Most complex real systems are found to have multiple layers of connectivity and required to be modelled as multiplex networks. One of the extremely critical problems is to reduce the congestion and enhance the transfer capacity, especially in real communication networks with a big data environment. A novel and effective strategy to improve traffic and control congestion is proposed by adding edges according to their weights which are defined by the topology structural properties. Furthermore, which layer is more effective when (...) our strategy is applied is discussed based on its topology structure. Adding edges between nodes whose product of multiplex network betweenness is the highest is confirmed to be more effective, particularly in the layer with stronger community structure. Simulation experiments on both computer-generated and real-world networks demonstrate that our strategy can enhance the transfer capacity of multiplex networks significantly, which is in good agreement with our analysis. (shrink)

The spread of epidemics, especially COVID-19, is having a significant impact on the world. If an epidemic is not properly controlled at the beginning, it is likely to spread rapidly and widely through the coexistence relationship between natural and social systems. A university community is a special, micro-self-organized social system that is densely populated. However, university authorities in such an environment seem to be less cautious in the defence of an epidemic. Currently, there is almost no quantitative research on epidemic (...) spreading and response strategies in universities. In this paper, a case study of a university community is considered for a simulation of an infection evolving after an epidemic outbreak based on the method of system dynamics of the three stages. The results show the following: By improving the speed of the initial emergency response, the total number of patients can be effectively controlled. A quarantine policy helps to slow down the evolution of infection. The higher the isolation ratio, the higher the cost; therefore, the isolation ratio should be optimized. It is important to make emergency plans for controlling epidemic spreading and carry out emergency drills and assessments regularly. According to the results of this study, we suggest an emergency management framework for public health events in university communities. (shrink)

This article investigates an adaptive neural network control algorithm for marine surface vessels with time-varying output constraints and unknown external disturbances. The nonlinear state-dependent transformation is introduced to eliminate the feasibility conditions of virtual controller. Moreover, the barrier Lyapunov function is used to achieve time-varying output constraints. As an important approximation tool, the NN is employed to approximate uncertain and continuous functions. Subsequently, the disturbance observer is structured to observe time-varying constraints and unknown external disturbances. The novel strategy can guarantee (...) that all signals in the closed-loop system are semiglobally uniformly ultimately bounded. Finally, the simulation results verify the benefit of the proposed method. (shrink)

This study examines the influence of the COVID-19 crisis on academic expectations among international students from north-western China. According to past studies, academic expectations are multifaceted, making it critical to test the methods employed to assess this fundamental trait. The outbreak of COVID-19 has resulted in various significant changes in education, which have shifted from traditional to online or mixed formats. As a result, examining international students' academic expectations along with their interactions with adopted technologies is a topic that addresses (...) the current situation and issues. A mixed approach, comprising two different instruments, was followed to achieve this primary objective. While a survey with a questionnaire was undertaken with 551 international students, divided into two groups, ten students were interviewed during and after the lockdowns. The findings revealed that COVID-19 had a significant impact on the academic expectations of students as well as many elements such as training for employment, personal and social development, international student mobility, motivation, social pressure, and social interaction with the help of supporting technologies. In terms of gender, men outperformed women in motivation, social interaction, training for employment, and personal and social development factors. Similarly, as per the grade variable, the same higher trend was seen in postgraduates. Based on these findings, a set of recommendations was put forward. In the future, technology will be helpful in China's educational sector, such as online group collaboration, open education, managing student retention, and supervising teachers' recruitment. (shrink)

This study explored how perceived control affects consumers' willingness to purchase self-improvement products under self-deficit situations. For this purpose, three experiments were conducted to examine the following sources of control: the controllability of self-deficits ; the locus of control ; and situational perceived control. According to the results, higher perceived control can reduce consumers' defensive reaction tendencies, thus increasing their willingness to purchase products that claim to improve their current deficits. Moreover, the aforementioned effect only occurs in within-domain improvement products, (...) rather than without-domain improvement products. (shrink)

Ritualistic consumption refers to integrating ritual elements into the process of product design and usage. By conducting three studies, we find that ritualistic consumption can offer new and interesting experiences and help consumers gain a sense of control. Both positive and negative emotions can promote ritualistic consumption tendencies. However, their underlying psychological mechanisms are different. Specifically, positive emotion can arouse consumers’ desire for interesting experience and thus promotes their preference for ritualistic consumption, while negative emotion can arouse consumers’ need for (...) control and thus promote their preference for ritualistic consumption. Our research results offer a theoretical contribution and practical inspiration for emotional marketing. (shrink)

