Human personality influences the way people interact with dogs. This study investigated the associations between the personality of animal shelter volunteers and behavior during on-leash walks with shelter dogs. Video recording and a canine leash tension meter were used to monitor the on-leash walking. Personality was measured in five dimensions with the NEO Five-Factor Inventory. Neurotic volunteers pulled the leash harder and tended to interact with dogs using more body language; dogs being walked by neurotic volunteers in turn displayed more (...) lip-licking and body shaking and were more likely to be rated as well-behaved. Extroverted volunteers were associated with stronger maximal leash tension at both the human and dog ends of the leash, and they praised the dog more, often in a high pitched voice. These volunteers eliciting more tail-wagging and body shaking by the dog. Extroverted volunteers were also more tolerant of different dog behaviors. Volunteers with personalities characterized by “openness to experiences” were less likely to verbally attract the attention of dogs, praise dogs and talk to them in a high-pitched voice; however, dogs walked by these volunteers were more likely to pull on the leash, and engaged in more lip-licking but less sniffing. “Agreeable” volunteers liked to verbally attract the attention of the dogs and more commonly initiated hand gestures and physical contact, causing the dogs to pull less frequently; dogs in these dyads displayed more gazing and lip-licking behaviors. Conscientious volunteers were less likely to pull the leash and tended to have more physical contact with the dogs but did not favor verbal communication and did not use a high pitched voice. (shrink)

Abnormal behaviour detection algorithm needs to conduct behaviour analysis on the basis of continuous video inclination tracking, and the robustness of the algorithm is reduced for the occlusion of moving targets, the occlusion of the environment, and the movement of targets with the same colour. For this reason, the optical flow information between RGB images and video frames is used as the input of the network in view of group behaviour. Then, the direction, velocity, acceleration, and energy of the crowd (...) were weighted and fused into a global optical flow descriptor. At the same time, the crowd trajectory map is extracted from the original image of a single frame. Following, in order to realize the detection of large displacement moving target and solve the problem that the traditional optical flow algorithm is only suitable for the detection of displacement moving target, a video abnormal behaviour detection algorithm based on the double-flow convolutional neural network is proposed. The network uses two network branches to learn spatial dimension information and temporal dimension information, respectively, and uses short- and long-time neural network to model the dependency relationship between long-time video frames, so as to obtain the final behaviour classification results. Simulation test results show that the proposed method can achieve good recognition effect on multiple datasets, and the performance of abnormal behaviour detection can be significantly improved by using interframe motion information. (shrink)

Urban inclusive green growth (UIGG) refers to the synergetic enhancement of the economy, the environment, and the society in a city. Achieving such enhancement requires addressing a series of problems in the development of urbanization, such as unemployment, lack of access to education, insufficient medical resources, inequity, and environmental pollution. As firms are critical to city development and urbanization, whether they practice corporate social responsibility (CSR) plays a crucial part in UIGG. In this study, we focus on Chinese cities as (...) examples of UIGG and Chinese listed companies as CSR engagers, employing matched data on Chinese listed companies and cities to investigate how CSR affects UIGG. Specifically, the empirical results of a high-dimensional fixed effect model indicate that CSR significantly promotes UIGG. This finding remains valid after a set of robustness checks, including instrumental variable (IV) regression. CSR can promote UIGG by positively influencing enterprises’ economic performance, innovation, and employment. To promote firms’ substantive CSR actions, the government of Jiangsu Province, China, launched a pilot policy for CSR promotion by issuing an official guidance document, which can be considered a quasi-natural experiment to test the causality between CSR and UIGG. We find that the CSR pilot significantly promoted UIGG. The heterogeneity test results indicate that the influence of CSR on UIGG varies based on the audit company, the nature of the enterprise, and the structure of corporate leadership. (shrink)

Confucius is conventionally regarded as the founder of secular humanism and as a philosopher concerned about humans and culture. I would add to this that Confucius should also be read as an environmental philosopher. One reason is the pedagogical dimension in Confucianism, which points to Confucius as an environmental educator ? not the least of which since much of environmental education relies on common sense and an enlightened collective self-interest. Another reason is an aspect I call ?ecological intelligence?, which is (...) a key feature of ancient Confucianism and a signpost for the civil evolution that the mitigation of climate change demands from global civilization today. (shrink)

