Prior studies have shown that people imagine their personal future to be more positive than their country’s collective future. The present research extends the nascent literature by examining the valence and perceived control of personal and national future events in a new experimental paradigm, the cultural generalizability of the findings, and the relation of future thinking to psychological well-being. US college students (Study 1) and US and Turkish community participants (Study 2) imagined what might happen to them and their country (...) in three time points (i.e., next week, next year, and in 10–15 years). They then rated the emotional valence and perceived control of the events and completed a psychological well-being measure. Both US and Turkish participants imagined their personal future to be more positive than their country’s future, whereas they attributed higher perceived control to their countries for national future events than to themselves for personal future events. The positivity of national (Study 1) and personal future events (Study 2) predicted better psychological well-being, whereas perceived control did not. These original findings enrich our theoretical understanding of future thinking. (shrink)

ObjectiveThis study aimed to investigate the morphometric alterations in the cortical and subcortical structures in multiple system atrophy patients with mild cognitive impairment, and to explore the association with cognitive deficits.MethodsA total of 45 MSA patients and 29 healthy controls were recruited. FreeSurfer software was used to analyze cortical thickness, and voxel-based morphometry was used to analyze the gray matter volumes. Cortical thickness and gray matter volume changes were correlated with cognitive scores.ResultsCompared to healthy controls, both MSA subgroups exhibited widespread (...) morphology alterations of brain structures in the fronto-temporal regions. Direct comparison of MSA-MCI and MSA-only patients showed volume reduction in the left superior and middle temporal gyrus, while cortical thinning was found in the left middle and inferior temporal gyrus in MSA-MCI patients. Cortical thinning in the left middle temporal gyrus correlated with cognitive assessment and disease duration.ConclusionStructural changes in the brain occur in MSA-MCI patients. The alteration of brain structure in the left temporal regions might be a biomarker of cognitive decline in MSA-MCI patients. (shrink)

Stone & Wang collate the nascent research examining the mnemonic consequences associated with social media use. In particular, they highlight two important factors in understanding how social media use shapes the way individuals and groups remember the past: the type of information (personal vs. public) and the role (producer vs. consumer) individuals undertake when engaging with social media. Stone and Wang investigate those two features in relation to induced forgetting for personal information and false memories/truthiness for public information.

This article aims to explore contemplative practitioners’ direct lived experiences of enlightenment and develop a multi-item scale measuring these experiences. A mixed-method approach was adopted. The first study is a phenomenological study that interviewed 24 participants with enlightenment experiences and the second study is a scale-development study that recruited 1130 participants for scale validation. Two major clusters of the enlightenment experiences including sensory feelings and nondual realizations emerged from the phenomenological study and the four main themes of the realizations were (...) formed: intrapersonal insights, inspiration internalization, interpersonal compassion, and interconnectedness. After exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis, a three-factor structure of the Spiritual Enlightenment Experience Scale, including nonduality, sensory clarity, and sensory disappearance were revealed. The findings of the research depicted a fuller picture of spiritual enlightenment experiences which may contribute to the current knowledge of religiosity and spirituality, as well as transpersonal psychology. The results suggest that the core components of spiritual enlightenment experiences include sensory clarity and disappearance experiences and realizations of nonduality. (shrink)

Jade products that imitate ancient Chinese art samples are a special kind of objects that, in their form and decor, are close to or likened to more ancient works of arts and crafts. The article explores the artistic form and characteristic features of imitations of ancient jade products of the Qing era, presented in the collections of Russian museums and the Palace Museum of China. The object of the study are objects of Chinese art of jade carving, which are in (...) the collection of the Palace Museum (Beijing), the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. Peter the Great (Kunstkamera) of the Russian Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg) and the State Museum of Oriental Art (Moscow), where the use of imitations of ancient objects was discovered. Artistic analysis of jade imitations allows us to conclude that the works of the Qing era were more complex and diverse in form, decor and carving techniques compared to Han products, while the craftsmen, although they managed to preserve the classical sophistication of objects, lost the severity and solemnity of Han jade. As well as the art history analysis of the works, one can see that the forms and decors of jade objects are the product of aesthetic consciousness. The novelty of this study lies in the fact that the varieties and features of imitations of ancient jade during the Qing Dynasty are summarized, and the huohuan technique in jade processing is confirmed. This may be of interest to researchers in related scientific fields. (shrink)

