As software piracy continues to be a threat to the growth of national and global economies, understanding why people continue to use pirated software and learning how to discourage the use of pirated software are urgent and important issues. In addition to applying the theory of planned behavior (TPB) perspective to capture behavioral intention to use pirated software, this paper considers perceived risk as a salient belief influencing attitude and intention toward using pirated software. Four perceived risk components related to (...) the use of pirated software (performance, social, prosecution and psychological risks) have been identified, measured and tested. Data were collected through an online survey of 305 participants. The results indicate that perceived prosecution risk has an impact on intention to use pirated software, and perceived psychological risk is a strong predictor of attitude toward using pirated software. In addition, attitude and perceived behavior control contribute significantly to the intended use of pirated software. However, the proposed direct relationship between subjective norm and intention to use pirated software is not supported. Implications for research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

Background:When the contagious COVID-19 spread worldwide, the frontline staff faced unprecedented excessive work pressure and expectations of all of the society.Objective:The aim was to explore healthcare workers’ stress and influencing factors when caring for COVID-19 patients from an altruistic perspective.Methods:A cross-sectional, descriptive study was conducted in a tertiary hospital during the outbreak of COVID-19 between February and March 2020 in Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei province in China. Data were collected from 1208 healthcare workers. Descriptive statistics and multiple linear (...) regression were used to analyze the data.Ethical considerations:Research ethics approval (with the code of TJ-IRB20200379) was obtained from Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College of Huazhong University of Science and Technology. Written informed consent was also received from participants.Results:Less than 60% of participants chose moderate or severe stress on all stressors, indicating a low stress level among healthcare workers. The main source of stress among frontline healthcare workers caring for COVID-19 patients came from the fear of being infected, the fear of family members being infected, and the discomfort caused by protective equipment. Frontline staff who were nurses, were married, and had worked more than 20 days suffered higher stress, whereas rescue staff showed lower stress.Conclusion:The healthcare workers caring for patients with COVID-19 had low stress level, although they still had the fear of being infected or uncomfortable feeling caused by personal protective equipment. A low stress level among healthcare workers indicated their professional devotion and altruism during COVID-19 epidemic. Medical institutions and the government should continue to strengthen infection prevention measures and provide more comprehensive care involving families of frontline healthcare workers, especially nurses and married staff. It will be a lesson to other countries that awaking healthcare workers’ inside motivation and providing necessary support from government and society were significant. (shrink)

Although the trickle-down effect of ethical leadership has been documented in the literature, its underlying mechanism still remains largely unclear. To address this gap, we develop a cross-level dual-process model to explain how the effect occurs. Drawing on social learning theory, we hypothesize that the ethical leadership of high-level managers could cascade to middle-level supervisors via its impact on middle-level supervisors’ two ethical expectations. Using a sample of 69 middle-level supervisors and 381 subordinates across 69 sub-branches from a large banking (...) firm in China, we found that middle-level supervisors’ ethical efficacy expectation and unethical behavior–punishment expectation accounted for the trickle-down effect. The explanatory role of middle-level supervisors’ ethical behavior–reward expectation, however, was not supported. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

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

Enterprises often post branded content on social media and adopt a proactive response approach to improve digital customer engagement to gain a competitive advantage. However, there are many brands which fail to operate social media as effectively as expected. The effective use of brand social media strategies to improve digital customer engagement remains an ongoing challenge for the enterprises. Based on firm-generated content theory and social presence theory, this study aims to identify the impact of brand social media strategies on (...) different levels of digital customer engagement, including positive filtering, cognitive and affective processing as well as advocacy from content strategy and response strategy. Based on 1,519 brand posts on the official Weibo pages of eight of the top 500 Chinese brands in 2021, this study uses a multiple linear regression model to examine the impact of brand social media strategies on digital customer engagement and the moderating effects of brand image and discretionary purchases. The findings show that, on the one hand, among the brand social media content strategies, action content strategy is associated with higher levels of digital customer engagement. On the other hand, different brand social media response strategies have a differential impact on digital customer engagement levels, with cohesive response being the best strategy for increasing digital customer engagement level. In addition, the effectiveness of brand social media response strategy in digital customer engagement is further moderated by the brand image and discretionary purchases. In contrast, the effectiveness of brand social media response strategy in digital customer engagement is stronger when the brand image emphasizes its “competence” or the discretionary purchases focus on “material purchases.” This study not only enriches the research on digital customer engagement but also provides a reference for the brand strategy selection, design and management based on social media. (shrink)

