The changing milieu of research—increasingly global, interdisciplinary and collaborative—prompts greater emphasis on cultural context and upon partnership with international scholars and diverse community groups. Ethics training, however, tends to ignore the cross-cultural challenges of making ethical choices. This paper confronts those challenges by presenting a new curricular model developed by an international team. It examines ethics across a very broad range of situations, using case studies and employing the perspectives of social science, humanities and the sciences. The course has been (...) developed and taught in a highly collaborative way, involving researchers and students at Zhejiang University, the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay and Brown University. The article presents the curricular modules of the course, learning outcomes, an assessment framework developed for the project, and a discussion of evaluation findings. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to analyze the relationship between psychology and modern art design education in colleges, and to provide the basis for improving the quality of art education in colleges. Based on the relevant theory, the characteristics of educational psychology and art psychology and the correlation between them were analyzed from the angle of art education. According to the characteristics of college students' psychological development, the significance of art psychology-related courses was analyzed. Through the form of questionnaire, (...) a total of 200 students were randomly selected from Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts and Xi'an University of Science and Technology, respectively. A total of 400 questionnaires were issued, and 382 valid questionnaires were recovered. The results show that almost all students in two colleges think pedagogy and educational psychology are the theoretical basis for art teachers, while less than one-third of students in Xi'an University of Science and Technology think that art psychology is the theoretical basis for art teachers. The difference between the students' aesthetic and life values in the two colleges is significant. In the 15 directions of life values, there are significant differences in five directions: spirit—material, enrichment—emptiness, enthusiasm—apathy, hope—despair, and dedication—acceptance. It shows that the psychological and values of college students are changeable, and the educators should pay attention to the education in the related fields of psychology. This exploration was conducted based on educational psychology, which is of great significance for improving the educational level of art psychology in colleges and enable students to form correct aesthetic standards and life values. (shrink)

The energy hole is a severe problem for underwater acoustic distributed networks in that it affects the normal operations of the network and shortens the network’s life span. To deal with this problem, a loop-free routing control technique is proposed in this paper. The classical shortest-path routing control method is used to generate multiple disjointed routing tables. The residual energy of the nodes and the changing information of the uplink/downlink matrix are added to the data frames for distribution. The source (...) node specifies the routing path to transmit the data frames based on the changing information, and the relay nodes route the data frames strictly according to the routing path designated by the source node. Besides, the energy consumption of the relay node is saved by replying to the pseudo-ACK frame. Simulation experiments are implemented in four typical scenarios, and the results reflect that the proposed technique could extend the network’s life span by approximately 10% when compared to other mature techniques. Besides, it has no other negative effects on the normal operations of the network. (shrink)

The objective of the study was to compare goal scoring patterns among the “Big Five” European football leagues during the 2009/2010–2018/2019 seasons. A total of 18 pattern dimensions related to the offense pattern, the shooting situation and the scoring time period were evaluated. Kruskal–Wallis analyses revealed significant pattern differences among the five leagues. The Spanish La Liga showed a greater proportion of goals from throw-ins. The English Premier League had a higher tendency to score from corner kicks. The German Bundesliga (...) had the greatest number of goals from counterattacks and indirect free kicks, and the Italian Serie A had the greatest proportion of penalties. Ligue 1’s scoring ability is weaker than that of the other leagues, especially Bundesliga. The Bundesliga had an overwhelming advantage in goals scored on big chances with assists, while the Premier League had an advantage in goals scored with assists that were not from big chances. However, the differences among the five leagues in the mean goals scored in the last 15 min and the goals from elaborate attacks and direct free kicks were not statistically significant. These results provide a valuable addition to the knowledge of different goal patterns of each league and allow us to better understand the differences among the leagues. (shrink)

