Working memory (WM) is a fundamental cognitive ability to support complex thought, but it is limited in capacity. WM training has shown the potential to make benefit for those in need. Many studies have shown the potential of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to transiently enhance WM performance by delivering low current to the brain cortex of interest via electrodes on the scalp. TDCS has also been revealed as a promising intervention to augment WM training in a few studies. However, (...) those few tDCS-paired WM training studies focused more on the effect of tDCS on WM enhancement and its transferability after training but paid less attention to the variation of cognitive performance during the training procedure. The current study attempted to explore the effect of tDCS on the variation of performance during WM training in healthy young adults. All the participant received WM training with the load-adaptive verbal N-back task for five days. During the training procedure, active/sham anodal high-definition tDCS (HD-tDCS) was used to stimulate the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). To examine the training effect, pre- and post-test were performed respectively one-day before and after the training sessions respectively. At the beginning of each training session, stable-load WM tasks were performed to examine the performance variation during training. Compared to the sham stimulation, higher learning rates of performance metrics during the training procedure were found when WM training was combined with active anodal HD-tDCS. The performance improvements (post-pre) of the active group were also found to be higher than those of sham group and were transferred to a similar untrained WM task. Further analysis revealed that the negative relation between the training improvements and baseline performance. These findings show the potential that tDCS may be leveraged as an intervention to facilitate WM training for those in need of higher WM ability. (shrink)

Since 2016, drones have been deployed in various development projects in sub-Saharan Africa, where trials, tests, and studies have been rolled out in countries, including Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Malawi, Ghana, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The use cases of drones vary, ranging from imagery collection to transportation of vaccines, lab samples, blood products, and other medical supplies. A wide range of stakeholders is involved, including governments, international organizations, educational institutions, as well as industry. Based on a field study (...) conducted in 2019, this article investigates how drones are used for medical supply delivery in Malawi-a country where the community is underserved for healthcare and related infrastructure underdeveloped, while airspace is largely open and regulations generally relaxed. The objective of presenting this case study is to contribute to the evidence regarding the rapid deployment of medical cargo drones across the African continent, and to spark critical reflections over the utility, suitability, and impacts of incorporating drones in the existing health supply chain systems in resource-poor settings. The discussion revolves around two aspects: 1) the emergent “African Drone Rise”-is it ok “as it is Africa”? and 2) the normative role of technology in the aid sector-is it “a solution looking for a problem”? In conclusion, a call for more structured guidance for the systematic examination and evaluation of the medical cargo drone case is raised. (shrink)

With the rise of the “humanitarian drone” in recent years, drones have become one of the most controversial public interest technologies that have gained increasing media attention. It is worth noting that, although there is a perception in the aid sector that drones hold the promise to reinvent the health supply logistics, to date, routine drone delivery is still relatively new and largely unproven. This paper presents a recent field study conducted in 2019, where drones were deployed in Malawi to (...) help address the last mile challenge in medical supply delivery, and where a noticeable mentality of “killing two birds with one stone” around the attempt of using drones in resource-poor settings is observed. The objective of the paper is to shed light, through a real-world case study and from the ethical perspective, on the impacts of implementing such a systemic change in the existing health supply chain systems. As conclusion, a call for more reflexive approaches for the critical examination, as well as more structured guidance for the responsible evaluation, of medical cargo drones is raised. (shrink)

Increasingly, humanitarian organizations across the globe have been implementing innovative technologies in their practice as they respond to the needs of communities affected by conflicts, disasters, and public health emergencies. However, technological innovation may intersect with moral values, norms, and commitments, and may challenge humanitarian imperatives. Through the examination of an empirical case study on drone mapping, this paper aims to explore three questions: (1) What are the dynamics between aid delivery and technological innovation in the humanitarian enterprise? (2) How (...) are structural problems addressed in an environment in which technology is being portrayed as a force for change? (3) What moral responsibilities towards vulnerable populations should humanitarian stakeholders bear when introducing innovative technologies in humanitarian action. Discussion revolves around the ideology of “technological utopia”, and the normative role of technology in the aid sector - to make substantive impacts, or to produce “success stories”. In conclusion, a call for rigorous ethical analysis to help foster value sensitive humanitarian innovation (VSHI) is made. (shrink)

