BackgroundDeficits in phonological processing are commonly reported in dyslexia but longitudinal evidence that poor speech perception compromises reading is scant. This 2-year longitudinal ERP study investigates changes in pre-attentive auditory processing that underlies categorical perception of mandarin lexical tones during the years children learn to read fluently. The main purpose of the present study was to explore the development of lexical tone categorical perception to see if it can predict children’s reading ability.MethodsBoth behavioral and electrophysiological measures were taken in this (...) study. Auditory event-related potentials were collected with a passive listening oddball paradigm. Using a stimulus continuum spanning from one lexical tone category exemplar to another, we identified a between-category and a within-category tone deviant that were acoustically equidistant from a standard stimulus. The standard stimulus occurred on 80% of trials, and one of two deviants equiprobably on the remaining trials. 8-year-old Mandarin speakers participated in both an initial ERP oddball paradigm and returned for a 2-year follow-up.ResultsThe between-category MMN and within-category MMN significantly correlate with each other at age 8 but not at age 10. The between-category MMN at age 8 can predict children’s ability at age 10 but the within-category cannot.ConclusionThe categorical perception of lexical tone is still developing from age 8 to age 10. The behavioral and electrophysiological results demonstrate that categorical perception of lexical tone at age 8 predicts children’s reading ability at age 10. (shrink)

In this study, we aimed to address three comments proposed by Ogihara on a recent study where we found that unique names in China have become increasingly popular from 1950 to 2009. Using a large representative sample of Chinese names, we replicated the increase in uniqueness of Chinese names from 1920 to 2005, especially since the 1970s, with multiple uniqueness indices based on name-character frequency and name-length deviation. Over the years, Chinese characters that are rare in daily life or naming (...) practice were more often used in given names, and the length of given names became more deviant from typical practice. Taken together, these findings not only reconfirmed the increasing prevalence of unique names but also demonstrated the validity of various indices in assessing name uniqueness in China. (shrink)

Shared beliefs, collective Emotionscollective and joint intentions are widely recognized to be at the core of the social world. Beliefs, emotions and intentions, however, largely depend on Experience. It is hard to see how the former could be joint, shared, or collective, without any possibility of togetherness at the experiential level. Sharing experiences is thus a key for human sociality.

The pathogen-prevalence hypothesis postulates that collectivism would be strengthened in the long term in tandem with recurrent attacks of infectious diseases. However, it is unclear whether a one-time pathogen epidemic would elevate collectivism. The outbreak of COVID-19 and the widespread prevalence of online social networks have provided researchers an opportunity to explore this issue. This study sampled and analyzed the posts of 126,165 active users on Weibo, a leading Chinese online social network. It used independent-sample t-tests to examine whether COVID-19 (...) had an impact on Chinese collectivistic value-related behaviors by comparing the usage frequency of personal pronouns, group-related words, and relationship-related words before and after the outbreak. Overall, most collectivist words exhibited a significant upward trend after the outbreak. In turn, this tendency pointed to a rising sense of collectivism. Hence, this study confirmed the pathogen-prevalence hypothesis in real settings, finding that an outbreak of an infectious disease such as COVID-19 could exert an impact on collectivism and may deliver a theoretical basis for psychological protection against the threat of COVID-19. However, further evaluation is required to ascertain whether this trend is universal or culture-specific. (shrink)

Transgender women are an important subgroup of the transgender umbrella and have their own unique gender identity. This article aimed to understand and measure the latent concept of gender identity among Chinese transgender women from a multi-dimensional perspective. Through a two-phase, iterative scale development process, we developed the Gender Identity Scale for Transgender Women in Chinese. Literature reviews, expert consultations, and focus groups constitute phrase 1 of the study, which resulted in the first version of GIS-TW with 30 items. In (...) phrase 2, exploratory factor analysis on a sample of 244 Chinese transgender women revealed a six-factor solution across the 22 items. The Bem Sex Role Inventory was included to test for convergent validity, and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale was used to test discriminant validity. Then we conducted the confirmatory factor analysis with an independent sample of 420 Chinese transgender women, which produced the final version of GIS-TW with 21 items. The internal consistency and test-retest stability of each factor was good. In conclusion, the GIS-TW is a reliable and valid psychometric tool for the assessment of Chinese transgender women’s gender identity. Future application of the scale will help transgender women obtain better gender confirmative interventions. (shrink)

