Bermúdez argues that framing effects are rational because particular frames provide goal-consistent reasons for choice and that people exert some control over the framing of a decision-problem. We propose instead that these observations raise the question of whether frame selection itself is a rational process and highlight how constraints in the choice environment severely limit the rational selection of frames.

Bailey Willis was the second major American geologist to undertake reconnaissance research in China--in the years 1903-04. Together with the stratigrapher Eliot Blackwelder, topographer Harvey Sargent, and guide Li Shan, he travelled first in Shandong Province, then from Peking to Xian, thence across the mountains into Sichuan, and then by river via the Yangzi Gorges to Shanghai. It was hoped that they would discover the primeval ancestor of trilobites in China, but the search proved unsuccessful. Willis's stratigraphic findings are described, (...) as are his structural interpretations of what he observed in China. His work in China gave rise to some unfounded speculations about the possible causes of lateral Earth movements, due to rocks of different densities being adjacent to one another in the Earth's crust. These ideas were followed by several other 'theories of the Earth' during Willis's later career, some of which were also probably related to his experiences in China. He seemingly practised the formulation of 'multiple working hypotheses'. The paper also discusses the influence of Willis's survey and stratigraphic work on the subsequent development of Chinese geology, with particular attention given to the various meanings of the term 'Sinian System'. Mention is made of later work in China on Lower Cambrian stratigraphy. (shrink)

An account is given of the reconnaissance investigations in China of the American geologist and mining engineer, Raphael Pumpelly. Pumpelly is well known to Chinese historians of science as being the first professionally trained Western geologist to examine the geology of China. This paper offers a reconstruction of Pumpelly's journeys and seeks to understand what an explorer might do in a land where there had been no previous geological investigations by persons trained in the methods of Western science. Pumpelly's hypotheses (...) about the geology of China are also analysed and a sketch of his influence on the history of Chinese geology is given. (shrink)

Activating relevant responses is a key function of automatic processes in De Neys's model; however, what determines the order or magnitude of such activation is ambiguous. Focusing on recently developed sequential sampling models of choice, we argue that proactive control shapes response generation but does not cleanly fit into De Neys's automatic-deliberative distinction, highlighting the need for further model development.

The burgeoning of new technologies is increasingly affecting people’s lives. One new technology that is heatedly discussed is artificial intelligence in education. To allow students to understand the impact of emerging technologies on people’s future lives from a young age, some popular science activities are being progressively introduced into elementary school curricula. Popular science activities are informal education programs and practices of universal education. However, two issues need to be discussed in the implementation of these activities. First, because these informal (...) curricula are usually short in duration, the question of whether they only serve to generate motivation or actually enhance learning outcomes requires examination. Second, the role of teacher support in popular science activities and its impact on students’ learning results need to be further investigated. To this end, this study aims to explore the effectiveness of popular AI science activities in informal curricula on students’ AI achievement and the interrelationship between students’ learning outcomes in popular AI science activities with and without teacher support. A 6-h-long AI popular science activity was conducted with 22 fifth- and sixth-grade students in elementary school. This study was conducted using a one-group pretest and posttest design, and the data collection tools included AI achievement pre- and posttests and an artifact scoring rubric. The results showed that with regard to learning outcomes, popular science activities were helpful for cognitive enhancement of AI concepts, but more time was needed for skills to improve. Additionally, this study found that students’ learning performance was different with and without teacher support. Activities with teacher support can enhance students’ learning outcomes, but students become accustomed to relying on their teachers. In contrast, activities without teacher support seem to be more effective in fostering students’ independent computational thinking and problem-solving abilities. (shrink)

This study investigates and compares the impact of spiritual leadership on organizational citizenship behavior in finance and retail service industries to determine the possibility of generalizing and applying spiritual leadership to other industries. This study used multi-sample analysis of structural equation modeling. The results show that values, attitudes, and behaviors of leaders have positive effects on meaning/calling and membership of the employees, and further facilitate employees to perform excellent organizational citizenship behaviors, including the altruism of assisting colleagues and the responsible (...) conscientiousness toward organization. The effect of altruism toward colleagues is especially stronger. Finally, the effect of leaders’ values, attitudes, and behaviors on the spiritual survival of employees is stronger in retail than that in finance. (shrink)

(1989). The introduction and development of continental drift theory and plate tectonics in China: a case study in the transference of scientific ideas from west to east. Annals of Science: Vol. 46, No. 1, pp. 21-43.