China has carried out a series of higher education reforms in the past decades. One of the most important parts of the reforms is the internationalization progress of Chinese universities. Despite being a developing country, China offers globally competitive scholarships to international students. However, surprisingly, little research has touched on how international students view China’s high scholarship policies, leaving an important and intriguing question underexplored. Therefore, this paper attempts to fill the literature gap by investigating international students’ brand perceptions of (...) Chinese universities that provide high scholarships. Moreover, we reveal the process of their judgments through identifying the mediating role of perceived quality. A set of two experimental studies provide convergent support for these propositions. Theoretically, the findings of this paper contribute to the literature on higher education reforms, scholarship policies, and branding. In terms of practice, the research results offer implications to policy makers, education professionals, and students. (shrink)

Metal roof enclosure system is an important part of steel structure construction. In recent years, it has been widely used in large-scale public or industrial buildings such as stadiums, airport terminals, and convention centers. Affected by bad weather, various types of accidents on metal roofs frequently occurred, causing huge property losses and adverse effects. Because of wide span, long service life and hidden fault of metal roof, the manual inspection of metal roof has low efficiency, poor real-time performance, and it (...) is difficult to find hidden faults. On the basis of summarizing the working principle of metal roof and cause of accidents, this paper classifies the fault types of metal roofs in detail and establishes a metal roof monitoring and fault diagnosis system using distributed multisource heterogeneous sensors and Zigbee wireless sensor networks. Monitoring data from strain gauge, laser ranging sensor, and ultrasonic ranging sensor is utilized comprehensively. By extracting time domain feature, the data trend characteristics and correlation characteristics are analyzed and fused to eliminate erroneous data and find superficial faults such as sensor drift and network interruption. Aiming to the hidden faults including plastic deformation and bolt looseness, an SVM fault diagnosis algorithm based on RBF kernel function is designed and applied to diagnose metal roof faults. The experimental results show that the RBF-SVM algorithm can achieve high classification accuracy. (shrink)

As a special occupational group, the working and living environments faced by seafarers are greatly different from those of land. It is easy to affect the psychological and physiological activities of seafarers, which inevitably lead to changes in the brain functional activities of seafarers. Therefore, it is of great significance to study the neural activity rules of seafarers’ brain. In view of this, this paper studied the seafarers’ brain alteration at the activated voxel level based on functional magnetic resonance imaging (...) technology by comparing the differences in functional connectivities between seafarers and non-seafarers. Firstly, the activated voxels of each group were obtained by independence component analysis, and then the distribution of these voxels in the brain and the common activated voxels between the two groups were statistically analyzed. Next, the FCs between the common activated voxels of the two groups were calculated and obtained the FCs that had significant differences between them through two-sample T-test. Finally, all FCs and FCs with significant differences between the common activated voxels were used as the features for the support vector machine to classify seafarers and non-seafarers. The results showed that DFCs between the activated voxels had better recognition ability for seafarers, especially for Precuneus_L and Precuneus_R, which may play an important role in the classification prediction of seafarers and non-seafarers, so that provided a new perspective for studying the specificity of neurological activities of seafarers. (shrink)

The current humanitarian use of drones is focused on two applications: disaster mapping and medical supply delivery. In response to the growing interest in drone deployment in the aid sector, we sought to develop a resource to support value sensitivity in humanitarian drone activities. Following a bottom-up approach encompassing a comprehensive literature review, two empirical studies, a review of guidance documents, and consultations with experts, this work illuminates the nature and scope of ethical challenges encountered by humanitarian organizations embarking upon (...) innovation programmes. The Framework for the Ethics Assessment of Humanitarian Drones (FEAHD) identifies five values and five key questions related to ethical considerations along the decision chain of humanitarian drone activities. It fills a gap between high-level, principle-based guidance related to humanitarian innovation, and detailed operation-oriented checklists for projects involving the use of drones. In this way, the FEAHD contributes to support value sensitivity in the humanitarian use of drones. (shrink)

