The purpose of the present study was to explore the direct influence of self-concept and self-imagination on English language learning outcomes. Furthermore, this study examined the mediating role of self-efficacy in the relationship between self-concept, self-imagination, and ELLO. A survey questionnaire of 21 items was used in this study. We distributed the questionnaire through QR code and collected the data from 2,517 participants who enrolled in blended learning courses at the undergraduate level in Chinese universities. The relationship among the variables (...) was measured through SmartPLS-SEM 3.3.3. The outcomes of the present study indicated a direct, positive, and significant connection of self-concept, self-imagination, and self-efficacy with ELLO. Looking at indirect influences, self-concept and self-imagination, positive and significant, influence ELLO through self-efficacy. Thus, self-efficacy was indicated to play a mediating role between self-concept, self-imagination and ELLO. We can conclude that self-concept, self-imagination, and self-efficacy are the main predictors of ELLO in blended learning courses during the pandemic. Additionally, self-concept and self-imagination along with the intervening role of self-efficacy, play a more effective role in improving ELLO. Moreover, this study provided some useful, practical implications, and future research directions. (shrink)

The globalization in business and tourism becomes crucial more and more for the economical sustainability of local communities. In the presence of an epidemic outbreak, there must be such a decision on the policy by the host community as whether to accept visitors or not, the number of acceptable visitors, or the condition for acceptable visitors. Making use of an SIRI type of mathematical model, we consider the influence of visitors on the spread of a reinfectious disease in a community, (...) especially assuming that a certain proportion of accepted visitors are immune. The reinfectivity of disease here means that the immunity gained by either vaccination or recovery is imperfect. With the mathematical results obtained by our analysis on the model for such an epidemic dynamics of resident and visitor populations, we find that the acceptance of visitors could have a significant influence on the disease’s endemicity in the community, either suppressive or supportive. (shrink)

Counterfactual thinking is presumed to play a preparatory function in promoting people’s behavioural intentions. This study specifically addresses the impacts of COVID-19 severity, tourists’ counterfactual thinking about the pandemic, and tourists’ perceived duty-free consumption value on the effect of a duty-free policy on travel intentions. Four hundred and ten participants took part in this study, which involved a 2 × 2 design. Results reveal the following patterns: compared to the absence of a duty-free policy in tourist destinations, enactment of a (...) duty-free policy leads to stronger visit intentions through greater perceived value and the effect of a duty-free policy on travel intention is moderated by tourists’ counterfactual thinking and COVID-19 severity. (shrink)

Although big data analytics capability leads to competitive performance, the mechanism of the relationship is still unclear. To narrow the research gap, this paper investigates the mediating roles of two forms of resource integration in the relationship between two forms of BDAC [big data analytics management capability and BDA technology capability] and competitive performance. Supported by Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Modeling and the cross-sectional survey data from 219 Chinese enterprises, the results show that the resource bricolage plays a significantly mediating (...) role in the relationships between BDA management capability and competitive performance as well as in the relationship between BDA technology capability and competitive performance. Furthermore, the mediating effect in the former relationship is stronger than that in the latter relationship. Additionally, BDA technology capability only has a direct effect on resource bricolage, while BDA management capability has a stronger effect on resource optimization than that on resource bricolage. Finally, resource bricolage has a stronger impact on competitive performance than resource optimization. These findings contribute to understanding how enterprises could apply different forms of BDAC to other kinds of resource integration to achieve outstanding competitive performance. (shrink)

Although lean search is seen as an important action in lean startup, previous studies have less knowledge on how to realize it, especially in the face of traditional plans that cannot cope with sudden changes in the environment. To fill the research gap, this study investigates the effects of improvisation on lean search. Meanwhile, this research also discusses the moderating effects of entrepreneurial team heterogeneity and the environmental uncertainty to identify the boundary conditions of this relationship. Supported by the cross-sectional (...) data from 203 Chinese startups, the results show that explorative and ambidextrous improvisation are positively associated with lean search. However, the effect of exploitative improvisation on lean search is unsupported. Additionally, technology uncertainty positively moderates the relationship between exploitative improvisation and lean search. Market uncertainty positively moderates the relationship between explorative improvisation and lean search. However, the entrepreneurial team heterogeneity negatively moderates the relationship between ambidextrous improvisation and lean search. These findings contribute to understanding how startups could conduct lean search in a rapidly changing environment, which provides theoretical guidance for improving the success rate of startups. (shrink)

