In the context of the slowing growth of the real economy and the rapid development of the financial industry, more and more non-financial companies are participating in the financial industry for the purpose of development and profit expansion. China has gradually appeared the phenomenon of corporate financialization. This paper uses the panel fixed effect model empirically examines the effect of political turnover on corporate financialization by using data of listed companies and top prefecture level officials in China between 2007 and (...) 2020. We find that the turnover of mayors significantly decreases corporate financialization, while the turnover of party secretaries has no impact on corporate financialization. Moreover, these results are moderated by the characteristics of government officials and firm’s characteristics. Our results further show that changes by mayors increase fixed asset investment and decrease cash holdings, and, thus, reduce corporate financialization. These findings could assist in solving the “from real to virtual” problems, strengthening financial services, and realizing high-quality economic development. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to improve the entrepreneurial performance and sports morality of college teacher-and-student entrepreneurs. Consequently, psychological capital is creatively combined with social and political education to explore college entrepreneurs’ EP and sports morality. First, following a theoretical model implementation, this article proposes several hypotheses. Then, a questionnaire survey was designed, and the data were analyzed. The results show that gender has little impact on EP and sports morality; PsyCap significantly affects the EP of college entrepreneurs at (...) the age of 33–38 years; in terms of educational background, average scores of PsyCap + SPE of bachelors are the highest, followed by masters or above, and finally, the college undergraduate; the average score of PsyCap + SPE of married respondents is 4.0, while that of the unmarried is 3.7; there is a significant difference between college entrepreneurs’ EP under the dimension of the basic enterprise situation; and the average score of the length of entrepreneurship is 9.87, which has the most significant impact on the EP and sports morality, and the significance of sports morality is 0.04. Among them, the most significant impact on EP and sports morality is weekly sports participation, with a score of 9.67. Therefore, PsyCap + SPE plays a positive role in the EP of college entrepreneurs. In contrast, sports morality has little impact on EP. This study provides a reference for the research on the influence of entrepreneurship and sports morality of college entrepreneurs. (shrink)

With the advancement of China’s economic transformation, the impact of economic policy uncertainty on family firms has become increasingly significant. The “familism” of family firms makes them more motivated to maintain family harmony, pursue innovative activities, and the long-term development of enterprises when faced with economic policy uncertainty. In this paper, we employed the data of listed Chinese family firms from 2010 to 2018 to analyze the impact of economic policy uncertainty on family business innovation activities, analyze the inherent characteristics (...) of family firm innovation, and find the path that enables the innovative activities of family firms and provides a valuable experience for the innovation of private enterprises in economic policy uncertainty. We provide evidence that economic policy uncertainty positively relates to family firm innovation. Moreover, the relationship is affected by factors such as directors’ executive background and access to state-owned equity. Further analysis indicates that economic policy uncertainty can promote family firms’ innovation activities by improving their risk-taking, internal capital market circulation, and reducing political connections. (shrink)

Aesthetic experiences play an important role in human culture and spiritual life and are closely related to aesthetic perception and appreciation of art, music, literature and natural landscapes. With the development of neuroscience and cognitive psychology, our understanding of aesthetic experiences continues to deepen; in this context, the study of neuroplasticity has attracted widespread attention. This study explores in detail how this process affects the perception of aesthetic cognition, thereby enhancing the aesthetic experience in several key ways. The study finds (...) that neuroplasticity plays a role in the evolution of an individual’s perception and appreciation of beauty, as it facilitates adjustments in perception, attention, emotion, and cross-perceptual integration based on individual experiences. These findings provide a theoretical basis for deepening the perception and appreciation of beauty and insights to better understand and advance the aesthetic experience provided by art, music and literature. Future research will explore how to maximise the use of neuroplasticity to enhance the quality and depth of the aesthetic experience, advance the field of aesthetic psychology and art research and further enrich and satisfy individuals’ perception and experience of beauty. (shrink)