Developmental and neuroscience works have demonstrated that the moral judgment is influenced by theory of mind, which refers to the ability to represent the mental states of different agents. However, the neural and cognitive time course of interactions between moral judgment and ToM remains unclear. The present event-related potential study investigated the underlying neural substrate of the interaction between moral judgment and ToM by contrasting the ERPs elicited by moral judgments for self and for others in moral dilemmas. In classic (...) moral dilemmas, the agents must choose between the utilitarian choice and the non-utilitarian choice. The ERPs were recorded from participants who made moral judgments for self and for others when the agent made utilitarian or non-utilitarian choices during the dilemma. The results revealed that the moral judgment for others elicited a larger frontal late positive component than that for self when the agents made utilitarian choices, while no difference was observed on early components of N1, P2, and N2. Moreover, individual differences in mentalizing ability were negatively correlated with the LPC amplitudes. These findings suggested that ToM modulated the late controlled process but not the early automatic process during moral judgments. (shrink)

Currently due to the COVID-19 pandemic, young people are experiencing a decrease in self-efficacy and an increase in mental illness. Though previous studies have shown that self-efficacy and divergent thinking training are positively related, little is known about the impact of divergent thinking training on self-efficacy and emotions. Therefore, our study seeks this answer to support teenagers injured psychologically during disastrous periods. We randomly assigned 70 students to a 2 × 2 mixed design. Participants in the experimental group were given (...) a 9-day divergent thinking training with the theme of “writing down 10 novel functions of the mask,” while those in the control group spent 10 min each day recording what they ate. The self-efficacy, anxiety, depression, and stress of two groups were measured before and after training. Results showed that, compared to the control group, self-efficacy ceased decreasing while anxiety decreased for the experimental group. These findings confirm the positive effect of divergent thinking on teenagers. Implications and limitations are discussed. (shrink)

Recent work has shown that preschool-aged children and adults understand freedom of choice regardless of culture, but that adults across cultures differ in perceiving social obligations as constraints on action. To investigate the development of these cultural differences and universalities, we interviewed school-aged children (4–11) in Nepal and the United States regarding beliefs about people's freedom of choice and constraint to follow preferences, perform impossible acts, and break social obligations. Children across cultures and ages universally endorsed the choice to follow (...) preferences but not to perform impossible acts. Age and culture effects also emerged: Young children in both cultures viewed social obligations as constraints on action, but American children did so less as they aged. These findings suggest that while basic notions of free choice are universal, recognitions of social obligations as constraints on action may be culturally learned. (shrink)

Currently due to the COVID-19 pandemic, young people are experiencing a decrease in self-efficacy and an increase in mental illness. Though previous studies have shown that self-efficacy and divergent thinking training are positively related, little is known about the impact of divergent thinking training on self-efficacy and emotions. Therefore, our study seeks this answer to support teenagers injured psychologically during disastrous periods. We randomly assigned 70 students to a 2 × 2 mixed design. Participants in the experimental group were given (...) a 9-day divergent thinking training with the theme of “writing down 10 novel functions of the mask,” while those in the control group spent 10 min each day recording what they ate. The self-efficacy, anxiety, depression, and stress of two groups were measured before and after training. Results showed that, compared to the control group, self-efficacy ceased decreasing while anxiety decreased for the experimental group. These findings confirm the positive effect of divergent thinking on teenagers. Implications and limitations are discussed. (shrink)

When navigating in a new environment, it is typical for people to resort to external guidance such as GPS, or people. However, in the real world, even though navigators have learned the route, they may still prefer to travel with external guidance. We explored how the availability of feedback and the source of external guidance affect navigation decision-making on experienced routes in the presence of external guidance. In three experiments, participants navigated a simulated route three times and then verbally confirmed (...) that they had learned it. They then travelled the same route again, accompanied with no, correct, or incorrect direction guidance, which latter two were provided by a GPS (Exp.1), a stranger (Exp.2), or a friend (Exp.3). Half of the participants received immediate feedback on their navigation decisions, while the other half without feedback did not know if they had selected the correct directions. Generally, without feedback, participants relied on external guidance, regardless of the direction sources. Results also showed that participants trusted the GPS the most, but performed best with their friends as a direction source. With feedback, participants did not show differences in performance between the correct and incorrect guidance conditions, indicating that feedback plays a critical role in evaluating the reliability of external guidance. Our findings suggest that incorrect guidance without any feedback might disturb navigation decision-making, which was further moderated by the perceived credibility of direction sources. We discuss these results within the context of navigation decision-making theory and consider implications for wayfinding behaviors as a social activity. (shrink)