The study is intended to examine the impact of crisis responsibility on the reputation of the Chinese public sector organization during the COVID-19 crisis. In addition to that, the study has also examined the mediating role of crisis response strategy in the relationship between crisis responsibility and the reputation of the Chinese public sector organization during the COVID-19 crisis. Lastly, the study has also examined the moderating role of internal crisis communication in the relationship between the crisis responsibility and crisis (...) response strategy of the Chinese public sector organization during COVID-19. This study bases on a quantitative research approach along with a cross-sectional research design. The population of the study is the Chinese public sector organization companies. Data is collected from the employees working in Chinese public sector organizations. The current study used 500 sample sizes; 205 valid responses are received which were used in data analysis. The SEM-PLS is used for the data analysis. The result of the study indicates that all the direct hypotheses are accepted significantly, which indicates that the crisis responsibility and crisis response strategy are significant determinants of organizational reputation during the COVID-19. In a similar vein, the crisis responsibility has placed a significant impact on the crisis response strategy of Chinese organizations during COVID-19. The study is among the pioneer studies on crisis responsibility in the Chinese public sector organization during COVID-19. The study has employed an extended framework encircling the literature on crisis responsibility, crisis response strategy, internal crisis communication, and organizational reputation. Theoretically, the study has extended the situational crisis communication theory framework by incorporating internal crisis communication in the framework. (shrink)

Entrepreneurship success is the ultimate goal pursued by entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurial passion is also considered an indispensable and important element on the road to entrepreneurial success. However, the internal influence mechanism of entrepreneurial passion on entrepreneurial success is still insufficient in academic circles. In view of this, based on the theory of social information processing, this research analyses the internal mechanism of entrepreneurial passion through individual psychological capital on entrepreneurial success and the promotion of external entrepreneurial policy support. Through a (...) multi-time and multi-source questionnaire survey of 455 entrepreneurs in entrepreneurship parks and entrepreneurship centers in Wuhan, Guangdong, Shanghai, and other places, the research results show that entrepreneurial passion can increase individual psychological capital and positively affect entrepreneurial success; psychological capital mediates the relationship between individual entrepreneurial passion and entrepreneurial success. Entrepreneurship policy support at the environmental level can promote the effect of entrepreneurial passion on the accumulation of psychological capital, and promote the transformation of entrepreneurial passion into entrepreneurial success through psychological capital. The above research results are helpful to the accumulation of entrepreneurs’ psychological capital and provide a useful reference for entrepreneurial success. (shrink)

This speculative paper enquires into the discourse of the ‘end of labour’ or ‘disappearance of labour’ as a result of the development of ‘intelligent capitalism’ clearly seen in ‘intelligent manufacturing’ systems that are now pursued and developed as Industry 4.0 strategy in East Asia, Germany and others parts of the world. When ‘intelligent capitalism’ becomes the norm rather the exception what happens to labour as a factor of production and what happens to economy and society based on capital and labour? (...) The paper briefly reviews the sociology of labour from a Marxist view to examine conceptions of Fordist and post-Fordist capitalism, and explore the advert of ‘intelligent capitalism’ to pose the question concerning education. (shrink)

BackgroundThe underrepresentation of scholarly works from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in academic literature is a documented concern, attributed partly to editorial biases. This trend, prevalent across various disciplines, has been less explored in the context of medical ethics journals. This study aimed to examine the composition of editorial board members (EBM) in high-impact medical ethics journals and to evaluate the extent of international diversity within these editorial teams.MethodsThis study incorporated an analysis of 16 high-impact medical ethics journals. Information regarding (...) the EBM of these journals was systematically gathered and categorized based on the World Bank’s country income classifications. An in-depth examination of the editorial board compositions was then conducted.ResultsThe study identified 669 EBM across the selected journals. A predominant 89.84% (601) of these members were from high-income countries (HICs), with upper-middle-income countries contributing 7.47% (50) and lower-middle-income countries 2.69% (18). No EBM were associated with low-income countries. A regional breakdown indicated that North America was the most represented area, accounting for 48.88% (327), followed by Europe & Central Asia (27.50%, 184), East Asia & Pacific (13.45%, 90), Latin America & Caribbean (4.63%, 31), Sub-Saharan Africa (4.19%, 28), Middle East & North Africa (0.75%, 5), and South Asia (0.60%, 4). In total, these EBMs hailed from 46 different countries, with the United States representing the largest proportion (43.80%, 293), followed by the United Kingdom (13.15%, 88), Australia (7.92%, 53), Germany (6.73%, 45), and Canada (5.08%, 34).ConclusionsThere is a significant lack of international representation within the EBM of high-impact medical ethics journals. The majority of editors in this field are affiliated with HICs, leading to a severe underrepresentation of LMICs within the editorial boards. (shrink)

