Retailers like to use different colors to present the sale price and original price when they are presenting a promotion price. How does the inconsistent color presentation of the prices influence consumers’ purchase likelihood? The extant research does not consider this question. This article will address this question. Drawing on incongruence theory and the persuasion knowledge model, this article proposes that when the color of the sale price is inconsistent with that of the original price, consumers show less preference for (...) the sale price. The reason is that consumers perceive the price as being less trustworthy, which leads to a lower purchase likelihood. Furthermore, this effect is affected by the brand awareness of products. Specifically, when products are less-known brands, the inconsistent colors of the sale price and original price will lead to a lower purchase likelihood. In contrast, when products are well-known brands, the inconsistent colors of the sale price and original price will lead to a high purchase likelihood. In this article, four studies are used to verify these hypotheses, and implications of theory and practice of the present research are discussed. (shrink)

This paper examines how drawing classes can contribute to moral education in primary schools. This paper uses class observation, interviews with teachers and students, and analysis of students’ wor...

In its three decades of development, many constructs of cause-related marketing have been tested from different perspectives and in varied contexts. However, there has not yet been an integrated empirical study. Reviewing 162 studies from 117 articles, we constructed a framework of meta-analysis and identified 20 constructs. Among these, 13 are antecedents that can be grouped into three components: consumer-related traits, execution-related factors, and product-related traits, while three mediators and four consequences are used to measure the effectiveness of cause-related marketing. (...) Moreover, we examined 857 relationships among the constructs. The results showed that consumer-related traits, execution-related factors, and product-related traits all influence the effectiveness of cause-related marketing to varying degrees. Furthermore, we analyzed the effects of six moderators and found that cause-related marketing would be more effective when the brand is familiar, the product is utilitarian, the donation magnitude is large, and the cause is less familiar. However, neither cultural orientation nor cause type significantly influences the effectiveness of cause-related marketing. Finally, the interactions between these moderators and execution-related antecedents provide contributions and implications for cause-related marketing. (shrink)

Science and technology have changed all aspects of our lives, including the mode of narration, from traditional stories to data stories. Storytellers have been integrating visualizations into their narratives. From the case studies of some artworks and our students' works to visualization research, we have found distinct genres of narrative visualization and the education method for university students. We describe the differences between these artworks, together with interactivity and information transmission. Some small experiments and some examples of students' works will (...) be shown to explore the visual narrative. We suggest new design strategies including how to make invisible things visible. (shrink)

During the COVID-19 pandemic, online health platforms and physicians’ online knowledge sharing played an important role in public health crisis management and disease prevention. What influences physicians’ online knowledge sharing? From the psychological perspective of stimulus–response, this study aims to explore how patients’ visit and patients’ consultation influence physicians’ online knowledge sharing considering the contingent roles of physicians’ online expertise and online knowledge sharing experience. Based on 6-month panel data of 45,449 physician–month observations from an online health platform in China, (...) the results indicate that both patients’ visit and patients’ consultation are positive related to physicians’ online knowledge sharing. Online expertise weakens the positive effect of patients’ consultation on physicians’ online knowledge sharing. Online knowledge sharing experience weakens the positive relationship between visit of patient and physicians’ online knowledge sharing, and enhances the positive relationship between patients’ consultation and physicians’ online knowledge sharing. This study contributes to the literatures about stimulus–response in psychology and knowledge sharing, and provides implications for practice. (shrink)