The autophagy initiation complex is brought about via a highly ordered and stepwise assembly process. Two crucial signaling molecules, mTORC1 and AMPK, orchestrate this assembly by phosphorylating/dephosphorylating autophagy‐related proteins. Activation of Atg1 followed by recruitment of both Atg9 vesicles and the PI3K complex I to the PAS (phagophore assembly site) are particularly crucial steps in its formation. Ypt1, a small Rab GTPase in yeast cells, also plays an essential role in the formation of the autophagy initiation complex through multiple regulatory (...) pathways. In this review, our primary focus is to discuss how signaling molecules initiate the assembly of the autophagy initiation complex, and highlight the significant roles of Ypt1 in this process. We end by addressing issues that need future clarification. (shrink)

Most neuroimaging research in stroke rehabilitation mainly focuses on the neural mechanisms underlying the natural history of post-stroke recovery. However, connectivity mapping from resting-state fMRI is well suited for different neurological conditions and provides a promising method to explore plastic changes for treatment-induced recovery from stroke. We examined the changes in resting-state functional connectivity (RS-FC) of the ipsilesional primary motor cortex (M1) in 10 post-acute stroke patients before and immediately after 4 weeks of robot-assisted bilateral arm therapy (RBAT). Motor performance, (...) functional use of the affected arm, and daily function improved in all participants. Reduced interhemispheric RS-FC between the ipsilesional and contralesional M1 (M1-M1) and the contralesional-lateralized connections were noted before treatment. In contrast, greater M1-M1 functional connectivity and disturbed resting-state networks were observed after RBAT relative to pre-treatment. Increased changes in M1-M1 RS-FC after RBAT were coupled with better motor and functional improvements. Mediation analysis showed the pre-to-post difference in M1-M1 RS-FC was a significant mediator for the relationship between motor and functional recovery. These results show neuroplastic changes and functional recoveries induced by RBAT in post-acute stroke survivors and suggest that interhemispheric functional connectivity in the motor cortex may be a neurobiological marker for recovery after stroke rehabilitation. (shrink)

This longitudinal study investigated how different mediums of word explanation affected the use of English vocabulary strategies among Chinese Grade-7 students. 170 students were tested on their English receptive vocabulary size and vocabulary strategy application before and after an 8.33-month intervention. Students were divided into three experimental groups and one control group. The three experimental groups were provided with learning materials that explained the target vocabulary in three mediums respectively: English-only, English-and-Chinese, and Chinese-only. Results showed that, after the intervention, receptive (...) vocabulary size did not have any direct significant impact on vocabulary strategy development, whereas mediums of word explanation materials impacted students' application of vocabulary learning strategies in different ways. Our findings showed that the English-only medium significantly enhanced students' use of metacognition, cognition, and memorization strategies, but decreased social strategy development. Chinese-only medium significantly facilitated cognition and memorization strategy development. Implications for L2 vocabulary education are discussed. (shrink)

Young migrants have been the major migrant labor force in urban China. But they may be more vulnerable in quality of life and mental health than other groups, due to their personal characteristic and some social/community policies or management measures. It highlights the need to focus on psychological wellbeing and probe driving and reinforcing factors that influence their mental health. This study aimed to investigate the influence of subjective/objective status and possible pathways of young migrants’ life satisfaction and psychological distress. (...) Data on 9838 young migrants in the China Migrants Dynamic Survey were analyzed by LISREL 8.8. A total of 94.03% migrated for jobs or business. Subjective status, including subjective socioeconomic status, social adaptation, and psychological integration, had positive effects on life satisfaction, whereas social adaptation and psychological integration negatively affected psychological distress. Objective status, including objective socioeconomic status and health insurance, had adverse effects on life satisfaction, whereas they positively affected psychological distress. Social participation and city belonging had only significant positive mediating roles on life satisfaction. It is essential to increase social adaptation and decrease integration stress according to younger internal migrants’ practical needs. It is also necessary to enhance community/social resources and activities in the context of developing sustainability in the community to assist in mental health promotion. (shrink)

