Learning disabilities are highly prevalent on college campuses, yet students with learning disabilities graduate at lower rates than those without disabilities. Academic and psychosocial supports are essential for overcoming challenges and for improving postsecondary educational opportunities for students with learning disabilities. A holistic, multi-level model of campus-based supports was established to facilitate culture and practice changes at the institutional level, while concurrently bolstering mentors’ abilities to provide learning disability-knowledgeable support, and simultaneously creating opportunities for students’ personal and interpersonal development. Mixed (...) methods were used to investigate implementation of coordinated personal, interpersonal, and institutional level supports for undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) students with learning disabilities. A one-group pre-test post-test strategy was used to examine undergraduate outcomes. Participants included 52 STEM undergraduates with learning disabilities, 57 STEM graduate student mentors, 34 STEM faculty mentors, and 34 university administrators and personnel as members of a university-wide council. Enrolled for two years, undergraduates were engaged in group meetings involving psychoeducation and reflective discussions, development of self-advocacy projects, and individual mentorship. Undergraduates reported improved self efficacy (p =.001), campus connection (p <.001), professional development (p ≤.002), and self advocacy (p <.001) after two academic years. Graduate student mentors increased their understanding about learning disabilities and used their understanding to support both their mentees and other students they worked with. Council members identified and created opportunities for delivering learning disability-related trainings to faculty, mentors and advisors on campus, and for enhancing coordination of student services related to learning and related disorders. Disability-focused activities became integrated in broader campus activities regarding diversity. This research explicates a role that college campuses can play in fostering the wellbeing and the academic and career development of its students with developmental learning and related disorders. It offers an empirically tested campus-based model that is multilevel, holistic, and strengths-based for supporting positive outcomes of young people with learning disabilities in STEM. Moreover, findings advance the knowledge of supports and skills that are important for self-regulating and navigating complex and multi-faceted disability-related challenges within both the post-secondary educational environment and the young adults’ sociocultural context. (shrink)

The structure and “metabolism” (movement and conversion of goods and energy) of urban areas has caused cities to be identified as “super‐organisms”, placed between ecosystems and the biosphere, in the hierarchy of living systems. Yet most such analogies are weak, and render the super‐organism model ineffective for sustainable development of cities. Via a cluster analysis of 15 shared traits of the hierarchical living system, we found that industrialized cities are more similar to eukaryotic cells than to multicellular organisms; enclosed systems, (...) such as factories and greenhouses, paralleling organelles in eukaryotic cells. We further developed a “super‐cell” industrialized city model: a “eukarcity” with citynucleus (urban area) as a regulating centre, and organaras (enclosed systems, which provide the majority of goods and services) as the functional components, and cityplasm (natural ecosystems and farmlands) as the matrix. This model may improve the vitality and sustainability of cities through planning and management. (shrink)

Within the same pathogen-stress framework as proposed by Fincher & Thornhill (F&T), we argue further that pathogen stress promotes matrilocal rather than patrilocal family ties which, in turn, slow down the process of modernity; and that pathogen stress promotes social learning or copying, including the adoption of foreign religions.

Background and aimDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, an Internet-Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program was delivered and may be better than an in-person approach. Our study evaluated the effects of iMBSR intervention on mental health, self-efficacy, and body image in women with breast cancer in Taiwan.Materials and methodsSixty-seven women with breast cancer were allocated to a 6-week iMBSR program or a waitlist control group, without heterogeneity between group characteristics. Patients from both groups were measured at baseline and postintervention using three scales: Depression, Anxiety, (...) and Stress Scale, General self-efficacy scale, and Body Image Scale. Descriptive dataset analysis, paired t-test, and Student’s t-test were used to evaluate the data.ResultsAlthough iMBSR did not significantly improve depression and stress between groups, iMBSR could improve anxiety with medium effect sizes. Significant benefits were found for body image and self-efficacy, with large effect sizes.ConclusionOur preliminary study supports iMBSR as a program that can improve mental health, body image, and self-efficacy in women with breast cancer. During the COVID-19 pandemic, medical professionals can use Internet-based clinical health education. (shrink)