Many neuroanatomical alterations have been detected in patients with tinnitus in previous studies. However, little is known about the morphological and structural covariance network changes before and after long-term sound therapy. This study aimed to explore alterations in brain anatomical and SCN changes in patients with idiopathic tinnitus using voxel-based morphometry analysis 24 weeks before and after sound therapy. Thirty-three tinnitus patients underwent magnetic resonance imaging scans at baseline and after 24 weeks of sound therapy. Twenty-six age- and sex-matched healthy (...) control individuals also underwent two scans over a 24-week interval; 3.0T MRI and high-resolution 3D structural images were acquired with a 3D-BRAVO pulse sequence. Structural image data preprocessing was performed using the VBM8 toolbox. The Tinnitus Handicap Inventory score was assessed for the severity of tinnitus before and after treatment. Two-way mixed model analysis of variance and post hoc analyses were performed to determine differences between the two groups and between the two scans. Student-Newman-Keuls tests were used in the post hoc analysis. Interaction effects between the two groups and the two scans demonstrated significantly different gray matter volume in the right parahippocampus gyrus, right caudate, left superior temporal gyrus, left cuneus gyrus, and right calcarine gyrus; we found significantly decreased GM volume in the above five brain regions among the tinnitus patients before sound therapy compared to that in the HC group. The 24-week sound therapy group demonstrated significantly greater brain volume compared with the baseline group among these brain regions. We did not find significant differences in brain regions between the 24-week sound therapy and HC groups. The SCN results showed that the left superior temporal gyrus and left rolandic operculum were significantly different in nodal efficiency, nodal degree centrality, and nodal betweenness centrality after FDR correction. This study characterized the effect of sound therapy on brain GM volume, especially in the left superior temporal lobe. Notably, sound therapy had a normalizing effect on tinnitus patients. (shrink)

The integration of event-related potential and functional magnetic resonance imaging helps to obtain and study neural networks with high temporal and spatial resolution. EEG/fMRI data proves that in the visual tristimulus oddball paradigm, two P300 potentials induced by target stimulation and novel stimulation are detected at the frontal-middle, center, and mid-apical electrodes. Previous studies have shown that P3a and P3b have different spatial distributions of brain activation, but it is unclear whether they have the same neural mechanism. The purpose of (...) this study is to determine the neuropsychological mechanisms of P3a and P3b, as well as the spatiotemporal differences in neurodynamics between the two ERP subcomponents. In a group of 25 subjects, P300 ERP induced by target stimulation and novel stimulation can be detected at the Fz, Cz, and Pz electrodes. At Cz and Fz, compared with P3b related to the target stimulus, the P3a related to the novel stimulus has a higher amplitude and the waveform declines more slowly. But at Pz, P3b has a higher amplitude than P3a. P3a appeared earlier than P3b at Cz and Fz, but the opposite phenomenon was observed at the Pz electrode. The activated brain regions of P3a included the left frontal-parietal lobe region, left anterior wedge lobe region, and right insula, while the target-driven P3b was significantly associated with BOLD changes in the bilateral fusiform gyrus, the left frontal region, and the bilateral insula. The results showed that the integration of the spatial and temporal information of the two imaging modes, namely, ERP and fMRI, proves the existence of the different brain function processes of the two P300 subcomponents. Through the analysis of the composition of P300, the results further proved that the top-down and bottom-up processing processes have played a role in the occurrence of attention capture. It is just that the modulation effects of the two processing mechanisms are different in different tasks. Therefore, it should be noted that the captured neural mechanism is not a single top-down or bottom-up processing process but should be the result of the interaction between the two. (shrink)

