In recent years, many studies have been done to identify the factors that affect teacher emotions at schools. However, the empirical evidence on how teachers’ emotions influence students’ outcomes and performance is not extensive. Against this background, this study explored the correlation between teacher EI and student academic achievement and possible mechanisms may lie in this relationship. A sample of 365 Chinese teachers from 25 public middle schools participated in this study by completing measurements of teacher EI, teacher work engagement, (...) and teacher self-efficacy. The student academic achievement was assessed by the grades of the previous term reported by the students. The results indicated that teacher work engagement partially mediated the path from teacher EI and student academic achievement. Moderated mediation further showed that teachers with high self-efficacy had a more significant positive impact on the relationship between teacher work engagement and student academic achievement than teachers with low self-efficacy. The limitations of this study were also discussed. (shrink)

Background: Chinese Taoist cognitive therapy (CTCT), a culture-oriented psychological therapy for Chinese mental well-being, has been proposed for decades. However, the evidence for its effects is unclear. This study aimed to systematically assess the effect of this therapy on symptoms of depression and anxiety in Chinese adults. Methods: Relevant studies were searched from major electronic databases through November 2018 without language limits. Several search terms used include “anxiety” OR “depression” AND “Taoism” OR “Daoism” OR “Chinese Taoist Cognitive Therapy”. A total (...) of 11 clinical trials focusing on CTCT were included in this meta-analysis. Random-effects meta-analytical models were conducted. Heterogeneity and publication bias were also explored. Results: Eight clinical trials for 580 subjects were included. The majority of these studies explored samples with depressive symptoms. Overall, CTCT significantly reduced depressive symptoms with a small positive effect (SMD = 0.16, 95% CI: -0.36-0.68). Medium-to-large effect sizes were observed across individuals with clinical or nonclinical depression and chronic physical diseases (SMD = 0.70, 95%CI: 0.27-1.13 and SMD = 0.72, 95%CI: 0.09-1.35, respectively). However, the effectiveness for anxiety symptoms remains debatable. Conclusions: Our findings hold promise that CTCT can help reduce depressive symptoms in Chinese adults, including patients with chronic physical diseases and clinical or nonclinical depression. Our findings may be generalized to Chinese communities in other countries. (shrink)

Traffic congestion is a common problem in many countries, especially in big cities. At present, China’s urban road traffic accidents occur frequently, the occurrence frequency is high, the accident causes traffic congestion, and accidents cause traffic congestion and vice versa. The occurrence of traffic accidents usually leads to the reduction of road traffic capacity and the formation of traffic bottlenecks, causing the traffic congestion. In this paper, the formation and propagation of traffic congestion are simulated by using the improved medium (...) traffic model, and the control strategy of congestion dissipation is studied. From the point of view of quantitative traffic congestion, the paper provides the fact that the simulation platform of urban traffic integration is constructed, and a feasible data analysis, learning, and parameter calibration method based on RBF neural network is proposed, which is used to determine the corresponding decision support system. The simulation results prove that the control strategy proposed in this paper is effective and feasible. According to the temporal and spatial evolution of the paper, we can see that the network has been improved on the whole. (shrink)

The rapid improvement of technologies such as artificial intelligence in recent years has resulted in the development of smart technologies that can influence learning performance in different fields. The purpose of study is to explore the link between smart technology and learning performance. Using the S-O-R model as a framework, the researchers argue that smart technology will increase corporate trust, self-efficacy, and well-being, resulting in improved learning performance. The current model regards corporate trust and self-efficacy as relationship factors and investigates (...) their direct influence on employee well-being and learning performance and the mediating role played by these variables. Additionally, the function of employee well-being in moderating the relationship between corporate trust, self-efficacy, and employee learning performance is also explored. The respondents in the present study are made up of employees from 10 logistics companies located in China. The data analysis is conducted using the AMOS software. The results show that that smart technologies can affect learning performance through corporate trust, self-efficacy, and employee well-being. The implementation of smart technology initiatives by corporations may provide positive workplace outcomes for employees, corporations, and the relationship between employees and the companies that employ them. (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)