The objective of this study was to determine whether consent forms in oncology clinical trials of commercially available treatments inform subjects that they may be able to obtain the treatments being investigated without participating in research. We acquired consent forms from a random sample of U.S. oncology clinical trials in the ClinicalTrials.gov database. We then examined a subgroup of the sample consisting of studies in which the treatments under investigations were commercially available. Less than 20% of the consent forms in (...) that group disclosed to subjects that they may be able to obtain the treatment being investigated without participating in the study . Our results suggest that potential research subjects are frequently not informed about important alternatives to research participation in studies involving commercially available treatments, which is a violation of both ethical and regulatory standards. (shrink)

PurposeThis study investigated the impact of age and myopia on visual form perception among Chinese school-age children.MethodsThis cross-sectional study included 1,074 students with a mean age of 12.1 ± 4.7 years. The mean spherical equivalence refraction of the participants was −1.45 ± 2.07 D. All participants underwent distance visual acuity, refraction measurement and local and global visual form perception test including orientation, parallelism, collinearity, holes and color discrimination tasks.ResultsThe reaction times of emmetropes were slower than those of myopic and high (...) myopic groups on both local and global discrimination tasks. A reduction in reaction times was found with increasing age on both local and global discrimination tasks. Age was significantly associated with both local and global visual perception performance after adjusting for gender, visual acuity and SER.ConclusionsThis study revealed that both local and global visual perception improve with age among Chinese children and that myopes seem to have better visual perception than emmetropes. (shrink)

Happiness can be regarded as an evaluation of life satisfaction. A high level of wellbeing can promote self-fulfillment and build a rational, peaceful, self-esteem, self-confidence, and positive social mentality. Therefore, the analysis of the factors of happiness is of great significance for the continuous improvement of the individual’s sense of security and gain and the realization of the maximization of self-worth. Emotion is not only an important internal factor that affects happiness, but it can also accurately reflect the individual’s happiness. (...) However, most of current happiness evaluation methods based on the emotional analysis belong to shallow learning paradigm, making the deep learning method unexploited for automatically happiness decoding. In this article, we analyzed the emotions of graduates during their employment and studied its influence on personal happiness at work. We proposed deep restricted Boltzmann machine for graduates’ happiness evaluation during employment. Furthermore, to mitigate the information loss when passing through many network layers, we introduced the skip connections to DRBM and proposed a deep residual RBM for enhancing the valuable information. We further introduced an attention mechanism to DRRBM to focus on the important factors. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed method on the happiness evaluation tasks, we conducted extensive experiments on the statistical data of the China Comprehensive Social Survey. Compared with the state-of-the-art methods, our method shows better performance, which proves the practicability and feasibility of our method for happiness evaluation. (shrink)

The use of drones (or unmanned aerial vehicles, UVAs) in humanitarian action has emerged rapidly in the last decade and continues to expand. These so-called ‘humanitarian drones’ represent the first wave of robotics applied in the humanitarian and development contexts, providing critical information through mapping of crisis-affected areas and timely delivery of aid supplies to populations in need. Alongside these emergent uses of drones in the aid sector, debates have arisen about potential risks and challenges, presenting diverse perspectives on the (...) ethical, legal, and social implications of humanitarian drones. Guided by the methodology introduced by Arksey and O’Malley, this scoping review offers an assessment of the ethical considerations discussed in the academic and gray literature based on a screening of 1,188 articles, from which we selected and analyzed 47 articles. In particular, we used a hybrid approach of qualitative content analysis, along with quantitative landscape mapping, to inductively develop a typology of ethical considerations associated with humanitarian drones. The results yielded 11 key areas of concern: (1) minimizing harm, (2) maximizing welfare, (3) substantive justice, (4) procedural justice, (5) respect for individuals, (6) respect for communities, (7) regulatory gaps, (8) regulatory dysfunction, (9) perceptions of humanitarian aid and organizations, (10) relations between humanitarian organizations and industry, and (11) the identity of humanitarian aid providers and organizations. Our findings illuminate topics that have been the focus of extensive attention (such as minimizing risks of harm and protecting privacy), traces the evolution of this discussion over time (i.e., an initial focus on mapping drones and the distinction of humanitarian from military use, toward the ethics of cargo drones carrying healthcare supplies and samples), and points to areas that have received less consideration (e.g., whether sustainability and shared benefits will be compromised if private companies’ interest in humanitarian drones wanes once new markets open up). The review can thus help to situate and guide further analysis of drone use in humanitarian settings. (shrink)

