Conquering print-sound mappings is vital for developing fluent reading skills. In neuroimaging research, this ability can be indexed by activation differences between audiovisual congruent against incongruent conditions in brain areas such as the left superior temporal cortex. In line with it, individuals with dyslexia have difficulty in tasks requiring print-sound processing, accompanied by a reduced neural integration. However, existing evidence is almost restricted to alphabetic languages. Whether and how multisensory processing of print and sound is impaired in Chinese dyslexia remains (...) underexplored. In this study, we applied a passive audiovisual integration paradigm with functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate the possible dysfunctions in processing character-sound and pinyin-sound associations in Chinese dyslexic children. Unexpectedly, the dyslexic group did not show reduced neural integration compared with typically developing readers in either character or pinyin experiment. However, the results revealed atypical correlations between neural integration and different reading abilities in dyslexia. Specifically, while the neural integration in the left inferior frontal cortex in processing character-sound pairs correlated with silent reading comprehension in both children with and without dyslexia, it was associated with morphological awareness in controls but with rapid naming in dyslexics. This result indicates Chinese dyslexic children may not use the same grapho-semantic processing strategy as their typical peers do. As for pinyin-sound processing, while a stronger neural integration in the direction of “congruent > incongruent” in the left occipito-temporal cortex and bilateral superior temporal cortices was associated with better oral reading fluency in the control group, an opposite pattern was found in dyslexia. This finding may reflect dyslexia's dysfunctional recruitment of the regions in grapho-phonological processing, which further impedes character learning. (shrink)

Pronatalist policies, once regarded as a solution to declining fertility rates, face mounting scrutiny as they intersect with complex sociocultural dynamics across societies. Recent United Nations (UN) projections (2024) highlight an irreversible demographic trend: East Asian nations, exemplified by South Korea’s record-low fertility rate of 0.72, represent a global shift towards subreplacement fertility, as shown in figure 1.1 Lee’s analysis critiques pronatalist policies’ limitations, arguing that cash incentives and other state-sponsored measures merely mask systemic inequities while reinforcing paternalistic norms.2 This (...) commentary extends Lee’s critique by identifying a fundamental contradiction: welfare-driven pronatalist policies risk exacerbating inequities by diverting resources from broader well-being priorities. UN data show that even substantial pronatalist spending—as evidenced by South Korea’s $270 billion expenditure since 2008—fails to counter structural forces driving fertility decline,2 such as gendered labour disparities and rising single-person households. This paradox necessitates a paradigm shift from population sustainability—a relic of Malthusian anxieties—to population well-being, prioritising inclusive social services over demographic engineering. By anchoring this argument in the latest demographic evidence, we challenge policymakers to confront the ethical imperative of reallocating resources towards underserved groups, whose marginalisation is both a cause and consequence of pronatalism’s narrow calculus. Figure 1 Changes and projections of total fertility rate (live births per woman) in East Asia representative countries (1950–2050). *These data do not include …. (shrink)

Jan Patočka starts the phenomenology of existence movement as a response to the crisis brought about by modern technology. This movement aims to liberate both humanity and the world from the absolute dominance of technologism, while addressing the spiritual crisis faced by human beings. Patočka offers a new phenomenological perspective on human existence, viewing it as a continuous movement. He emphasizes that human embodiment in the world is characterized by an existential movement, which involves rootedness, self-extension, and breakthrough. Through the (...) concrete and practical movement of human existence, Patočka underscores the existential responsibility that is intrinsic to human subjects. This perspective enables us to confront existential problems and reestablish a sense of purpose and meaning to human existence within the natural world. (shrink)