Previous studies suggested that facial attractiveness perception can be increased with facial skin homogeneity improving; and human’s facial change detection increases along with facial skin homogeneity increases. However, it’s unknown whether a face can be perceived prettier than it did before while still being considered as physically the same. It is possible that these two kinds of cognitive-aesthetic processing may have separate mathematical functions in psychophysical studies. In other words, human’s facial attractiveness differentiation may be more sensitive than facial change (...) detection. In this current study, we explored the above questions. Using three types of psychophysical techniques to manipulate facial skin homogeneity, we measured how participants’ sensitivity to facial skin homogeneity and attractiveness change. Results showed a linear function curve for facial physical change detection and a logarithmic function curve was drawn in the forced-choice technique, which was the most sensitive one, indicating that participants can judge a face prettier than before without being aware of it has physically changed. Besides, two linear function curves were shown in the same/different technique and a rating technique. Taken together, this current study revealed that facial attractiveness can be enhanced and discriminated by improving facial skin homogeneity, without being realized by people with conscious awareness that the face has been changed. (shrink)

Patients requiring deep brain stimulation due to intracerebral metallic foreign substances have not been reported elsewhere in the world. Additionally, the long-term effects of metallic foreign bodies on deep brain stimulation are unknown. A 79-year-old man with a 5-year history of Parkinson's disease reported that, 40 years ago, while playing with a pistol, a metallic bullet was accidentally discharged into the left brain through the edge of the left eye, causing no discomfort other than blurry vision in the left eye. (...) DBS was performed due to the short duration of efficacy for oral medication. Because the bullet was on the left subthalamic nucleus electrode trajectory and the patient's right limb was primarily stiff, the patient received globus pallidus interna -DBS implantation in the left hemisphere and STN-DBS implantation in the right hemisphere. During a 6-month postoperative follow-up, the patient's PD symptoms were effectively managed with no noticeable discomfort. (shrink)

Background and PurposeTranscranial direct current stimulation is an emerging non-invasive neuromodulation technique for focal epilepsy. Because epilepsy is a disease affecting the brain network, our study was aimed to evaluate and predict the treatment outcome of cathodal tDCS by analyzing the ctDCS-induced functional network alterations.MethodsEither the active 5-day, −1.0 mA, 20-min ctDCS or sham ctDCS targeting at the most active interictal epileptiform discharge regions was applied to 27 subjects suffering from focal epilepsy. The functional networks before and after ctDCS were (...) compared employing graph theoretical analysis based on the functional magnetic resonance imaging data. A support vector machine prediction model was built to predict the treatment outcome of ctDCS using the graph theoretical measures as markers.ResultsOur results revealed that the mean clustering coefficient and the global efficiency decreased significantly, as well as the characteristic path length and the mean shortest path length at the stimulation sites in the fMRI functional networks increased significantly after ctDCS only for the patients with response to the active ctDCS. Our prediction model achieved the mean prediction accuracy of 68.3% after the nested cross validation. The mean area under the receiver operating curve was 0.75, which showed good prediction performance.ConclusionThe study demonstrated that the response to ctDCS was related to the topological alterations in the functional networks of epilepsy patients detected by fMRI. The graph theoretical measures were promising for clinical prediction of ctDCS treatment outcome. (shrink)

Given the widespread acceptance of computational thinking in educational systems around the world, primary and higher education has begun thinking about how to cultivate students' CT competences. The artificial intelligence of things combines artificial intelligence and the Internet of things and involves integrating sensing technologies at the lowest level with relevant algorithms in order to solve real-world problems. Thus, it has now become a popular technological application for CT training. In this study, a novel AIoT learning with Augmented Reality technology (...) was proposed and explored the effect of CT skills. The students used AR applications to understand AIoT applications in practice, attempted the placement of different AR sensors in actual scenarios, and further generalized and designed algorithms. Based on the results of the experimental course, we explored the influence of prior knowledge and usage intention on students' CT competence training. The results show that proposed AIoT learning can increase students' learning intention and that they had a positive impact on problem solving and comprehension with AR technology, as well as application planning and design. (shrink)

Consciousness researchers are interested in distinguishing between mental activity that occurs with and without awareness . The inattentional blindness paradigm is an excellent tool for this question because it permits the independent manipulation of processing time and awareness. In the present study, we show that implicit texture segregation can occur during inattentional blindness, provided that the texture is exposed for a sufficient duration. In contrast, a Simon effect does not occur during inattentional blindness, even with similar exposure duration of the (...) critical stimulus. This reveals a dissociation between processing time and awareness, consistent with the possibility of separate processing streams for explicit and implicit visual perception. (shrink)

While political scientists generally see Taiwan as a success state because of its economic modernization and political democratization, this book reinterprets Taiwan's success from the Confucian and postcolonial perspectives. Democracy uncovers the hegemonic construction of the myth of the "success state" and challenges political scientists to abandon both the liberal-centrism and state-centrism prevailing in the literature of democratization.