Quantum B-algebras, the partially ordered implicational algebras arising as subreducts of quantales, are introduced axiomatically. It is shown that they provide a unified semantic for non-commutative algebraic logic. Specifically, they cover the vast majority of implicational algebras like BCK-algebras, residuated lattices, partially ordered groups, BL- and MV-algebras, effect algebras, and their non-commutative extensions. The opposite of the category of quantum B-algebras is shown to be equivalent to the category of logical quantales, in the way that every quantum B-algebra admits a (...) natural embedding into a logical quantale, the enveloping quantale. Partially defined products of algebras related to effect algebras are handled efficiently in this way. The unit group of the enveloping quantale of a quantum B-algebra X is shown to be always contained in X, which gives a functorial subgroup X× of X. Similar subfunctors are obtained for the non-commutative extensions of BCK-algebras and effect algebras. The results of Galatos, Jónsson, and Tsinakis on the splitting of generalized BL-algebras into a semidirect product of a partially ordered group operating on an integral residuated poset are extended to a characterization of twisted semidirect products of a po-group by a quantum B-algebra. (shrink)

The high-tech industry is the main force promoting the development of China’s national economy. As its industrial economic strength grows, China’s high-tech industry is increasingly using cross-border mergers and acquisitions as an important way to “go out.” To explore the rules governing the process and operation mechanism of reverse knowledge transfer through the CBM&A of China’s high-tech industry under government intervention, a tripartite evolutionary game model of the government, the parent company, and the subsidiary as the main subjects is constructed (...) in this paper. The strategies adopted by the three subjects in the RKT game process are analysed, and the factors influencing RKT through CBM&A under government intervention are simulated and analysed using Python 3.7 software. The results show that, under government intervention, the parent company and subsidiary have different degrees of influence on each other. Subsidiaries are highly sensitive to the compensation rate of RKT. Positive intervention by the government tends to foster stable cooperation between the parent company and the subsidiary. However, over time, the government gradually relaxes its intervention in the RKT and innovation of multinational companies. (shrink)

People are known for good predictions in domains they have rich experience with, such as everyday statistics and intuitive physics. But how well can they predict for problems they lack experience with, such as the duration of an ongoing epidemic caused by a new virus? Amid the first wave of COVID-19 in China, we conducted an online diary study, asking each of over 400 participants to predict the remaining duration of the epidemic, once per day for 14 days. Participants’ predictions (...) reflected a reasonable use of publicly available information but were meanwhile biased, subject to the influence of negative affect and future time perspectives. Computational modeling revealed that participants neither relied on prior distributions of epidemic durations as in inferring everyday statistics, nor on mechanistic simulations of epidemic dynamics as in computing intuitive physics. Instead, with minimal experience, participants’ predictions were best explained by similarity-based generalization of the temporal pattern of epidemic statistics. In two control experiments, we further confirmed that such cognitive algorithm is not specific to the epidemic scenario and that minimal and rich experience do lead to different prediction behaviors for the same observations. We conclude that people generalize patterns in recent history to predict the future under minimal experience. (shrink)

In late 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic began to spread over the world, causing millions of deaths. In the first few months of the pandemic, several countries prevented the spread of the pandemic successfully. By contrast, the pandemic in many other countries was not controlled well. For example, India encountered a second serious outbreak of COVID-19 from April 2021 due to the poor resistance measures implemented by the government. To figure out the effective countermeasures to the pandemic, this research proposes a (...) COVID-19 pandemic and its response system, which consists of the infection subsystem, the quarantine subsystem, and the medical subsystem. On this basis, an improved SEIR-SD model is established which is utilized to analyze the response measures to the pandemic quantitatively. This model successfully simulates the actual epidemic scenarios in Wuhan, which verifies its effectiveness. Afterward, the impact of hospital administration rate, quarantine rate, average contact number, and contact infection rate on the cumulative number of infections and deaths are analyzed by simulation. The results show that both the medical and administrative efforts, especially in the early stage of the epidemic, are significant in reducing the number of infections and shortening the epidemic period. In the medical aspect, the more stringent quarantine brings the earlier inflection point of the epidemic; more importantly, improving the treatment rate significantly reduces the scale of the epidemic. In the administrative aspect, enforcing individual protection and strict community closure can effectively cut off the transmission of the virus and curb the spread of the epidemic. Finally, this research proposes several practical suggestions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The main contribution of this research is that the effects of different response measures on the number of new infections daily and the cumulative number of deaths of a country or region in the COVID-19 pandemic are estimated quantitatively based on modeling and simulation. (shrink)