Background Intensive care is essential for critically ill patients who experience loss of personal identity and restricted physical and emotional expression. However, patient privacy in Intensive Care Units (ICUs) remains inadequately protected, with both patients and healthcare professionals (HCPs) reporting breaches. Cultural backgrounds and individual perspectives of patients and HCPs significantly shape their views on privacy. In China, discourse on ICU patient privacy is still in its early stages. Research aim This study aims to explore the experiences of HCPs and (...) patients regarding the patient privacy in ICU under the Chinese background. Research design A qualitative study was conducted using purposive sampling methods for semi-structured, face-to-face, in-depth interviews, followed by thematic analysis to identify key themes. Participants and research context Six focus-group interviews (with a total of 33 nurses) were conducted, while seven doctors and 10 patients were interviewed individually from March to July 2024 at a tertiary hospital in China. Ethical considerations This study was approved by the hospital’s Ethics Committee (reference number: 2024-L-158). Informed consent was obtained from all participants, and data confidentiality was ensured through anonymization and encrypted storage. Findings Four themes were identified: (1) the coexistence of consensus and disagreement regarding privacy scope; (2) the paradoxical perception of privacy protection; (3) conflicting responses to privacy violation and (4) much has been done, but more is needed. Conclusions Minimizing exposure of ICU patients’ private areas and protecting their information are essential to safeguarding privacy. Education and training in bioethics can enhance HCPs’ sensitivity to ethical issues and improve practices regarding privacy protection. Teaching resilience and stress management can help mitigate psychological distress associated with privacy violations in ICU patients. Additionally, promoting HCPs’ privacy awareness, limiting visits by opposite-sex family members, and enhancing HCPs’ empathy are key strategies in this context. (shrink)

This paper critically evaluates Matthew Burch’s interpretations and critiques of the phenomenological account of health and illness, which are predominantly situated within the realm of static phenomenology within Husserl’s framework, thereby neglecting the potential insights offered by genetic phenomenology. The primary focus of this paper is to explore genetic phenomenology in order to present an alternative interpretation of PHI. It argues that illness experience involves subjectivity, intersubjectivity, and objectivity, unified within a structural interdependence. Additionally, normality comprises subjective, intersubjective, and objective (...) dimensions, reflecting its multifaceted nature. It encompasses both a pregiven aspect and a constitutive process. Moreover, the distinction between the lived body and the physical body is a result of first-person subjectification and third-person objectification perspectives. These perspectives mutually complement and intertwine, where bodily transparency and bodily conspicuousness do not necessarily conflict. (shrink)

Research on the behavioral theory of the firm has established that the profitability goal triggers various firm actions, but it has yet to thoroughly explore which other goals may gain prominence in directing firm resources if the profitability goal has been achieved. We identify shareholder satisfaction and societal benefit as two additional organizational goals and predict that when firms have achieved their profitability aspirations, the financial resources allocated to pursue these goals depend on the dominance of coalitions supporting or opposing (...) them. Drawing on the coalition theory within the behavioral theory of the firm, we theorize that the prioritization and pursuit of a goal depend on the relative power of its supporting coalition within a firm’s governance body, including top decision-makers like CEOs and board members. By examining 2071 Chinese listed firms, we find that the relative strength of the shareholder-value coalition (supporting shareholder satisfaction) and the state-endorsement coalition (supporting societal benefit) affects firms’ resource allocation toward dividend payments and corporate philanthropy in distinct ways. (shrink)

In the paper, we consider the decision problem of two group achievement stit logics: the super-additive group achievement stit logic and the additive group achievement stit logic, both with refref equivalence. They are the sets of formulas that are valid on two distinct classes of branching time and agent choice structures with instants, respectively. In one class, all structures are super-additive, and in the other class, all structures are additive. Moreover, neither of these structures contains busy choice sequences. We establish (...) the decidability of the super-additive group achievement stit logic with refref equivalence, whereas the additive group achievement stit logic with refref equivalence is shown to be undecidable whenever the number of agents exceeds 2. As additional results, we obtain an alternative but more straightforward semantics for the group achievement stit logics and an embedding of the group Chellas stit logics into the group achievement stit logics with refref equivalence. (shrink)

This volume fills that gap and offers teachers in criminal justice ethics and law enforcement practitioners a rich selection of materials that have emerged in ...