BackgroundFibromyalgia syndrome is the second most common chronic diffuse pain disorder and can have a lasting negative impact on the quality of life, pain, and physical function of people. Exercise therapy is an important component of the treatment of fibromyalgia, but there was not a consensus understanding of the effect of various exercise programs on the quality of life, pain, and physical function of people with fibromyalgia syndrome. This study aimed to compare three exercise programs in their effectiveness in improving (...) quality of life, relieving muscle pain, and enhancing physical function in patients with fibromyalgia.MethodsA comprehensive search of databases, including China National Knowledge Internet, Wan fang, The Cochrane Library, PubMed, EMBASE, and Web of Science, was conducted to identify randomized controlled trials on exercise therapy for patients with fibromyalgia syndrome with outcome indicators including at least one of Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire, Tender point count, and 6-minute walk test from the date of database creation on 20 April 2022. The included studies were evaluated for literature quality according to Cochrane Handbook criteria, and a network meta-analysis was performed using STATA 14.0.ResultForty-five randomized controlled trials met all inclusion criteria and were analyzed. The network meta-analysis showed that a combination of aerobic and resistance exercise was ranked first in all three dimensions of quality of life improvement, pain alleviation, and physical function enhancement.ConclusionThe current meta-analysis demonstrates that the combination of aerobic and resistance exercise may be the best type of exercise to accentuate the quality of life, pain alleviation, and physical function for people with fibromyalgia syndrome. (shrink)

In the process of rapid urbanization, urban heat island effect has been showing more and more significant impacts on human well-being. Therefore, a more detailed understanding of the impact of three-dimensional building morphology on UHI effect across a continuum of spatial scales will be necessary to guide and improve the human settlement.This study selected 31 provincial capital cities of mainland China to analyze the impacts of the 3D building morphology, including the number, area, height, volume, and the surface area of (...) the buildings, on the land surface temperature. By exploring how the influence of 3D building morphology on LST changes with the increase of spatial scale, this study finally recognized which 3D building morphology index is the most significant index affecting LST in different cities, and which spatial scale these 3D building morphology indexes have the most significant impact on LST. The results showed that the building area is the most important 3D building morphology parameter affecting the LST, while the building height has the slightest influence on the LST. These effects are more significant in the spatial scale of 150 m–540 m, and the spatial scale increases with the increase of building areas in developed cities. These results highlight the necessity of considering fine-grained management in the governance and alleviating of the urban thermal environment through urban planning and urban renewal strategies. (shrink)

BackgroundIn China, undergraduate students face both academic and career selection pressures, sleep is an important physiological process for them. Investigate the physical exercise, sleep quality of undergraduate students in the education stage in Xuzhou City, and analyze the factors affecting their sleep quality, to promote the health education and psychological health of undergraduate students.Materials and methodsThe Physical Activity Rating Scale-3, the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, and the demographic information questionnaire were used to survey a whole-group sample of four undergraduate colleges (...) and universities in Xuzhou by cluster sampling, the general characteristics including gender, grade, height, weight, domicile, race, economic income, etc., were collected, and the data were analyzed and processed using chi-square tests and multi-factor logistic regression.Results3,366 valid questionnaires were collected from four undergraduate colleges and universities, including 1,355 males and 2,011 females. The detection rate of exercise in Jiangsu Normal University was lower than that in other universities, and the detection rate of sleep disorders was higher than that in other universities. Xuzhou Medical University, the highest detection rate of large exercise, Xuzhou Institute of Technology, the lowest detection rate of sleep disorders. There were significant differences in the detection rate of large amount of exercise among college students of different genders, grades, body types, and majors. There were significant differences in the detection rate of sleep disorders among college students with different gender, grade, family economic status, daily cell phone use time, cell phone purposeless usage, and exercise level. Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that grade, family economic status, cell phone use time, cell phone purposeless usage is the main influencing factors of sleep disorders in college students.ConclusionThe sleep problems of undergraduates are serious, especially in Jiangsu Normal University. Scientific and appropriate exercise is an important measure to solve the sleep problems of undergraduates. Colleges and universities should actively carry out health education, college students living habits such as cell phone use should be guided training. (shrink)

Transcranial Photobiomodulation has demonstrated its ability to alter electrophysiological activity in the human brain. However, it is unclear how tPBM modulates brain electroencephalogram networks and is related to human cognition. In this study, we recorded 64-channel EEG from 44 healthy humans before, during, and after 8-min, right-forehead, 1,064-nm tPBM or sham stimulation with an irradiance of 257 mW/cm2. In data processing, a novel methodology by combining group singular value decomposition with the exact low-resolution brain electromagnetic tomography was implemented and performed (...) on the 64-channel noise-free EEG time series. The gSVD+eLORETA algorithm produced 11 gSVD-derived principal components projected in the 2D sensor and 3D source domain/space. These 11 PCs took more than 70% weight of the entire EEG signals and were justified as 11 EEG brain networks. Finally, baseline-normalized power changes of each EEG brain network in each EEG frequency band were quantified during the first 4-min, second 4-min, and post tPBM/sham periods, followed by comparisons of frequency-specific power changes between tPBM and sham conditions. Our results showed that tPBM-induced increases in alpha powers occurred at default mode network, executive control network, frontal parietal network and lateral visual network. Moreover, the ability to decompose EEG signals into individual, independent brain networks facilitated to better visualize significant decreases in gamma power by tPBM. Many similarities were found between the cortical locations of SVD-revealed EEG networks and fMRI-identified resting-state networks. This consistency may shed light on mechanistic associations between tPBM-modulated brain networks and improved cognition outcomes. (shrink)