In this study, we examined the effects of parental phubbing on learning burnout in elementary and secondary school students and its mechanism of action. A questionnaire method was applied to investigate parental phubbing, parent–child attachment, ego depletion, and learning burnout among 2090 elementary and secondary school students in Anhui Province, China. The results are as follows: Parental phubbing was significantly correlated with parent–child attachment, ego depletion, and learning burnout; Parental phubbing has an indirect impact on learning burnout in elementary and (...) secondary school students through three pathways: a separate mediating effect on parent–child attachment, a separate mediating effect on ego depletion, and a chain mediating effect on both. Parental phubbing is a risk factor for Learning Burnout, which can positively affect Learning Burnout in elementary and secondary school students. The findings of the study contribute to revealing the influence mechanism of parental phubbing on learning burnout in elementary and secondary school students. (shrink)

As one of the key technologies for accelerating the construction of the ubiquitous Internet of Things, demand response not only guides users to participate in power market operations but also increases the randomness of grid operations and the difficulty of load forecasting. In order to solve the problem of rough feature engineering processing and low prediction accuracy, a short-term load forecasting model of LSTM neural network considering demand response is proposed. First of all, in view of the strong randomness and (...) complexity of input features, the weighted method is used to process multiple input features to strengthen the contribution of effective features and tap the potential value of features. Secondly, an improved genetic algorithm is used to obtain the best LSTM parameters; finally, the special gate structure of the LSTM model is used to selectively control the influence of input variables on the model parameters and perform load forecasting. The experimental results show that the research has high prediction accuracy and application value and provides a new way for the development of power load forecasting. (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)

In public health emergencies, people are more willing to save money rather than spending it, which is not conductive to economic development and recovery. Due to the absence of relevant research, the internal logic of this phenomenon is not clear. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, this study systematically explored whether and why public health emergencies stimulate consumers' preference for saving. We conducted two online surveys and used methods including stepwise regression analysis and bootstrapping to test the hypotheses. The (...) first survey, with 1,511 participants from China in February 2020, indicates that the severity of emergencies has a significant positive impact on the populations' willingness to save. Risk perception plays a mediating role between the severity of emergencies and consumers' saving willingness. Materialism plays a moderating role between risk perception and an individual's saving willingness, individuals who are more materialistic have a lower saving willingness when they perceive the risks of the pandemic. To verify the duration of the above effects, we conducted a follow-up survey consisted of 466 instances in August 2020. It is noteworthy that the above effects are not significant during the post-pandemic period. Thus, spending behavior in public health emergencies can be motived by reducing risk perception and increasing materialism. These findings can provide a valuable inspiration for public health, crisis management, and economic recovery during public health emergencies. (shrink)

Internet addiction is a growing social problem with negative mental and social outcomes; the present study examined whether rejection sensitivity mediates the relationship between interparental conflict and adolescent IA and the moderating role of school connectedness. One thousand and seven adolescents anonymously completed questionnaires to assess interparental conflict, school connectedness, rejection sensitivity, IA, and demographic information. The model results showed that: the positive association between interparental conflict and adolescent IA was partially mediated by rejection sensitivity; this indirect link was moderated (...) by the school connectedness and was stronger for adolescents with high school connectedness. The results provide support for the attachment theory that high interparental conflict could increase adolescents’ rejection sensitivity, and high school connectedness plays a double-edged role that adolescents show more rejection sensitivity while reporting high interparental conflict and high school connectedness. (shrink)

The creative thinking and ability of top management team members is important in coping with rapid changes in the external environment and improving the competitive advantage of an organization. This research focuses on the CEO–TMT interface to explain how CEOs influence TMT characteristics, which in turn affects TMT outcomes. Based on social learning theory, this study examines the associations among CEO ethical leadership, TMT cohesion and TMT creativity in a Chinese context using a total of 91 top management teams. To (...) verify the reliability and validity of the constructs, a series of confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) were run. The results showed that the hypothesized model captured distinct constructs and fits the data well. Multistep regression method was used to test hypotheses. The results indicated that (a) CEO ethical leadership has a positive effect on TMT creativity; (b) TMT cohesion plays a mediating role in the relationship between CEO ethical leadership and TMT creativity; and (c) power distance plays a moderating role in the relationship between CEO ethical leadership and TMT creativity. The greater the power distance, the weaker the positive relationship between CEO ethical leadership and TMT creativity. This study demonstrates the value of CEO ethical leadership and advocates the importance of establishing team cohesion and building a psychologically safe environment to motivate top managers within an organization to share information and knowledge to improve creativity. (shrink)