BackgroundMental stress and imbalance of its two neural stress systems, the autonomic nervous system and the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis, are associated with chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome and erectile dysfunction. However, the comprehensive analyses of psychological stress and stress systems are under-investigated, particularly in CP/CPPS patients complicated by lower urinary tract symptoms and ED.Materials and methodsParticipants were 95 patients in CP/CPPS+ED group, 290 patients in CP/CPPS group, 124 patients in ED group and 52 healthy men in control group. The National Institutes (...) of Health Chronic Prostatitis Symptom Index, the International Index of Erectile Function-5 and the International Prostate Symptom Score were used for assessing the disease severity of CP/CPPS, LUTS and ED. Psychometric self-report questionnaires including the Beck Anxiety Inventory, Perceived Stress Scale, Type A Personality Test and Symptom Checklist 90 were completed for distress from physical symptoms. Twenty-five subjects per group were randomly selected for further investigating the changes of the HPA axis and ANS. Saliva samples were taken on 3 consecutive days at 8 specific times with strict reference to time of morning awakening for evaluation of free cortisol. Heart rate variability as marker of the ANS was measured using 24 h electrocardiography, and time-and frequency-domain variables were analyzed.ResultsThe BAI and SCL-90 scores were significantly higher in the CP/CPPS+ED, CP/CPPS and ED groups compared with the control group. The PSS scores of both groups with ED were significantly higher than the control group. Compared with the CP/CPPS group, the differences of PSS, SCL-90 and TAPT scores were statistically significant in CP/CPPS+ED patients. The IPSS scores were shown to have significantly positive correlations with BAI, PSS and SCL-90 in the CP/CPPS patients. However, in all subjects, the IIEF-5 scores were shown to have significantly negative correlations with BAI, PSS, SCL-90 and quality of life score in NIH-CPSI. Cortisol awakening response parameters and diurnal cortisol levels did not significantly vary between the four groups. Time-dependent parameters of HRV also did not differ significantly across groups. In the frequency domain analysis, low frequency was significantly lower in ED patients when compared with CP/CPPS+ED patients and healthy controls, high frequency power was significantly higher in healthy controls compared to patients with ED, CP/CPPS and CP/CPPS+ED, and the CP/CPPS+ED group had significantly higher LF/HF ratio than the control group.ConclusionCP/CPPS and ED patients score exceedingly high on most psychosocial variables. The symptom scores of LUTS and ED positively correlate with the severity of psychological stress. Our findings also suggest that the ANS sympathovagal imbalance is associated with ED and LUTS in CP/CPPS, whereas HPA axis activity is not. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of personality traits on academic performance. Furthermore, this study also aims at exploring the effects of virtual experience and emotional intelligence between personality traits and academic performance of the students. The findings imply that personality traits are the strong predictors of better academic performance. However, several personality traits do not have a positive impact on the academic performance. The study further suggests that students who have emotional abilities and virtual experience (...) are more likely to perform well in their academics. The population of this research consists of students in various colleges and universities in developing regions. Thus, the sample consists of bachelor's and master's students. Existing scales are adopted with minor changes to make it more suitable and understandable within the study context. A total of 319 questionnaires were distributed. Among these 365 questionnaires, 234 questionnaires were received and further used for the purpose of data analysis. This shows an encouraging response from the targeted sample. Education and productivity of the students are influenced by their personality as well as their emotional intelligence abilities. The findings imply that being extrovert is a strong predictor of student achievement and should be prioritized in intervention strategies. This personality feature is responsible for performance in addition to virtual learning experience. Despite its low overall relative value, agreeableness is a significant driver of student achievement. Along with ability and aptitude assessments, personality evaluations might be utilized as a secondary screening tool to identify adolescents at risk of underperformance and academic performance failure. Therefore, learning emotional skills would be beneficial to cope the modern challenges of the competitive educational environment. Virtual experience and being emotionally sound can help students to learn quickly and to be more adaptive into the new world of digitalization. The conclusions of the current study have significant consequences for educators and policymakers. They must accept that boosting emotional intelligence levels through teaching or training is a significant objective of contemporary education. The emotional intelligence abilities of the students related to culture may be shown in a variety of ways, from expectations toward students to interpersonal interactions with students, and from teaching techniques to evaluation methods. (shrink)

Although several studies have explored the relationship between the Internet and elderly individuals, little is known about whether and how the Internet affects elderly individuals’ subjective well-being from multiple perspectives. This study examines the effects of the Internet on physical satisfaction and life satisfaction and explores the potential mechanisms by which the Internet produces its effects on elderly individuals. Using nationally representative data from the China General Social Survey, this study finds that the Internet has a significant positive impact on (...) physical satisfaction and life satisfaction of the elderly in China. The mechanism analysis shows that the Internet can improve the level of health insurance participation, which we interpret as potential mechanisms through which the Internet positively affects physical satisfaction among elderly individuals. Correspondingly, the Internet affects life satisfaction of elderly individuals by influencing social networks. Further heterogeneity tests find that the effect is stronger for urban areas, male and high human capital samples. This study highlights the important micro effects of the Internet and provides a reference for exploring the mechanism of the Internet affecting SWB. (shrink)