Project citizenship behavior has an important positive impact on project success. Researching how to promote PCB is an important issue in project management. Based on social learning theory and social cognitive theory, this paper adopted the method of questionnaire survey and hierarchical linear model to analyze the collected data derived from the sample of Chinese construction enterprises and verified this hypothesis. The results show that responsible leadership has a significant positive effect on PCB, moral identity mediates this relationship, and collective (...) moral sensitivity positively moderates this mediating effect. The findings of the study systematically and deeply reveal the intrinsic mechanism of the cross-level influence of responsible leadership on PCB, and provide new enlightenment for the practice of project management. (shrink)

The concubines, with whom the sultans lived a family life, were classified according to a certain hierarchy in the Harem. The first wives of the sultan and those who gave birth were called Kadınefendi. The other wives with a lower status than the Kadınefendi wives were called Ikbal Hanımefendi. According to Islamic law, marriage with a concubine is not like a marriage with a free woman. If a marriage is desired, the concubine must be freed. Until the 19th century, sultans (...) did not marry their concubines for a few exceptions. In the 19th century, the legal status of concubines in the Ottoman Empire became controversial. The countries of origine changed when the Ottoman Empire was unable to conquer new territory. Consequently, the enslavement procedure of prisoners of war disappeared. Instead, Caucasian immigrants, who had to leave their homeland mainly due to the Russian attacks, gave their daughters to the Ottoman palace so that they would not suffer misery and could reach important positions in the future. Among these were orphans from poor families as well as those from noble Caucasian dynasties. Even though the young women in the palace were called concubines, at least some of them were free/Muslim persons. This meant, that they could not be enslaved according to Islamic law. Although there was no problem for those who served in the palace, a remarkable situation emerged for the would-be spouses of the sultan. Could a woman from a free and Muslim family be the sultan's wife without a marriage bond? Was the limitation of the Kadınefendi numbers to four (in times of Sultan Abdülaziz) due to the Islamic law principle, that a man could marry maximum four wives? Was there a marriage ceremony (nikāh) for Kadınefendi wives? What was the situation of the Ikbal? Satisfactory answers to these questions have not been given yet. However, there are no official records it was claimed that lately sultans married especially their concubines who were Abkhaz descendants and included them among their wives in this way, because they were free and Muslims. Thus, the matter whether Sultan Abdülhamid II's wives were concubines or wedded became the subject of some research today. Memoires claim that almost all of Sultan Abdülhamid's wives were free and of Muslim origin. According to this, it was said that the wives of Sultan Abdülhamid could not have the status of the concubine and that their relationship should have been by marriage. On the other hand, considering that a maximum of four women can be married according to Islamic law, the marriage of the Sultan, who had thirteen wives, raised juristic questions. This problem was most clearly seen in the inheritance case filed by his heirs after the death of Sultan Abdülhamid. In this case, where it was claimed that Sultan Abdülhamid was married to nine wives, no objection was made to that claim. In this study, information about the wives of Sultan Abdülhamid and their legal status was tried to be determined through the documents related to their salaries during the 2nd Constitutional Era. Besides, the issue of nine wedded women, which emerged in the case of Sultan Abdülhamid's inheritance, was evaluated in terms of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence). Sultan Abdülhamid was never accused of marriages contrary to Islamic law by his opponents during and after his reign. From this point of view, it can be said that there was no situation contrary to Islamic law regarding the Sultan's harem at that time. This might be due to three possibilities: Firstly, some wives have concealed the truth in the court, which is the weakest possibility according to the data obtained. Secondly, the talaq (divorcement) was hidden by Sultan Abdülhamid and his wives were not aware of it. This possibility has been found to be problematic when evaluated in terms of Hanafi fiqh. Thirdly, the practice of al-nikāh al-tanazzuhī (marriage performed in order to avoid from fornication). Considering the correspondence between the state departments in the period starting with the 2nd Constitutional Monarchy and until the Republic, it is clear that the Kadınefendis were regarded as married wives (their number was limited to four), while the Ikbals were regarded as concubines. From this point of view, it is thought that the most plausible possibility is that the Ikbals were regarded as concubines and their marriages were al-nikāh al-tanazzuhī. (shrink)

Wang Ch'ung, a materialist of the early Eastern Han period, was a progressive thinker who publicly raised the militant banner of "attacking Confucius" and "criticizing Mencius.".