This paper aims to explore whether the usage of credit cards has peer effects in rural areas of China. The results suggest that the usage of credit cards will be affected by the behavior of other farmers; namely, the usage of credit cards has peer effects in rural areas. We also verify that women, older, and low-academic farmers show stronger peer effects. The results emphasize that, compared with the mass farmers and vulnerable farmers, the usage of elite farmers is more (...) likely to affect the same behaviors of other farmers. Our study contributes to prior literature by giving empirical insights into the consequences of peer effects on the credit card usage of farmers, which conduces to a better understanding of the financial decision-making of farmers. The research may provide a practical implication for the optimal design of policy interventions. On the one hand, banks and other financial institutions can promote innovative financial products in rural areas with the help of peer effects; on the other hand, regulators can regulate farmers’ wrong financial behaviors by the social multiplier of peer effects to reduce systemic risks in rural finance. (shrink)

Understanding the role of teachers’ facial expressions in students’ learning is helpful to improve online teaching. Therefore, this study explored the effects of teacher’s facial expressions on students’ learning through analyzing three groups of video lectures. Participants were 78 students enrolled in three groups: one with an enhanced-expression teacher, one with a conventional-expression teacher, and one with the teacher’s audio only. ANOVA was used to explore whether video lectures instructed by the enhanced-expression teacher were better than those instructed by the (...) conventional-expression teacher and the audio-only teacher for facilitating students’ learning, and what is the role of the teacher’s emotions in students’ perceived social presence, arousal level, cognitive load, and learning. The results showed that the video lecture by the enhanced-expression teacher was better than those with the conventional-expression teacher and with the audio-only for facilitating students’ social presence, arousal level, and long-term learning. Interestingly, it was found that the teacher’s emotions could relieve students’ cognitive load. These results explained the inconsistency of existing studies by exploring the mechanism of teachers’ emotions in students’ learning. It also provides teachers with practical guidance for video lecture design. (shrink)

For synchronization of a class of chaotic systems in the presence of nonvanishing uncertainties, a novel time-varying gain observer-based sliding mode control is proposed. First, a novel time-varying gain disturbance observer is developed to estimate the uncertainties. Then, by using the output of TVGDO to modify sliding mode control, a new TVGDO-based SMC scheme is developed. Although the observation and control precision of conventional fixed gain disturbance observer-based control for chaotic systems can be guaranteed by a high observer gain, the (...) undesirable spike problem may be caused by the high gain if the initial values of estimate and true states are not equal. The most attractive feature of this work is that the newly proposed TVGDO can eliminate the spike problem by developing a time-varying gain scheme. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated by the numerical simulation. (shrink)

Chinese philosophy of religion is a less discussed and less clearly formed area in the study of Chinese philosophy. It is true that there is virtually no discussion in Chinese philosophy about rationality or justification of religious beliefs comparable to the discussion of the same issues in Western philosophy of religion. The inquiry about rationality and justification of religious beliefs has shaped Western philosophy of religion. However, the scope of philosophy of religion in the Western context has been widened since (...) Hume and Kant. When the West began to be exposed to non-Western religions, philosophical reflection on non-Western religions is also brought into the scope of philosophy of Religion. We can expect that the concept of religion will become much broader, the scope of philosophy of religion will expand and new issues, especially, issues concerning specific and non-Western religions, will be framed. When we look at philosophy of religion in a broad sense, the field of Chinese philosophy of religion begins to emerge. In this survey paper, I will focus on several issues which, in a broad sense of philosophy of religion, can be construed as the issues of Chinese philosophy of religion. One of the issues is about the religiosity of Confucianism. The second issue is about the concept of Tian. The third is the issue regarding the origin and nature of Chinese state religion and its characteristics which also have caught the attention of scholars, especially, in China. Is Confucianism a religion? How should we construe the religiosity of Confucianism if it does have a religious dimension? Is Tian a theological term? How does Tian differ from Western God? Is the sacrifice to Tian religious and a form of monotheism? What is the nature of state religion in traditional China? What is the relation between the state religion and Confucianism in traditional China? The debates on the issues addressing these questions will be introduced and discussed in this paper. (shrink)

This paper proposes a novel robust fixed-time control for the robot manipulator system with uncertainties. Based on the uniform robust exact differentiator algorithm, a robust control term is constructed. Then, a robust fixed-time inverse dynamics control is proposed. For the proposed control method, the fixed-time stability of a closed-loop system with uncertainties is strictly proved. The newly proposed method exhibits the following two attractive features. First, the proposed control scheme extends the existing fixed-time IDC for the robot manipulator system to (...) the robust control scheme. Second, the proposed method is strictly nonsingular rather than the commonly used approximate approach. Simulation result demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme. (shrink)