IntroductionThis paper employs Confucianism to illustrate a kind of differential or benevolent love, which people give in accordance with their relations and roles. In this sense, Confucian benevolent love is more of a duty to create mutual belonging than an emotion of solidarity.1 This benevolent love contrasts with the universal love of liberalism and the resultant solidarity that those who express this form of love feel for one another—these people often being the distant and unacquainted—whose presence would puzzle Confucian leaders (...) in terms of their roles and duties. Confucian roles are, in comparison, contextual, evolving, and reciprocal in order to cope with encountered strangeness. The liberal belief in everyone being ontologically equal and free de-emphasizes the relevance of experiencing the other’s strangeness. As a result of this, a Confucian’s and liberal’s love for one another may ironically cause, in both, a moral outrage qua deprived belonging.2. (shrink)

Our previous study has shown impaired blood oxygen level-dependent /functional magnetic resonance imaging activation of the visual attention network in strabismic amblyopia. However, there has been no comparison of resting state fMRI activation and functional connectivity in brain regions of interest along the visual attention network including visual cortex, intraparietal sulcus, and frontal eye fields during closed eye resting across the SA, or anisometropic amblyopes groups. Hence, we compared, gray matter volume, amplitude of low frequency fluctuations, regional homogeneity, and FC (...) in the left and right hemisphere ROIs of the visual attention network in SA, AA, and healthy controls. Correlation analyses of corrected visual acuity of amblyopic eye and MRI results were also performed and showed that the LogMAR cVA of the amblyopic eye positively correlated with right zALFF and zReHo FEF of SA and right IPS of AA only. GMV of both left and right hemisphere V1 areas was significantly greater but ALFF was significantly lower for SA compared to AA and HC groups. zALFF and zReHo analyses in the AA and SA groups indicated significantly higher activation than that in the HC group in the right FEF and IPS but lower than that in the HC group in the left FEF, and only the SA group showed lower activation in both V1 areas than the HC group. FC values of the right FEF–left V1, right FEF–right V1, and right FEF–right IPS pathways in the SA and AA groups were also significantly higher than those in the HC group whereas all other FC values were non-significant. Thus, this study indicates that even during resting-state the visual attention network function is impaired in SA and AA participants with only right hemisphere FEF showing significant activation in SA and IPS in AA suggesting that the slower saccade activation times characteristic of amblyopic eyes lead to the dominant eye controlling activation of the visual attention network. (shrink)

In response to the COVID-19 outbreak in many parts of the world, online education has become a more viable option. Some studies have assessed undergraduate students’ readiness for online learning, while others examined students’ anxiety about online learning at home. The relationship between readiness and anxiety about online learning is, however, not well explored. This paper has two purposes: to develop a new and valid instrument—the Home-based Online Learning Readiness Questionnaire —to measure students’ readiness to study online at home based (...) on a theoretical framework of self-regulated learning. As a replacement for the previous readiness scale, this new instrument adds a section on learning strategies and updates and develops new items. to investigate the relationship between readiness and anxiety in online learning. In order to explore those issues, 527 undergraduate students in China were surveyed in this study. The results indicated that HOLRQ was validated in the following six domains: motivation, self-efficacy, information technology skills, resource management, learning strategies and help-seeking. Chinese undergraduate students were more prepared in resource management, motivation, and help seeking, but less prepared in learning strategies, information technology skills, and self-efficacy. However, the regression analysis showed that readiness did not predict online learning anxiety. It means even highly prepared self-regulated learners may experience anxiety when learning online from home. The findings provide insights for instructors and administrators to determine how students really feel about learning from home with online education. (shrink)