In his feature article,1 McCullough LB et al highlights the importance of civility among medical educators and academic leaders in shaping the professional habits of junior doctors. He emphasises the role of medical educators in correcting unprofessional behaviour and emphasises the need for academic leaders to motivate junior doctors to develop virtuous professional habits. The relationship between junior doctors and medical educators can be likened to that between students and teachers. Through active or passive learning from medical educators, junior doctors (...) gain the necessary knowledge, experience and professional virtues. Academic leaders, as prominent experts in their field, play a guiding role in this process. Therefore, their relationship with junior doctors is akin to that between idols and fans. In this regard, academic leaders can serve as exceptional role models for guiding junior doctors to develop the inclination to …. (shrink)

Seng Zhao and his collection of treatises, the Zhao lun, have enjoyed a particularly high reputation in the history of Chinese Buddhism. One of these treatises, The Immutability of Things, employs the Madhyamaka argumentative method of negating dualistic concepts to demonstrate that, while "immutability" and "mutability" coexist as the states of phenomenal things, neither possesses independent self-nature. More than a thousand years after this text was written, Zhencheng's intense criticism of it provoked fierce reactions among a host of renowned scholar-monks. (...) This paper explores Zhencheng's main points as well as the perspectives and motives of his principal adversaries in order to shed light on the nature of philosophical discourse during the late Ming dynasty. (shrink)

Social information processing theory suggests that the chief executive officer’s entrepreneurial orientation is an organisational signal that influences the members’ innovativeness. Middle management teams are expected to be more innovative as they connect senior managers with frontline managers in the dynamic competitive environment of the digital economy. How CEOs guide MMT innovations through EO becomes critical in the process of capturing opportunities and creating value. However, previous research has failed to adequately identify distinct CEO EO manifestations with organisational contexts configurations (...) that influence MMTs innovation. Thus, based on differences in organisational contexts and MMTs’ cognition, this study thoroughly investigates how the vertical manifestation of CEO EO impacts the innovativeness of MMTs. We used fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis on a sample of 117 organisations to determine which configurations of CEO EO vertical penetration within an organisation can stimulate MMT innovativeness. The study discovered four first-level configurations that support stimulating MMT innovativeness respectively when the CEO EO is fully or partially manifested, and without the CEO EO. Moreover, we found the internal reasons for MMTs’ information interpretation heterogeneity, which is critical for realising the coordination and unity of entrepreneurial cognition and behaviours. Finally, these findings’ theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

Responding to serious environmental problems, requires urgent and fundamental shifts in our day-to-day lifestyles. This paper employs a qualitative, cross-cultural approach to explore people’s subjective self-reflections on their experiences of pro-environmental behavioral spillover in three countries; Brazil, China, and Denmark. Behavioral spillover is an appealing yet elusive phenomenon, but offers a potential way of encouraging wider, voluntary lifestyle shifts beyond the scope of single behavior change interventions. Behavioral spillover theory proposes that engaging in one pro-environmental action can catalyze the performance (...) of others. To date, evidence for the phenomenon has been mixed, and the causal processes governing relationships between behaviors appear complex, inconsistent and only partly understood. This paper addresses a gap in the literature by investigating accounts of behavioral spillover in three diverse cultural settings using qualitative semi-structured interviews. The analysis shows that while around half of participants overall who were questioned recalled spillover effects, the other half had not consciously experienced spillover. There were few significant differences across cultures, though some forms of spillover effects were reported more in some cultures than others. More environmentally-engaged participants across all three countries were significantly more likely to experience spillover than those who were less engaged. Accounts of within-domain spillovers were most commonly reported, mainly comprising waste, resource conservation and consumption-related actions. Accounts of between-domain spillover were very rare. Recollection of contextual and interpersonal spillover effects also emerged from the interviews. Our findings suggest that more conscious behavioral spillover pathways may be limited to those with pre-existing environmental values. Behavioral spillover may comprise multiple pathways incorporating conscious and unconscious processes. We conclude that targeting behavioral catalysts that generate more socially diffuse spillover effects could offer more potential than conventional spillover involving a single individual. (shrink)