Man has to face the unknown future anytime and anywhere. For this reason, he needs to believe in the truth beyond himself. Otherwise, society will decline, decay, and never come back. Similarly, human beings are always faced with social conflicts everywhere. For this reason, he needs a legal system. Otherwise, society will disintegrate and fall apart. However, from the constitutional text, there is no uniform title and standard definition of freedom of religious belief in all countries. Countries in the west (...) are called religious freedom, while China adopts the concept of freedom of religious belief. This article will further analyze the different influences of Chinese and western religions on the law. It is worth pointing out that the living environment of law in the west is not as good as Chinese people think, and the authority of law and people's belief in law are gradually drifting away. Based on the basic theory of freedom of religious belief, this paper analyzes the different influences of Chinese and western religions on the law, analyzes the present situation and demands for legal protection of freedom of religious belief in contemporary China, and tries to put forward feasible solutions. (shrink)

Active reciprocity is a process of human harmonious development, which is based on reciprocity. Reciprocity is the result of trichotomy and the expression of golden mean; Active reciprocity is the expression of active golden mean, which discards the passive part of reciprocity. Active reciprocity is a form of rational collectivism which, generally speaking, has two rules for individual communication behavior, namely mutually benefiting and mutually tolerating. It also has three rules for individual behavior, namely benefiting the others without harming oneself, (...) benefiting both oneself and others, benefiting oneself without harming others. It has, through norms, incorporated values and ideas such as fairness, reason, democracy, philanthropism, freedom, harmony, as well as right, responsibility, respect, tolerance, trust, sustainable development. However, it has to be pointed out that active reciprocity should oriented towards altruism, with the minimum requirement of doing no harm to others. Otherwise it will result in moral relativism. (shrink)

The complexity of today’s organizational environment increasingly requires leaders to think in a dynamic and flexible way to resolve contradictory issues. This study explored and compared the effects of servant leadership and authoritarian leadership on employees’ work behavior from the perspectives of ambidextrous leadership theory and social exchange theory, and further examined the mediating role of psychological empowerment. In this study, 315 employees from state-owned communication companies in Shandong and Zhejiang Provinces in China were selected as subjects, and path analysis (...) was used to test the hypotheses. The results showed that servant leadership positively predicted organizational citizenship behavior and task performance. While authoritarian leadership negatively predicted organizational citizenship behavior and positively predicted task performance, psychological empowerment mediated the relationship between the two leadership styles and organizational citizenship behavior and task performance. Moreover, psychological empowerment and organizational citizenship behavior played a multiple mediating role between the two leadership styles and task performance. The theoretical implications of these findings for advancing the ambidextrous leadership theory in Chinese organizational contexts and practical approaches for corporate managers to effectively use ambidextrous leadership style were discussed. (shrink)

Experts play a crucial role in underpinning decision-making in most management situations. While recent studies have disclosed the impacts of individuals’ inherent cognition and the external environment on expert performance, these two-dimensional mechanisms remain poorly understood. In this study, we identified 14 factors that influence expert performance in a bid evaluation and applied cross-impact matrix multiplication to examine the interdependence of the factors. The results indicate that the two dimension-related factors affect each other within a person–environment system, and a poor (...) situation perception gives rise to the deviation of expert performance. Expert performance can be improved if external supervision and expertise are strengthened through deliberate practices. The study proposes a new expert performance research tool, elucidates its mechanism in bid evaluation from a cognitive psychology perspective, and provides guidelines for its improvement in workplace contexts. (shrink)

In this research work, a user-friendly decision support framework is developed to analyze the behavior of Pakistani students in academics. The purpose of this article is to analyze the performance of the Pakistani students using an intelligent decision support system (DSS) based on the three-level machine learning (ML) technique. The neural network used a three-level classifier approach for the prediction of Pakistani student achievement. A self-recorded dataset of 1,011 respondents of graduate students of English and Physics courses are used. The (...) ten interviews along with ten questions were conducted to determine the perception of the individual student. The chi-squared ( χ ) \left(\chi ) test was applied to test statistical significancy of the questionnaire. The statistical calculations and computation of data were performed by using the statistical package of IBMM SPSS version 21.0. The seven different algorithms were tested to improve the data classification. The Java-based environment was used for the development of numerous prediction classifiers. C4.5 algorithm shows the finest accuracy, whereas Naïve Bayes (NB) algorithm shows the least. The results depict that the classifier’s efficiency was improved by using a three-level proposed scheme from 83.2% to 88.8%. This prediction has shown remarkable results when compared with the individual level classifier technique of ML. This improvement in the accuracy of DSSs is used to identify more efficiently the gray areas in the education stratum of Pakistan. This will pave a path for making policies in the higher education system of Pakistan. The presented framework can be deployed on different platforms under numerous operating systems. (shrink)