Graduate students’ failure to graduate is of great concern, with the failure to graduate due to the dissertation being the most influential factor. However, there are many factors that influence the writing of a dissertation, and research on these factors that influence graduate students’ learning through emotion and cognition is still quite rare. A review of past research revealed that the main factor causing graduate students to drop out midway is not completing their thesis, followed by factors including insufficient achievement (...) motivation, lack of learning strategy, and low confidence. The graduation rate of graduate students has been emphasized by the academic community; therefore, this study investigated the correlation between graduate students’ achievement motivation, active learning, and academic confidence in writing research. The study invited graduated students from two universities of science and technology situated in the northern region of Taiwan to complete the questionnaire. In this study, valid data for validation analysis were collected from 173 respondents, and the results showed that achievement motivation positively influenced active learning and that active learning positively influenced academic confidence. From the above findings, it can be seen that to help graduate students from University of Science and Technology to effectively complete their graduate studies, students should develop good motivation to adopt active learning strategies to enhance their academic self-confidence. (shrink)

Co-creativity focuses on how individuals produce innovative ideas together. As few studies have explored co-creativity using standardized tests, it is difficult to effectively assess the individual’s creativity performance within a group. Therefore, this study aims to develop a platform that allows two individuals to answer creativity tests simultaneously. This platform includes two divergent thinking tasks, the Straw Alternative Uses Test and Bottle Alternative Uses Test, and Chinese Radical Remote Associates Test A and B, which were used to evaluate their open-and (...) closed-ended creative problem-solving performance. This platform has two modes: single-player mode and paired-player mode. Responses from 497 adults were collected, based on which the fluency, flexibility, and originality of divergent thinking were measured. This study also developed a computer scoring technique that can automatically calculate the scores on these creativity tests. The results showed that divergent thinking scores from computer-based calculation and manual scoring were highly positively correlated, suggesting that the scores on a divergent thinking task can be calculated through a system that avoids time-consuming, uneconomical manual scoring. Overall, the two types of tests on this platform showed considerable internal consistency reliability and criterion-related validity. This advanced application facilitates the collection of empirical evidence about co-creativity. (shrink)

Deliberative democracy is one of the best designs that could facilitate good public policy decision making and bring about epistemic good based on Mercier and Sperber's (M&S's) theory of reasoning. However, three conditions are necessary: (1) an ethic of individual epistemic humility, (2) a pragmatic deflationist definition of truth, and (3) a microscopic framing power analysis during group reasoning.

Based on their framework, Müller & Schumann (M&S) propose a staged drug policy that matches well the neoliberal governance scheme. To mend the sad loss of the sociocultural dimension in their model, I propose three such considerations: first, sociocultural interactions with the brain; second, sociocultural context and justice of drug use; and third, sociocultural preparedness for implementing their drug policy.

BackgroundTo investigate the factors related to approval after review by an Institutional Review Board, the structure equation model was used to analyze the latent variables ‘investigators’, ‘vulnerability’ and ‘review process’ for 221 proposals submitted to our IRB.MethodsThe vulnerability factor included vulnerable cases, and studies that involved drug tests and genetic analyses. The principal investigator factor included the license level of the PI and whether they belonged to our institution. The review factor included administration time, total review time, and revision frequency. (...) The revision frequency and total review time influenced the efficiency of review.ResultsThe latent variable of reviewing was the most important factor mediating the PIs and vulnerability to IRB review approval. The local PIs moderated with genetic study and revision frequency had an impact on the review process and mediated non-approval.ConclusionsBetter guidance of the investigators and reviewers might improve the efficiency with which IRBs function. (shrink)