Significant challenges confronting China include reducing carbon emissions, dealing with the resulting problems, and meeting various requirements for long-term economic growth. As a result, the shift in industrial structure best reflects how human society utilizes resources and impacts the environment. To meet China's 2050 net-zero emissions target, we look at how technological innovations, financial development, renewable energy investment, population age, and the economic complexity index all play a role in environmental sustainability in China. Analyzing short- and long-term relationships using ARDL (...) bounds testing, we used historical data spanning 1990–2018. According to the study's findings, the cointegration between CO2 emissions and their underlying factors was found. The deterioration of the environment directly results from financial development, increasing economic complexity, and population aging. Technical advancements, investments in renewable energy sources, and changes to the industrial structure all contribute to lower CO2 emissions. Granger causality results were also reliably obtained in this study. According to our findings in the fight against environmental problems, a key tool for meeting long-term sustainability goals is policy prescriptions that use technological innovations, renewable energy investment, and industrial structure. (shrink)

Adaptation can optimize information processing by allowing the visual system to always adjust to the environment. However, only a few studies have investigated how the visual system makes adjustments to repeatedly occurring changes in the input, still less about the related neural mechanism. Our previous study found that contrast adaptation attenuated after multiple daily sessions of repeated adaptation, which was explained by the habituation of either the adapter’s effective strength or the adaptation mechanisms. To examine the former hypothesis, in the (...) present study we used the frequency tagging technique to measure the adapter-elicited steady-state visual evoked potential amplitudes. Participants repeatedly adapted to the same contrast adapter in a top-up manner for six continuous days, which was called training of adaptation. The behavioral adaptation effect and SSVEP response to the trained adapter and an untrained control adapter were measured before and after training. The psychophysical results showed that the effect of adaptation in the trained condition significantly reduced after training, replicating our previous finding. Contradicting the prediction of the hypothesis that repeated adaptation attenuated the effective strength of the adapter, the SSVEP amplitude was unchanged after training, which was further confirmed by an equivalence test. Taken together, the results challenge the account of habituation of adapter in repeated adaptation, while leaving the account of habituation of adaptation mechanism to be tested. (shrink)

21世紀人類新科學、新文明的基礎——思維科學理論體系的建立 1687年英國科學家牛頓發表的《自然哲學的數學原理》一書，是近代自然科學完全確立的標誌，從而引領人類的科學邁入宏觀科學的時代，為現代文明奠定了理論和思想上的基礎；1905年德國科學家愛因斯坦發表的《相 對論》，更使得人類的科學邁入微觀科學的時代，讓人們對周圍世界有了一個更加深入和全面的了解。 雖然上述二者都有力地推動了人類科學和文明的巨大進步，卻都未能跳脫出現代科學的物質觀對人們思維上的限制，不能應用於高度複雜的人體和生命科學，更不能解決當前擺在人們面前諸於癌症、愛滋病、各種慢性病、遺傳病 、傳染病等形形色色的問題。 毫無疑問，21世紀將是人體和生命科學的世紀。然而，在人體和生命科學領域，尚未出現像牛頓的《自然哲學的數學原理》和愛因斯坦的《相對論》那樣具有劃時代意義，且與生命科學高度複雜的基本特點互相呼應的全新理論 體系；這就導致人體和生命科學在21世紀的發展將缺乏理論上的立足點，人體和生命科學新的大發展正在呼喚全新理論的出現。 2012年，《生命科學的哲學原理》一書的完成和發表，正是適應這一時代的需要而建立起來的全新科學理論體系，採用了與牛頓和愛因斯坦完全不同，更加高級、全新的思維方式，並突破了現代科學的物質觀對人們思維上的 限制，從而引領人類的科學從當前具體的物質科學邁入抽象的思維科學的新時代，進而有效地解決人體和生命科學領域中各種高度複雜的問題，整個人類的文明也將因此而再次發生翻天覆地的偉大轉變，為新的歷史時期之人類社 會的和平、穩定與快速發展提供理論和思想上的依據。.