Research on knowledge hiding has largely focused on its antecedents while overlooking its consequences. Drawing on moral cleansing theory, we adopt a “perpetrator-centric view” and posit that employees who engage in playing dumb and evasive hiding–two specific knowledge hiding behaviors that involve deception–will subsequently perform more organizational citizenship behavior directed toward individuals (OCB-I) because they perceive a loss of moral credits following their moral transgression. Further, we propose that the indirect effects are contingent on perpetrators’ moral identity internalization. We tested (...) our hypotheses using a time-lagged research design with a sample of 362 respondents from a large pharmaceutical group company. Consistent with our hypotheses, we found that employees who engaged in playing dumb and evasive hiding subsequently exhibited more OCB-I as they perceived a loss of moral credits, whereas employees who engaged in rationalized hiding did not. In addition, the positive relationships between playing dumb and evasive hiding with perceived loss of moral credits were stronger when perpetrators had high moral identity internalization, as were the indirect effects of playing dumb and evasive hiding on OCB-I via perceived loss of moral credits. Our research contributes to the understanding of when and how engaging in knowledge hiding affects perpetrators and their compensatory behaviors toward coworkers. (shrink)

The counterfactual account of physical computation is simple and, for the most part, very attractive. However, it is usually thought to trivialize the notion of physical computation insofar as it implies ‘limited pancomputationalism’, this being the doctrine that every deterministic physical system computes some function. Should we bite the bullet and accept limited pancomputationalism, or reject the counterfactual account as untenable? Jack Copeland would have us do neither of the above. He attempts to thread a path between the two horns (...) of the dilemma by buttressing the counterfactual account with extra conditions intended to block certain classes of deterministic physical systems from qualifying as physical computers. His theory is called the ‘algorithm execution account’. Here we show that the algorithm execution account entails limited pancomputationalism, despite Copeland’s argument to the contrary. We suggest, partly on this basis, that the counterfactual account should be accepted as it stands, pancomputationalist warts and all. (shrink)

Due to the crucial role of customers’ brand citizenship behaviors on brand strength, this study explored the relationship between brand uniqueness, brand credibility, brand intimacy, brand love, and brand citizenship behavior in Taiwan’s restaurant context. The participants are the customers of Wang Steak, a famous restaurant chain in Taiwan. A total of 358 valid responses were gathered from a questionnaire survey, with a response rate of 71.6%. We used structural equation modeling to analyze the data. Brand uniqueness, brand credibility, and (...) brand intimacy all have a positive relationship with brand love. Moreover, brand love was positively associated with brand citizenship behavior. The findings provide greater insights into the relationship of perceived brand uniqueness, brand credibility, brand intimacy, and brand love with customers’ brand citizenship behaviors. (shrink)

Achieving the global benefits of artificial intelligence (AI) will require international cooperation on many areas of governance and ethical standards, while allowing for diverse cultural perspectives and priorities. There are many barriers to achieving this at present, including mistrust between cultures, and more practical challenges of coordinating across different locations. This paper focuses particularly on barriers to cooperation between Europe and North America on the one hand and East Asia on the other, as regions which currently have an outsized impact (...) on the development of AI ethics and governance. We suggest that there is reason to be optimistic about achieving greater cross-cultural cooperation on AI ethics and governance. We argue that misunderstandings between cultures and regions play a more important role in undermining cross-cultural trust, relative to fundamental disagreements, than is often supposed. Even where fundamental differences exist, these may not necessarily prevent productive cross-cultural cooperation, for two reasons: (1) cooperation does not require achieving agreement on principles and standards for all areas of AI; and (2) it is sometimes possible to reach agreement on practical issues despite disagreement on more abstract values or principles. We believe that academia has a key role to play in promoting cross-cultural cooperation on AI ethics and governance, by building greater mutual understanding, and clarifying where different forms of agreement will be both necessary and possible. We make a number of recommendations for practical steps and initiatives, including translation and multilingual publication of key documents, researcher exchange programmes, and development of research agendas on cross-cultural topics. (shrink)