With renewable energy being increasingly connected to power grids, pumped storage plants play a very important role in restraining the fluctuation of power grids. However, conventional control strategy could not adapt well to the different control tasks. This paper proposes an intelligent nonlinear model predictive control strategy, in which hydraulic-mechanical and electrical subsystems are combined in a synchronous control framework. A newly proposed online sequential extreme learning machine algorithm with forgetting factor is introduced to learn the dynamic behaviors of the (...) coupling system. Specifically, the initial learning parameters are optimized by prior-knowledge learning and a new self-adaptive adjustment strategy is also put forward. Subsequently, the stair-like control strategy and artificial sheep algorithm are used in rolling the optimization mechanism to replace the existing complex differential geometric solutions. Comparative experiments are carried out under different working conditions based on a PSP in China. The results show that the influence from coupling factors can be considerable and the proposed MPC strategy indicates superiority in voltage and load adjustment as well as the frequency oscillation suppression. (shrink)

Fan (2010) did a good job in applying his interpretation of Confucian ethics of giftedness to genetic enhancement. To him, it is God-like Heaven that gives lives to us and our ancestors as gifts th...

In China, there have been numerous reports that doctors or other health care workers have been attacked by patients or members of patient’s families. From 2000 to 2003, there were 502 reports of violence against health care workers in the city of Beijing, in which 90 health care workers were wounded or disabled. From January 1991 to July 2001, in Hubei Province, 568 attacks on health care facilities and workers were reported, and some health care workers were even killed. In (...) Jiangsu Province, from 2000 to 2002, violent events against health care facilities and workers increased by 35% every year, with an average of 177 such events occurring each year. Those acts of violence have been attributed, in part, to the inadequacy of the legal system for handling medical disputes that was in effect prior to 2002. (shrink)

Using educational robots to integrate computational thinking with cross-disciplinary content has gone beyond Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, to include foreign-language learning and further cross-context target-language acquisition. Such integration must not solely emphasise CT problem-solving skills. Rather, it must provide students with interactive learning to support their target-language interaction while reducing potential TL anxiety. This study aimed to validate the effects of the proposed method of pair programming along with question-and-response interaction in a board-game activity on young learners’ CT skills (...) and TL learning across contexts. Two Grade 6 classes, one with 16 students who were studying Chinese as a Second Language and the other with 16 students who were studying English as a Foreign Language, participated in the activity. A series of instruments on achievement assessment, questionnaires on CT skills and TL anxiety, and sequential learning behaviour analysis were used to critically examine the results. The main conclusion is that the EFL group showed better social skills of cooperation on CT and lower TL learning anxiety, while the CSL group demonstrated better problem-solving skills in CT, but presented more behaviours of trial-and-error loops. Results not only contribute suggestions for cross-disciplinary learning but also provide support for cross-context instruction beyond educational coursework. (shrink)

This study aims to examine the neural correlates of cognitive shifting during the Dimensional Change Card Sort Task task with functional near-infrared spectroscopy. Altogether 49 children completed the DCCS tasks, and 25 children passing all items were classified into the Switch group. Twenty children committing more than one perseverative errors were grouped into the Perseverate group. The Switch group had Brodmann Area 9 and 10 activated in the pre-switch period and BA 6, 9, 10, 40, and 44 in the post-switch (...) period. In contrast, the Perseverate group had BA 9 and 10 activated in the pre-switch period and BA 8, 9, 10 in the post-switch period. The general linear model results afford strong support to the “V-shape curve” hypothesis by identifying a significant decrease–increase cycle in BA 9 and 44, the neural correlations of cognitive shifting. (shrink)

Biomedical ontologies are emerging as critical tools in genomic and proteomic research where complex data in disparate resources need to be integrated. A number of ontologies exist that describe the properties that can be attributed to proteins; for example, protein functions are described by Gene Ontology, while human diseases are described by Disease Ontology. There is, however, a gap in the current set of ontologies—one that describes the protein entities themselves and their relationships. We have designed a PRotein Ontology (PRO) (...) to facilitate protein annotation and to guide new experiments. The components of PRO extend from the classification of proteins on the basis of evolutionary relationships to the representation of the multiple protein forms of a gene (products generated by genetic variation, alternative splicing, proteolytic cleavage, and other post-translational modification). PRO will allow the specification of relationships between PRO, GO and other OBO Foundry ontologies. Here we describe the initial development of PRO, illustrated using human proteins from the TGF-beta signaling pathway. (shrink)