BackgroundMental health is a public health problem of great concern. Previous studies show that textual features and individual psychological characteristics can influence the effect of receiving information.PurposeThis study explores whether textual features influence the persuasiveness of teenager students’ mental health education while considering the influence of risk preference.MethodsFrom November to December 2021, a cross-sectional study was conducted among 1,869 teenager students in grade 7–12 in Chongqing, China. Wilcoxon signed-rank test, multiple logistic regression, and subgroup analysis were used to analyze the (...) data.ResultsAmong the four textual features mentioned in this study, a significant difference was reported in the persuasive effects of information with and without numerical features. Combined with those from the risk preference analysis, results showed that the regulatory effect of risk preference was only reflected in emotional conflicts. Students who prefer having no emotional conflict in the text showed the characteristics of risk avoidance, or lower grades, or rural or school accommodation. Most teenager students are also risk averse, especially females and juniors.ConclusionThe numbers, symbols, and positive emotions in the text generate an active effect on teenager students receiving mental health education. Students avoiding risk are inclined to read texts without emotional conflicts. The probability of male choosing texts with positive emotional polarity is 33.5% lower than that of female. Female students and those from lower grades also demonstrate a higher inclination to risk avoidance compared with their male and higher grade counterparts. Therefore, educational materials with different text characteristics should be developed for teenager students with varying characteristics. (shrink)

In this paper, the nonsmooth compound transmission control protocol with the gentle random early detection system with the state-dependent round-trip delay is investigated in detail. Uniqueness of the positive equilibrium is proved firstly. Then, the closed approximate periodic solutions in this state-dependent delayed nonsmooth compound TCP with the GRED model are obtained by employing the harmonic balance and alternating frequency/time domain method. Then, we compare the results generated by numerical simulations with those of the closed approximate expressions obtained by HB-AFT. (...) It indicates that HB-AFT is simple, correct, and powerful for state-dependent delayed nonsmooth dynamical systems. Finally, we find the complicated dynamic: chaos. It is a grazing chaos with a hybrid property, i.e., where usually w oscillates at a very low frequency and q oscillates at a very high frequency. And, the route to chaos is a very rare route, i.e., the instantaneous and local transition of stable equilibrium to chaos. So, to the end of stability and good performance, we should adjust the parameters carefully to avoid the periodic and chaotic oscillations. (shrink)

This study investigated the status quo of article retractions by Chinese researchers. The bibliometric information of 834 retractions from the Web of Science SCI-expanded database were downloaded and analysed. The results showed that the number of retractions increased in the past two decades, and misconduct such as plagiarism, fraud, and faked peer review explained approximately three quarters of the retractions. Meanwhile, a large proportion of the retractions seemed typical of deliberate fraud, which might be evidenced by retractions authored by repeat (...) offenders of data fraud and those due to faked peer review. In addition, a majority of Chinese fraudulent authors seemed to aim their articles which contained a possible misconduct at low-impact journals, regardless of the types of misconduct. The system of scientific evaluation, the “publish or perish” pressure Chinese researchers are facing, and the relatively low costs of scientific integrity may be responsible for the scientific integrity. We suggested more integrity education and severe sanctions for the policy-makers, as well as change in the peer review system and transparent retraction notices for journal administrators. (shrink)

東アジア共通の知の基盤を創った99人。日本・中国・韓国の3か国から各33名、近世の代表的思想家を紹介。単なる技術の学ではなく、儒学を基調として、自己修養や自然への畏敬など「心」を重んじる実心実学思想は 、東アジア世界の独自かつ共通の知的達成であった。近代以降を席巻した西洋の知的体系が大きな見直しを迫られるいま、東アジア独自の知の源泉を再認識する。.

This study examines consumers’ uses of corporate social responsibility communication channels, the relationship of such uses to consumers’ CSR awareness, and the mechanisms through which consumers’ CSR awareness can lead to their intention to participate in CSR activities. Specifically, we explored the mediation effects of consumers’ CSR associations with a company, consumers’ assessment of the company’s CSR credibility, and consumers’ perceptions of their relationship with the company, applying the conceptual frameworks of the uses and gratification theory, source credibility theory, and (...) organization–public relationship scholarship. We conducted an online survey of a company’s customers, and the results showed that their level of awareness of the company’s CSR activities was positively related to the degree of use of all communication channels through which they received CSR messages, except CSR reports. The degree of the customers’ awareness of the company’s CSR programs, however, did not always correspond to the customers’ intention to participate in the programs: a crucial condition mediating between the customers’ knowledge of CSR programs and their intention to participate in the programs was their associating the company with CSR. The CSR associations influenced CSR credibility and perceived OPR quality, which, in turn, led to CSR participation intention. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings. (shrink)