Chuan bo Zhuzi jia li, xuan jiang Tai zu sheng yu, shi Ming chao zai di fang tui xing de zui zhu yao de liang zhong she hui li jiao xing shi, xian shi chu li zhi shi zhong shi wang chao zheng zhi de yi ge he xin li nian he shou dao te bie qiang diao de she hui zhi li fang shi. Jia li shi wang chao zheng zhi wen hua de yi bu fen, Ming chao wei (...) le tui guang jia li, jian li qi duo qu dao, duo ceng ji de jia li chuan bo: ji you guan fang chang dao ye you min jian zi wei, ji you li shu, li tu deng wen ben xing shi, yi you shi ren shi fan, zhi dao deng fei wen ben xing shi. (shrink)

The rapid development of computers and technology affects modern daily life. Individuals in the digital age need to develop computational thinking skills. Existing studies have shown that programming teaching is conducive to cultivating students’ CT, and various learning models have different effects on the cultivation of CT. This study proposed a problem-oriented learning model that is closely related to programming and computational thinking. In all, 60 eighth-grade students from a middle school in China were divided into an experimental group which (...) adopted the POL model, and a control group which adopted the lecture-and-practice learning model. The results showed that the students who were instructed using the POL model performed better than those who were instructed using the LAP model on CT concepts, CT practices, and CT perspectives. Significant differences were found for CT concepts and CT perspectives, but not for CT practices. Findings have implications for teachers who wish to apply new learning models to facilitate students’ CT skills, and the study provides a reference case for CT training and Python programming teaching. (shrink)

The transplanted firm is an important force to promote the network evolution and cluster transformation and upgrading of the undertaking firm. From the micro-analytic perspective of firm network, this paper puts forward a theoretical framework with “relationship-network-evolution” as the main line. Taking the refrigeration industry cluster in Minquan County of China as a case study and keeping the firm networks of economic relation, technical cooperation, and social communication firm network in 2009, 2013, and 2017 as the research objects, this paper (...) analyzes the structure and evolution characteristics of regional firm network system, proposes the degree and effect of the local embeddedness of transplanted firms, and discusses their differences between international and interregional transplanted firms. The results revealed that: the local embeddedness of transplanted firms significantly promotes the development of refrigeration industry network. The network power of large-scale transplanted firms in the cluster is increasing day by day, and the network presents a multi-core trend. The local embeddedness of some transplanted firms is not high, and the overall connectivity of the network is not strong. Network intermediary nodes have strong heterogeneity, and the intermediary role of some large transplanted firms in the network needs to be improved. The three network systems have similar structural characteristics, and social capital plays an important role in the local embeddedness of transplanted firms and the development of regional firm network. Compared with international transplanted firms, interregional transplanted firms are more adaptable in terms of local embeddedness. The research results provide a reference for the construction of similar industrial clusters in China and other developing countries. (shrink)

In this paper, we study the estimation of motion direction prediction for fast motion and propose a threshold-based human target detection algorithm using motion vectors and other data as human target feature information. The motion vectors are partitioned into regions by normalization to form a motion vector field, which is then preprocessed, and then the human body target is detected through its motion vector region block-temporal correlation to detect the human body motion target. The experimental results show that the algorithm (...) is effective in detecting human motion targets in videos with the camera relatively stationary. The algorithm predicts the human body position in the reference frame of the current frame in the video by forward mapping the motion vector of the current frame, then uses the motion vector direction angle histogram as a matching feature, and combines it with a region matching strategy to track the human body target in the predicted region, thus realizing the human body target tracking effect. The algorithm is experimentally proven to effectively track human motion targets in videos with relatively static backgrounds. To address the problem of sample diversity and lack of quantity in a multitarget tracking environment, a generative model based on the conditional variational self-encoder conditional generation of adversarial networks is proposed, and the performance of the generative model is verified using pedestrian reidentification and other datasets, and the experimental results show that the method can take advantage of the advantages of both models to improve the quality of the generated results. (shrink)