Although the relationship between stressors and thriving at work has been established, the linkage between them is still in the early stages of theory development. This study proposed a two-path model, based on Lepine’s stressors-performance model, to analyze the effects of the stressors on the thriving at work. Two complementary mediating paths were proposed, i.e., affective strain and motivation, which were explained using affective events theory and expectancy theory, respectively. Based on the empirical data from 233 employees, the results show (...) that challenge stressors could enhance employees’ positive affect and self-efficacy, thus leading to thriving at work; on the contrary, hindrance stressors would result in negative influences. In addition, it is also found that the effect of affective path tend to be greater than that of motivation path, which could provide a practical guide for organizations to effectively apply stress management and to promote employees thriving at work. (shrink)

The global progress empowers the development of new business and expansion of existing business. The availability of sufficient accounting professional are necessary to manage and document the business activities. However, youth are less inclined to purse accounting as profession to keep the progress of global and local economic development. The current study aimed to explore the formation of the intention to pursue Certified Professional Accountancy Qualification with factor of capabilities, career opportunities, job security with respect to the extended theory of (...) planned behavior, i.e., attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control. The study adopted a cross-sectional design and collected quantitative data from a total of 339 accounting students from Malaysia using an online survey. The finding revealed that capabilities and career opportunities influenced the students’ intention to pursue CPAQ. Meanwhile, perceived behavioral control had significantly affect the students’ decision to pursue CPAQ, which is in line with the TPB. The study concentrated on the importance of these factors in influencing the students’ intention and decision to pursue CPAQ. The study offered vital implications for accounting educators and educational institutions to promote the accounting profession as choice and students engage in pursuing CPAQ. The Malaysian government should encourage and support accounting students financially for pursuing CPAQ by providing job security and enhancing subjective norms that may enable these students to complete the required professional qualifications. The study’s limitations and future research opportunities are documented at the end of this article. (shrink)

PurposeThis study aims to investigate the mediational path of the influence of cultural orientation on the COVID-19 pandemic outcome at the national level and find out whether some culture-related factors can have a moderating effect on the influence of culture.MethodologyCultural dimension theory of Hofstede is used to quantify the degree of each dimension of culture orientation. The cross-section regression model is adopted to test if culture orientations affect the pandemic outcome, controlling for democracy, economy, education, population, age, and time. Then, (...) a mediational analysis is conducted to examine if policy response is the mediator that culture makes an impact on the pandemic outcome. Finally, a moderation analysis is carried out to determine how each control variable has moderated the influence.FindingsThe cross-section regression results showed that culture orientation influences the outcome of the COVID-19 pandemic at the 99% confidence level and that among the six cultural dimensions, collectivism-individualism has the most significant impact. It has also been found that policy response is the mediator of cultural influence, and culture-related factors can moderate the influence.ContributionThe contribution of this research lies in developing the assertion that culture influences pandemic outcomes. Our findings indicate that collectivism-individualism culture orientation affects the effectiveness of epidemic controls the most among the six culture dimensions. Additionally, our research is the first to study the mediating effect of policy responses and the moderating effect of culture-related factors on the influence of cultural orientation on the pandemic outcome. (shrink)

Resumo: Não apenas as famílias aristocráticas indígenas, mas também as famílias de imigrantes do norte que viviam no Leste de Zhejiang, estavam envolvidas nos debates sobre teoria monetária e pensamento político, na Dinastia Jin Oriental e Dinastias do Sul. Os debates geralmente se concentravam nos preços das commodities e no trabalho forçado no Leste de Zhejiang. Esse fenômeno histórico especial reflete duas questões. Por um lado, o caos causado pela guerra no Norte e as famílias de estudiosos, migrando para o (...) Sul, promoveram muito o desenvolvimento do Sul da China, o que tornou os cinco condados do leste de Zhejiang as áreas mais importantes e ativas da economia. Por outro lado, reflete as mudanças de relacionamento entre imigrantes e nobres indígenas. Ou seja, as famílias aristocráticas indígenas e as famílias imigrantes do Norte cooperaram na economia para aumentar a prosperidade e o desenvolvimento do Leste de Zhejiang. Mais tarde, com o surgimento de “povo comum (寒人)”, o status econômico dos estudiosos foi cada vez mais impactado, o que resultou em ansiedade e consciência de crise dos nobres. (shrink)