Recently, scholars have begun to shift focus toward the effectiveness of different teaching methods for entrepreneurship education. However, the establishment of a unified and clear standard for the division of entrepreneurship educational methods remains unfulfilled, affecting the accuracy of research conclusions. In the present study, for the first time, the aim was to divide the entrepreneurship educational method into the classroom teaching method and the extracurricular activity method from the perspective of competency level training. On the basis of the modified (...) planning behavior theory, the influence of entrepreneurship education on entrepreneurial intention was explored. In the present study, 514 college students of 14 universities in China were surveyed. The results reveal that the CTM and EAM had a direct positive bearing on EI, with indirect impact exerted by attitude toward entrepreneurship and perceived behavioral control. Although the direct effects of the two teaching methods were similar, EAM could effectively improve ATE and PBC, thereby resulting in a positive effect on EI to a greater extent. Further observations were made that the participation of research University students in CTM was significantly lower than that of applied University students, leading to lower EI. Additionally, higher EI could be attributed to the more active participation in EAM of male students than female students, while no significant difference was indicated between different majors in EI. The results are of significant reference value for promoting the reform of entrepreneurship education and improving the quality of entrepreneurship education in colleges and universities. (shrink)

An incline S is a commutative semiring where r+1=1 for any r \in S . We note that the ideal lattice of an S-semimodule is naturally an S-semimodule and so is its congruence lattice when S is transitive. We prove that the categories of complete S-semimodules, together with dual functor, internal hom and tensor product, is a ⋆-autonomous category. We define the locally and globally maximal congruences which are related to Birkhoff subdirect product decomposition. We show that the categories of (...) S-semimodules, algebraic S-semimodules and topological S-semimodules are equivalent. Finally, we get a sheaf representation of any S-semimodule. (shrink)

Evidence suggests that participation in plaza dancing may affect mental health. This study for the first time quantified the relationships between plaza dancing and psychological well-being and ill-being. We systematically searched PubMed, Web of Science, CNKI, Wanfang, and VIP to identify relevant studies published from the databases since their inception to July 25, 2021. The standardized mean differences of pre-to-post intervention data were calculated in the meta-analysis. Subgroup and meta-regression analyses were performed to test the potential moderating effects of age, (...) outcome classification, measurement instruments, district, publication year, total sample size, and the duration, frequency, and length of the square dance intervention. A total of 25 original articles met all the eligibility criteria and were included in the review, and 17 studies were included in the meta-analysis. The meta-analysis revealed that plaza dancing improved psychological well-being and reduced psychological ill-being. The study participants’ age and district did not seem to affect the effectiveness of the plaza dancing intervention. The duration and frequency of plaza dancing affected the association between square dance and psychological well-being and psychological ill-being. Plaza dancing has a significant positive effect on psychological well-being and psychological ill-being, and the effects are moderated by intervention modality. Generalizing plaza dancing interventions to promote psychological well-being and prevent or treat psychological ill-being is needed.Systematic Review Registration[www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero], identifier [CRD42021272016]. (shrink)

Classic genetics studies found that genomic imbalance caused by changing the dosage of part of the genome (aneuploidy) has more detrimental effects than altering the dosage of the whole genome (ploidy). Previous analysis revealed global modulation of gene expression triggered by aneuploidy across various species, including maize (Zea mays), Arabidopsis, yeast, mammals, etc. Plant microRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of 20‐ to 24‐nt endogenous small noncoding RNAs that carry out post‐transcriptional gene expression regulation. That miRNAs and their putative targets are (...) preferentially retained as duplicates after whole‐genome duplication, as are many transcription factors and signaling components, indicates miRNAs are likely to be dosage‐sensitive and potentially involved in genomic balance networks. This review addresses the following questions regarding the role of miRNAs in genomic imbalance. (1) How do aneuploidy and polyploidy impact the expression of miRNAs? (2) Do miRNAs play a regulatory role in modulating the expression of their targets under genomic imbalance? (shrink)

Based on a pre-order on a set, we axiomatize the Egli-Milner order on the power set and show how it is related to the Lewis order. Moreover, we consider a strict version of the Egli-Milner order and show how it can be related to the semantics of conditionals based on a priority structure.