There is an important contemporary debate in moral responsibility about whether the following asymmetry thesis is true: moral responsibility for actions does not require alternative possibilities but moral responsibility for omissions does. In this paper, we do two things. First, we consider and reject a recent argument against the asymmetry thesis, contending that the argument fails because it rests on a false view about the metaphysics of omissions. Second, we develop and defend a new argument against the asymmetry thesis, one (...) that avoids the problem with the first argument by not resting on any assumptions about what omissions are metaphysically. (shrink)

Variability in the emotion regulation (ER) strategies one uses throughout daily life has been suggested to reflect adaptive ER ability and to act as a protective factor in mental health. Moreover, psychological inflexibility and persistent negative affect (or affective inertia) are key features of depression and other forms of mental illness and are often further exacerbated by rigid or overly passive regulatory behaviours. The current study investigated the hypothesis that ER variability might serve as a protective factor against depressive symptoms (...) and affective inertia. Using experience-sampling (N = 213), we tested whether two indictors of ER variability (between- and within-strategy SDs) were related to depressive symptoms and affective inertia. We found that people with higher between-strategy variability and within-strategy variability (specifically for reappraisal and distraction) reported fewer depressive symptoms. Both within- and between-strategy variability were negatively related to negative affective inertia. Between-strategy variability and negative affective inertia had unique effects on depression, when used as simultaneous predictors. Altogether, this study provides further evidence for the utility of ER as a factor buffering against depressive symptoms and particularly for the use of variable ER strategies. (shrink)

This study aims to investigate the effect of coronavirus disease 2019 on the Chinese public’s mental health during its early stage. We collected the data through an online questionnaire survey. Specifically, we adopted the impact of event scale-revised and state-trait anxiety inventory to assess symptomatic responses to exposure to traumatic life events and public anxiety, respectively, in the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. Then, we evaluated the differences in the scores among various socio-demographic groups using Kruskal-Wakkis H tests and t-tests and analyzed (...) the IES-R, state anxiety score, and trait anxiety score using the Pearson correlation analysis. Finally, we conducted a path analysis to determine the mediating role of post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms in the relationship between TA and SA. The results show that the average of the SA and TA scores were 48.0 ± 10.4 and 38.0 ± 8.2, respectively; the respondents who suffered from mild, moderate, and severe psychological impacts because of the health crisis accounted for 21.9, 5.2, and 13.1%, respectively; farmers have the highest IES-R score than others; people with the highest income have the lowest SA level; a significant positive correlation existed between the IES-R and STAI scores; and TA produces both direct and indirect effects on SA. Overall, the general Chinese public exhibited much higher anxiety levels than normal in the early days of the pandemic outbreak. Accordingly, we strongly recommend psychological counseling and intervention support to mitigate the adverse psychological impacts of such an event. (shrink)

With the progress of social and improvement of public awareness, the demand for enterprises to participate in a social welfare cause is increasing. A company can directly support corporate social responsibility issues through cause-related marketing approaches, for example, by donating part of the proceeds from product sales or simply by donating their products. Previous research has only discussed the impact of one of these CRM approaches on customers in one study. This research compared the effect of these two approaches on (...) the purchase intention of consumers. Experiment 1 demonstrated that, for practical products, the purchase intention of BOGO was higher, while for hedonic products, the purchase intention of BOGM was higher. More importantly, we found a potential mechanism – perceived helpfulness – that drives our main effect. Experiment 2 revealed that the different statement order of charity information and product information in advertising can moderate the main effect. The research also provides several implications and insight into how companies can make donations while winning more customers’ willingness to pay, thus encouraging more companies to fulfill their corporate social responsibility. (shrink)