This paper presents a novel fractional-order PID controller tuning strategy based on Bode’s optimal loop shaping which is commonly used for LTI feedback systems. Firstly, the controller parameters are achieved based on flat phase property and Bode’s optimal reference model, so that the controlled system is robust to gain variations and can achieve desirable transient performance according to various control requirements. Then, robustness analysis of the controlled system is carried out to support the results. Furthermore, the parameter setting is analyzed (...) to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed controller. At last, some simulation examples are shown to verify the accuracy and usefulness of the proposed control strategy. The proposed fractional-order PID controller does not have any restriction on the controlled plant, so it can be widely applied on both integer-order and fractional-order systems. (shrink)

Social media chat groups, such as WeChat and WhatsApp groups, are widely applied in online communication. This research has conducted two studies to examine the individual level and collective level’s opinion dynamics in those groups. The opinion dynamic is driven by two variables, people’s perceived peer support and willingness of opinion expression. The perceived peer support influences the willingness of opinion expression, and the willingness influences the dynamics of real opinion-expression. First, the quasi-experimental study recruited twenty-five participants as the observation (...) group and found that decreasing perceived peer support would significantly increase individuals’ expression willingness to protect his/her opinion. To generalize the individual level findings to a collective level, the second study treated the social media chat groups as an undirected fully-connected social network and simulated people’s opinion expression dynamics with an agent-based model. The simulation indicated that with the help of increased willingness of opinion expression, the minority opinion supporters as a collective did not fall silent but continue to express themselves and increasing willingness of opinion expression would maintain the existence of minority opinion but could not help the minority reverse to the majority. (shrink)

With the increasing scale of e-commerce, the complexity of image content makes commodity image classification face great challenges. Image feature extraction often determines the quality of the final classification results. At present, the image feature extraction part mainly includes the underlying visual feature and the intermediate semantic feature. The intermediate semantics of the image acts as a bridge between the underlying features and the advanced semantics of the image, which can make up for the semantic gap to a certain extent (...) and has strong robustness. As a typical intermediate semantic representation method, the bag-of-visual-words model has received extensive attention in image classification. However, the traditional BoVW model loses the location information of local features, and its local feature descriptors mainly focus on the texture shape information of local regions but lack the expression of color information. Therefore, in this paper, the improved bag-of-visual-words model is presented, which contains three aspects of improvement: multiscale local region extraction; local feature description by speeded up robust features and color vector angle histogram ; and diagonal concentric rectangular pattern. Experimental results show that the three aspects of improvement to the BoVW model are complementary, while compared with the traditional BoVW and the BoVW adopting SURF + SPM, the classification accuracy of the improved BoVW is increased by 3.60% and 2.33%, respectively. (shrink)

Event cameras which transmit per-pixel intensity changes have emerged as a promising candidate in applications such as consumer electronics, industrial automation, and autonomous vehicles, owing to their efficiency and robustness. To maintain these inherent advantages, the trade-off between efficiency and accuracy stands as a priority in event-based algorithms. Thanks to the preponderance of deep learning techniques and the compatibility between bio-inspired spiking neural networks and event-based sensors, data-driven approaches have become a hot spot, which along with the dedicated hardware and (...) datasets constitute an emerging field named event-based data-driven technology. Focusing on data-driven technology in event-based vision, this paper first explicates the operating principle, advantages, and intrinsic nature of event cameras, as well as background knowledge in event-based vision, presenting an overview of this research field. Then, we explain why event-based data-driven technology becomes a research focus, including reasons for the rise of event-based vision and the superiority of data-driven approaches over other event-based algorithms. Current status and future trends of event-based data-driven technology are presented successively in terms of hardware, datasets, and algorithms, providing guidance for future research. Generally, this paper reveals the great prospects of event-based data-driven technology and presents a comprehensive overview of this field, aiming at a more efficient and bio-inspired visual system to extract visual features from the external environment. (shrink)

Many researchers have acknowledged the role of metacognition in facilitating learning to write in English as a foreign language (EFL). Although research on metacognition has explored learners’ metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive strategies in the field of EFL writing, little is known about the nature of learners’ metacognitive experiences in EFL writing. To fill such an important gap, this study was designed to assess EFL learners’ metacognitive experiences before, during, and after writing. Data were collected from a total of 760 undergraduates (...) through three self-report questionnaires and a writing task. Results from quantitative analyses showed four subcategories of EFL learners’ metacognitive experiences in writing: metacognitive feeling, metacognitive judgments/estimates, online task-specific metacognitive knowledge, and online task-specific metacognitive strategies. Based on the empirical evidence, we propose a model of metacognitive experiences in EFL writing. Theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical implications are discussed. (shrink)