In this article, we demonstrate a sense in which the one-particle quantum mechanics and the classical electromagnetic four-potential arise from the quantum field theory. In addition, the classical Maxwell equations are derived from the QFT scattering process, while both classical electromagnetic fields and potentials serve as mathematical tools to approximate the interactions among elementary particles described by QFT physics. Furthermore, a plausible interpretation of the Aharonov–Bohm effect is raised within the QFT framework. We provide a quantum treatment of the source (...) of electromagnetic potentials and argue that the underlying mechanism in the AB effect can be understood via interactions among electrons described by QFT theory where the interactions are mediated by virtual photons. (shrink)

The sizes of individual data files have steadily increased along with rising demand for customized services, leading to issues such as low efficiency of web-based geographical information system -based data compression, transmission, and rendering for rich Internet applications in complicated visualization systems. In this article, a WebGIS-based technical solution for the efficient transmission and visualization of meteorological big data is proposed. Based on open-source technology such as HTML5 and Mapbox GL, the proposed scheme considers distributed data compression and transmission on (...) the server side as well as distributed requests and page rendering on the browser side. A high-low 8-bit compression method is developed for compressing a 100 megabyte file into a megabyte-scale file, with a compression ratio of approximately 90%, and the recovered data are accurate to two decimal places. Another part of the scheme combines pyramid tile cutting, concurrent domain name request processing, and texture rendering. Experimental results indicate that with this scheme, grid files of up to 100 MB can be transferred and displayed in milliseconds, and multiterminal service applications can be supported by building a grid data visualization mode for big data and technology centers, which may serve as a reference for other industries. (shrink)

The BP neural network model is a hot issue in recent academic research, and it has been successfully applied to many other fields, but few researchers apply the BP neural network model to the field of automobile insurance. The main method that has been used in the prediction of the total claim amount in automobile insurance is the generalized linear model, where the BP neural network model could provide a different approach to estimate the total claim loss. This paper uses (...) a genetic algorithm to optimize the structure of the BP neural network at first, and the calculation speed is significantly improved. At the same time, by considering the overfitting problem, an early stop method is introduced to avoid the overfitting problem. In the model, a three-layer BP neural network model, which includes the input layer, hidden layer, and output layer, is trained. With consideration of various factors, a total claim amount prediction model is established, and the trained BP neural network model is used to predict the total claim amount of automobile insurance based on the data of the training set. The results show that the accuracy of the prediction by using the BP neural network model to both the data of Shandong Province and to the data of six cities is over 95%. Then, the predicted total claim amount is used to calculate premiums for five cities in Shandong Province according to credibility theory. The results show that the average premium of the five cities is slightly higher than the actual claim amount of the city. The combination of BP neural network and credibility theory can perform accurate claim amount estimation and pricing for automobile insurance, which can effectively improve the current situation of the automobile insurance business and promote the development of insurance industry. (shrink)

Purpose As an enabler of environmental sustainability, Green information technology has become an emerging topic of interest in both academic and business communities. Despite its importance, confusions exist in the content and scope of Green IT practice. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the current state of Green IT practice. Design/methodology/approach First 14 widely accepted Green IT practice topics were identified from prior research and a taxonomy was developed to categorize them. Using the content analysis (...) method, these topics were examined in the sustainability reports of 30 IT companies in 2014 Fortune 500. A quantity–quality portfolio framework was developed and applied to measure and assess the Green IT practices of the selected samples. Findings Currently, the Green IT practice is still in its infancy. Both research and practice attention are now focusing on IT’s direct impacts and enabling impacts, while overlooking the systemic impacts, on natural environment. The possible reasons for the current state and the recommendations for future research and practice are provided. Originality/value Theoretically, this paper identified 14 widely accepted Green IT practice topics and developed a taxonomy for categorizing them. The taxonomy and topics provide a theoretical basis for future examination on Green IT practice-related issues. Practically, the findings of this paper provide guidelines for Green IT practice and directions for both Green IT developers and adopters in their decision-making. (shrink)

The Myelin Regulator Factor (MYRF) is a master regulator governing myelin formation and maintenance in the central nervous system. The conservation of MYRF across metazoans and its broad tissue expression suggest it has functions extending beyond the well‐established role in myelination. Loss of MYRF results in developmental lethality in both invertebrates and vertebrates, and MYRF haploinsufficiency in humans causes MYRF‐related Cardiac Urogenital Syndrome, underscoring its importance in animal development; however, these mechanisms are largely unexplored. MYRF, an unconventional transcription factor, begins (...) embedded in the membrane and undergoes intramolecular chaperone mediated trimerization, which triggers self‐cleavage, allowing its N‐terminal segment with an Ig‐fold DNA‐binding domain to enter the nucleus for transcriptional regulation. Recent research suggests developmental regulation of cleavage, yet the mechanisms remain enigmatic. While some parts of MYRF's structure have been elucidated, others remain obscure, leaving questions about how these motifs are linked to its intricate processing and function. (shrink)