Background The urgency of ensuring adequate moral courage in clinical nursing practice is evident. However, currently, there are few formal intervention plans targeted at enhancing the moral courage of nurses. Aim To develop a training program for improving the moral courage of nurses using the modified Delphi method. Research design A modified Delphi study. Participants and research context From November to December 2022, a literature review and expert group discussion were conducted to develop a preliminary training plan framework. From January (...) to March 2023, a two-round Delphi survey was performed, and a consensus was reached regarding the plan through online questionnaires. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data. Ethical considerations This study was approved by the institutional ethics committee (No. 138, 30 August 2021). All participants provided written informed consent. Results Consensus was reached on eight themes and 33 items to strengthen the moral courage training program for nurses. Conclusions Guided by a unified goal of moral education, a multi-level and acceptable intervention plan was designed to enhance the moral courage of nurses. (shrink)

To help retailers gain consumers’ trust, many studies have investigated antecedents of consumer trust. However, distrust, a concept closely related to trust, has attracted only sporadic research attention. As a result, whether factors that increase consumer trust can eliminate consumer distrust is unclear. To deepen understanding of trust and distrust, this study applies the critical incident technique to identify and compare the antecedents of trust and distrust of Chinese consumers. The results show that the antecedents of distrust differ from those (...) of trust, indicating different formulation mechanisms of both. Therefore, on the one hand, retailers should pay attention to increasing consumer trust, and on the other hand, they should develop marketing activities to reduce consumer distrust. (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)

Based on a national survey of Chinese scientific personnel in 2008, this paper sheds new light on the relationship between social networks and scientific performance. In this study, we used position generator to measure scientists’ ego-centered social networks. The scientists’ performance was measured by multiple indexes, including recognitions from the academic, governmental, and market sectors. The findings show that size and composition of scientists’ social networks have significant effect on their scientific performance. The notions of “information communication mechanism” and “resource (...) acquisition mechanism” are introduced to explain how network composition affects scientific performance along multiple dimensions. The policy implications of the study are also discussed. (shrink)

Male sexual arousal (SA) has been known as a multidimensional experience involving closely interrelated and coordinated neurobehavioral components that rely on widespread brain regions. Recent functional neuroimaging studies have shown relation between abnormal/altered dynamics in these circuits and male sexual dysfunction. However, alterations in the topological1 organization of structural brain networks in male sexual dysfunction are still unclear. Here, we used graph theory2 to investigate the topological properties of large-scale structural brain networks, which were constructed using inter-regional correlations of cortical (...) thickness between 78 cortical regions (subcortical regions were not included due to the used cortical surface model) in 40 patients with psychogenic erectile dysfunction (pED) and 39 normal controls. Compared with normal controls, pED patients exhibited a less optimal global topological organization with reduced global and increased local efficiencies. Our results suggest disrupted neural integration among distant brain regions in pED patients, consistent with previous reports of impaired white matter structure and abnormal functional integrity in pED. Additionally, disrupted global network topology in pED was observed to be primarily relevant to altered subnetwork and nodal properties within the networks mediating the cognitive, motivational and inhibitory processes of male SA, possibly indicating disrupted integration of these networks in the whole brain networks and might account for pED patients’ abnormal cognitive, motivational and inhibitory processes for male SA. In total, our findings provide evidence for disrupted integrity in large-scale brain networks underlying the neurobehavioral processes of male SA in pED and provide new insights into the understanding of the pathophysiological mechanisms of pED. (shrink)

Business Ethics, the Environment &Responsibility, Volume 31, Issue 4, Page 1040-1052, October 2022.

This study aimed to investigate how visual–spatial ability predicted academic achievement through arithmetic and reading abilities. Four hundred and ninety-nine Chinese children aged from 10.1 to 11.2 years were recruited and measured visual–spatial, arithmetic, and reading abilities. Their mathematical and Chinese language academic achievements were collected for two consecutive school years, respectively, during the same year as cognitive tests and 1 year after the cognitive tests. Correlation analysis indicated that visual–spatial, arithmetic, and reading abilities and academic achievements were significantly correlated (...) with each other. The structural equation modelling analyses showed that there were two paths from visual–spatial ability to academic achievement: a major path mediated by arithmetic ability and a minor serial mediation path from visual–spatial ability to arithmetic ability to reading ability, then to academic achievement. Results shed light on the importance of visual–spatial ability in education. (shrink)