BackgroundThe brain death standard allowing a declaration of death based on neurological criteria is legally endorsed and routinely practiced in the West but not in Asia. In China, attempts to legalize the brain death standard have occurred several times without success. Cultural, religious, and philosophical factors have been proposed to explain this difference, but there is a lack of empirical studies to support this hypothesis.Methods476 medical providers from three academic hospitals in Hunan, China, completed a selfadministered survey including a 12-question (...) brain death clinical knowledge assessment and hypothetical vignettes describing brain dead patients.ResultsThe response rate was 95.2 %. Almost all of the providers had heard of the term “brain death.” More than half have encountered presumed brain dead patients. Two-thirds accepted brain death as an ethical standard to determine human death. The mean knowledge score was 8.50 ± 1.83 out of 12. When given the description of a brain dead patient, 50.7 % considered the patient dead, 51.9 % would withdraw life support, and 40.6 % would allow organ procurement. Both provider and patient characteristics contributed to the providers’ decisions. Ethical acceptance was the most important independent predictor for brain death acknowledgement, followed by high knowledge scores, and the belief that the soul lives in the brain. Religious faith and associated beliefs did not have a significant effect.ConclusionsNotwithstanding scarce official accounts, recognition of the brain death standard is not uncommon in China. Chinese medical providers can adequately define the medical characteristics of brain death and accept it in theory, but hesitate to apply it to practice in the vignettes. Legalization is paramount in providing the protection providers need to comfortably declare brain death. However the medical decision-making surrounding brain death is complex and the provider's past experiences and emotions may also influence the process. (shrink)

Exploring the dynamics feature of robust chaotic system is an attractive yet recent topic of interest. In this paper, we introduce a three-dimensional fractional-order chaotic system. The important finding by analysis is that the position of signalx3descends at the speed of 1/cas the parameterbincreases, and the signal amplitude ofx1,x2can be controlled by the parametermin terms of the power function with the index −1/2. What is more, the dynamics remains constant with the variation of parametersbandm. Consequently, this system can provide rich (...) encoding keys for chaotic communication. By considering the properties of amplitude and position modulation, the partial projective synchronization and partial phase synchronization are realized with linear control scheme. The distribution map of optimal synchronization region in the control-parameter space is charted by defining the power consumption of controller. Numerical simulations are executed to confirm the theoretical analysis. (shrink)

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

With widespread advances in the diffusion and application of medical technologies, the phenomena of misuse and overuse have become pervasive. These phenomena not only increase the cost of health care systems and deplete the accessibility and availability of health care services, they also jeopardize patient autonomy. From a literature review on this aspect of medical technology, an impact on patient autonomy is found in almost all cases, with the exception of philosophical or ethical writings, in which there is not much (...) practical application for health policy and law. In this article, the major finding is that in the area of patient autonomy, it does not matter much whether the “physician decides” or the “patient decides” in the current “disease care” health system, where most of the doctors focus only on disease treatment using aggressive medical technologies. It is also our “disease care” system that ensures that the patients, the health care professionals, or the health care management cannot safeguard their autonomy. Only when the genuine health care system is restored will patient autonomy be protected. (shrink)

Landscape architectural sketches as a painter in real life performance of the most simple and efficient means of drawing attention to the form of linguistic diversity to pursue both a true reflection of objective reality, but also further demonstrate the unique inner experience, mining personality, weaknesses, enrich and improve the artistic quality.