In four experiments, we explored the inferences people make when they learn that counterfactual thinking has occurred. Experiment 1 showed that knowing that a protagonist had engaged in counterfactual thinking resulted in participants inferring that the past event was closer in time to the protagonist, but there was no difference in inferring how close the past event was between knowing that a protagonist made many or a single counterfactual statement. Experiment 2 confirmed that participants were not affected by the number (...) of counterfactual statements they read when inferring temporal closeness. Experiment 3 demonstrated that participants who learned that a protagonist had engaged in counterfactual thinking were more likely to infer that the protagonist experienced the controllable event. Experiment 4 indicated that participants who learned that a protagonist had engaged in counterfactual thinking were more likely to infer that the protagonist experienced the exceptional event. We concluded that the existence of counterfactual thoughts can lead people to infer that events were close, exceptional, and controllable, which suggests that the relations between closeness/controllability/exceptionality and counterfactual thinking are bidirectional. These results showed that as well as making inferences based on facts about the real world, people also make inferences about the real world based on hypothetical worlds. (shrink)

ObjectiveSchizophrenia is a mental disorder that is characterized by progressive cognitive impairment. Objective measures of cognitive function may provide reliable neurobiomarkers for patients with schizophrenia. The goal of the current work is to explore the correlation between resting theta power and cognitive performance in patients with schizophrenia.MethodsTwenty-two patients with schizophrenia and 23 age-, sex-, and education-matched healthy controls were included in this study. The MATRICS Consensus Cognitive Battery was used for cognitive evaluation and the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale for (...) evaluation of clinical symptoms. EEGs were acquired in the resting state with closed and opened eyes. Between the two groups, we compared the relative theta power and examined their relationship with cognitive performance.ResultsCompared to healthy controls, patients with schizophrenia showed significantly higher theta power, both with eyes closed and open. When the eyes were open, negative correlations were found in patients with schizophrenia between theta power in the central and parietal regions with processing speed scores, and between the theta power of the Pz electrode and verbal learning and reasoning and problem-solving scores. In the control group, theta power over the Fz electrode was negatively correlated with processing speed.ConclusionsOur findings showed that theta activity increased in certain brain regions during resting state in schizophrenia. Negative associations between resting theta power over the parietal-occipital regions with MCCB domains scores suggest that altered theta activity can be used as a neurobiological indicator to predict cognitive performance. (shrink)

Wireless devices consume large amounts of energy during wireless communication. As the energy storage of battery is limited, improving energy efficiency has become an important approach to prolong the lifetime of devices. The IEEE 802.11 protocol supports the power save mode in wireless local area networks. However, the standard PSM cannot adapt to the changes of traffic load or channel conditions. Therefore, this article proposes an adaptive traffic-aware PSM mechanism that improves energy efficiency of wireless devices in a WLAN with (...) an access point. According to the current channel condition and traffic load, the AP adjusts the interval of beacons that give devices different priorities to fetch buffered packets. The devices can adaptively adjust listening intervals according to network traffic, and adopt different congestion backoff timers when channel collisions happen or the network topology changes. The APSM has been implemented and evaluated in NS-2. The simulation results have shown that devices using the APSM can improve energy efficiency by 115% at most compared with the ones using the standard PSM. The benefit of adaptive beacon interval and listening intervals is significant, while the improvement due to the adaptive backoff timer is minor. The improvement of the APSM over the PSM is more significant when the network traffic level decreases and the ratio of idle power to sleeping power increases. Additionally, the APSM increases the delay of data frames within a limited range, which does not bring any bad effect on network throughput. (shrink)