ObjectiveWe aim to investigate the feasibility of using diffusion tensor imaging to evaluate changes in extraocular muscles and lacrimal gland in patients with thyroid-associated ophthalmopathy and to evaluate disease severity.Materials and MethodsA total of 74 participants, including 17 healthy controls, 22 patients with mild TAO, and 35 patients with moderate-severe TAO, underwent 3-Tesla DTI to measure fractional anisotropy and mean diffusivity of the EOMs and LG. Ophthalmological examinations, including visual acuity, exophthalmos, intraocular pressure, and fundoscopy, were performed. FA and MD (...) values were compared among patients with different disease severity. Multiple linear regression was adopted to predict the impact of clinical variables on DTI parameters of orbital soft tissue.ResultsTAO patients’ EOMs and LG showed significantly lower FA values and higher MD compared to HCs’. Moderate-severe TAO patients’ EOMs and LG had dramatically lower FA and higher MD compared with HCs. In addition, only the DTI parameters of the medial rectus were considerably different between mild and moderate-severe TAO patients. Multiple linear regression showed that disease severity had a significant impact on the DTI parameters of orbital soft tissue.ConclusionDTI is a useful tool for detecting microstructural changes in TAO patients’ orbital soft tissue. DTI findings, especially medial rectus DTI parameters, can help to indicate the disease severity in TAO patients. (shrink)

Active reciprocity is a process of human harmonious development, which is based on reciprocity. Reciprocity is the result of trichotomy and the expression of golden mean; Active reciprocity is the expression of active golden mean, which discards the passive part of reciprocity. Active reciprocity is a form of rational collectivism which, generally speaking, has two rules for individual communication behavior, namely mutually benefiting and mutually tolerating. It also has three rules for individual behavior, namely benefiting the others without harming oneself, (...) benefiting both oneself and others, benefiting oneself without harming others. It has, through norms, incorporated values and ideas such as fairness, reason, democracy, philanthropism, freedom, harmony, as well as right, responsibility, respect, tolerance, trust, sustainable development. However, it has to be pointed out that active reciprocity should oriented towards altruism, with the minimum requirement of doing no harm to others. Otherwise it will result in moral relativism. (shrink)

Trust is indispensable not only for interpersonal relationships and social life, but for good quality healthcare. As manifested in the increasing violence and tension in patient-physician relationships, China has been experiencing a widespread and profound crisis of patient–physician trust. And globally, the crisis of trust is an issue that every society, either developing or developed, has to face in one way or another. Yet, in spite of some pioneering works, the subject of patient-physician trust and mistrust – a crucial matter (...) in healthcare especially because there are numerous ethical implications – has largely been marginalized in bioethics as a global discourse. Drawing lessons as well as inspirations from China, this paper demonstrates the necessity of a trust-oriented bioethics and presents some key theoretical, methodological and philosophical elements of such a bioethics. A trust-oriented bioethics moves beyond the current dominant bioethical paradigms through putting the subject of trust and mistrust in the central agenda of the field, learning from the social sciences, and reviving indigenous moral resources. In order for global bioethics to claim its relevance to the things that truly matter in social life and healthcare, trust should be as vital as such central norms like autonomy and justice and can serve as a potent theoretical framework. (shrink)

One stable marker of face perception appears to be left-side bias, the tendency to rely more on information conveyed by the left side of the face than the right. Previous studies have shown that left-side bias is influenced by familiarity and prior experience with face stimuli. Since other-race facial recognition is characterized by reduced familiarity, in contrast to own-race facial recognition, the phenomenon of left-side bias is expected to be weaker for other-race faces. Among Chinese participants, face inversion has been (...) found to eliminate the left-side bias associated with own-race faces. Therefore, it is of interest to know whether face inversion influences left-side bias for non-Chinese research participants and can be generalized across own- and other-race faces. This study assessed 65 Caucasian participants using upright and inverted chimeric Caucasian and Asian faces in an identity similarity-judgment task. Although a significant left-side bias was observed for upright own-race faces, this bias was eliminated by facial inversion, indicating that such a bias depends on the applicability of configural processing strategies. For other-race faces, there was no left-side bias in the upright condition. Interestingly, the inverted presentation yielded a right-side bias. These results show that while left-side bias is affected by familiarity differences between own- and other-race faces, it is a universal phenomenon for upright faces. Inverted presentation strongly reduces left-side bias and may even cause it to revert to right-side bias, suggesting that left-side bias depends on configural face processing. (shrink)