Some philosophers argue that throughout its long history, Confucian ethics have stressed character formation or personal cultivation of virtues. Thus, it seems appropriate to characterise Confucian ethics as ethics of virtue. in this book, the author attempts to critique the apparent similarity and show, on the contrary, that Confucian ethics are better conceived of as a unique kind of ethics, in which rule-based morality and virtues are united. Through a unique analysis of Confucian ethics and comparison between Confucian ethics and (...) some Western ethical theories, the author also hopes to generate suggestions and ideas on how to integrate or unify rule and virtue in one moral theory. (shrink)

Social influence analysis is important for many social network applications, including recommendation and cybersecurity analysis. We observe that the influence of community including multiple users outweighs the individual influence. Existing models focus on the individual influence analysis, but few studies estimate the community influence that is ubiquitous in online social network. A major challenge lies in that researchers need to take into account many factors, such as user influence, social trust, and user relationship, to model community-level influence. In this paper, (...) aiming to assess the community-level influence effectively and accurately, we formulate the problem of modeling community influence and construct a community-level influence analysis model. It first eliminates the zombie fans and then calculates the user influence. Next, it calculates the user final influence by combining the user influence and the willingness of diffusing theme information. Finally, it evaluates the community influence by comprehensively studying the user final influence, social trust, and relationship tightness between intrausers of communities. To handle real-world applications, we propose a community-level influence analysis algorithm called CIAA. Empirical studies on a real-world dataset from Sina Weibo demonstrate the superiority of the proposed model. (shrink)

Transgender women experience serious psychiatric problems and high suicide rates. According to the interpersonal theory of suicide, thwarted belongingness and perceived burdensomeness play major roles in suicidality and can be measured by the Interpersonal Needs Questionnaire. However, no study has validated the use of the INQ in TGW. This study aimed to examine the psychometric properties of the INQ among TGW. We recruited 198 TGW from Shenyang, China, using snowball sampling. The construct validity of the INQ was assessed through factor (...) analysis, and convergent and divergent validity were examined through a structural equation model with other psychosocial factors. The construct validation analysis supported a three-factor model with satisfactory fit indices: χ2/df = 1.54, RMSEA = 0.052, CFI = 0.931, TLI = 0.916, SRMR = 0.053. The thwarted belongingness was significantly associated with self-esteem and social support, and the social exclusion was significantly associated with loneliness, depression, entrapment, and defeat, suggesting satisfactory convergent and divergent validity for the three-factor model. The present findings indicate that for TGW, high social exclusion is important in assessing perceived interpersonal needs, while the notable deviation from previous two-factor model warrants further study. (shrink)

We examine whether the level of integrity in a society, i.e., social integrity, affects stock price crash risk. We explore two competing hypotheses. On the one hand, exposure to high levels of integrity may reduce managers’ incentives to obfuscate information, thereby leading to lower crash risk. On the other hand, social integrity may weaken outsiders’ monitoring of managerial behaviors, thus giving managers more opportunities to obfuscate information and, consequently, leading to higher crash risk. Using a sample of Chinese listed firms, (...) we find that firms located in regions with higher integrity have lower future stock price crash risk. This result is confirmed by a difference-in-difference analysis with an exogenous shock to social integrity. Further analysis suggests that increased information transparency is a potential channel through which social integrity affects stock price crash risk. Cross-sectional analyses suggest that the negative effect of social integrity on crash risk is more pronounced in firms with weaker internal control systems and firms with less negative media coverage. Overall, our study provides novel evidence that the ethical environment plays a significant role in shaping business ethics and influencing stock price crash risk. (shrink)