With the change in the location of school education from the classroom to the home during the COVID-19 outbreak, there should be more educational caregiving from children’s parents when children learn online. Parental involvement in children’s online learning including study guide and psychological counseling is the specific content of educational caregiving, which is different from face-to-face learning. More attention should be paid to parental involvement and parents’ satisfaction with the online learning effect. This study therefore conducted a survey on middle (...) school students’ parents to establish a moderating model, exploring the influence of parental involvement on parent satisfaction, and the number of children and parental education level as the moderator variables influencing parental involvement. The results show that there is a significant positive correlation between parental involvement and satisfaction, while the parental education level and the number of children both have a moderating effect on the relationship between parental involvement and parent satisfaction. The moderating effect of the education level of parents shows negative, while the moderating effect of the number of children is positive. An interesting finding is that the number of children has a very low influence on parental involvement. (shrink)

Peripheral vision has different functional priorities for mammals than foveal vision. One of its roles is to monitor the environment while central vision is focused on the current task. Becoming distracted too easily would be counterproductive in this perspective, so the brain should react to behaviourally relevant changes. Gist processing is good for this purpose, and it is therefore not surprising that evidence from both functional brain imaging and behavioural research suggests a tendency to generalize and blend information in the (...) periphery. This may be caused by the balance of perceptual influence in the periphery between bottom-up and top-down processing channels. Here, we investigated this interaction behaviourally using a peripheral numerosity discrimination task with top-down and bottom-up manipulations. Participants compared numerosity between the left and right peripheries of a screen. Each periphery was divided into a centre and a surrounding area, only one of which was a task relevant target region. Our top-down task modulation was the instruction which area to attend – centre or surround. We varied the signal strength by altering the stimuli durations i.e., the amount of information presented/processed. We found that numerosity perceived in target regions was affected by contextual information in neighbouring areas. This effect appeared as soon as stimulus duration allowed the task to be reliably performed and persisted even at the longest duration. We compared the pattern of results with an ideal-observer model and found a qualitative difference in the way centre and surround areas interacted perceptually in the periphery. When participants reported on the central area, the irrelevant surround would affect the response as a weighted combination – consistent with the idea of a receptive field focused in the target area to which irrelevant surround stimulation leaks in. When participants report on surround, we can best describe the response with a model in which occasionally the attention switches from task relevant surround to task irrelevant centre – consistent with a selection model of two competing streams of information. Overall our results show that the influence of spatial context in the periphery is mandatory but task dependent. (shrink)

In order for higher education to provide students with up-to-date knowledge and relevant skillsets for their continued learning, it needs to keep pace with innovative pedagogy and cognitive sciences to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education for all. An adequate implementation of flipped learning, which can offer undergraduates education that is appropriate in a knowledge-based society, requires moving from traditional educational models to innovative pedagogy integrated with a playful learning environment (PLE) supported by information and communications technologies (ICTs). In this (...) paper, based on the design-based research, a task-driven instructional approach in the flipped classroom (TDIAFC) was designed and implemented for two groups of participants in an undergraduate hands-on making course in a PLE. One group consisting of 81 students as the experimental group (EG) received flipped learning instruction, and another group of 79 students as the control group (CG) received lecture-centered instruction. The EG students experienced a three-round study, with results from the first round informing the customized design of the second round and the second round informing the third round. The experimental results demonstrated that students in the EG got higher scores of summative tests and final scores than those in the CG. In particular, students’ learning performance in three domains (i.e., cognitive, affective, and psychomotor) differ significantly between the two groups. (shrink)

As a prevalent source of work stress, illegitimate tasks offend employees’ professional identity and threaten individual self-view, then create many negative organizational outcomes. However, current studies have paid inadequate attention to the impact of IT on work disengagement and its influencing path, failing to comprehensively identify the negative effects of illegitimate tasks. Based on stress-as-offense-to-self theory and ego depletion theory, the influencing path of illegitimate tasks on WD is explored, and coworker emotional support and leisure crafting are introduced to explore (...) the intervention conditions on the impact of illegitimate tasks. By analyzing data from a survey of 260 employees, this study reveals the following findings: illegitimate tasks have a significantly positive impact on work disengagement; ED fully transmits the positive impact of illegitimate tasks on work disengagement; CES and LC not only attenuate the effect of illegitimate tasks on ego depletion, but also negatively moderate the indirect effect of illegitimate tasks on work disengagement through ego depletion. (shrink)