Customer engagement behavior is a critical success factor for community e-commerce. While many community e-commerce websites are currently improving service quality to enhance customer engagement behavior, little is known about how such e-services affect customer engagement behavior. Building upon the stimulus-organism-response model, this study developed a research model to explain how e-service quality of community e-commerce platform affects customer engagement behavior through customer trust and perceived risk. The research model was empirically evaluated by surveying 326 customers who have shopped through (...) the community e-commerce platforms. The results indicate that e-service quality positively affects customer engagement behavior. Besides, customer trust and perceived risk play a mediating role between e-service quality and customer engagement behavior. This study offers recommendations to managers on how to build an attractive community e-commerce platform to stimulate customer engagement behavior. (shrink)

The rate of learning and cognitive development is at its highest level in preschool-aged children, making this stage a critical period. Exercise has received increasing attention for its beneficial physical and mental health effects on the development of preschool children. This study investigated the effects of diverse exercise on the cognition of preschool children. Two classes were randomly selected from kindergarten classes of children aged 5–6 years, and designated as the experimental and control classes. Each class contained 20 children according (...) to the kindergarten class system. The experimental class completed exercises according to the designed curriculum, while control class carried out exercises according to the regular teaching plan, for a study period of 12 weeks. The Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence and the Mental Health Questionnaire for Children were used to assess outcomes, both at the beginning and end of study. After 12 weeks, the experimental class has improved in the “Object Assembly,” “Block Design,” “Picture Completion,” and “Coding” in performance test, and showed improvements in the “Movement,” “Cognitive Ability,” “Sociality” and “Living Habits” in mental health outcomes. Diverse exercise has a significantly beneficial role in promoting the cognitive development of children aged 5–6 years, as well as a beneficial, albeit insignificant, role in their mental health. (shrink)

Live streaming e-commerce, as a kind of new information technology-based business model, is currently the most popular marketing approach, especially in China. This research divides live streaming interactions into three dimensions, interactions for obtaining product information, interactions for grasping the purchase dynamics of others, and interactions for obtaining monetary incentives, and proposes a comprehensive framework to examine whether live streaming interactions with consumers promote both social presence and consumer conformity, and thereby enhance their purchase intentions. Covariance-based structural equation modeling with (...) AMOS was conducted to analyze data collected from 576 Chinese consumers. The main findings are that, first, both IPI and IPD can exert a direct impact on social presence and consumer conformity; second, IMI has a positive impact only on social presence; third, among the three dimensions of interactions, both IPI and IPD tend to increase purchase intention through social presence and consumer conformity, while IMI increases purchase intention only via social presence. Furthermore, given the differences between experience and search products, the results of the multigroup analysis indicate inconsistent path coefficients between the two product groups. This study provides a novel perspective on live streaming e-commerce with evidence on how interactions matter in driving purchase intentions, enriches the content of live streaming e-commerce literature and explores the practical implications for marketing managers are looking for marketing by live streaming. (shrink)

BackgroundPublished data and practice recommendations on end-of-life care generally reflect Western practice frameworks; there are limited data on withdrawal of treatment for children in China.MethodsWithdrawal of treatment for children in the pediatric intensive care unit of a regional children’s hospital in eastern China from 2006 to 2017 was studied retrospectively. Withdrawal of treatment was categorized as medical withdrawal or premature withdrawal. The guardian’s self-reported reasons for abandoning the child’s treatment were recorded from 2011.ResultsThe incidence of withdrawal of treatment for children (...) in the PICU decreased significantly; for premature withdrawal the 3-year average of 15.1% in 2006–2008 decreased to 1.9% in 2015–2017. The overall incidence of withdrawal of care reduced over the time period, and withdrawal of therapy by guardians was the main contributor to the overall reduction. The median age of children for whom treatment was withdrawn increased from 14.5 months in 2006 to 40.5 months in 2017. Among the reasons given by guardians of children whose treatment was withdrawn in 2011–2017, “illness is too severe” ranked first, accounting for 66.3%, followed by “condition has been improved”. Only a few guardians ascribed treatment withdrawal to economic reasons.ConclusionsThe frequency of withdrawal of medical therapy has changed over time in this children’s hospital PICU, and parental decision-making has been a large part of the change. (shrink)