Background Relational autonomy is an alternative concept of autonomy in which an individual is recognized as embedded into society and influenced by relational factors. Social context, including social location, political structure, and social forces, significantly influence an agent to develop and exercise autonomy skills. The relational approach has been applied in clinical practice to identify relational factors impacting patient autonomy and decision-making, yet there is a knowledge gap in how these factors influence the demonstration of relational autonomy in the context (...) of medical decisions of adults. Objective The present study targeted the existing knowledge of what and how relational factors impact individuals making medical decisions using the theoretical framework of relational autonomy. Methods A meta-synthesis study was utilized. Four electronic databases, including Embase, OVID Medline, CINAHL, and PubMed, were searched, along with gray literature and reference lists, to identify relevant studies. Results 23 studies reporting 21 qualitative and two mixed-method studies were reviewed. Four themes emerged from the qualitative findings: (1) supportive relationships facilitate an individual’s relational autonomy; (2) obtaining comprehensive information from broader sources helps individuals exercise relational autonomy; (3) undue family pressure impedes the exercising of patient relational autonomy; and (4) healthcare providers’ dominant voice hampers the demonstration of relational autonomy. Conclusions Applying relational autonomy to assist adults in making well-considered decisions is essential. The meta-synthesis suggests establishing a supportive relationship between individuals, healthcare providers, and family. A supportive relationship will allow healthcare providers to make judgments in line with an individual’s values and wishes with the aim of promoting relational autonomy. Advance care planning was proposed as the effective solution to obtain a consensus between individuals and their families while respecting an individual’s values and preferences. Furthermore, it is considered crucial for healthcare providers to appreciate an individual's values and incorporate their preferences into recommendations. (shrink)

Aiming at the problem of low pedestrian target detection accuracy, we propose a detection algorithm based on optimized Mask R-CNN which uses the latest research results of deep learning to improve the accuracy and speed of detection results. Due to the influence of illumination, posture, background, and other factors on the human target in the natural scene image, the complexity of target information is high. SKNet is used to replace the part of the convolution module in the depth residual network (...) model in order to extract features better so that the model can adaptively select the best convolution kernel during training. In addition, according to the statistical law, the length-width ratio of the anchor box is modified to make it more accord with the natural characteristics of the pedestrian target. Finally, a pedestrian target dataset is established by selecting suitable pedestrian images in the COCO dataset and expanded by adding noise and median filtering. The optimized algorithm is compared with the original algorithm and several other mainstream target detection algorithms on the dataset; the experimental results show that the detection accuracy and detection speed of the optimized algorithm are improved, and its detection accuracy is better than other mainstream target detection algorithms. (shrink)

Complex, multigenic biological traits are shaped by the emergent interaction of proteins being the main functional units at the molecular scale. Based on a phenomenological approach, algorithms for quantifying two different aspects of emergence were introduced (Wegner and Hao in Progr Biophys Mol Biol 161:54–61, 2021) describing: (i) pairwise reciprocal interactions of proteins mutually modifying their contribution to a complex trait (denoted as weak emergence), and (ii) formation of a new, complex trait by a set of n ‘constitutive’ proteins at (...) concentrations exceeding individual threshold values (strong emergence). The latter algorithm is modified here to take account of protein redundancy with respect to a complex trait (‘full redundancy’). Irreducibility is considered a necessary and sufficient criterion for strong biological emergence; if one constitutive protein is missing, or its concentration drops below the threshold the trait is lost. A definition based on ‘unpredictability’ is dismissed, because this criterion is irrelevant for the evolution of a complex trait, and apparent unpredictability may rather reflect our basic deficits in understanding unless we can provide an unequivocal proof for it. The phenomenological approach advocated here allows to identify hidden rules according to which strongly emergent traits may be organized. This is of high value for understanding the evolution of complex traits which seems to require the saltational advent of all constitutive proteins ‘in one turn’ to arrive at a functional trait providing for an improved fitness of the organism. Rather than being a purely random process, it may be guided by fundamental structural principles. (shrink)

Studies showing human behavior influenced by subliminal stimuli mainly focus on implicit processing per se, and little is known about its interaction with explicit processing. We examined this by using the Simon effect, wherein a task-irrelevant spatial distracter interferes with lateralized response. Lo and Yeh found that the visual Simon effect, although it occurred when participants were aware of the visual distracters, did not occur with subliminal visual distracters. We used the same paradigm and examined whether subliminal and supra-threshold stimuli (...) are processed independently by adding a supra-threshold auditory distracter to ascertain whether it would interact with the subliminal visual distracter. Results showed auditory Simon effect, but there was still no visual Simon effect, indicating that supra-threshold and subliminal stimuli are processed separately in independent streams. In contrast to the traditional view that implicit processing precedes explicit processing, our results suggest that they operate independently in a parallel fashion. (shrink)