Parents have an influence on the formation of their children’s mate preferences. This research conducted two studies to test the relationship between parents’ education level and the gender role characteristics of ideal mate for college students, and the moderating role of urban-rural residence on this relationship. In study 1, 1,033 participants reported their explicit attitude toward gender role characteristics for an ideal mate via the Chinese Sex Role Inventory-50. In study 2, we recruited 130 participants and used an implicit association (...) test to measure their implicit attitude. Regression-based analyses showed that the higher education level of parents was significantly associated with female students’ mate preferences with high-femininity but low-masculinity traits. For male students, the higher education level of parents was associated with their explicit preferences of mates with high-masculinity but low-femininity traits. The significant moderating effect of urban-rural residence was observed in explicit preference, with the different patterns in gender groups. In conclusion, parents with higher educational attainment might bring up children who are more likely to embrace a partner with non-traditional gender roles. (shrink)

Traditional spatial enabled grammars lack flexibility in specifying the spatial semantics of graphs. This paper describes a new graph grammar formalism called the multigranularity Coordinate Graph Grammar (mgCGG) for spatial graphs. Based on the Coordinate Graph Grammar (CGG), the mgCGG divides coordinates into two categories, physical coordinates and grammatical coordinates, where physical coordinates are the common coordinates in the real world, and grammatical coordinates describe the restrictions on the spatial semantics. In the derivation and reduction of the mgCGG, the spatial (...) matching conditions between nodes are evaluated on the basis of the grammatical coordinates, which can be obtained by the specified granularities. By adjusting the granularities, both qualitative and quantitative analyses for spatial semantics can be obtained, including the transition states between them. In addition, a new redex searching algorithm with polynomial time complexity is designed for the mgCGG. A running example of drawing a flowchart is given to illustrate a practical application of the mgCGG. Through a detailed comparison with related spatial-enabled grammars, it is found that the mgCGG has good performance in four critical aspects—the semantics processing mechanism, fault-tolerance, redex searching algorithm, and practical application—providing a flexible yet uniform way to specify spatial graphs and building a bridge between nonspatial and spatial grammars. (shrink)

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

Background: Losing one’s only child may lead to post-traumatic stress disorder, of which re-experiencing is the core symptom. However, neuroimaging studies of sex differences in re-experiencing in the context of the trauma of losing one’s only child and PTSD are scarce; comparisons of the functional networks from the hippocampal subfields to the thalamus might clarify the neural basis.Methods: Thirty couples without any psychiatric disorder who lost their only child, 55 patients with PTSD, and 50 normal controls underwent resting-state functional magnetic (...) resonance imaging. The functional connectivity from the hippocampal subregions to the thalamus and the correlations of FC with re-experiencing symptoms were analyzed within and between the sexes.Results: Compared with husbands without PTSD, wives without PTSD had higher re-experiencing symptoms and weaker FC between the right hippocampal cornu ammonis 3 and the right thalamus. Moreover, only the correlation between the RCA3-RT FC and re-experiencing in wives without PTSD was significant. Among the three groups, only the RCA3-RT FC in female subjects was markedly different. Additionally, the RCA3-RT FC in wives without PTSD was remarkably lower relative to female patients with PTSD.Conclusion: Wives without PTSD who lost their only child had worse re-experiencing symptoms relative to their husbands, which was associated with the FC alteration between the hippocampal subregions and the thalamus. Importantly, the low level of the RCA3-RT FC may play a potentially protective role against the development of PTSD in wives who have lost their only child. (shrink)

This paper proposes a new system whose potential function is with three types of asymmetric potential wells, driven by trichotomous noise. Firstly, the three types of asymmetric bistable system are described in detail, and the changes of asymmetric bistable system potential function under different asymmetric factors are analyzed. Secondly, the effect of potential function parameters, asymmetric factorα, noise intensity D, and the probability of particle transition q is discussed, using numerical simulation. The detection effects of traditional symmetric SR and three (...) types of asymmetric SR are observed and compared under the driving of trichotomous noise and periodic signals. The mean of signal-to-noise ratio gain is the indicator of the system's effectiveness on enhancing weak signal. The results indicate that it can make the detection effect of the asymmetric system better than that of the traditional bistable system by adjusting the parameters of the asymmetric stochastic resonance system and trichotomous noise. (shrink)