Prior research in behavioral ethics suggests that supervisors may influence employees’ ethical decision-making. However, the extent to which supervisors shape the recurrence of employees’ unethical behaviors remains underexplored. By integrating cognitive dissonance theory with social information processing theory, we provide new insights into how supervisors influence employees’ responses to their past ethical violations. We hypothesize that when supervisors exhibit a high level of perspective taking, employees are less likely to perceive organizational intolerance of unethical behaviors and, in turn, are more (...) likely to repeat these behaviors in the future. To test our hypotheses, we conducted a field investigation using objective data from organizational records and survey responses collected from 276 sales professionals and 108 supervisors in a large firm over a nine-month period. Our results support our predictions. We discuss theoretical and practical implications, limitations, as well as future directions. (shrink)

Screen time has become a hot button issue in psychology with researchers fiercely debating its mental effects. If we want to understand the psychological dynamics of technology use, however, a numerical conceptualization of screen time will lead us to gloss over crucial distinctions. To make this point, the present article takes a hermeneutic approach to a negative form of screen time known as ‘phubbing’, which is the practice of snubbing conversational partners in favor of one’s phone. Using interview data, it (...) is demonstrated that whether or not phone use amounts to phubbing, that is, whether or not it tips over and becomes harmful, depends on a host of contextual factors such as relation (who), content (what), purpose (why), timing (when), and communication (how). These findings demonstrate that not all screen time is created equal: what is harmful and inappropriate in one context is benign in another, and vice versa. Simply put, screen time is not a numerical entity whose causal effects we can measure and explain, but a meaningful activity that we must try to understand. (shrink)

Social enterprises are hybrid organizations that primarily pursue social missions while also seeking economic gains. Drawing on workplace diversity and conflict theories, this article addresses recent calls for further research to explore how employees within social enterprises experience internal conflicts arising from the organizational pursuit of dual, competing missions (i.e., social and economic), and how social enterprises manage, and potentially overcome, these challenges. In the context of Korean social enterprise, we conducted a quantitative study that built on an initial explorative (...) qualitative study. Our research examined whether perceived participatory human resource management practices and diversity climate increase employees’ affective commitment by reducing their relational conflict. We further explored a boundary condition, perceived social impact, which strengthened this mediation relationship. Our results offer significant insights into social enterprise, business ethics, and broader management literature. Implications for future research and practice are also discussed. (shrink)

Previous studies have shown that the motion intention recognition for lower limb prosthesis mainly focused on the identification of performed gait. However, the bionic prosthesis needs to know the next movement at the beginning of a new gait, especially in complex operation environments. In this paper, an upcoming locomotion prediction scheme via multilevel classifier fusion was proposed for the complex operation. At first, two motion states, including steady state and transient state, were defined. Steady-state recognition was backtracking of a completed (...) gait, which would be used as prior knowledge of motion prediction. In steady-state recognition, surface electromyographic and inertial sensors were fused to improve recognition accuracy; five typical locomotion modes were recognized by random forest classifier with over 97.8% accuracy. The transient state was defined as an observation period at the initial stage of upcoming movement, in which only the sEMG signal was recorded due to the limitation of sliding window length. LightGBM classifier was validated to outperform other methods in the accuracy and prediction time of transient-state recognition. Finally, a simplified HMM model based on prior knowledge and observation result was constructed to predict upcoming locomotion. The results indicated that the locomotion prediction was over 91% accuracy. The proposed scheme implements the locomotion prediction at the initial stage of each gait and provides critical information for the gait control of lower limb prosthesis. (shrink)

The impact of integrity on organizational and/or interpersonal relationships is well documented in the literature but its influence on customer relationships such as consumer trust and relationship commitment has been largely overlooked. The present study attempts to fill this research gap by examining the effect of integrity on consumer relationship commitment in a cross-cultural setting. Survey data from the United States and China were used to test the hypothesized relationships. The results show that integrity has significant impacts on both consumer (...) trust and relationship commitment, and culture significantly moderates the effect of integrity on consumer commitment. Specifically, integrity was found to affect American respondents’ relationship commitment both directly and indirectly with the direct effect being greater and the indirect effect being smaller relative to those of Chinese respondents. In contrast, integrity had only indirect effect on relationship commitment with Chinese consumers, highlighting the importance of consumer trust in the integrity-commitment relationship. The implications for research and business practice were discussed. (shrink)