This study investigates the impact of entrepreneurship education on college students’ entrepreneurial intentions, as well as the moderating effects of personality and family economic status on the relationship between entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial intention, respectively. We tested our hypotheses using a sample of college students in Tianjin, China, and analyzed the data of 326 questionnaires containing validated measures. The results show that entrepreneurship education has a positive impact on college students’ entrepreneurial intentions; proactive personality negatively moderates this relationship; and family (...) economic status positively moderates it. However, the moderating effect of narcissistic personality has not been verified. This study is unique and innovative as it brings new insights to this stream of literature by introducing the roles of the personality and family economic status in the relationship between entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial intention. Our analysis provides important empirical evidence about the negative moderating effect of proactive personality and the positive moderating effect of family economic status on the relationship between entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial intention, introducing insights into the heterogeneity of the effect of entrepreneurship education. (shrink)

This study was conducted to investigate the relationship between posttraumatic growth, resilience, positive coping style, and self-efficacy among the primary caregivers of children with developmental disorders in Chongqing, China. A total of 198 primary caregivers aged from 22 to 66 years old, including 155 females and 43 males, were enrolled. The Posttraumatic Growth Inventory, Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale-10, Simplified Coping Style Questionnaire, and General Self-Efficacy Scale were used for data collection. The results found that PTG could be positively predicted by resilience. (...) Positive coping style and self-efficacy mediated the relationship between resilience and PTG. The different levels of PTG were determined by the resident location, monthly income and education of the primary caregivers. The results suggest that it is critical to improve the mental health of the primary caregivers of children with developmental disabilities. Our results also provide a scientific basis for future research. (shrink)

With the rapid development of mobile devices, users can now read on the screen. Electronic reading has become a common reading style with the growth in online learning or electronic learning. E-book applications are widely developed and applied for reading on a screen. However, it is difficult for readers to change their reading habits or preference from paper-printed books to digital devices. The study of readers' continuance intention to use e-book APPs is the first step to improving e-reading. This study (...) focuses on the influential factors on undergraduates' continuance intention of e-book APPs, which analyzed and summarized the literature related to the electronic book applications and undergraduates' continuous intention, combined with the characteristics of the e-book APPs, introduced relevant theories and variables, and established the factors that influence undergraduates' continuous intention of using e-book APPs. On this basis, the paper analyzed the relationship between various influencing factors and their influence on continuous intention. A model composed of five hypotheses was constructed to test the factors influencing undergraduates' continuous intention in e-book APPs. The results indicated that of all research variables, satisfaction is the most important factor that affects continuous intention; Perceived usefulness and perceived playfulness have an indirect effect on continuous intention through satisfaction; personalization has direct effects on perceived usefulness and perceived playfulness, so it also has an indirect effect on continuous intention. The findings of the study will be helpful for designers and developers of e-book APPs and provide e-book APP suggestions for readers as well. (shrink)

Social exclusion has a significant impact on cognition, emotion, and behavior. Some behavioral studies investigated how social exclusion affects pain empathy. Conclusions were inconsistent, and there is a lack of clarity in identifying which component of pain empathy is more likely to be affected. To investigate these issues, we used a Cyberball task to manipulate feelings of social exclusion. Two groups participated in the same pain empathy task while we recorded event-related potentials when participants viewed static images of body parts (...) in painful and neutral situations. The results showed early N2 differentiation between painful and neutral pictures in the central regions in both groups. The pattern at the late controlled processing stage was different. Parietal P3 amplitudes for painful pictures were significantly smaller than those for neutral pictures in the social exclusion group; they did not differ in the social inclusion group. We observed a parietal late positive potential differentiation between painful and neutral pictures in both groups. LPP amplitudes were significantly smaller in the social exclusion group than those in the social inclusion group for painful stimuli. Our results indicate that social exclusion does not affect empathic responses during the early emotional sharing stage. However, it down-regulates empathic responses at the late cognitive controlled stage, and this modulation is attenuated gradually. The current study provides neuroscientific evidence of how social exclusion dynamically influences pain empathy. (shrink)