In economic researches, much effort was devoted to the problem of how to increase the economics of countries. However, the development of a country may fluctuate a lot due to international and domestic problems. Thus, we should also evaluate the robustness of countries against unexpected economic recessions. In this paper, we use perturbation to quantify the robustness of countries using two renowned algorithms: method of reflections and fitness-complexity method. The robustness characterizes the stability of countries’ competitiveness against economic recessions. The (...) experiments in the international trade networks show that FCM could characterize the robustness better than MR. High fitness countries of FCM have strong robustness against economic crises, which enlarges the application fields of FCM. Additionally, we simulate the trade conflict between USA and China. The simulation results show that China suffers much in the trade conflict, while USA loses very little and has strong robustness in this conflict. (shrink)

BackgroundProfessional ethics is the regulation and discipline of nurses’ daily nursing work. Nurses often encounter various ethical challenges and problems in their clinical work, but there are fe...

Recent research has suggested that young children may have primitive knowledge of ratio and proportions. However, it is unclear how precisely young children represent ratio magnitudes and how well...

This article starts with the environmental changes in human cognition, analyzes the virtual as the main feature of visual perception under digital technology, and explores the transition from passive to active human cognitive activities. With the diversified understanding of visual information, human contradiction of memory also began to become prominent. Aiming at the problem that the existing multimodal TV media recognition methods have low recognition rate of unknown application layer protocols, an adaptive clustering method for identifying unknown application layer protocols (...) is proposed. This method clusters application layer protocols based on similarity of the load characteristics of network stream application layer protocol data. The method divides the similarity calculation in the clustering algorithm to improve the clustering efficiency of the algorithm. Experimental results show that the proposed method can efficiently and accurately recognize unknown visual communication. This article proposes that, in the interactive multimodal visual information transmission, human visual perception experience has changed, the diversity of visual information content expression makes the aesthetic subject more personalized and stylized. (shrink)

The California Verbal Learning Test-Second Edition, is a commonly used tool to assess episodic memory. This study analyzed learning and memory characteristics in a cognitively healthy Chinese population, as well as the effects of age, sex and education on CVLT-II factors. In total, 246 healthy people aged 20–80 years and 29 persons with multiple sclerosis were included in this study and completed the CVLT-II. Factors including total learning, learning strategy, serial position effects, short-delay free and cued recall, long-delay free and (...) cued recall, repetitions and intrusions during recall, hits and false positives of recognition, and total recognition discriminability were calculated. The effects of age, sex and education on these factors were analyzed using ANCOVA or independent two-sample t-tests and further confirmed by multiple regression analysis. The regression-based normative data were then computed by the equivalent scores method. Moreover, differences in learning and memory were compared between persons with MS and age-, sex- and education-matched healthy individuals. Most CVLT-II factors significantly differed between different age and education groups; in particular, better performance in total learning, recall, semantic clustering and recognition was observed in the younger and more educated groups than in the older and less educated groups. Male participants showed higher recency effect scores, more repetitions and fewer hits than female participants. Compared with healthy individuals, persons with MS showed extensive impairments in memory processes, such as learning, recall, learning strategy and recognition. These findings indicated that verbal learning and memory were highly dependent on age and educational level but not strongly affected by sex. The CVLT-II effectively assesses episodic memory impairment in the Chinese-speaking population. (shrink)

Conceptual metaphor is characterized by two important features—systematicity and complexity. This article is primarily concerned with IDEA metaphors in Chinese and attempts to explore how systematicity and complexity have structured the IDEA metaphorical hierarchical system. Four principal IDEA metaphors are investigated, namely, “IDEAS ARE PEOPLE”, “IDEAS ARE PLANTS”, “IDEAS ARE OBJECTS”, and “IDEAS ARE FOOD”. It is found that the relationship between metaphors and human thought is systematic as well as complex and that systematicity and complexity of IDEA metaphors intertwine (...) with each other. (shrink)