We explored the division of parenthood in Chinese families with adolescents by identifying the parental involvement patterns in the data obtained from 786 pairs of parents. Division-of-parenthood patterns were created via factor mixture modeling using self-reported three dimensions of father and mother involvement. Three differential division-of-parenthood patterns were identified: (a) parent-cooperation pattern, where moderate and equivalent involvement existed between mothers and fathers; (b) mother-dominated pattern, where mother involvement was particularly greater than father involvement; and (c) father-dominated pattern, where father involvement (...) was particularly greater than mother involvement. Families were more likely to be in the mother- or the father-dominated pattern as their levels of positive coparenting behaviors increased. By contrast, as the levels of paternal conflict behavior increased, families were likely to be in the mother-dominated pattern. This study highlighted parents’ individual parenting role, the diverse division-of-parenthood patterns in the family, and the important role of coparenting behavior. (shrink)

This study explored the differentiated neural correlates of mental rotation in preschoolers with high and low working memory capacity using functional near-infrared spectroscopy. Altogether 38 Chinese preschoolers completed the Working Memory Capacity test, the Mental Rotation, and its Control tasks. They were divided into High-WMC and Low-WMC groups based on the WMC scores. The behavioral and fNIRS results indicated that: there were no significant differences in MR task performance between the High-WMC and Low-WMC group ; the Low-WMC group activated BA6, (...) BA8, BA 9, and BA 44, whereas the High-WMC group activated BA8, BA10 and BA 44 during mental rotation; significant differences were found in the activation of BA44 and BA9 between the High-WMC and Low-WMC groups during mental rotation; and the High-WMC and Low-WMC groups differed significantly in the activation of BA 9 and BA10 during the control tasks, indicating that both areas might be responsible for the group differences in working memory. (shrink)

We estimate that 208,000 deep brain stimulation (DBS) devices have been implanted to address neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders worldwide. DBS Think Tank presenters pooled data and determined that DBS expanded in its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 providing a space where clinicians, engineers, researchers from industry and academia discuss current and emerging DBS technologies and logistical and ethical issues facing the field. (...) The emphasis is on cutting edge research and collaboration aimed to advance the DBS field. The Eighth Annual DBS Think Tank was held virtually on September 1 and 2, 2020 (Zoom Video Communications) due to restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The meeting focused on advances in: (1) optogenetics as a tool for comprehending neurobiology of diseases and on optogenetically-inspired DBS, (2) cutting edge of emerging DBS technologies, (3) ethical issues affecting DBS research and access to care, (4) neuromodulatory approaches for depression, (5) advancing novel hardware, software and imaging methodologies, (6) use of neurophysiological signals in adaptive neurostimulation, and (7) use of more advanced technologies to improve DBS clinical outcomes. There were 178 attendees who participated in a DBS Think Tank survey, which revealed the expansion of DBS into several indications such as obesity, post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction and Alzheimer’s disease. This proceedings summarizes the advances discussed at the Eighth Annual DBS Think Tank. (shrink)