Low frequency oscillation is an important attribute of human brain activity, and the amplitude of low frequency fluctuation is an effective method to reflect the characteristics of low frequency oscillation, which has been widely used in the treatment of brain diseases and other fields. However, due to the low accuracy of the current analysis methods for low frequency signal extraction of ALFF, we propose the Fourier-based synchrosqueezing transform, which is often used in the field of signal processing to extract the (...) ALFF of the low frequency power spectrum of the whole-time dimension. The low frequency characteristics of the extracted signal are compared with those of FSST and fast Fourier transform through the resting-state data. It is clear that the signal extracted by FSST has more low frequency characteristics, which is significantly different from FFT. (shrink)

Through the recognition of ocean sediment sonar images, the texture in the image can be classified, which provides an important basis for the classification of ocean sediment. Aiming at the problems of low efficiency, waste of human resources, and low accuracy in the traditional manual side-scan sonar image discrimination, this paper studies the application of image recognition technology in sonar image substrate texture discrimination, which is popular in many fields. At the same time, considering the scale complexity, diversity, multisources, and (...) small sample characteristics of the marine sediment sonar image texture, the transfer learning is introduced into the image recognition, and the K-means clustering algorithm is used to reset the prior frame parameters to improve the speed and accuracy of image recognition. Through the experimental comparison between the original model and the new model based on transfer learning, the AP value of the yolov3 model based on transfer learning can reach 84.39%, which is 0.97% higher than that of the original model, with considerable accuracy and room for improvement; it takes less than 0.2 seconds. This shows the applicability and development of image recognition technology in texture discrimination of bottom sonar images. (shrink)

As an old and traditional beverage, tea has been an important part of people’s life in both China and the United Kingdom , and has respectively developed a unique culture in each of the two nations. Tea culture is an important part in culture of these two nations. In this paper, the author will first review 3 important aspects of the tea culture in China and the UK: history of tea, tea drinking customs and teasets, and then a conclusion about (...) the similarities and differences of Chinese and British tea culture will be drawn. (shrink)

本书系作者一系列关于后现代理论衰落后新出现的批评流派的论文集。其内容和体例分为五编。第一编的两章分别对九十年代以来国际学术界关于后现代主义问题的讨论作出总结性的评述;第二编“后殖民主义”应当说是本书的 重点,在首先对后殖民理论的源起以及后殖民地文学的概况作一“鸟瞰式”的评价。.

Dialectics is essentially the method or logos in which categories of forms are combined to explain things. Dialectics was developed because reason faces difficulties in grasping the sensible world. Practical wisdom is knowledge about some things or certain person or persons because of its variable objects. But it is not entirely specific or only about a particular thing and without universality in any sense. As one kind of dialectics, it combines various elements to accord with the right logos, similar to (...) the way in which various forms are combined in theory. Therefore practical wisdom as a combination or polymerization of elements can be regarded as another kind of logic, namely practical logic or dialectics. (shrink)

In order to improve early childhood physical education, in this study, the talent cultivation mechanism for undergraduates was explored under the “full-practice” concept, oriented by preschooler mental health. First, from the perspective of preschooler psychology, the mechanisms of ability training and talent cultivation for undergraduates majoring in early childhood education were explored under the “full-practice” concept. Considering that the physical, psychological, and intellectual development of preschoolers shall follow the rules of physical education, and current early childhood education mainly focuses on (...) intelligence education in China, early childhood physical education was analyzed further in this study. By investigating the undergraduate majors of early childhood education in Henan University, this study first summarized the current problems in early childhood education systems in universities. Secondly, combined with the form of physical education in kindergartens, strategies for talent cultivation and curriculum setting of early childhood physical education majors in colleges and universities were proposed. Finally, from the perspective of innovation and diversification of training forms, the cultivation of early childhood educators’ physical education ability was analyzed at multiple levels and multiple objectives, and the integrated training system of early childhood education talents was constructed. The results show that, among all the courses for early childhood education major, compulsory courses account for 81.2% and optional courses account for 18.8%. In addition, a survey on undergraduates’ attitudes toward the curriculum of their major demonstrates that 81.2% of the undergraduates thought that the range and content of practical courses should be increased, indicating that undergraduates majoring in early childhood education are dissatisfied with the current curriculum system, and they have an increased demand for practical courses. Correspondingly, it is vital to build and improve on the early childhood physical education. In terms of its talent cultivation, the “full-practice” concept helps combine theory with practice to improve the effectiveness of education and teaching, pushing forward the reform of the education system. Meanwhile, data- and intelligence-oriented teaching will become the new direction of modern sports development, as well as an important link for tracking and monitoring children’s sports teaching in China. Through the continuous introduction of wearable artificial intelligence products, real-time monitoring of children’s physical conditions can be realized, which helps improve the effectiveness of early childhood physical education. (shrink)