We explored the care experiences and needs of the home caregivers of patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) to improve their quality of life. We interviewed home caregivers in-depth and analyzed the data using Colaizzi's descriptive phenomenological method. We interviewed 11 home caregivers of patients with ALS with a disease duration between 1.5 and 4 years. Primary caregivers were predominantly female and were the patients' spouses. Daily caregiving time averaged 4–14 h for 0.5–3.5 years. Interview themes included helplessness and adaptation (...) to life changes, hopelessness, compassion for the patient’s prognosis, and expectation for diverse support. The study sample size was limited, as all participants were from a single tertiary hospital, and all patients had severe functional impairment. Caregivers of patients with ALS experience a considerable burden. Patients and their caregivers can benefit from diversified support channels, and assistive communication systems can be applied to home care. Future research will focus on in-home public long-term care services in China. (shrink)

In this article, we explore the micro-foundations of elite politics by focusing on changes in network structures that emerge from informal conversations. Empirically, we offer a novel “situational conflict” explanation to account for the puzzle of why reformist leaders were periodically ousted during China’s reform era (1977–1992), emphasizing the unexpected power collision that catalyzed the violent crackdown on the Tiananmen movement in 1989. To do so, we employ network analysis and narrative to utilize an original dataset of elite conversations and (...) primary sources that have only recently been made available. We find that ideological cleavage and manipulative brokerage produced each conflict to varying degrees but were contingent on the relational structure arising from elite conversational interactions. Furthermore, the actual unfolding of those conflicts often resulted from key actors’ discrepant understandings of the changing relationships via ongoing interactions at vital moments, such as during the Tiananmen movement. Integrating micro-sociological theories and network analysis, our work has methodological and theoretical implications for unpacking the black box of elite politics and its role in macro-historical change. (shrink)

Building a flexible supply chain can enable the firms to manage their supply chains to adapt effectively to dynamic market demand changes and thus guarantee their accelerated growth in the future. In this vein, this study aims to address several important issues in supply chain management by considering two characteristics of blockchain technology and exploring the specific conditions under which firms are likely to develop trust in supply chain management. Furthermore, we argue that such supply chain trust is vital to (...) the success of achieving and increasing supply chain flexibility. In addition, we propose that top management teams’ digital leadership within the firms plays a vital role in moderating the contribution of each dimension of blockchain technology to supply chain trust. Using data from a large sample of 338 firms in China, we perform structural equation modeling to examine our conceptual framework empirically. Our results highlight and support the idea that blockchain technology’s information transparency and security influence the trust-building in a supply chain and supply chain flexibility and articulate the particular importance of digital leadership in explaining the contribution of different blockchain technology characteristics to trust-building. Our study advances the theoretical, empirical, and managerial analysis of critical factors to build trust and achieve flexibility in supply chains. (shrink)

This paper presents an adaptive neural tracking control approach for a two-joint robotic manipulator with unknown time-varying delays. In order to work out the effect of unknown time-varying delays on the two-joint robotic manipulator, the appropriate Lyapunov–Krasovskii functionals and separation technology are chosen to settle this matter. The neural networks work as an approximator that has the advantage of estimating the unknown function in the system. In this paper, Lyapunov stability analysis can prove that all signals of the closed-loop system (...) are semiglobal uniformly ultimately bounded and the tracking error can converge to a compact neighborhood with respect to zero. The simulation consequences demonstrate the availability of the feedforward control approach. (shrink)

In the presence of heterogeneity between the randomized controlled trial (RCT) participants and the target population, evaluating the treatment effect solely based on the RCT often leads to biased quantification of the real-world treatment effect. To address the problem of lack of generalizability for the treatment effect estimated by the RCT sample, we leverage observational studies with large samples that are representative of the target population. This article concerns evaluating treatment effects on survival outcomes for a target population and considers (...) a broad class of estimands that are functionals of treatment-specific survival functions, including differences in survival probability and restricted mean survival times. Motivated by two intuitive but distinct approaches, i.e., imputation based on survival outcome regression and weighting based on inverse probability of sampling, censoring, and treatment assignment, we propose a semiparametric estimator through the guidance of the efficient influence function. The proposed estimator is doubly robust in the sense that it is consistent for the target population estimands if either the survival model or the weighting model is correctly specified and is locally efficient when both are correct. In addition, as an alternative to parametric estimation, we employ the nonparametric method of sieves for flexible and robust estimation of the nuisance functions and show that the resulting estimator retains the root- n n consistency and efficiency, the so-called rate-double robustness. Simulation studies confirm the theoretical properties of the proposed estimator and show that it outperforms competitors. We apply the proposed method to estimate the effect of adjuvant chemotherapy on survival in patients with early-stage resected non-small cell lung cancer. (shrink)

