Previous studies have identified the critical role of the left fusiform cortex in visual word form processing, learning, and memory. However, this so-called visual word form area's other functions are not clear. In this study, we used fMRI and the subsequent memory paradigm to examine whether the putative VWFA was involved in the processing and successful memory encoding of faces as well as words. Twenty-two native Chinese speakers were recruited to memorize the visual forms of faces and Chinese words. Episodic (...) memory for the studied material was tested 3. h after the scan with a recognition test. The fusiform face area and the VWFA were functionally defined using separate localizer tasks. We found that, both within and across subjects, stronger activity in the VWFA was associated with better recognition memory of both words and faces. Furthermore, activation in the VWFA did not differ significantly during the encoding of faces and words. Our results revealed the important role of the so-called VWFA in face processing and memory and supported the view that the left mid-fusiform cortex plays a general role in the successful processing and memory of different types of visual objects. © 2010 Elsevier Inc. (shrink)

We explored the care experiences and needs of the home caregivers of patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) to improve their quality of life. We interviewed home caregivers in-depth and analyzed the data using Colaizzi's descriptive phenomenological method. We interviewed 11 home caregivers of patients with ALS with a disease duration between 1.5 and 4 years. Primary caregivers were predominantly female and were the patients' spouses. Daily caregiving time averaged 4–14 h for 0.5–3.5 years. Interview themes included helplessness and adaptation (...) to life changes, hopelessness, compassion for the patient’s prognosis, and expectation for diverse support. The study sample size was limited, as all participants were from a single tertiary hospital, and all patients had severe functional impairment. Caregivers of patients with ALS experience a considerable burden. Patients and their caregivers can benefit from diversified support channels, and assistive communication systems can be applied to home care. Future research will focus on in-home public long-term care services in China. (shrink)

This study explores “Strengthen Moral Education for Cultivating People” in China from the perspectives of concepts and policies. “Strengthen Moral Education” is identifi...

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the international scientific output on postpartum depression research during 2000–2020 through a bibliometric analysis and to explore research hotspots, frontiers, and trends in the field of postpartum depression. We searched the Web of Science Core Collection for publications on postpartum depression published between 2000 and 2020. CiteSpace, gCluto, and other software applications were used to analyze the data by year, journal, and country. A total of 2,963 publications were retrieved and 96 countries (...) or regions published related papers. The United States had the largest number of published papers and the highest betweenness centrality, which is the dominant position in the field of postpartum depression. A total of 717 journals published papers, with the Archives of Womens Mental Health ranked first in terms of volume and betweenness centrality. In this study, 31 high-frequency main MeSH terms/subheadings were selected. The high-frequency MeSH terms were clustered into six categories: an overview of depression-related research, diagnostic and screening scales for postpartum depression, epidemiological investigation into postpartum depression, treatment and drug selection for postpartum depression, psychological research on postpartum depression, and etiology, physiopathology, complications, genetics of postpartum depression. Finally, we used strategic diagram to analyze research trends in postpartum depression. This study has identified a continuous significant increase in the publication of PPD articles. Currently, the etiology, physiological pathology, intervention and treatment of complications on PPD are immature, which provides reference for the trend of obstetric psychology. (shrink)

This study investigates the value essence of “Double reduction” (Shuang jian) policy in China from a perspective of policy narrative. It examines three values essences of “Double reduction” (Shuang jian) policy, including the core value of running schools: student-centered education; the leading value of running schools: quality-based education and the dominant value of running schools: home-school cooperative education. The interactive analysis of “Double reduction” (Shuang jian) policy in China highlights that the main purpose of the "double reduction" policy is to (...) solve major problems related to people’s livelihood in the field of education and provide people with higher quality and universal educational resources. In addition, suggestion, conclusion, and remark are offered in the last. (shrink)