This article examines the risk and return profiles of stock indices composed of companies meeting environmental, social and governance screening criteria [such as the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices ] and conventional composite indices of eight Asian countries from 2002 to 2014. The results indicate that there are no significant differences in the returns or risk-adjusted returns between the ESG indices and the composite indices within countries. The results do reveal that the market volatility of the ESG indices is higher than (...) the market volatility of the conventional indices. Market betas of DJSI and ESG equity indices are significantly lower than betas of the composite equity indices. The overall results indicate that the performance of ESG equity indices of many Asian countries is similar to the performance of conventional indices, suggesting that investors can pursue socially responsible investing objectives without a material difference in portfolio performance from conventional investing. (shrink)

This study combines the discovery methods and training of innovative talents, China’s requirements for improving talent training capabilities, and analyses the relationship between the number of professional enrollments in colleges and universities and the demand for skills in specific places. The research learns the characteristics and training models of innovative talents, deep learning, neural networks, and related concepts of the seasonal difference Autoregressive Moving Average Model. These concepts are used to propose seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average back propagation. Firstly, the (...) SARIMA-BP artificially sets the weight parameter values and analyzes the model’s convergence speed, superiority, and versatility. Then, particle swarm optimization algorithm is used to pre-process the model and test its independence. The accuracy of the model is checked to ensure its proper performance. Secondly, the model analyzes and predicts the relationship between the number of professional enrollments of 10 colleges and universities in a specific place and the talent demand of local related enterprises. Moreover, the established model is optimized and tested by wavelet denoising. Independent testing is done to ensure the best possible performance of the model. Finally, the weight value will not significantly affect the model’s versatility obtained by experiments. The prediction results of professional settings and corporate needs reveal that: there is a moderate correlation between professional locations and corporate needs; colleges and universities should train professional talents for local enterprises and eliminate the practical education concepts. (shrink)

The Tang Dynasty (618–907) stands as a pinnacle of cultural, artistic, and spiritual flourishing, with its music and dance embodying profound metaphysical, religious, and philosophical dimensions. Beyond their aesthetic appeal, these art forms served as mediums for spiritual expression, ritualistic practice, and intercultural religious dialogue, particularly along the Silk Road. However, the challenge of revitalizing Tang Dynasty music and dance in contemporary times requires reconciling historical traditions with modern sensibilities, integrating religious and philosophical reflections, and leveraging innovative technologies to enhance (...) their spiritual resonance. This study explores the philosophical and religious significance of Tang Dynasty music and dance within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), emphasizing their role in fostering intercultural exchange, sacred aesthetics, and ethical values. A qualitative research approach is employed, incorporating historical analysis, case studies, and cultural hermeneutics to examine how these ancient art forms can be revitalized while retaining their transcendental and ritualistic essence. Drawing from Buddhist, Daoist, and Confucian influences embedded in Tang Dynasty artistic traditions, this research highlights how these performances once served as vehicles for divine worship, meditative practice, and moral education. Methodologies include the integration of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) to create immersive spiritual experiences, the fusion of traditional music and dance with sacred narratives, and the use of interactive storytelling to preserve religious symbolism. Case studies, such as the immersive encounter at Chang’an Twelve Hours and the evolution of Imitation Tang Music and Dance, exemplify how these innovations can restore the spiritual and philosophical depth of Tang-era performances. This study concludes that interdisciplinary collaboration and international partnerships can play a crucial role in sustaining the spiritual and cultural legacy of Tang Dynasty music and dance. By embedding these art forms within the broader discourse of religious aesthetics and philosophy, their revitalization can contribute not only to cultural preservation but also to the enrichment of contemporary spiritual thought in a globally connected world. Future research should further explore the role of sacred music and dance in interfaith dialogue and their potential to inspire a renewed understanding of religious and philosophical traditions. (shrink)