Abstract Objective Intuitive inquiry meditation is a unique form of Buddhist Zen/Chan practice in which individuals actively and intuitively utilize the cognitive functions to cultivate doubt and explore the concept of the self. This event-related potential (ERP) study aimed to investigate the neural correlates by which long-term practice of intuitive inquiry meditation induces flexibility in self-schema processing, highlighting the role of doubt and belief processes in this exploration. Methods Twenty experienced and eighteen beginner meditators in intuitive inquiry meditation were recruited (...) for this ERP study. The interactions of doubt and belief processes with concepts of the self and Buddha were investigated. A 128-channel electroencephalography (EEG) system was used to collect EEG data. The ERP data were processed and analyzed using EEGLAB. Results The data showed a double dissociation between beginners and experienced meditators (monks) in the concepts of the self and Buddha: intuitive inquiry meditation reduced the brain activity of beginners when viewing Buddha image but not when viewing a picture of themselves. However, in experienced meditators, intuitive inquiry meditation reduced brain activity when they viewed images of themselves but not when they viewed Buddha image. Further event-related spectral perturbation (ERSP) analysis revealed that experienced meditators had a greater theta spectral power and higher intertrial coherence (ITC), indicating that they could more flexibly modulate ongoing cognitive processes than beginner meditators. Conclusion Intuitive inquiry meditation could help beginner meditators detach from the concept of Buddha but not from that of the self. However, in experienced meditators, the opposite was true. ERSP analysis showed that only experienced meditators exhibited significant alterations in brain activity dynamics during intuitive inquiry meditation, which might enable these practitioners to become spontaneously detached from the concept of the self. These findings revealed the neural mechanism by which long-term practice of intuitive inquiry meditation can influence the doubting process and its effect on self-schema processing. (shrink)

Body ownership concerns what it is like to feel a body part or a full body as mine, and has become a prominent area of study. We propose that there is a closely related type of bodily self-consciousness largely neglected by researchers—experiential ownership. It refers to the sense that I am the one who is having a conscious experience. Are body ownership and experiential ownership actually the same phenomenon or are they genuinely different? In our experiments, the participant watched a (...) rubber hand or someone else’s body from the first-person perspective and was touched either synchronously or asynchronously. The main findings: (1) The sense of body ownership was hindered in the asynchronous conditions of both the body-part and the full-body experiments. However, a strong sense of experiential ownership was observed in those conditions. (2) We found the opposite when the participants’ responses were measured after tactile stimulations had ceased for 5 s. In the synchronous conditions of another set of body-part and full-body experiments, only experiential ownership was blocked but not body ownership. These results demonstrate for the first time the double dissociation between body ownership and experiential ownership. Experiential ownership is indeed a distinct type of bodily self-consciousness. (shrink)

Ongoing electroencephalography signals are recorded as a mixture of stimulus-elicited EEG, spontaneous EEG and noises, which poses a huge challenge to current data analyzing techniques, especially when different groups of participants are expected to have common or highly correlated brain activities and some individual dynamics. In this study, we proposed a data-driven shared and unshared feature extraction framework based on nonnegative and coupled tensor factorization, which aims to conduct group-level analysis for the EEG signals from major depression disorder patients and (...) healthy controls when freely listening to music. Constrained tensor factorization not only preserves the multilinear structure of the data, but also considers the common and individual components between the data. The proposed framework, combined with music information retrieval, correlation analysis, and hierarchical clustering, facilitated the simultaneous extraction of shared and unshared spatio-temporal-spectral feature patterns between/in MDD and HC groups. Finally, we obtained two shared feature patterns between MDD and HC groups, and obtained totally three individual feature patterns from HC and MDD groups. The results showed that the MDD and HC groups triggered similar brain dynamics when listening to music, but at the same time, MDD patients also brought some changes in brain oscillatory network characteristics along with music perception. These changes may provide some basis for the clinical diagnosis and the treatment of MDD patients. (shrink)

Visual programming language is a crucial part of learning programming. On this basis, it is essential to use visual programming to lower the learning threshold for students to learn about artificial intelligence to meet current demands in higher education. Therefore, a 3-h AI course with an RGB-to-HSL learning task was implemented; the results of which were used to analyze university students from two different disciplines. Valid data were collected for 65 students in the Science -student group and 39 students in (...) the Humanities -student group. Independent sample t-tests were conducted to analyze the difference between cognitive styles and computational thinking. No significant differences in either cognitive style or computational thinking ability were found after the AI course, indicating that taking visual AI courses lowers the learning threshold for students and makes it possible for them to take more difficult AI courses, which in turn effectively helping them acquire AI knowledge, which is crucial for cultivating talent in the field of AI. (shrink)

We are of the opinion that there is also identity between erroneous thinking and existence. Our opinion is based on the following facts.