The lack of a standardized reliable and valid instrument makes it difficult to measure attitudes toward lesbian women and gay men consistently and thus poses a challenge to compare and contrast intervention measures. This study aimed to validate Herek’s ATLG scale among undergraduates in mainland China and identify factors associated with negative attitudes toward LG. A total of 6,036 eligible undergraduates conveniently drawn from 30 provinces across mainland China were randomly split in half. Item analysis was first used to select (...) unrelated or redundant items for deletion. Exploratory factor analysis were then conducted on the first half of the sample, followed by confirmatory factor analysis and reliability analysis in the second half. Logistic regression analyses were finally carried out to identify their determinants. Six items were removed from the item analysis. EFA supported the existence of two factors. CFA results indicated that the two-factor model fit the data better than the one-factor model. Logistic regression analyses indicated that being female, majoring in non-health-related disciplines, attributing homosexuality to uncontrollable causes, non-adherence to traditional gender norms and exposure to homosexual content were significantly associated with less negative attitudes toward both L and G. Urban students were marginally less likely to express negative attitudes toward L but not G, while non-heterosexuals and those who had prior personal contact with homosexuals exhibited less negative attitudes toward G but not L. However, grade showed no significant associations with either ATL or ATG. The retained 14-item version of Herek’s ATLG scale has been proven to be a reliable and valid tool. Furthermore, ATL and ATG were determined by different factors and thus would be treated separately. In order to reduce negative attitudes toward LG among undergraduates in mainland China, a comprehensive intervention plan such as conducting comprehensive sex education and pushing the process of legalizing same-sex marriage should be designed, implemented and evaluated. (shrink)

Souvenirs play an important role in tourism development. They act not only as mementos, enabling tourists to relive and retain the memory of a particular journey, but also as main income sources for tourism destinations and stakeholders. Many intangible cultural heritages have been developed into souvenirs, especially products made by traditional craftsmanship. ICH souvenirs facilitate cultural value that is understandable to tourists, who appreciate the design of the ICH souvenirs and their contributions to a pleasure and memorable journey. Based on (...) the theory of beauty and the preference-for-prototypes theory, this study explored how symmetry design of ICH souvenirs influences tourist’s aesthetic pleasure. As ICH souvenirs development is a commercialization process, and over-commodification would lead to cultures being lost and tourists’ disappointment, the authenticity concept is applied in order to address over-commodification. Thus, this study analyzed the moderating role of tourists’ authenticity perception of ICH souvenirs. Two lab-based between-subjects design experiments were employed to test the proposed hypotheses. Data analysis entailed multiple regression analysis, one-way ANOVA, and two-way ANOVA. The findings showed that symmetry of ICH souvenir design had a positive impact on tourists’ aesthetic pleasure. Under the symmetric-design condition, tourists’ typicality perception of ICH souvenirs positively mediated the main relationship, while under the asymmetric-design condition, tourists’ novelty perception had a negative mediating effect. The moderated mediation effects were in accord with hypotheses to some extent; at a relatively high level of authenticity perception, the indirect effect of symmetry on aesthetic pleasure via typicality perception increased as authenticity perception rose; at a relatively low level of authenticity perception, the indirect effect of symmetry on aesthetic pleasure via novelty perception declined as authenticity perception rose. This study identified critical factors influencing tourists’ aesthetic pleasure with ICH souvenirs, and it revealed the internal influencing mechanisms and moderating effects under different design conditions. These findings give some insights to ICH practitioners for using souvenir design to improve tourists’ aesthetic pleasure. (shrink)