The hematopoietic system consists of more than ten differentiated cell types, all of which are derived from a single type of hematopoietic stem cell. The accessibility and interest of this system have made it a model for understanding normal and abnormal differentiation of mammalian cells. Newer techniques have generated a mass of data that requires integrative approaches for analysis and interpretation. The traditional view of the differentiation program holds that a small number of regulators are involved in each stage of (...) cell specification. However, this may not be the case. Recent analyses have shown that almost all substantial subsets of genes, including the set of broadly expressed transcription factors, are expressed in patterns that are unique for each lineage. Further, much of this difference between lineages can be captured in two‐dimensional graphs. Understanding the biologic significance, mechanisms and constraints underlying these differences is a challenge for experimentalists and computational biologists alike. BioEssays 26:1276–1287, 2004. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Since the 1990s, grammatical complexity has received substantial research attention in applied linguistics. The representation of grammatical complexity has expanded in L2 writing with the application of diverse measures in empirical studies in the recent three decades. In response to this situation, we found it important to revisit grammatical complexity, and an exploratory factor analysis was applied to explore latent dimensions of grammatical complexity in L2 writing. We analyzed Lu’s 14 grammatical complexity measures in the L2 corpus of the British (...) Academic Written English Corpus. We then proposed a four-factor model with “clausal subordination,” “phrasal construction”, “global length unit” and “others.” The four factors generally align with the types of grammatical complexity proposed in Lu, but differences on six measures are also found. Noteworthy points were discussed to interpret the reasons behind the differences. Research implications are provided to show further research directions. (shrink)

The goal of this study is to investigate whether different types of structures and lexical tones of Chinese characters cause different processing fluency. In Experiment 1, participants’ explicit affective assessments of Chinese characters with different structures, frequencies, and lexical tones were analyzed. Results indicated that participants showed explicit preferences and dispreferences to different structures and lexical tones. In Experiment 2, participants’ implicit responses to different structures and lexical tones were investigated using a metaphor experimental paradigm. Results were consistent with the (...) major findings of Experiment 1. In Experiments 3 and 4, participants’ recognition of words of different structures and lexical tones were analyzed. Results revealed that participants had a better memory for Surround structure characters when stimuli were visually presented and for Tone 3 when stimuli were auditorily presented. Finally, the significance and implications of this study are discussed. (shrink)

. The defects in macro traffic model research are pointed out firstly. In order to remedy these defects, traffic movements at the grid intersection were analyzed, and with the basic framework of the traffic transmission model, the new macro traffic model used in the paper for control simulation and evaluation has been proposed. Secondly, the bi-level optimization control model is proposed, using minimal delay and maximal throughput as its upper objectives, and optimal traffic coordination on both sides as the lower (...) objective. A corresponding heuristic ant algorithm is subsequently designed to solve the control model. Finally, the proposed method is tested at a suppositional road network, under three different demand scenarios, compared with Transyt-7F. The results show that the proposed method has better performance, especially under high demand scenarios. (shrink)

User location prediction in location-based social networks can predict the density of people flow well in terms of intelligent transportation, which can make corresponding adjustments in time to make traffic smooth, reduce fuel consumption, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and help build a green cycle low-carbon transportation green system. This paper proposes a Markov chain position prediction model based on multidimensional correction. Firstly, extract corresponding information from the user’s historical check-in position sequence as a position-position conversion map. Secondly, the influence of (...) check-in period, space distance, and other factors on the position prediction is linearly weighted and merged with the position prediction of the n-order Markov chain to construct MDC-MCM. Finally, we conduct a comprehensive performance evaluation of MDC-MCM using the dataset collected from Brightkite. Experimental results show that compared with other advanced location prediction technologies, MDC-MCM achieves better location prediction results. (shrink)

The present study examined the effect of distant temporal distance on creative thinking and the underlying motivation mechanism. We tested our hypotheses in four studies. In Studies 1-4, participants in the distant temporal distance opposed to the proximal temporal distance performed better on a series of creative thinking tasks: the Alternate Uses Task (Study 1), the Chinese Remote Associates Test (Study 2), the Toy Design Task (Study 3) and the Ad Evaluation Task (Study 4). Moreover, Studies 2 and 3 found (...) that promotion motivation mediated the beneficial effect of distant temporal distance on the performance of the two creative thinking tasks. In conclusion, distant temporal distance facilitated creative thinking, and promotion motivation mediated this beneficial effect. (shrink)