Student–teacher relationships have been examined by many studies. However, an omission still exists, the existing scales are not appropriate for studying STRs in private colleges because of the special character of these schools. This paper presents the development and validation of Private-College Student–Teacher Relationship Scale, the first instrument to evaluate student–teacher relationships in private colleges. The PCSTRS has six dimensions: trust, interaction, intimacy, care, approval, and comfort. In our main study, the validity and reliability of the six-factor PCSTRS model were (...) demonstrated. The result of internal consistency coefficient indicated the high reliability of the scale, and the result of concurrent validity indicated the significant correlational relationships between the PCSTRS with other STR measures. In supplementary study, the PCSTRS was administered to 360 participants to confirm the applicability of PCSTRS and investigate the relation of STRs and students’ traits, performance, and wellbeing, as well as the differences between the private school and the public school in this relation; the analyses revealed that there were significant differences in trust, intimacy, and care between private and public colleges; positive correlations were found between STRs and self-esteem, self-efficacy, academic performance, extracurricular activity involvement, and subjective wellbeing. Present research firstly develops the PCSTRS, examined the reliability and validity, and provides the proposed nomological network among related constructs. (shrink)

Synthesizing insights from a dynamic capability perspective and social network theory, this study identifies the factors influencing green innovation and examines the relationships between influencing factors, green innovation, and performance. This study uses structural equation modeling to test the research hypotheses. The results indicate that dynamic capability, coordination capability, and social reciprocity are significant drivers of green innovation, including green product innovation and green process innovation. Green product and process innovation have positive effects on environmental performance and organizational performance. These (...) findings are relevant to firms in quest of green management and innovation. (shrink)

ObjectiveNumerous studies have demonstrated that religious belief is associated with prosocial behavior. However, how do they maintain cooperation in societies with a predominating atheist population, such as China? Different primings and a quasi-experiment are used to examine the link between communist authority and prosocial behaviors among college students in China.Materials and methodsIn Study 1, the subjects’ communist authority in the university lab was primed by a communist-authority video. In Study 2, we compared the priming effects of communist authority and religion (...) on prosocial intention. Study 3 investigated the priming effect of communist authority on prosocial behaviors by employing a scrambled sentence task in the university lab. A quasi-experiment was conducted in Study 4.ResultsResults showed that communist-authority, a reminder of secular authorities, increased prosociality among college students. And empathy moderated the relationship between secular authorities and prosociality in Study 3 and Study 4.DiscussionCommunist authority, a secular authority prime, has a positive effect on promoting prosocial behaviors. These results provided a feasible yet novel way to reveal the mechanism of the relationship between secular authorities and prosociality in China. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has plunged the housing affordability and living sanitary conditions of China's low-income groups into a crisis. Public rental housing has made a significant contribution to alleviating this crisis, yet its exit problem has become more acute due to the impact of the epidemic. In order to explore how to effectively play the role of multi-governance in public rental housing exit, this paper adopts game theory to analyze the evolution of the behavioral strategies of government departments and public (...) rental housing tenants in public rental housing exit by combining four influencing parameters: the epidemic severity, the epidemic influence coefficient, the public participation degree, and the public reporting fairness. In response to exploring the conditions for the effective functioning of the multi-governance model under the impact of the epidemic, the influences of parameter change on the stability of the system are analyzed. The results show that when the COVID-19 epidemic impact coefficient is high, government departments need to reduce their own supervision costs to achieve better multi-governance effects; when public reports are distorted, the government departments’ own supervision capabilities determine the impact of public participation on governance effects. (shrink)

Teacher’s unethical professional behaviors affect students’ physical and mental health. Prevention should start with student teachers, but empirical research is lacking in China. This study surveyed over 2,000 student teachers from China to examine the psychometric properties of a student teachers’ unethical professional behavior tendencies scale which revised by primary and secondary school teachers’ unethical professional behavior tendencies scale. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis confirmed that a bi-factor model fit the data best. The final student teachers’ unethical professional behavior tendencies (...) scale comprised four subscales, including a general factor and four special factors. The student teachers’ unethical professional behavior tendencies scale correlated negatively with their professional ethical values and positively with perceived frequency of unethical professional behaviors of college teachers around them. The data supported the scale’s measurement invariance across gender, and male student teachers scored significantly higher on unethical professional behavior tendencies than female student teachers. The findings suggest that the student teachers’ unethical professional behavior tendencies scale is a useful instrument for assessing student teachers’ unethical professional behaviors in China. (shrink)