As a generalization of both single-valued neutrosophic element and hesitant fuzzy element, single-valued neutrosophic hesitant fuzzy element is an efficient tool for describing uncertain and imprecise information. Thus, it is of great significance to deal with single-valued neutrosophic hesitant fuzzy information for many practical problems. In this paper, we study the aggregation of SVNHFEs based on some normalized operations from geometric viewpoint. Firstly, two normalized operations are defined for processing SVNHFEs. Then, a series of normalized aggregation operators which fulfill some (...) basic conditions of a valid aggregation operator are proposed. Additionally, a decision-making method is developed for resolving multiattribute decision-making problems based on the proposed operators. Finally, a numerical example is provided to illustrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the method. (shrink)

In this paper, the single-machine scheduling problem is studied by simultaneously considering due-date assignment and group technology. The objective is to determine the optimal sequence of groups and jobs within groups and optimal due-date assignment to minimize the weighted sum of the absolute value in lateness and due-date assignment cost, where the weights are position dependent. For the common due-date assignment, slack due-date assignment, and different due-date assignment, an O n log n time algorithm is proposed, respectively, to solve the (...) problem, where n is the number of jobs. (shrink)

The online creativity generation research is a new field of creativity research. However, very little is known about the specific psychological processes of online idea generation. Against this background, this study explored the correlation between student intrinsic motivation and online creativity and possible mechanisms that may lie within this relationship. A sample of 423 Chinese students from three public universities participated in this study by completing measurements of intrinsic motivation, online learning engagement, creativity, and perceived teacher emotional support. The results (...) indicated that student online learning engagement partially mediates the positive association between student intrinsic motivation and their online creativity. Teacher emotional support moderates the positive relationship between student intrinsic motivation and online learning engagement. Our findings suggested that student online creativity benefited from their intrinsic motivation in an online environment. The limitations of this study were also discussed. (shrink)

To explore the impact of academic burden on the physical and mental health of primary school students, combined with the results of the Programme for International Student Assessment report in 2018, the relationship among the development of mathematical literacy, mathematics academic burden, and the physical and mental health of primary school students is studied. First, the relationship between mathematical literacy and mathematics anxiety is analyzed, and related influencing factors and measurement methods of mathematics anxiety are introduced. A questionnaire is then (...) designed for primary school students’ mathematical stress, and the reliability and validity of the designed questionnaire are tested. Finally, a questionnaire survey is conducted on students, parents, and teachers in the third, fourth, and fifth grades of three standardized public primary schools. The results of the questionnaire survey show that students, teachers, and parents have a general understanding of the mathematics academic burden of primary school students at this stage. A total of 70% of teachers believe that primary school students have a heavy mathematics burden; 50% of parents think that primary school students are under heavy academic stress; 70% of primary school students believe that the heavy mathematics burden leads to reduced sleep time and extracurricular activities, which has a serious impact on the physical and mental health of primary school students. This research provides a reference for improving the current balance between education and students’ physical and mental health in China. (shrink)

The fast advancing RNA‐seq technology has unveiled an unexpected diversity and expression specificity of 3′ untranslated regions (3′UTRs) of mRNAs. In particular, neural mRNAs seem to express significantly longer 3′UTRs, some of which are over 10 kb in length. The extensive elongation of 3′UTRs in neural tissues provides intriguing possibilities for cell type‐specific regulations that are governed by miRNAs, RNA‐binding proteins and ribonucleoprotein aggregates. In this article, we review recent progress in the characterization of mRNA 3′UTRs and discuss their implications (...) in the understanding of 3′UTR‐mediated gene regulation. (shrink)

This research examines the effect of an individual difference variable that reflects the extent to which one desires positive evaluations from others—that is, face consciousness on consumer energy-saving behavior—as well as the mechanism through which the effect occurs and conditions under which it varies. Drawing upon the means-end theory of lifestyles, we propose that face consciousness increases a status-seeking lifestyle and thus decreases energy-saving behavior. Moreover, the negative relationship between status-seeking lifestyle and energy-saving behavior is contingent upon a perceived seriousness (...) of environmental problems and perceived environmental responsibility, such that the indirect and negative effect of such face consciousness is stronger for consumers who perceive less serious environmental problems and less environmental responsibility. Results from an experimental study and a field study using samples of Chinese consumers provide consistent evidence for the hypothesized model. Theoretical and practical implications for energy-saving behavior are also discussed. (shrink)