BackgroundThe rating of perceived exertion scales with respiratory and muscular illustrations are recognized as simple and practical methods to understand individual psychometric characteristics in breathing and muscle exertion during exercise. However, the implementation of respiratory and muscular RPE to quantify training load in futsal training camps has not been examined. This study investigates respiratory and muscular RPE relationships during domestic training camps and overseas training camps in an under 20 futsal national team.MethodsData collected from eleven field players were used for (...) comparison in this study. All players reported Borg CR10 RPE and 7-scales respiratory RPE and muscular RPE after training sessions and matches. Additionally, total distance covered and training impulse were used to quantify external and internal loads via the Polar Team Pro system. Paired-sample t-tests were used to compare the RPECR10, RPErespiration, RPEmuscle, TD, and TRIMP between DTC and OTC. Furthermore, linear regression was performed to determine the relationships among all RPE scales, TD, and TRIMP.ResultsThe RPECR10, TD, and TRIMP showed significant difference between DTC and OTC. Furthermore, linear regression analyses showed significant correlation between RPErespiration and RPEmuscle, RPECR10 and RPErespiration, and RPECR10 and RPEmuscle.ConclusionPictorial RPErespiration or RPEmuscle can be used as an alternative to quantify perceived measures of internal loads during DTC and OTC in futsal players. Interpretation of perceived measures of training load and cardiac-related responses in association with external training loads during short-term training camps would be useful in further understanding the demands of futsal players’ experience in these circumstances. (shrink)

Eye-tracking technology has become a powerful tool for biomedical-related applications due to its simplicity of operation and low requirements on patient language skills. This study aims to use the machine-learning models and deep-learning networks to identify key features of eye movements in Alzheimer's Disease (AD) under specific visual tasks, thereby facilitating computer-aided diagnosis of AD. Firstly, a three-dimensional (3D) visuospatial memory task is designed to provide participants with visual stimuli while their eye-movement data are recorded and used to build an (...) eye-tracking dataset. Then, we propose a novel deep-learning-based model for identifying patients with Alzheimer's Disease (PwAD) and healthy controls (HCs) based on the collected eye-movement data. The proposed model utilizes a nested autoencoder network to extract the eye-movement features from the generated fixation heatmaps and a weight adaptive network layer for the feature fusion, which can preserve as much useful information as possible for the final binary classification. To fully verify the performance of the proposed model, we also design two types of models based on traditional machine-learning and typical deep-learning for comparison. Furthermore, we have also done ablation experiments to verify the effectiveness of each module of the proposed network. Finally, these models are evaluated by four-fold cross-validation on the built eye-tracking dataset. The proposed model shows 85% average accuracy in AD recognition, outperforming machine-learning methods and other typical deep-learning networks. (shrink)

Functional diversity is related to functional areas in which CFOs are experienced. It reflects their number of general managerial skills or social ties to some extent. In this paper, we try to examine whether there is an association between CFO functional diversity and the timeliness of annual reports. Using data on Chinese listed firms from 2009 to 2017, we found that in state-owned enterprises, there is a negative relationship between this diversity and timeliness. However, the promotion incentive of CFOs with (...) functionally diverse experience can weaken this negative relationship. We also found that there is a positive relationship between the two factors in private enterprises whose offices are headquartered in regions with a low degree of marketization. We use difference-in-differences method to test the hypotheses again. The conclusions remain robust. (shrink)

This study aimed to explore the psychological mechanisms behind the relationship between kindergarten parental satisfaction and parental loyalty. This study used the parental satisfaction scale, parental trust scale, parental relationship commitment scale, and parental loyalty scale on 923 kindergarten parents. The test was conducted on 923 kindergarten parents. The results of this study showed that parental satisfaction significantly and positively affected parental loyalty. Parental trust was partially mediated between parental satisfaction and parental loyalty. Parental relationship commitment was also partially mediated (...) between parental satisfaction and parental loyalty. Regarding to parental satisfaction and parental loyalty, parental trust and parental relationship commitment had chain mediation effect between parental satisfaction and parental loyalty. The findings of this study provided valuable insights into the effect of parental satisfaction on parental loyalty and offer concrete practical suggestions for kindergarten operators to improve the loyalty of kindergarten parents. (shrink)

Coal mine safety management involves many interested parties and there are complex relationships between them. According to game theory, a multiparty evolutionary game model is established to analyze the selection of strategies. Then, a simplified three-party model is taken as an example to carry out detailed analysis and solution. Based on stability theory of dynamics system and phase diagram analysis, this article studies replicator dynamics of the evolutionary model to make an optimization analysis of the behaviors of those interested parties (...) and the adjustment mechanism of safety management policies and decisions. The results show how the charge of supervision of government department and inspection of coal mine enterprise impact the efficiency of safety management and the effect of constraint measures and incentive and other measures in safety management. (shrink)