Entrepreneurship competitions are an important way to implement entrepreneurship education in universities and the main way for many students improve their entrepreneurial competence. To clarify the mechanism of the role of entrepreneurship competition on the entrepreneurial competence of university students, based on data from a sample of 170,764 university students from 31 provinces in China, this study constructs a moderated mediation model that focuses on the mediating role of entrepreneurial spirit in entrepreneurial competition and entrepreneurial competence and the moderating role (...) of entrepreneurial practice. The results showed that ECompetition found to have a significant positive predictive effect on ECompetence. ES plays a mediating role in the relationship between ECompetition and competence. The direct predictive effect of ECompetition on ECompetence and the mediating effect of ES on their relationship is moderated by EP. The results provide a new perspective on the impact of entrepreneurship competition on college students’ entrepreneurial competence and expands the experiential learning theory in entrepreneurship education. (shrink)

BackgroundPost-stroke depression is one of the most common neuropsychiatric diseases in patients with stroke, and it can increase the disability rate, mortality, and recurrence rate of stroke. Currently, many clinical studies have indicated that traditional Chinese medicine, such as acupuncture and herbs, Western medicine, rehabilitation, repeated transcranial magnetic stimulation, and other treatment methods, are effective in treating PSD. However, no study has formulated a comprehensive treatment plan that integrates TCM, Western medicine, and rehabilitation for PSD. Thus, this trial aims to (...) assess the efficacy and safety of integrative medicine for treating PSD.MethodsThis multicenter, prospective, randomized, controlled study aims to form a set of effective clinical treatment schemes that integrate TCM, Western medicine, and rehabilitation for PSD. A total of 202 participants recruited from four centers will be randomized into either the integrative medicine or standard care group. Standard care—basic treatment, general nursing care, and exercise therapy—will be provided to all participants. The integrative medicine group will also receive acupuncture, Chinese herbs, and repeated transcranial magnetic stimulation. Participants will receive acupuncture and rTMS treatments five times per week for 4 weeks and will be administered Chinese herbs, basic treatment, general nursing care, and exercise therapy for 4 weeks. The primary outcomes include the Hamilton Depression Scale, Self-Rating Depression Scale, and Activity of Daily Living Scale. And the secondary outcomes include the Montreal Cognitive Assessment Scale, the Fugl-Meyer Assessment Scale, and the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index. All outcome measures will be evaluated at baseline, week 4, and week 8. Safety assessments will be performed throughout the study.DiscussionThis study is expected to verify the efficacy and safety of integrative medicine for treating PSD, providing an evidence-based clinical reference for the future development of a standardized scheme.Clinical trial registrationClinicalTrials.gov, identifier: NCT05187975. (shrink)

Alcohol use disorder is one of the most common substance use disorders contributing to both behavioral and cognitive impairments in patients with AUD. Recent neuroimaging studies point out that AUD is a typical disorder featured by altered functional connectivity. However, the details about how voxel-wise functional coordination remain unknown. Here, we adopted a newly proposed method named functional connectivity density to depict altered voxel-wise functional coordination in AUD. The novel functional imaging technique, FCD, provides a comprehensive analytical method for brain's (...) “scale-free” networks. We applied resting-state functional MRI toward subjects to obtain their FCD, including global FCD, local FCD, and long-range FCD. Sixty-one patients with AUD and 29 healthy controls were recruited, and patients with AUD were further divided into alcohol-related cognitive impairment group and non-cognitive impairment group. All subjects were asked to stay stationary during the scan in order to calculate the resting-state gFCD, lFCD, and lrFCD values, and further investigate the abnormal connectivity alterations among AUD-NCI, ARCI, and HC. Compared to HC, both AUD groups exhibited significantly altered gFCD in the left inferior occipital lobe, left calcarine, altered lFCD in right lingual, and altered lrFCD in ventromedial frontal gyrus. It is notable that gFCD of the ARCI group was found to be significantly deviated from AUD-NCI and HC in left medial frontal gyrus, which changes probably contributed by the impairment in cognition. In addition, no significant differences in gFCD were found between ARCI and HC in left parahippocampal, while ARCI and HC were profoundly deviated from AUD-NCI, possibly reflecting a compensation of cognition impairment. Further analysis showed that within patients with AUD, gFCD values in left medial frontal gyrus are negatively correlated with MMSE scores, while lFCD values in left inferior occipital lobe are positively related to ADS scores. In conclusion, patients with AUD exhibited significantly altered functional connectivity patterns mainly in several left hemisphere brain regions, while patients with AUD with or without cognitive impairment also demonstrated intergroup FCD differences which correlated with symptom severity, and patients with AUD cognitive impairment would suffer less severe alcohol dependence. This difference in symptom severity probably served as a compensation for cognitive impairment, suggesting a difference in pathological pathways. These findings assisted future AUD studies by providing insight into possible pathological mechanisms. (shrink)