The present study examined the effects of transcranial direct current stimulation using Halo Sport on the time to exhaustion in relation with muscle activities and corticomuscular coupling of agonist and antagonist muscles during a sustained isometric fatiguing contraction performed with the elbow flexors. Twenty healthy male college students were randomly assigned to tDCS group and control group. The two group participants performed two experimental sessions which consisted of pre-fatigue isometric maximal voluntary contraction, sustained submaximal voluntary contractions performed to exhaustion, and (...) post-fatigue MVC with the right elbow flexor muscles. Sham stimulation and tDCS were applied for control and tDCS group participants 20 min prior to the second session test, respectively. MVC strength in pre- and post-fatigue test, TTE, electroencephalogram, and electromyography of biceps brachii and triceps brachii were recorded during the tests. It was found that tDCS using the Halo Sport device significantly increased TTE and thus improved muscular endurance performance. The improvement may be partly related to the improvement of neuromuscular efficiency as reflected by decrease of antagonistic muscle coactivation activities, which may be related to cortical originated central processing mechanism of neuromuscular activities. (shrink)

Background and ObjectiveThere is a paucity of research that has explored “False Alarm” mechanisms. In order to remedy this deficiency in knowledge, the present study used event-related potential technology to reveal the mechanisms underlying False Alarm in response to fear stimuli.MethodsThis study selected snakes as experimental materials and the “oddball paradigm” was used to simulate the conditions of False Alarm. The mechanism underlying False Alarm was revealed by comparing cognitive processing similarities and differences between real snakes and toy snakes.ResultsEvent-related potential (...) findings demonstrated that there was no significant difference between N1 and P2 components induced by real and toy snakes in the early processing stage. Compared with toy snakes, real snakes induced smaller N2 amplitude, larger P3 amplitude, and a shorter P3 latency at the late processing stage. The results of brain topographic mapping analysis showed that the brain regions activated by a real or toy snake were basically the same within the time windows of 110–150 and 220–270 ms, respectively. In the time window of 300–360 and 400–500 ms, the degree of brain regions activation with a real snake was significantly greater than that induced by a toy snake.ConclusionFalse Alarm is caused by the brain’s inability to distinguish, in the early stage of cognitive processing, stimulus objects with similar appearances. When the brain is able to distinguish the differences between different stimulus objects in the late stage of cognitive processing, False Alarm disappears. (shrink)

Many industrial processes are operated in multiple modes due to different manufacturing strategies. Multimodality of process data is often accompanied with nonlinear and non-Gaussian characteristics, which makes data-driven monitoring more complicated. In this paper, statistics pattern analysis is introduced to extract low- and high-order statistics from raw process data. Support vector data description, which can deal with nonlinear and non-Gaussian problems, is applied to monitor multimode process in this paper. To improve detection performance of SVDD for training multimode data with (...) outliers, modified local reachability density ratio is proposed as a weight factor to be embedded in the weighted-SVDD model, in which the local neighbors in terms of both space and time are considered. Finally, the effectiveness and superiority of our proposed method are demonstrated by the Tennessee-Eastman process and wastewater treatment process. (shrink)

In the age of digitalization, social media has played a significant role in quickly spreading the news about current affairs. From December 2019 to now, coronavirus disease 2019, with its several mutated shapes, has more transmissible potential catastrophe and has become a severe phenomenon issue worldwide. The international spread of the epidemic has created fear among people, especially employees working physically in different organizations. The present research aimed to measure the impact of social media on its users in the China. (...) The social media users more often were influenced by shocking news instructively and destructively. The research analysis was based on service sector employees and data collected from 630 respondents via a structured questionnaire. This research was confirmed the negative impact of fear on social media on the performance of employees. This research was also confirmed the moderation impact of the COVID-19 vaccine on the relationship between social media fear and employee performance. This research recommends that the China Censor Board checked the news and its validity to reduce the fear of COVID-19 among employees. This research will become a roadmap for organizations and media controllers to understand the impact of social media during an intense situation. The telecommunication sector will reduce psychological disease and enhance the work capability of employees by controlling unnecessary and unapproved material about sensitive issues. (shrink)