Online learning resources play an important role in teaching and learning in the process of online learning. Teachers will be satisfied with selectable and suitable online learning resources, which can promote their self-efficacy to facilitate online teaching and learning. This study proposed a model to examine the effects of the selectivity of online learning resources and the suitability of online learning resources on teachers’ online teaching satisfaction, and the mediating role of technology self-efficacy and online teaching self-efficacy between them. The (...) results indicated that SE-OLR and SU-OLR positively affected teachers’ online teaching satisfaction; TECHN-SE and OT-SE positively influenced teachers’ online teaching satisfaction, while TECHN-SE and OT-SE played mediating roles between SE-OLR and SU-OLR and teachers’ online teaching satisfaction. The findings have implications for the design and development of online learning resources to improve teachers’ satisfaction and facilitate students’ learning effectiveness and teachers’ online teaching. (shrink)

The growth of strawberry will be stressed by biological or abiotic factors, which will cause a great threat to the yield and quality of strawberry, in which various strawberry diseased. However, the traditional identification methods have high misjudgment rate and poor real-time performance. In today's era of increasing demand for strawberry yield and quality, it is obvious that the traditional strawberry disease identification methods mainly rely on personal experience and naked eye observation and cannot meet the needs of people for (...) strawberry disease identification and control. Therefore, it is necessary to find a more effective method to identify strawberry diseases efficiently and provide corresponding disease description and control methods. In this paper, based on the deep convolution neural network technology, the recognition of strawberry common diseases was studied, as well as a new method based on deep convolution neural network strawberry disease recognition algorithm, through the normal training of strawberry image feature representation in different scenes, and then through the application of transfer learning method, the strawberry disease image features are added to the training set, and finally the features are classified and recognized to achieve the goal of disease recognition. Moreover, attention mechanism and central damage function are introduced into the classical convolutional neural network to solve the problem that the information loss of key feature areas in the existing classification methods of convolutional neural network affects the classification effect, and further improves the accuracy of convolutional neural network in image classification. (shrink)

Previous studies show that adults and children evaluate the act of leaving a choice for others as prosocial, and have termed such actions as socially mindful actions. The current study investigates how the desirability of the available options (i.e., whether the available options are desirable or not) may influence adults’ and children's evaluation of socially mindful actions. Children (N = 120, 4- to 6-year-olds) and adults (N = 124) were asked to evaluate characters selecting items for themselves from a set (...) of three items—two identical items and one unique item—in a way that either leaves a choice (two diverse items) or leaves no choice (two identical items) for the next person (i.e., the beneficiary). We manipulated whether the available options were either desirable or undesirable (i.e., damaged). We found that adults’ and 6-year-olds’ evaluation of socially mindful actions is moderated by the desirability of the options. Although they evaluate the act of leaving a choice for others as nicer than the act of leaving no choice both when the choosing options are desirable and when they are undesirable, the discrepancy in the evaluation becomes significantly smaller when the choosing options are undesirable. We also found that inference of the beneficiary's feeling underlies social evaluation of the actor leaving a choice (or not). These findings suggest that children consider both the diversity of options left and the desirability of the available options in understanding and evaluating socially mindful acts. (shrink)