There is a high need for cognition on earthquake risk to improve the public’s risk knowledge and risk awareness, so that they can make right decisions and take quick actions regarding mitigation measures and adjustments. In this study, search engine query data from the Baidu Index were extracted to reveal the information search behaviors of the Chinese public regarding the earthquake risk from 2010 to 2012. The data were also analyzed to discuss the characteristics of need for cognition on a (...) nationwide scale and over the long term. The results showed that graphic representations of need for cognition adhere to a “half-peak pattern” before and after earthquake events and dimensions in psychological distance theory, such as temporal distance, spatial distance, and social distance influence the need for cognition on earthquake risk that was the time and spatial discount effect. The implications for theory and practice regarding risk communication and management are discussed and concluded. (shrink)

Journal Name: Cognitive Linguistics Issue: Ahead of print.

As the most frequently used tool for measuring empathy, the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) is often scored by researchers arbitrarily and casually. Many commonly used IRI scoring approaches and their corresponding measurement models are unverified, which may make the conclusions of subsequent variable relation studies controversial and even misleading. We make the first effort to summarize these measurement models and to evaluate rationality of the common scoring methods of the IRI by confirmatory factor analysis, focusing on model fitting, factor loading, (...) and model-based reliability simultaneously. The results show that most of these models do not fit well, indicating that the scoring approaches of the IRI corresponding to these models may be problematic. Relatively speaking, better scoring approaches of the IRI include summing empathic concern and perspective taking as the total score of the IRI and reporting the score of perspective taking as cognitive empathy. (shrink)

The emerging discourse of hopeful tourism (Hunter 1997; Lee et al. 2017; Pritchard, Morgan, and Ateljevic 2011; Sampaio, Thomas, and Font 2012; Schultz et al. 2005; Tolkach, Pratt, and Zeng 2017) h...

Background and purposeThis study aimed to analyze the feasibility and safety of endovascular therapy (EVT) in patients with acute posterior circulation stroke and vertebrobasilar dolichoectasia (VBD).Materials and methodsBASILAR was a national prospective registry of consecutive patients with symptomatic and imaging-confirmed acute stroke in the posterior circulation within 24 h of symptom onset. We evaluated EVT feasibility and safety in patients with VBD. Primary outcomes included improvement in modified Rankin Scale scores (mRS) at 90 days and mortality within 90 days. The (...) secondary outcome was the rate of favorable functional outcome, defined as mRS ≤ 3 (indicating independent ambulation) at 90 days. Safety outcomes included surgery-related complications and other serious adverse events.ResultsA total of 534 cases were included: 159 with VBD and 375 controls. No significant difference in mRS at 90 days was found between groups, but patients with VBD had a higher baseline National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) score [30 (19–33) vs. 25 (15–32)] and were older [65 (59–74) vs. 63 (55–72) year]. After propensity score matching, there were no significant differences in baseline NIHSS score between the two groups, and the efficacy and safety of EVT were similar between patients with or without VBD. Furthermore, the prognostic effect of puncture-to-recanalization time on the probability of mortality within 90 days in EVT-treated patients with VBD was significant {adjusted odds ratio, 1.008 [95% confidence interval (1.001–1.015)]}.ConclusionEndovascular therapy is safe and feasible in patients with acute posterior circulation stroke and VBD. The puncture-to-recanalization time is important for predicting the prognosis of EVT-treated patients with VBD. (shrink)

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

A major challenge for semantic video segmentation is how to exploit the spatiotemporal information and produce consistent results for a video sequence. Many previous works utilize the precomputed optical flow to warp the feature maps across adjacent frames. However, the imprecise optical flow and the warping operation without any learnable parameters may not achieve accurate feature warping and only bring a slight improvement. In this paper, we propose a novel framework named Dynamic Warping Network to adaptively warp the interframe features (...) for improving the accuracy of warping-based models. Firstly, we design a flow refinement module to optimize the precomputed optical flow. Then, we propose a flow-guided convolution to achieve the adaptive feature warping based on the refined optical flow. Furthermore, we introduce the temporal consistency loss including the feature consistency loss and prediction consistency loss to explicitly supervise the warped features instead of simple feature propagation and fusion, which guarantees the temporal consistency of video segmentation. Note that our DWNet adopts extra constraints to improve the temporal consistency in the training phase, while no additional calculation and postprocessing are required during inference. Extensive experiments show that our DWNet can achieve consistent improvement over various strong baselines and achieves state-of-the-art accuracy on the Cityscapes and CamVid benchmark datasets. (shrink)