Smart grids are rolling out internationally, with the United States nearing completion of a significant USD4-plus-billion federal program funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The emergence of smart grids is widespread across developed countries. Multiple approaches to analyzing the benefits of smart grids have emerged. The goals of this white paper are to review these approaches and analyze examples of each to highlight their differences, advantages, and disadvantages. This work was conducted under the auspices of a joint U.S.-China (...) research effort, the Climate Change Working Group Implementation Plan, Smart Grid. We present comparative benefits assessments of smart grid demonstrations in the U.S. and China along with a BA of a pilot project in Europe. In the U.S., we assess projects at two sites: the University of California, Irvine campus, which consists of two distinct demonstrations: Southern California Edison’s Irvine Smart Grid Demonstration Project and the UCI campus itself; and the Navy Yard area in Philadelphia, which has been repurposed as a mixed commercial-industrial, and possibly residential, development. In China, we cover several smart-grid aspects of the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city and the Shenzhen Bay Technology and Ecology City. In Europe, we look at a BA of a pilot smart grid project in the Malagrotta area west of Rome, Italy, contributed by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission. The Irvine sub-project BAs use the U.S. Department of Energy Smart Grid Computational Tool, which is built on methods developed by the Electric Power Research Institute. The TEC sub-project BAs apply Smart Grid Multi-Criteria Analysis developed by the State Grid Corporation of China based on the analytic hierarchy process with fuzzy logic. The B-TEC and TNY sub-project BAs are evaluated using new approaches developed by those project teams. JRC has adopted an approach similar to EPRI’s but tailored to the Malagrotta distribution grid. (shrink)

The asymmetric distribution of lipids, maintained by flippases/floppases and scramblases, plays a pivotal role in various physiologic processes. Scramblases are proteins that move phospholipids between the leaflets of the lipid bilayer of the cellular membrane in an energy‐independent manner. Recent studies have indicated that viral infection is closely related to cellular lipid distribution. The level and distribution of phosphatidylserine (PtdSer) in cells have been demonstrated to be critical regulators of viral infections. Previous studies have supported that the infection of human (...) immunodeficiency virus (HIV), Zika virus, Ebola virus (EBOV), influenza virus, and dengue fever virus require the externalization of phospholipids mediated by scramblases, which are also involved in the pathogenicity of the pandemic severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‐CoV‐2). In this review, we review the relationship of scramblases with viruses and the potential viral effector proteins that might utilize host scramblases. (shrink)

A sector is a basic unit of airspace whose operation is managed by air traffic controllers. The operation complexity of a sector plays an important role in air traffic management system, such as airspace reconfiguration, air traffic flow management, and allocation of air traffic controller resources. Therefore, accurate evaluation of the sector operation complexity is crucial. Considering there are numerous factors that can influence SOC, researchers have proposed several machine learning methods recently to evaluate SOC by mining the relationship between (...) factors and complexity. However, existing studies rely on hand-crafted factors, which are computationally difficult, specialized background required, and may limit the evaluation performance of the model. To overcome these problems, this paper for the first time proposes an end-to-end SOC learning framework based on deep convolutional neural network specifically for free of hand-crafted factors environment. A new data representation, i.e., multichannel traffic scenario image, is proposed to represent the overall air traffic scenario. A MTSI is generated by splitting the airspace into a two-dimension grid map and filled with navigation information. Motivated by the applications of deep learning network, the specific CNN model is introduced to automatically extract high-level traffic features from MTSIs and learn the SOC pattern. Thus, the model input is determined by combining multiple image channels composed of air traffic information, which are used to describe the traffic scenario. The model output is SOC levels for the target sector. The experimental results using a real dataset from the Guangzhou airspace sector in China show that our model can effectively extract traffic complexity information from MTSIs and achieve promising performance than traditional machine learning methods. In practice, our work can be flexibly and conveniently applied to SOC evaluation without the additional calculation of hand-crafted factors. (shrink)

Adolescence is a vital period of developing a moral self. As individuals enter adolescence, peers become increasingly important to them. This study aimed to explore the influence of peers' actual appraisals on moral self-representations. Based on Looking Glass Self Hypothesis, peers' reflected appraisals usually have a mediating effect on peers' actual appraisals and self-appraisals. This study used the Chinese Moral Trait Words Rating Scale to investigate 160 dyads of Chinese adolescents. The participants filled in the Self-Appraisals Questionnaire, Peers' Reflected Appraisals (...) Questionnaire, and Peers' Actual Appraisals Questionnaire, respectively. The results showed that: peers' actual appraisals indirectly affected self-appraisals through peers' reflected appraisals in the process of forming the moral self of early Chinese adolescents; Chinese adolescents had a certain accuracy in peers' actual appraisals, but often underestimated their peers' actual appraisals of them. This study was conducive to understanding the influence of peers on forming adolescents' moral self in the context of collectivistic culture. (shrink)