BackgroundPhysical activity is known to improve mental health, and is regarded as safe and desirable for uncomplicated pregnancy. In this novel study, we aim to evaluate whether there are associations between maternal physical activity during pregnancy and neonatal brain cortical development.MethodsForty-four mother/newborn dyads were included in this longitudinal study. Healthy pregnant women were recruited and their physical activity throughout pregnancy were documented using accelerometers worn for 3–7 days for each of the 6 time points at 4–10, ∼12, ∼18, ∼24, ∼30, (...) and ∼36 weeks of pregnancy. Average daily total steps and daily total activity count as well as daily minutes spent in sedentary/light/moderate/vigorous activity modes were extracted from the accelerometers for each time point. At ∼2 weeks of postnatal age, their newborns underwent an MRI examination of the brain without sedation, and 3D T1-weighted brain structural images were post-processed by the iBEAT2.0 software utilizing advanced deep learning approaches. Cortical surface maps were reconstructed from the segmented brain images and parcellated to 34 regions in each brain hemisphere, and mean cortical thickness for each region was computed for partial correlation analyses with physical activity measures, with appropriate multiple comparison corrections and potential confounders controlled.ResultsAt 4–10 weeks of pregnancy, mother’s daily total activity count positively correlated (FDR corrected P ≤ 0.05) with newborn’s cortical thickness in the left caudal middle frontal gyrus (rho = 0.48, P = 0.04), right medial orbital frontal gyrus (rho = 0.48, P = 0.04), and right transverse temporal gyrus (rho = 0.48, P = 0.04); mother’s daily time in moderate activity mode positively correlated with newborn’s cortical thickness in the right transverse temporal gyrus (rho = 0.53, P = 0.03). At ∼24 weeks of pregnancy, mother’s daily total activity count positively correlated (FDR corrected P ≤ 0.05) with newborn’s cortical thickness in the left (rho = 0.56, P = 0.02) and right isthmus cingulate gyrus (rho = 0.50, P = 0.05).ConclusionWe identified significant relationships between physical activity in healthy pregnant women during the 1st and 2nd trimester and brain cortical development in newborns. Higher maternal physical activity level is associated with greater neonatal brain cortical thickness, presumably indicating better cortical development. (shrink)

Size perception of visual objects is highly context dependent. Here we report a novel perceptual size illusion that the self-face, being a unique and distinctive self-referential stimulus, can enlarge its perceived size. By using a size discrimination paradigm, we found that the self-face was perceived as significantly larger than the other-face of the same size. This size overestimation effect was not due to the familiarity of the self-face, since it could be still observed when the self-face was directly compared with (...) a famous face. More crucially, such illusion effect could be extended to a new cartoon face that was transiently associated with one's own face and could also exert further contextual influences on visual size perception of other objects. These findings together highlight the role of self-awareness in visual size perception and point to a special mechanism of size perception tuned to self-referential information. (shrink)

Progressive supranuclear palsy is a movement disorder with prominent tau neuropathology. Brain diseases with abnormal tau deposits are called tauopathies, the most common of which is Alzheimer's disease. Environmental causes of tauopathies include repetitive head trauma associated with some sports. To identify common genetic variation contributing to risk for tauopathies, we carried out a genome-wide association study of 1,114 individuals with PSP and 3,247 controls followed by a second stage in which we genotyped 1,051 cases and 3,560 controls for the (...) stage 1 SNPs that yielded P ≤ 10-3. We found significant previously unidentified signals associated with PSP risk at STX6, EIF2AK3 and MOBP. We confirmed two independent variants in MAPT affecting risk for PSP, one of which influences MAPT brain expression. The genes implicated encode proteins for vesicle-membrane fusion at the Golgi-endosomal interface, for the endoplasmic reticulum unfolded protein response and for a myelin structural component. © 2011 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