Security issue against different attacks is the core topic of cyberphysical systems. In this paper, optimal control theory, reinforcement learning, and neural networks are integrated to provide a brief overview of optimal robust control strategies for a benchmark power system. First, the benchmark power system models with actuator and sensor attacks are considered. Second, we investigate the optimal control issue for the nominal system and review the state-of-the-art RL methods along with the NN implementation. Third, we propose several robust control (...) strategies for different types of cyberphysical attacks via the optimal control design, and stability proofs are derived through Lyapunov theory. Furthermore, the stability analysis with the NN approximation error, which is rarely discussed in the previous works, is studied in this paper. Finally, two different simulation examples demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed methods. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic affects all population segments and is especially detrimental to university students because social interaction is critical for a rewarding campus life and valuable learning experiences. In particular, with the suspension of in-person activities and the adoption of virtual teaching modalities, university students face drastic changes in their physical activities, academic careers, and mental health. Our study applies a machine learning approach to explore the gender differences among U.S. university students in response to the global pandemic. Leveraging a (...) proprietary survey dataset collected from 322 U.S. university students, we employ association rule mining techniques to identify and compare psychological, cognitive, and behavioral patterns among male and female participants. To formulate our task under the conventional ARM framework, we model each unique question-answer pair of the survey questionnaire as a market basket item. Consequently, each participant's survey report is analogous to a customer's transaction on a collection of items. Our findings suggest that significant differences exist between the two gender groups in psychological distress and coping strategies. In addition, the two groups exhibit minor differences in cognitive patterns and consistent preventive behaviors. The identified gender differences could help professional institutions to facilitate customized advising or counseling for males and females in periods of unprecedented challenges. (shrink)

Credit distribution is uneven in the domestic financial market since it is relatively easy for listed companies, mainly state-owned enterprises, to obtain banks’ funds. Unbalanced credit distribution has caused some listed companies to participate in “Borrow to Lend” activities. Based on the traditional “financing priority” theory and credit rationing theory, this paper studies the “Borrow to Lend” shadow banking activities of China’s non-financial listed companies based on the 2007–2018 financial statement data of Chinese-listed companies and discusses the micro-level and macro-level (...) related factors behind this activity. The empirical results show that China’s non-financial listed companies, especially the state-owned enterprises, are participating in obvious “Borrow to Lend” activities. The real economy’s rate of return shows a negative relationship with “Borrow to Lend” activities at the level of individual companies and their industries. This article uses the exogenous growth part of M2 growth to measure monetary policy tightness in terms of macro and credit policies. It uses the ratio of state-owned enterprise loans to total corporate loans as an approximate indicator of the credit distribution structure. The empirical results indicate that state-owned enterprises’ “Borrow to Lend” activities have shifted in the same direction as the tightening of monetary policy after the financial crisis. The proportion of state-owned enterprise loans positively correlates with state-owned enterprises’ “Borrow to Lend” activities. (shrink)

Neurite orientation dispersion and density imaging is a diffusion model specifically designed for brain magnetic resonance imaging. Despite recent studies suggesting that NODDI modeling might be more sensitive to brain development than diffusion tensor imaging, these studies were limited to a relatively small age range and mainly based on the manually operated region of interest analysis. Therefore, this study applied NODDI to investigate brain development in a large sample size of 214 subjects ranging in ages from 0 to 14. The (...) whole brain was automatically segmented into 122 regions. The maturation trajectory of each region was characterized by the time course of diffusion metrics and further quantified using nonlinear regression. The NODDI-derived metrics, neurite density index and orientation dispersion index, increased with age. And these two metrics were superior to the DTI-derived metrics in SVM regression models of age. The NDI in white matter exhibited a more rapid growth than that in gray matter. These diffusion indicators experienced conspicuous increases during early childhood and the growth speed slowed down in adolescence. Region-specific maturation patterns were described throughout the brain, including white matter, cortical and deep gray matter. These development patterns were evaluated and discussed on the basis of NODDI’s model assumptions. To summarize, this study verified the high sensitivity of NODDI to age over a crucial developmental period from newborn to adolescence. Moreover, the existing knowledge of brain development has been complemented, suggesting that NODDI has a potential capability in the investigation of brain development. (shrink)