BackgroundBreast cancer patients are at elevated risk of depression during treatment, thus provoking the chance of poor clinical outcomes. This retrospective cohort study aimed to investigate whether integrating Chinese herbal medicines citation into conventional cancer therapy could decrease the risk of depression in the long-term breast cancer survivors.MethodsA cohort of patients aged 20–70 years and with newly diagnosed breast cancer during 2000–2008 was identified from a nationwide claims database. In this study, we focused solely on survivors of breast cancer at (...) least1 year after diagnosis. After one-to-one matching for age, sex, and baseline comorbidities, breast cancer patients who received and did not receive CHM treatment were enrolled. The incidence rate and hazard ratio citation for depression between the two groups was estimated at the end of 2012. A Cox proportional hazard model was constructed to examine the impact of the CHM use on the risk of depression.ResultsDuring the study period, the incidence rate of depression was significantly lower in the treated cohort than in the untreated cohort [8.57 compared with 11.01 per 1,000 person-years citation], and the adjusted HR remained significant at 0.74 in a Cox proportional hazards regression model. The corresponding risk further decreasing to 43% among those using CHM for more than 1 year.ConclusionFinding from this investigation indicated that the lower risk of depression observed in breast cancer patients treated with CHM, suggesting that CHM treatment should be considered for disease management toward breast cancer. Yet, the optimal administered dose should be determined in further clinical trials. (shrink)

Objective: We aimed to evaluate the activity of the human glymphatic system in type 2 diabetes mellitus using diffusion tensor image analysis along with the perivascular space.Methods: Diffusion tensor images were acquired to calculate the diffusivities in the direction of the x-axis, y-axis, and z-axis of the plane of the lateral ventricle body in 20 patients with type 2 diabetes and 10 people in a control group. We evaluated the diffusivity along with the perivascular spaces, as well as the projection (...) fibers and association fibers, separately. The analysis along the perivascular space was defined as the mean /mean, where the Dxpro and Dxasc were the Dx values in the projection and association fiber areas, respectively.Results: There were significant differences in diffusivity along the projection fibers and the association fibers among the groups. The significant differences among the groups along the perivascular spaces, shown as the ALPS-index and medical history of T2DM, indicating lower water diffusivity along the perivascular space concerning type 2 diabetes severity, was also observed.Conclusion: Lower diffusivity along the perivascular space on DTI-APLS can reflect impairment of the glymphatic system in T2DM. This study showed that the activity of the glymphatic system could be evaluated by diffusion tensor image analysis. (shrink)

This study investigated the effect of obstructive sleep apnea on the neural mechanism of visual perception. A preliminary case-control study was conducted. Seventeen patients with moderate to severe OSA in the sleep center of Civil Aviation General Hospital and 20 healthy controls matched for age, sex, and education were recruited. The participants accepted the perceptual contour integration task, compared the differences in behavioral indicators between the two groups, and compared the differences in electroencephalography data between the two groups through event-related (...) potential technology. The groups did not differ significantly in age and gender, but they differed significantly in body mass index. The groups were not statistically different in terms of sleep structure and total sleep time. AHI, sleep efficiency, and minimal SaO2 value in the OSA group were significantly different from those of the control group. The results showed that the average reaction time of the OSA group was significantly longer than that of the healthy control group in the contour integration task. There was no significant difference in the accuracy rate. The results of EEG showed that the amplitudes of N100 of the OSA group were significantly higher than those of the control group at O1, Oz, and O2 electrodes. There was no significant difference in latency between the two groups. At the FCz electrode, the amplitudes of N200 of the OSA group were significantly higher than those of the control group. Therefore, we concluded that in the early stage of the perceptual integration task, although the neural response activity of patients with moderate and severe OSA was not accelerated, they need to call on more psychological resources, activate more neurons in the contour global recognition processing stage, and the compensatory effect of frontal lobe appeared in the stage of visual perception. (shrink)

When explaining the causes of structural variations in local governance reform, regional studies scholars face a trilemma: how to avoid voluntarism that over-inflates individuals’ power to ‘heroically’ reorganize local governance regimes; how to avoid determinism that denies the prowess of local actors in the face of institutional constraints; and how to avoid constructivism that denies the separate existence of both individual actions and local institutions. The question they must answer is: if individuals are embedded in institutions that define their interests (...) and shape their cognitions, how can they ever be able to change institutions? Critical realism suggests a suitable answer to this question by seeing institutional dynamics as consisting of structures, institutions, and actions, each with a distinct existence but nevertheless irreducible to each other. The practical value of this ontology – which avoids voluntarism, determinism and constructivism – is illustrated by an English devolution case study. (shrink)