Capitalizing on a unique setting in China where auditors disclose their prosocial activities, we examine the role that auditor social responsibility plays in shaping their performance. In one direction, behavior consistency theory implies that individual auditors exhibiting more social commitment in their off-the-job activities behave similarly during engagements, enhancing the quality of their audits. In the other direction, accounting firms’ internal structures along with external disciplinary forces mute the impact of heterogeneous auditor characteristics on their performance. In a staggered difference-in-differences (...) design, we report a significant fall in the magnitude of companies’ discretionary accruals and the incidence of financial reporting irregularities after their auditors begin contributing to social welfare, relative to companies whose auditors refrain from contributing during the same timeframe. Additional evidence implies that the higher audit quality stems from auditors better protecting their independence and improving their competence in the post-contribution period. Collectively, our results provide insights into the importance of auditors’ prosocial attitudes to their external monitoring. (shrink)

The cultural element is the minimum unit of a cultural system. The systematic categorizing, organizing, and retrieval of the traditional Chinese cultural elements are essential prerequisites for the realization of effective extracting and rational utilization, as well as the prerequisite for exploiting the contemporary value of the traditional Chinese culture. To build an objective, integrated, and reliable classification method and a system of traditional Chinese cultural elements, this study takes the text of Taiping Imperial Encyclopedia in Northern Song Dynasty as (...) the primary data source. The unsupervised word segmentation methods are used to detect Out-of-Vocabulary, and then the segmentation results by the THULAC tool with and without custom dictionary are compared. The TF-IDF algorithm is applied to extract the keywords of cultural elements and the Ochiia coefficient is introduced to create complex networks of traditional Chinese cultural elements. After analyzing the topological characteristics of the network, the community detection algorithm is used to identify the topics of cultural elements. Finally, a “Means-Ends” two-dimensional orthogonal classification system is established to categorize the topics. The results showed that the degree distribution in the complex network of Chinese traditional cultural elements is a scale-free network with γ = 2.28. The network shows a structure of community and hierarchy features. The top 12 communities have taken up to 91.77% of the scale of the networks. Those 12 topics of the traditional Chinese cultural elements are circularly distributed in the orthogonal system of cultural elements’ categorization. (shrink)

ObjectiveThis systematic review aims to analyze existing literature of the effects of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on motor skills learning of healthy adults and discuss the underlying neurophysiological mechanism that influences motor skills learning.MethodsThis systematic review has followed the recommendations of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses. The PubMed, EBSCO, and Web of Science databases were systematically searched for relevant studies that were published from database inception to May 2022. Studies were included based on the Participants, (...) Intervention, Comparison, Outcomes, and Setting inclusion strategy. The risk of bias was evaluated by using the Review manager 5.4 tool. The quality of each study was assessed with the Physiotherapy Evidence Database (PEDro) scale.ResultsThe electronic search produced 142 studies. Only 11 studies were included after filtering. These studies performed well in terms of distribution, blinding availability and selective reporting. They reported that tDCS significantly improved motor skills learning. The main outcomes measure were the improvement of the motor sequence tasks and specific motor skills. Nine studies showed that tDCS interventions reduced reaction time to complete motor sequence tasks in healthy adults and two studies showed that tDCS interventions improved golf putting task performance.ConclusionThe included studies showed that tDCS can help healthy adults to improve the motor skills learning by activating different brain regions, such as the primary motor cortex, left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and right cerebellum. However, the number of included studies was limited, and the sample sizes were small. Therefore, more studies are urgently needed to validate the results of current studies and further explore the underlying neurophysiological mechanisms of tDCS in the future. (shrink)

Type 2 diabetes mellitus is related to a variety of cognitive impairments that may even progress to dementia. Studies have found the angular gyrus is a cross-modal integration hub that is involved in a variety of cognitive processes. However, few studies have focused on the patterns of resting-state functional connections of the AG in patients with T2DM. This study explored the functional connection between the AG and the whole brain and the relationship between the FC and clinical/cognitive variables in patients (...) with T2DM. 44 patients with T2DM and 43 sex-, age-, and education-matched healthy controls underwent resting-state fMRI and received neuropsychological assessments. Compared with the control group, the T2DM group showed abnormal rsFCs between the AG and multiple brain regions. The FC between the left AG and the left medial temporal lobe in the T2DM group was positively correlated with scores on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, after a Bonferroni correction. Collectively, patients with T2DM have abnormal FCs between the AG and extensive brain regions that may be related to various cognitive processes. (shrink)