Hemispherical Resonator Gyro is a new type gyro with high precision, high reliability, shock resistance, no need of preheating, short start time, and long life. It is a kind of vibrating gyro with standing wave rotating along the sensitive base of annular precession, has a unique application prospect in the field of high precision inertial sensors, and is widely used in unmanned aerial vehicle control in complex environments. Based on the theory of the structure characteristics of the hemispherical resonator, the (...) mathematical model of energy of the resonator is established to research the rule of resonant frequency when the hemispherical resonator is rotated around the central axis. In this paper, the influence of precession factor, which are the top angle, the bottom angle, and wall unevenness of the hemispherical resonator, are analyzed. A series of hemispherical resonator models are constructed by ANSYS software to prove the results of theoretical research. The simulation results show that precession factor of the hemispherical resonator is more sensitive of the top angle than the bottom angle, and the error of angular velocity which is caused by the change of the top angle is larger than that which is caused by the change of the bottom angle. (shrink)

The emergence of conflicts between environmental safety incidents and protection rights generates sizeable political costs, which endangers the legitimacy of the government as well as political security and stability. This article further examines the role of political costs in environmental issues. First, political costs in relation to environmental issues are defined. An equilibrium strategic analysis is then presented using an evolutionary game model in which the strategic behavioral choices of government, enterprises, and citizens are investigated by embedding political costs in (...) the environmental governance system. Furthermore, the small-signal model was innovatively applied to simulate and analyze the stability of political costs under different equilibrium strategies in the system. The results show the following. Pubic behavior and government are the dominant factors that impact stability and instability, respectively. Public behavior is the core element that affects political cost consumption. When political costs are extremely depleted, the public will neglect economic interests, turn toward environmental interests, and choose the negative participation strategy, which destabilizes the system. The political cost signal at the optimal equilibrium point not only warns the government not to take the desperate action of concealing information asymmetry but also allows the government to let go of its hands to deal with the environmental issues. Corresponding policy recommendations are proposed. (shrink)

本书收有1987年11月北京召开的首届“政治科学学研讨会”论文20篇,文章用政治科学学观点对近代一些著名的政治科学现象进行了分析研究。.

国家“十五”规划重点图书北京市“十五”规划重点图书北京市哲学社会科学“九五”规划重点项目北京市社会科学理论著作出版基金重点资助项目.

Low‐molecular‐weight (LMW) thiols are extensively involved in the maintenance of cellular redox potentials and the protection of cells from a variety of reactive chemical and electrophilic species. However, we recently found that the metabolic coupling of two LMW thiols – mycothiol (MSH) and ergothioneine (EGT) – programs the biosynthesis of the anti‐infective agent lincomycin A. Remarkably, such a constructive role of the thiols in the biosynthesis of natural products has so far received relatively little attention. We speculate that the unusual (...) thiol EGT might function as a chiral thiolation carrier (for modification) and a novel activator (for glycosylation) of sugar. Additionally, we examine recent evidence for LMW thiols (MSH and others) as sulfur donors of sulfur‐containing natural products. Clearly, the LMW thiols have more diverse activities beyond cell protection, and more attention should be paid to the correlation of their functions with thiol‐dependent enzymes. (shrink)

China has achieved economic prominence but damaged the natural environment. Can religions excite pro-environmental actions? Chinese religion encompasses Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, native Taoism, and indigenous folk beliefs (GuanDi and Mazu). We theorize that believers demonstrate more sustainable HOPE (Help Ourselves Protect the Environment) than non-believers. Religions with standardized and formal liturgy show more pro-environmental HOPE than those without it. We challenge the myth that the believers of Christianity and Islam display more sustainable HOPE than other faith. The 2013 Chinese General (...) Social Survey (involving 10,017 randomly selected participants across 28 provinces) revealed that 11.10% of them have faith. Believers display higher levels of HOPE than atheists, demonstrating the __religion__ effect. Among believers, native Taoism and Buddhism exhibit more ecological HOPE than other religions, supporting the __dogma__ effect in the Chinese culture. Religions with formalized liturgy demonstrate more pro-environmental HOPE than generalized folk beliefs—GuanDi and Mazu, validating the __liturgy__ effect. Females, married, and people with good income, education, health, and country-domicile—the haves—exhibit robust ecological HOPE. The rich get richer and greener. However, those who are older, males, urban residents, and the Han majority do not. We empirically demonstrate the Matthew Effect in Religious Social Responsibility: Religious faith facilitates believers’ pro-environmental behaviors—HOPE and ethical behaviors in China. (shrink)

