Biobanks are potential goldmines for genomics research. They have become increasingly common as a means to determine the relationship between lifestyle, environmental exposures and predisposition to genetic disease. More and more countries are developing massive national scale biobanks, including Iceland, the UK and Estonia. Now several large-scale regional and national biobanks are planned in China, such as Shanghai Biobank, which is defined as a key-element in Shanghai's twelfth five-year Development Plan of Science and Technology. It is imperative that the authors (...) who are in charge of the ethical aspect of Shanghai Biobank discuss the ethical aspects of these biobanks up front. Currently there is a great deal of heterogeneity in the approaches to informed consent taken by different countries. In the article, after briefly introducing the biobanks in China, we focus on the three most common approaches: classical informed consent, tiered consent, and one-time general (or blanket) consent, and propose a version of the latter for China, based on compelling arguments. (shrink)

Biobanks are potential goldmines for genomics research. They have become increasingly common as a means to determine the relationship between lifestyle, environmental exposures and predisposition to genetic disease. More and more countries are developing massive national scale biobanks, including Iceland, the UK and Estonia. Now several large-scale regional and national biobanks are planned in China, such as Shanghai Biobank, which is defined as a key-element in Shanghai's twelfth five-year Development Plan of Science and Technology. It is imperative that the authors (...) who are in charge of the ethical aspect of Shanghai Biobank discuss the ethical aspects of these biobanks up front. Currently there is a great deal of heterogeneity in the approaches to informed consent taken by different countries. In the article, after briefly introducing the biobanks in China, we focus on the three most common approaches: classical informed consent, tiered consent, and one-time general (or blanket) consent, and propose a version of the latter for China, based on compelling arguments. (shrink)

This study aims at contributing to literature by investigating characteristics of Generation Z's social media uses and gratifications and the moderation effect of economic capital. Specifically, we employed online survey as the main research method to examine the connections between the young generation cohort's online motivations, social media practices, and economic capital. A total of 221 Chinese Generation Z social media users were recruited in the survey. Results indicated that Generation Zs have different social media engagements depending on whether they (...) were connected for daily routine alternatives or socialization; the young cohorts from upper-mid-income families demonstrated a more instrumental-rational habitus to use social media more frequently as a communicative tool than those from low-income families; and motivations and family income interacted to influence Generation Z's social media practices. Findings here provide empirical reference to deepened understandings of the interactions between social media and digital generations, and their connections with digital social inequalities. (shrink)

In special application scenarios, such as portable anesthesia depth monitoring, portable emotional state recognition and portable sleep monitoring, electroencephalogram (EEG) signal acquisition equipment is required to be convenient and easy to use. It is difficult to remove electrooculogram (EOG) artifacts when the number of EEG acquisition channels is small, especially when the number of observed signals is less than that of the source signals, and the overcomplete problem will arise. The independent component analysis (ICA) algorithm commonly used for artifact removal (...) requires the number of basis vectors to be smaller than the dimension of the input data due to a set of standard orthonormal bases learned during the convergence process, so it cannot be used to solve the overcomplete problem. The empirical mode decomposition method decomposes the signal into several independent intrinsic mode functions so that the number of observed signals is more than that of the source signals, solving the overcomplete problem. However, when using this method to solve overcompleteness, the modal aliasing problem will arise, which is caused by abnormal events such as sharp signals, impulse interference, and noise. Aiming at the above problems, we propose a novel EEG artifact removal method based on discrete wavelet transform, complete empirical mode decomposition for adaptive noise (CEEMDAN) and ICA in this paper. First, the input signals are transformed by discrete wavelet (DWT), and then CEEMDAN is used to solve the overcomplete and mode aliasing problems, meeting the a priori conditions of the ICA algorithm. Finally, the components belonging to EOG artifacts are removed according to the sample entropy value of each independent component. Experiments show that this method can effectively remove EOG artifacts while solving the overcomplete and modal aliasing problems. (shrink)

Knearest neighbor search is an important problem in location-based services and has been well studied on static road networks. However, in real world, road networks are often time-dependent; i.e., the time for traveling through a road always changes over time. Most existing methods forkNN query build various indexes maintaining the shortest distances for some pairs of vertices on static road networks. Unfortunately, these methods cannot be used for the time-dependent road networks because the shortest distances always change over time. To (...) address the problem ofkNN query on time-dependent road networks, we propose a novel voronoi-based index in this paper. Furthermore, we propose a novel balanced tree, namedV-tree, which is a secondary level index on voronoi-based index to make our querying algorithm more efficient. Moreover, we propose an algorithm for preprocessing time-dependent road networks such that the waiting time is not necessary to be considered. We confirm the efficiency of our method through experiments on real-life datasets. (shrink)

Diffusion plays an essential role in the distribution of predator and prey. We mainly research the diffusion network’s effect on the predator-prey model through bifurcation. First, it is found that the link probability and diffusion parameter can cause Turing instability in the network-organized predator-prey model. Then, the Turing stability region is obtained according to the sufficient condition of Turing instability and the eigenvalues’ distribution. Finally, the biological mechanism is explained through our theoretical results, which are also illustrated by numerical simulation.

As a rapidly growing emerging capital market, China has attracted the attention of both investors and scholars. To alleviate the expectation of external users of listed companies’ financial statements to “discount” items in levels 2 and 3 of the fair value measurement, listed companies will treat these items as conditional conservatism. It refers to the conservatism of companies when confirming bad news of unrealized gains and losses sooner than confirming good news. A sample was selected for empirical analysis to verify (...) the existence of this relationship. The results are as follows: the higher the proportion of levels 2 and 3 fair value measurements, the stronger the conditional conservatism of the company’s profit and loss; the higher the proportion of cash holding of operating activities in a company’s operating profit and the higher the audit quality, the higher the proportion of levels 2 and 3 fair value hierarchy measurements, and the stronger the conditional conservatism of the company’s profit and loss; and the lesser the internal control defects in a company, the higher the proportion of levels 2 and 3 fair value hierarchy measurements, and the stronger the conditional conservatism of its profit and loss. The findings provide empirical evidence to identify listed companies adopting conditional conservatism to alleviate discounting expectations of fair value items of financial statements’ external users and provide a reference for improving the standards and regulation of listed companies. (shrink)