The existing literature provides conflicting results on the association between firm performance and corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure. This paper empirically examines the effect of firm performance on CSR disclosure in terms of disclosure frequency and quality among Chinese listed firms and the possible mediating effect of corporate ownership on the relationship between firm performance and CSR disclosure. Our findings show that better-performing firms are more likely than worse-performing ones to disclose CSR information and to produce higher quality CSR reports. (...) In addition, the link between firm performance and CSR disclosure is found to be weaker among state-owned enterprises compared with non-state-owned ones. (shrink)

The existing literature provides conflicting results on the association between firm performance and corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure. This paper empirically examines the effect of firm performance on CSR disclosure in terms of disclosure frequency and quality among Chinese listed firms and the possible mediating effect of corporate ownership on the relationship between firm performance and CSR disclosure. Our findings show that better‐performing firms are more likely than worse‐performing ones to disclose CSR information and to produce higher quality CSR reports. (...) In addition, the link between firm performance and CSR disclosure is found to be weaker among state‐owned enterprises compared with non‐state‐owned ones. (shrink)

ObjectiveThis study aimed to better understand the current situation involving work stressors and the coping styles of outpatient and emergency nurses in 29 pediatric specialty hospitals across China. The study analyzed this correlation to provide a reference for the occupational stress management of pediatric nurses.MethodsFrom June to September 2020, 1,457 outpatient and emergency nurses in 29 pediatric specialty hospitals across China were selected as study participants, and a questionnaire survey was conducted using the Basic Information Questionnaire, the Chinese version of (...) the Work Stressor Scale for Nurses, and the Simple Coping Style Scale.ResultsThe assessed stress level of outpatient and emergency nurses in 29 tertiary pediatric specialty hospitals nationwide is lower than the results of the survey of the 2007 domestic norm, p < 0.05. The stressors related to nurses’ expectations, family conflicts, the nature of nursing work, patient factors, and workload were lower compared with the national norm. The positive coping style score on the Simple Coping Style Scale for pediatric outpatient nurses was, and work stressors were positively associated with negative coping styles. Multiple regression analysis showed that the influencing factors of work stressors among pediatric outpatient and emergency nurses correlated with the authorized size, age, working years of nurses, work department, and negative coping styles.ConclusionNegative coping styles were present among pediatric outpatient and emergency nurses and were associated with work stressors. The influencing factors of stressors mainly correlated with the clinical establishment, age, years of employment as a nurse, work department, and negative coping styles. (shrink)

The value–attitude–behavior and the theory of planned behavior appear to provide limited explanation for consumer green purchase behavior. This study aims to examine the relationship between pro-environmental value, consumption value, and TPB toward green car purchasing intention among the young Chinese generation. A total of 541 student responses were collected, and the results showed that altruistic value positively influenced subjective norm and perceived behavioral control, but negatively influenced green purchase attitude. Biospheric value positively influenced GPA and PBC. Function value and (...) emotional value positively influenced GPA, respectively, and emotional value fully mediated the relationship between function value and GPA. Furthermore, GPA, SN, PBC positively influenced intention toward green car purchasing behavior, respectively, and SN mediated the relationship between GPA and intention. This study shows how pro-environmental value and consumption value can influence components of TPB in green car purchase intention. (shrink)

Buddhisms and Deconstructions considers the connection between Buddhism and Derridean deconstruction, focusing on the work of Robert Magliola. Fourteen distinguished contributors discuss deconstruction and various Buddhisms—Indian, Tibetan, and Chinese —followed by an afterword in which Magliola responds directly to his critics.

This study examines the mediating role of rumination, state anger, and blame attribution, and the moderating role of trait forgiveness in the relationship between workplace harassment intensity and revenge among employed students at a medium-sized Midwestern U.S. university and full-time employees from various industries in Shanghai, China. We tested the proposed model using techniques described by Hayes. Results within both samples suggested that workplace harassment intensity is positively associated with both major and minor revenge. Results of multiple mediation tests showed (...) that state anger and blame attribution mediated the relationships between workplace harassment intensity and both types of revenge behavior. Furthermore, trait forgiveness moderated the relationship between blame attribution and major revenge. (shrink)