Had only from the early feminist social status and rights of women, the pursuit of development to the differences between women and men and the women's own recognition of the unique construction of identity. In the era of globalization, migration and cultural identity of the nation's more to gender studies of fuzzy multi-development of this condition, topics at the forefront of contemporary gender studies is that female homosexuality and the resulting strange phenomena. Both theoretical research projects has begun to attract (...) the attention of domestic scholars, and the status quo may be carried out with appropriate domestic comparative study. Continuing its author's previous work on cultural studies, the present essay offers a theoretic reflection on the origin and development of Western feminism in the context of cultural studies. To the author, contemporary feminism has long shifted its emphasis from pursuing women's social right and position onto the level of identifying themselves as female and constructing their own unique identity different from male. In the current age of globalization, the large-scale immigration and the obscurity of national and cultural identity enable gender study to develop in a pluralistic orientation. The main focus of contemporary gender studies is put on lesbian and queer studies, which have already attracted the attention of domestic scholars and which will be further carried out in comparison with the current Chinese practice. (shrink)

There are many Chinese versions of The Communist Manifesto and all of them had problems with the translation of foreign concepts and words, which triggered debates for years. One of the most interesting questions in the debates on the translation of the Manifesto is how to translate Assoziation / “association” and how Marx understood this concept.

The noticeable turn to technology in humanitarian action raises issues related to humanitarianism, sovereignty, as well as equality and access for at-risk populations in disaster zones or remote areas lacking sufficient healthcare services. On a technical level, practical challenges include heightened risks of data safety and security, and the potential malicious use of technology. On a societal level, humanitarian innovation may disrupt relations between different stakeholders, may widen inequality between those with access and those without, and may threaten privacy, disproportionately (...) affecting the vulnerable population. Drawing on the empirical findings of a case study of the 2015 Nepal earthquake, this paper presents an in-depth normative analysis to identify contextualised ethical considerations, and illuminate the wider debate about how technological innovation in the aid sector should be operationalised. In conclusion, on the normative level, a prudent attitude in adopting novel technology in the aid sector is required; while on the operational level, proposals for actionable ethical standards to guide and safeguard sector-wide innovation practices are needed. (shrink)

In this article, we use the two-sided market theory as a support and take the operating data of eight Chinese third-party payment platform companies as samples, based on pricing models and multiple regression analysis, to build a price feature model for a third-party payment platform. The results show that under the two-sided market environment, the scale of consumer and the same-side network externality of the merchant have a negative significant effect on the pricing of the third-party payment platform to the (...) seller; The market share of the platform and the bank fee cost of the platform have a positive significant effect on the pricing of a third-party payment platform to the merchant. At the same time, the same-side network externality of the seller, the scale of a merchant, and the selection of the business model of the platform have no significant effect on the pricing of the third-party payment platform to the merchant. These conclusions provide a scientific basis for a third-party payment platform enterprise to develop an appropriate pricing strategy and operating model. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The “facts” of international politics constitute the first-order representations of political life and can be reflected in popular entertainment as second-order or fictional representations. This article demonstrates that discourses of popular culture are powerful and implicated in International Relations studies. The article makes two correlated claims: the first is that the humanist and anthropological methodology often used to analyse pop culture could also be used to analyse international issues, if appropriately contextualized; the second claim is that a nation can (...) manifest its ‘discourse’ in international politics via its popular culture, as soft power. (shrink)