semantic associations were relatively weakened. Syntagmatic associations were of primary importance, with paradigmatic and encyclopedic associations followed. While syntagmatic relation was centered on determinative and governing associations, paradigmatic relation was dominated by adjacent and reverse associations. The development rate of syntagmatic associations was faster than that of paradigmatic and encyclopedic associations; no significant improvement was found on students’ adjacent, layer, homogeneous and supplement associations from primary school to high school. The findings generate important implications for Yi students’ Chinese language education. (shrink)

With the emergence of clustered, regularly interspaced, short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/CRISPR-associated protein 9 (Cas9) as one of the most promising new gene-editing techniques, scientists are now endeavoring to apply it to various domains. Among all the possible applications, gene editing in human embryos has received the most attention. Against this background, this article carries out a philosophical study on the ethical problems of human embryo gene editing or designing. Arguments against human embryo gene designing include that parents should be prohibited (...) from deciding their children’s future; commodifying children should be prohibited; the natural reproductive process should not be disturbed; and human embryo gene designing might foster discrimination. Arguments for human embryo gene designing include that parents should have the freedom to design their own babies and this freedom should not be limited; designing babies can promote the happy life of the baby; and totally forbidding embryo gene editing would drive the practice underground, where it would be performed illegally. This article analyzes all of these arguments and points out that all of them have some flaws. In order to draw a thoughtful conclusion, we turn to Confucianism and find a new perspective to determine whether designing babies with CRISPR technology is ethically permissible. (shrink)

Prior research suggests that ownership structure is associated to corporate social responsibility (CSR) in developed countries. This article examines whether and how ownership structure affects CSR in emerging markets using Chinese firms' social responsibility ranking. Our empirical evidences show that for non-state-owned firms, corporate ownership dispersion is positively associated to CSR. However, for state-owned firms, whose controlling shareholder is the state, this relation is reversed. We attribute the reversed relationship to political interferences and further test this hypothesis by demonstrating that (...) regional economic development is negatively related to CSR for state-owned firms due to decreased political interference in more developed areas. This study is the first to directly examine the relationship between the dispersion of corporate ownership and CSR in emerging markets, and our results depict that it is important to consider ownership type in assessing CSR in emerging market where state ownership is still prevalent such as China. The results also reveal that firm size, profitability, employee power, leverage, and growth opportunity affect CSR in China. (shrink)

Extant research has identified various effects of leader humor on subordinates and work groups. In contrast, less research has explored the influence of leader humor on leaders themselves and leaders’ subsequent behaviors. To address these issues, we drew from ego depletion theory and investigated when and how leader humor impacted leader workplace deviance. We argued that leader humor along with high impression management motive would bring increased ego depletion to leaders themselves and ultimately result in more leader workplace deviance. We (...) tested our theoretical model using a three-wave time-lagged field survey data collected from 103 leaders and 595 subordinates, as well as an experiment involving 487 leader participants, which provided overall support for our hypotheses. Our findings revealed the possible dark side of leader humor influencing both leaders themselves and organizations. Theoretical contributions and new avenues for future research are addressed. (shrink)

Employee resilience is of great significance for organizations to resist pressures, overcome crises, and achieve sustainable development. However, existing research has largely failed to explore its situational triggers. Drawing on social information processing theory and social exchange theory, a cross-level study was conducted to theorize the underlying mechanisms through which authentic leadership facilitates employee resilience. Based on a two-wave time-lagged design, the data were obtained from 85 team leaders and 417 employees in China. The results of the cross-level model showed (...) that authentic leadership was positively related to employee resilience. Perceived insider status and error management climate both played a partial mediating role in linking authentic leadership and employee resilience. Error management climate positively moderated the relationship between perceived insider status and employee resilience. This paper not only contributes to revealing the cross-level effect of authentic leadership on employee resilience but also provides some managerial practices. (shrink)