The inference systems proposed for solving SAT are unsound for solving MaxSAT and MinSAT, because they preserve satisfiability but not the minimum and maximum number of clauses that can be falsified, respectively. To address this problem, we first define a clause tableau calculus for MaxSAT and prove its soundness and completeness. We then define a clause tableau calculus for MinSAT and also prove its soundness and completeness. Finally, we define a complete clause tableau calculus for solving both MaxSAT and MinSAT, (...) in that the minimum number of generated empty clauses provides an optimal MaxSAT solution and the maximum number provides an optimal MinSAT solution. (shrink)

As humanoid social robots are developed rapidly in recent years and experimented in social situations, comparing them to humans provides insights into practical as well as philosophical concerns. This study uses the theoretical framework of communication constraints, derived in human–human communication research, to compare whether people apply social-oriented constraints and task-oriented constraints differently to human targets versus humanoid social robot targets. A total of 230 students from the University of Hawaii at Manoa participated in the study. The participants completed a (...) questionnaire, which determined their concern for the five communication constraints (feelings, non-imposition, disapproval, clarity, and effectiveness) in situations involving humans or robots. The results show people were more concerned with avoiding hurting the human’s feelings, avoiding inconveniencing the human interactive partner, and avoiding being disliked by the human and less concerned with avoiding hurting the robot’s feelings, avoiding inconveniencing the robot partner, and avoiding being disliked by the robot. But people did not differ in their concerns of the two task-oriented constraints (clarity and effectiveness) in response to humans versus humanoid robots. The results of the research suggest that people are more likely to emphasize the social-oriented constraints in communication with humans. (shrink)

Steady direct current (dc) electric fields exist in many biological systems over many hours. At these times cells are dividing, differentiating, moving to final locations and extending motile processes. Each of these events may be influenced by physiological electric fields in tissue culture and when electric fields are disrupted in vivo, major developmental abnormalities arise. The likelihood of physiological electric fields playing a role in cell behaviours and some potential mechanisms are outlined.

This narrative review of the literature assessed whether regular physical exercise and sleep patterns, fasting and autophagy, altogether can be an adequate strategy for achieving healthy longevity and well-being within different stage of life. There are a large number of studies dealing with well-being and healthy longevity; however, few of them have given us a specific formula for how to live long and healthy. Despite all the advances that have been made to create adequate physical exercise programs, sleep patterns or (...) nutritional protocols, the relation between different types of fasting, nutritional supplementation as well as regular physical exercise and sleep patterns have not yet been satisfactorily resolved to cause the best effects of autophagy and, therefore, well-being and healthy longevity. In this way, future studies should clarify more efficiently the relationship between these variables to understand the association between regular physical exercise, sleep patterns, fasting and autophagy for healthy longevity and well-being. (shrink)

This study examines the influence of Confucianism on corporate poverty alleviation (PA) participation. We argue that firms in regions with more Confucian temples are more likely to participate in government-initiated PA programs because Confucianism emphasizes common social welfare. This positive relationship is stronger for firms with chief executive officers born in Confucian regions and for firms that are under high media pressure, as the trade-off between social welfare and firm interest is in favor of Confucianism. Using a sample of Chinese-listed (...) firms, we find evidence supporting our arguments. Moreover, we find consistent evidence that firms influenced by Confucianism are motivated to pay long-term attention to PA activities and improve corporate PA efficiency, highlighting the substantive role of Confucianism in a PA campaign. Our study contributes to the business ethics literature by introducing Confucianism into research on corporate social activities and provides practical implications. (shrink)