Eye-tracking technology has become a powerful tool for biomedical-related applications due to its simplicity of operation and low requirements on patient language skills. This study aims to use the machine-learning models and deep-learning networks to identify key features of eye movements in Alzheimer's Disease (AD) under specific visual tasks, thereby facilitating computer-aided diagnosis of AD. Firstly, a three-dimensional (3D) visuospatial memory task is designed to provide participants with visual stimuli while their eye-movement data are recorded and used to build an (...) eye-tracking dataset. Then, we propose a novel deep-learning-based model for identifying patients with Alzheimer's Disease (PwAD) and healthy controls (HCs) based on the collected eye-movement data. The proposed model utilizes a nested autoencoder network to extract the eye-movement features from the generated fixation heatmaps and a weight adaptive network layer for the feature fusion, which can preserve as much useful information as possible for the final binary classification. To fully verify the performance of the proposed model, we also design two types of models based on traditional machine-learning and typical deep-learning for comparison. Furthermore, we have also done ablation experiments to verify the effectiveness of each module of the proposed network. Finally, these models are evaluated by four-fold cross-validation on the built eye-tracking dataset. The proposed model shows 85% average accuracy in AD recognition, outperforming machine-learning methods and other typical deep-learning networks. (shrink)

Using the promulgation of Green Credit Guidelines in China as the research setting, this paper exploits a quasi-natural experiment to examine the impact of green credit policy on the stock price crash risk of heavy-polluting firms. The results show that green credit policy significantly increases the risk of stock price crash of heavy-polluting firms. Such impact is transmitted through increased financial constraints and reduced information transparency. In addition, we find that the impact of green credit policy on the stock price (...) crash risk is more pronounced in firms with weak external governance and a small size. Our findings provide policy implications for mitigating corporate risks and promoting corporate sustainability. (shrink)

This study investigates the mechanism of how sensory experiences influence visitors’ digital engagement with a destination through establishing a strong bond and identification between a destination and tourist utilizing a two-step process. First, visitors’ sensory experiences in a destination are identified through a content analysis of online review comments posted by visitors. Afterward, the effects of those sensory experiences on visitors’ digital engagement through destination dependence and identification with that destination are examined. Findings suggest that sensory experiences are critical antecedents (...) of visitors’ bond and identification with a destination. Visitors’ positive destination-related sensory experiences increase their dependence on and identification with the destination, and this dependence and identification positively influence their digital engagement behavior on social media. (shrink)

BackgroundThe evaluation of the surgical readiness of patients plays an important role in clinical care. Preoperative readiness assessment is needed to identify the inadequacy among surgical patients, which provides guide for interventions to improve patients’ preoperative readiness. However, there is a paucity of high-level, quality tool that evaluate surgical readiness of patients in China. The purpose of this study is to translate the Preoperative Assessment of Readiness Tool into Chinese and determine the reliability and validity of the Chinese version in (...) the population of surgical patients.MethodsUsing a standard translation-backward method, the original English version of PART was translated into Chinese. A convenient sampling of 210 surgical patients was recruited from 6 hospitals in Zhejiang Province to test the psychometric properties of this scale including internal consistency, split-half reliability, content validity, structure validity, and floor/ceiling effect.ResultsA total of 194 patients completed questionnaires. The Chinese version of PART achieved Cronbach’s alphas 0.948 and McDonald’s omega coefficient 0.947, respectively, for the full scale. The estimated odd-even split-half reliability was 0.959. The scale-level content validity index was 0.867, and the items content validity index ranged from 0.83 to 1.0.The output of confirmatory factor analysis revealed a two-factor model with no floor/ceiling effect.ConclusionThe Chinese version of PART demonstrated acceptable reliability and validity among surgical patients. It can be used to evaluate patients’ preoperative preparation and help health professionals provide proper preoperative support. (shrink)

This paper mainly introduces the application of immersive media in Chinese public cultural participation from the perspective of cultural education, as well as the important value of the application of immersive media in expanding the breadth, accuracy, and depth of education and thereby improving the quality of education. On this basis, the realistic path of the role of immersive media technology in further realizing public cultural participation is discussed. First of all, through a questionnaire survey, it analyzes the problems existing (...) in Chinese public cultural participation from the perspective of cultural education and the application of immersive media in Chinese public cultural participation. Secondly, from the aspects that the application of immersive media can extend the space of cultural participation, enrich the content of cultural participation and strengthen the value recognition of cultural participation, it demonstrates that immersive media helps to solve the dilemma of Chinese public cultural participation as a whole and thus improve the quality of education. This will bring new possibilities for expanding Chinese public cultural participation and promoting public social education and cultural quality education. Finally, it discusses the further development of immersive media technology in the field of cultural education from the aspects of optimizing the ecology of immersive media development, promoting the R&D and application of immersive media technology, and promoting the integration of immersive media with cultural participation space and cultural education content. (shrink)