The study constructs a theoretical model of social capital, farm household financing, and scale operation and their environmental effects, and conducts an empirical test based on data from China Family Panel Studies which is conducted in 2018 using causal mediation analysis. The results showed that farmers who spent more on human interaction have a higher probability of choosing scale operation by renting land, the mechanism of which is that the social capital accumulated by farmers based on human interaction facilitates their (...) access to formal and informal financing, which in turn alleviates the financing constraint of scale operation. In addition, we found that the farmers with low education were more dependent on social capital to obtain informal financing to achieve scale operation. The environmental effects of scale operation found that the farmers significantly reduced the proportion of fertilizer and pesticide use, which could effectively mitigate possible pollution problems caused by excessive fertilizer and pesticide use. These findings confirm that social capital can alleviate the financing constraints of farmers to expand their operation scale through formal and informal financing, which in turn has a positive environmental effect. (shrink)

This study examines how chief executive officer overconfidence can influence the quantity, quality and direction of corporate innovation using Chinese firms for the period 2009–2016. Our results suggest that overall, CEO overconfidence has a positive impact on firm innovation productivity. Furthermore, this effect is significant for Chinese non-SOEs but not for Chinese SOEs. Specifically, an overconfident CEO can facilitate firm innovation in new technological areas but not in the firm’s existing areas. Additionally, we find that internal controls can regulate the (...) relationship between CEO overconfidence and innovation. Interestingly, when the internal control level is too high or too low, the correlation between CEO overconfidence and innovation productivity is not significant. (shrink)

The scattering number and isolated scattering number of a graph have been introduced in relation to Hamiltonian properties and network vulnerability, and the isolated scattering number plays an important role in characterizing graphs with a fractional 1-factor. Here we investigate the computational complexity of one variant, namely, the weighted isolated scattering number. We give a polynomial time algorithm to compute this parameter of interval graphs, an important subclass of perfect graphs.

IntroductionDue to the actual limitation of training conditions, the freestyle skiing aerials winter training term is short. Training tasks such as adaptability training and developing new skills are needed in summer training. When facing different training environments, freestyle skiing aerial athletes’ executive control over their abilities could be affected, which can affect their performance. Therefore, we want to research the effect of training conditions on executive control in freestyle skiing aerials athletes and its neural mechanism.Materials and methodsThirty-two freestyle skiing aerials (...) athletes were recruited. We evaluated their executive control and used fNIRS to measure oxygenated hemoglobin concentration changes in the prefrontal cortex during a rapid event-related design go/nogo task with different training condition-activated materials.ResultsAthletes’ behavior control in the summer condition has a lower accuracy than it is in the control condition. Athletes’ behavior control in the summer and winter training conditions had a longer reaction time than that in the control condition. The activation of the bilateral dlPFC and orbitofrontal cortex had a significant main effect across training conditions when freestyle skiing aerial athletes completed executive control tasks. The activation of athletes’ bilateral vlPFC and left dlPFC had an interaction between training conditions and behavioral control.ConclusionDifferent training conditions can lead to freestyle skiing aerial athletes executive control ability to drop, players in different training conditions show less activation on both sides of the vlPFC and orbitofrontal. The bilateral vlPFC and left dlPFC have an integrated effect on behavior inhibition across training conditions. (shrink)

These past few years, programs of local English as a foreign language (EFL) textbook development were launched to adapt to the newly issued English Curriculum Standards in China. They not only develop Student’s Books but also write Teacher’s Books as an integral part of their work. How to write a Teacher’s Book that exactly meets the non-native speaker (NNS) language teachers’ needs was a long-time concern, but few studies have been conducted to address the concern empirically. The present research with (...) a single case design closely examined how a local Teacher’s Book writer’s understanding of the local EFL teachers shaped the role of the Teacher’s Book by looking into the process of an English language teaching (ELT) materials development program in China. It sought to find answers to what the Teacher’s Book writer knew about the local EFL teachers, and how this understanding influenced his conceptualization of Teacher’s Book development. The findings show that the writer’s understanding of local teachers’ conventional teaching practice, and their content knowledge (CK) and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) play a decisive role in shaping the Teacher’s Book into materials that provide educational affordances to overcome the local EFL teachers’ weaknesses and inject innovation into their conventional practice. These findings have implications for both the international and local ELT materials development programs to compile Teacher’s Book for better local use. (shrink)