At this time, as we approach the imminent end of a century, it is amusing to look back at the changes that have taken place in the manners in which people have addressed one another in society over the last hundred years. If we are to locate, among all the terms that relate to social address, those that are, as Raymond Williams calls them, the "keywords,"1 then, to be sure, the term tongzhi or comrade is bound to be at the (...) head of the list. (shrink)

At this time, as we approach the imminent end of a century, it is amusing to look back at the changes that have taken place in the manners in which people have addressed one another in society over the last hundred years. If we are to locate, among all the terms that relate to social address, those that are, as Raymond Williams calls them, the "keywords,"1 then, to be sure, the term tongzhi or comrade is bound to be at the (...) head of the list. (shrink)

Despite recent major advances in the neuroscience underlying cognition, the processes of its emergence and evolution are far from being understood. In our view, current interrelated concepts of mind; knowledge; epistemology; perception; cognition and information fail to reflect the real dynamics of mental processes, their ontology and their logic. It has become routine to talk about information in relation to these processes, but there is no consensus about its most relevant qualitative and functional properties. We present a theory of human (...) cognition based on an ontology and epistemology of information and information processes originally proposed by Wu including an ontological doctrine of the different grades of information; and an informational epistemology based on a noegenesis of the doctrine of informational intermediaries that mediate between the cognitive subject and object. This theory is supported by the new, non-propositional logic proposed recently by Brenner. We demonstrate the utility of our approach for the reconceptualization of the virtual properties of reality and cognition. It is strongly anti-representationalist and can provide the basis for the integration of inputs from outside the brain into cognitive structures. For us, the philosophy of information is a metaphilosophy, implying major changes in both the content and methodology of standard philosophical disciplines. We suggest that this philosophy of information and our informational approach may help guide research in a number of current areas of cognitive science. (shrink)

Previous research has mostly focused on Internet use behaviors, such as usage time of the Internet or social media after individuals experienced offline social exclusion. However, the extant literature has ignored online response behaviors, such as online review responses to social exclusion. To address this gap, drawing on self-protection and self-serving bias, we proposed three hypotheses that examine the effect of offline social exclusion on online reviews, which are verified by two studies using different simulating scenarios with 464 participants. The (...) results show that when individuals are socially excluded offline, regardless of where the exclusion comes from, they will be more likely to give negative online reviews. In addition, brand awareness moderates the effect of offline social exclusion on online reviews. Specifically, if the brand is less known, compared with social inclusion, offline social exclusion will lead individuals to give more negative online reviews; conversely, for well-known brands, no significant difference exists in the online reviews between social exclusion and inclusion. (shrink)

Humans regularly pursue activities characterized by dramatic success or failure outcomes where, critically, the chances of success depend on the time invested working toward it. How should people allocate time between such make‐or‐break challenges and safe alternatives, where rewards are more predictable (e.g., linear) functions of performance? We present a formal framework for studying time allocation between these two types of activities, and we explore optimal behavior in both one‐shot and dynamic versions of the problem. In the one‐shot version, we (...) illustrate striking discontinuities in the optimal time allocation policy as we gradually change the parameters of the decision‐making problem. In the dynamic version, we formulate the optimal strategy—defined by a giving‐up threshold—which adaptively dictates when people should stop pursuing the make‐or‐break goal. We then show that this strategy is computationally inaccessible for humans, and we explore boundedly rational alternatives. We compare the performance of the optimal model against (a) a myopic giving‐up threshold that is easier to compute, and even simpler heuristic strategies that either (b) only decide whether or not to start pursuing the goal and never give up or (c) consider giving up at a fixed number of control points. Comparing strategies across environments, we investigate the cost and behavioral implications of sidestepping the computational burden of full rationality. (shrink)