ObjectiveWe wished to explore Parkinson's disease subtypes by clustering analysis based on the multimodal magnetic resonance imaging indices amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation and gray matter volume. Then, we analyzed the differences between PD subtypes.MethodsEighty-six PD patients and 44 healthy controls were recruited. We extracted ALFF and GMV according to the Anatomical Automatic Labeling partition using Data Processing and Analysis for Brain Imaging software. The Ward linkage method was used for hierarchical clustering analysis. DPABI was employed to compare differences in ALFF (...) and GMV between groups.ResultsTwo subtypes of PD were identified. The “diffuse malignant subtype” was characterized by reduced ALFF in the visual-related cortex and extensive reduction of GMV with severe impairment in motor function and cognitive function. The “mild subtype” was characterized by increased ALFF in the frontal lobe, temporal lobe, and sensorimotor cortex, and a slight decrease in GMV with mild impairment of motor function and cognitive function.ConclusionHierarchical clustering analysis based on multimodal MRI indices could be employed to identify two PD subtypes. These two PD subtypes showed different neurodegenerative patterns upon imaging. (shrink)

Many bacteria conditionally express proteinaceous organelles referred to here as microcompartments (Fig. 1). These microcompartments are thought to be involved in a least seven different metabolic processes and the number is growing. Microcompartments are very large and structurally sophisticated. They are usually about 100–150 nm in cross section and consist of 10,000–20,000 polypeptides of 10–20 types. Their unifying feature is a solid shell constructed from proteins having bacterial microcompartment (BMC) domains. In the examples that have been studied, the microcompartment shell (...) encases sequentially acting metabolic enzymes that catalyze a reaction sequence having a toxic or volatile intermediate product. It is thought that the shell of the microcompartment confines such intermediates, thereby enhancing metabolic efficiency and/or protecting cytoplasmic components. Mechanistically, however, this creates a paradox. How do microcompartments allow enzyme substrates, products and cofactors to pass while confining metabolic intermediates in the absence of a selectively permeable membrane? We suggest that the answer to this paradox may have broad implications with respect to our understanding of the fundamental properties of biological protein sheets including microcompartment shells, S‐layers and viral capsids. BioEssays 30:1084–1095, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The power trading system has the characteristics of nonlinearity, dynamics, and complexity. Part of the business data in the trading system needs to be exposed to numerous external business systems. The traditional centralized power trading model has some problems, such as low data security and trust crisis of regulators. Blockchain technology provides prominent ideas for solving these problems. Firstly, the improved AdaBoost algorithm is used to predict the supply and demand gap of power trading nodes. Secondly, based on the fact (...) that the information on the blockchain is only open to the power supply side, a two-stage game model of asymmetric information between the power supply side and the power user is constructed to capture the price competition behavior between them in order to find the Nash equilibrium price in two stages. Finally, the US PJM market electricity market data are used to carry out an example analysis to verify the effectiveness of the algorithm and model. (shrink)

Vaccine is one of the most effective means to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic in many countries, but vaccine hesitancy has been always widespread among people due to individual differences in access to vaccine information. This research aims to empirically investigate the relationship between media use preference, knowledge level, risk perception and willingness to vaccinate among Chinese residents. A cross-sectional survey of a Chinese sample was carried out to explore factors that influence the COVID-19 vaccination intention of Chinese residents. The (...) empirical results show that the knowledge level and risk perception of Chinese residents positively contribute to vaccination intention. People with video-usage preference have lower levels of knowledge about the COVID-19 vaccine than those with text-usage preference. People’s risk perception of the COVID-19 pandemic is not influenced by their media use preference or knowledge level, as COVID-19 is a global pandemic and a significant social risk. The current study yields health-related implications for the role of media use preference in vaccination intention. (shrink)