To study the development trend of embedded platforms in home appliances Internet of Things, an application of embedded Linux in the design of IoT gateway is designed. ARM microprocessor S3C2410, EM310 radio frequency module, and Ethernet DM9000A module are used to realize the home network information-processing platform. The platform utilizes existing network facilities, RF modules, and network interface modules to realize the interconnection of the home perception network through wireless or wired links. For experimental analysis, Ping the central server from (...) the IoT node B is set to twice: The first time ttl = 255 time = 1.9 ms, the second time: ttl = 255 time = 2.4 ms. After application verification, the system has the characteristics of low cost, small size, low power consumption, and vital ease of use. It can not only integrate the home Internet and the IoT gateway but also directly run application-layer communication protocols such as HTTP/mqtt between IoT nodes and Internet terminals. The design supports multi-hop communication and significantly increases the deployment range of IoT nodes without signal relay equipment, hence reducing the cost of IoT networking and the complexity of the network architecture. (shrink)

ObjectiveNumerous studies have demonstrated that religious belief is associated with prosocial behavior. However, how do they maintain cooperation in societies with a predominating atheist population, such as China? Different primings and a quasi-experiment are used to examine the link between communist authority and prosocial behaviors among college students in China.Materials and methodsIn Study 1, the subjects’ communist authority in the university lab was primed by a communist-authority video. In Study 2, we compared the priming effects of communist authority and religion (...) on prosocial intention. Study 3 investigated the priming effect of communist authority on prosocial behaviors by employing a scrambled sentence task in the university lab. A quasi-experiment was conducted in Study 4.ResultsResults showed that communist-authority, a reminder of secular authorities, increased prosociality among college students. And empathy moderated the relationship between secular authorities and prosociality in Study 3 and Study 4.DiscussionCommunist authority, a secular authority prime, has a positive effect on promoting prosocial behaviors. These results provided a feasible yet novel way to reveal the mechanism of the relationship between secular authorities and prosociality in China. (shrink)

As a special group of police officer, prison police have to endure more work stress and have significant work-family conflict, which may lead to more physical and mental health problems and need to be noticed by the society. The Work-Family Conflict Scale is a brief self-report scale that measures the conflict that an individual experiences between their work and family roles and the extent they interfere with one another. However, there is limited data on the scale’s psychometric properties. The aim (...) of this study was to examine the dimensionality and reliability of the Chinese version of the WFCS. The study sample was made up of a total of 717 Chinese prison police. The Rasch Rating Scale Model was used to determine the latent structure and estimate the quality of items and reliability of scale. The principle component analysis showed that the assumption of unidimensionality was fulfilled. The infit and outfit mean square statistics were of a reasonable range, and point-measure correlations indicted good model fit of each item. The item-person separation and reliability indices both met psychometric standards, illustrating good reliability. The person-item map indicated acceptable fit of items and persons, suggesting an alignment between persons and items. In addition, no evidence emerged of differential item functioning across different gender groups. Overall, the WFCS has good reliability and validity, and can be used to accurately evaluate the level of work-family conflict in Chinese prison police. (shrink)

The use of mobile technology, such as sports bracelets, is gaining popularity as it modifies the ways and processes of learning and teaching in college physical education. However, little empirical evidence can be seen in literature to demonstrate crucial factors that influence university students’ acceptance of sports bracelets. Guided by the technology acceptance model, this study hence aimed at explaining university students’ intention to use sports bracelets. In total, 445 university students in China responded to a 19-item survey package. Results (...) indicated that users’ attitudes toward technology and perceived usefulness were significant predictors of intention to use sports bracelets. Meanwhile, users’ intrinsic sports motivation significantly promoted users’ positive attitudes toward this technology and was significantly influenced by perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness. Overall, our findings highlighted the importance of stimulating young adults’ intrinsic sports motivation that facilitates their intention to use sports bracelets such that to develop a healthy lifestyle that benefits their physical health. (shrink)

Understanding the implication of point cloud is still challenging in the aim of classification or segmentation for point cloud due to its irregular and sparse structure. As we have known, PointNet architecture as a ground-breaking work for point cloud process can learn shape features directly on unordered 3D point cloud and has achieved favorable performance, such as 86% mean accuracy and 89.2% overall accuracy for classification task, respectively. However, this model fails to consider the fine-grained semantic information of local structure (...) for point cloud. Then, a multiscale receptive fields graph attention network by means of semantic features of local patch for point cloud is proposed in this paper, and the learned feature map for our network can well capture the abundant features information of point cloud. The proposed MRFGAT architecture is tested on ModelNet datasets, and results show it achieves state-of-the-art performance in shape classification tasks, such as it outperforms GAPNet model by 0.1% in terms of OA and compete with DGCNN model in terms of MA. (shrink)

As was previously known, pediatric medical staff in China faced several hurdles including high occupational risk, multiple contradictions, heavy workload, and long working hours. After the outbreak of 2019 novel coronavirus, facing the overload of work and the potential risk of infection, pediatric medical workers may be under great psychological pressure. The purpose of this article was to call attention to the impact of the epidemic on the mental health of Chinese pediatric workers, and developing psychological intervention program that are (...) tailored to them. The experiences from this public health emergency should inform the efficiency and quality of future crisis intervention of the Chinese government and authorities around the world. (shrink)

Previous studies suggest that morphological awareness and word detection skills have facilitating roles in reading fluency; however, it is unknown whether they can interplay with each other in such roles. The present study explored the relationships of MA, word detection, and passage reading fluency across ages. In total, 180 Chinese primary and secondary school students, aged from 8.52 to 15.67 years, completed tasks for these aforementioned capacities. After controlling gender, non-verbal intelligence, and reading ability at the word level, the results (...) showed that the participants with higher scores for MA or word detection performed better in passage reading fluency. However, the predictive effect of word detection on reading fluency became weaker as the children became older. The interaction between MA and word detection was positive in younger children, whereas this interaction tended to be negative for older children. The results demonstrated a dynamic interplay between MA and word detection in contributing to passage reading fluency in Chinese children. While it has a positive interaction with word detection on reading fluency in younger children, MA may become a compensator in older children whose word detection skills are less effective in facilitating fluent reading. (shrink)

At present, many countries have lowered the minimum age of criminal responsibility to deal with the trend of juvenile crime. In practical terms, whether countries advocate for lowering the age of criminal responsibility along with early puberty, or regulating the minimum age of juvenile criminal responsibility through their policies, their deep-rooted hypothesis is that age is tied to adolescents’ psychological growth, and, with the rise in age, the capacity for dialectical thinking, self-control, and empathy gradually improves. With this study, we (...) aimed to test whether this hypothesis is valid. The participants were 3,208 students from junior high school, senior high school, and freshman in the S province of the People’s Republic of China. We subjected the gathered materials to independent-samples t-tests, one-way analysis of variance, linear regression analysis, and Bonferroni post hoc test. The influence of the age variable upon dialectical thinking, self-control, and empathy was significant, but only empathy was positively correlated with age variable ; dialectical thinking ability, and self-control ability were negatively correlated with the age variable. Bonferroni post hoc test confirmed these findings. Therefore, we concluded the following: Juvenile criminal responsibility, based on the capacity for dialectical thinking, self-control, and empathy, is not positively correlated with age. Age is not the only basis on which to judge a juvenile’s criminal responsibility. More research that directly links age differences in brain structure and function to age differences in legally relevant capacities and capabilities is needed. Political countries should appropriately raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility and adopt the doli incapax principle in the judicial process. (shrink)

ObjectiveTo investigate the attitudes of Chinese parents regarding the storage of dried blood spots collected for newborn screening (NBS) and their use in research.MethodsWe conducted a hospital-based survey of parents and examined parental attitudes regarding (a) allowing NBS sample storage, (b) permitting use of children’s NBS samples for research with parental permission, and (c) permitting use of children’s NBS samples for research without parental permission.ResultsThe response rate was 52 percent. Of parents surveyed, 68 percent would permit their infant’s NBS sample (...) to be stored for at least some length of time. If permission is obtained, 69 percent of parents “strongly agreed” or “agreed” to permit use of the NBS sample for research. If permission is not obtained, only 14 percent of parents “strongly agreed” or “agreed.” There was no significant association between permitting use of NBS samples for research and parental gender, education, household income, number of children, or site of residence.ConclusionsThis is the first survey of Chinese parents regarding the use of NBS samples for different types of research, with results indicating that most parents would permit their infant’s sample to be stored and would support the use of NBS dried blood spots for research purposes. (shrink)

This paper first extracted 11 indicators from four aspects of infrastructure, educational equity, teaching quality, and scientific research level and established a multidimensional higher education evaluation system. After that, according to TOPSIS and the entropy method, a comprehensive score of the development of higher education was obtained, and a comprehensive index of higher education was proposed. According to the level of the score, we divide the development status into 5 categories, and use discrete Hopfield neural network for verification. In addition, (...) we applied the model to many countries and chose Vietnam to conduct an in-depth analysis of the model, including reforming policies and evaluating policy effects based on cobweb model. Finally, we found that the application of the model is very universal, but in reality the reform is very difficult. (shrink)