Dietary methionine restriction (MR) is associated with a spectrum of health‐promoting benefits. Being conducive to prevention of chronic diseases and extension of life span, MR can activate integrated responses at metabolic, transcriptional, and physiological levels. However, how the mitochondria of MR influence metabolic phenotypes remains elusive. Here, we provide a summary of cellular functions of methionine metabolism and an overview of the current understanding of effector mechanisms of MR, with a focus on the aspect of mitochondria‐mediated responses. We propose that (...) mitochondria can sense and respond to MR through a modulatory role of lipoylation, a mitochondrial protein modification sensitized by MR. (shrink)

Confucianism is an important theoretical support of the Chinese national spirit. It started with the Confucian school founded by Confucius, and after the continuous enrichment and creation of Confucianism, it gradually formed an important guiding ideology covering people, people and society, people and nature, etc., which had a far-reaching impact on politics, economy, literature, social life and other fields. In the 1980s, the stable social environment brought by the reform and opening up provided a good external condition for the development (...) of dulcimer art in China. The increasing communication between Chinese and western cultures and ideas has brought new ideas for the development of dulcimer art in China. Yangqin, in the form of "singing, dancing and telling stories", shows the living state and ideal pursuit of literati in Yuan Dynasty by shaping specific events and characters, thus being regarded as a "living fossil" that reflects the social outlook of Yuan Dynasty. There is no doubt that the culture of Chinese dulcimer is based on Chinese traditional culture. It has obvious characteristics of the cultural orientation of Confucianism and Taoism, and is also the result of the interaction between Chinese and Western cultural trends. This cultural orientation will definitely involve the future development trend of Chinese dulcimer culture and will have a profound impact on Chinese dulcimer culture in the 21st century. (shrink)

Anxiety is one of the most important affective factors affecting college students' foreign language learning. Especially in the Internet age, new teaching ideas and methods bring new load and anxiety to students' psychology. Taking students who attend a college English online course learning as the research object, this paper analyzes the general situation and professional skills of the students' psychological anxiety under the network environment by using the method of investigation and data analysis. It conceives six methods to reduce the (...) students' psychological anxiety according to the reason analysis and summarizes the more effective ways with data mining of another questionnaire. It points out that teachers can advocate the mode of group learning and peer cooperation, strengthen the timeliness and diversity of tests, increase the richness of extracurricular activities, and increase teachers' and students' quality of online teaching and learning to reduce the anxiety of students' foreign language learning in an online teaching environment. (shrink)

Adaptation can optimize information processing by allowing the visual system to always adjust to the environment. However, only a few studies have investigated how the visual system makes adjustments to repeatedly occurring changes in the input, still less about the related neural mechanism. Our previous study found that contrast adaptation attenuated after multiple daily sessions of repeated adaptation, which was explained by the habituation of either the adapter’s effective strength or the adaptation mechanisms. To examine the former hypothesis, in the (...) present study we used the frequency tagging technique to measure the adapter-elicited steady-state visual evoked potential amplitudes. Participants repeatedly adapted to the same contrast adapter in a top-up manner for six continuous days, which was called training of adaptation. The behavioral adaptation effect and SSVEP response to the trained adapter and an untrained control adapter were measured before and after training. The psychophysical results showed that the effect of adaptation in the trained condition significantly reduced after training, replicating our previous finding. Contradicting the prediction of the hypothesis that repeated adaptation attenuated the effective strength of the adapter, the SSVEP amplitude was unchanged after training, which was further confirmed by an equivalence test. Taken together, the results challenge the account of habituation of adapter in repeated adaptation, while leaving the account of habituation of adaptation mechanism to be tested. (shrink)

Countries around the world have adopted different policies to address the global issue of poverty, though their poverty line varies. China has achieved remarkable results in poverty alleviation through education. Aware that poverty eradication must rely on intellectual support, the country has shifted its anti-poverty theory and policy actions from a passive, one-off poverty reduction mode based on ‘blood transfusion’ to an active and sustainable mode aimed at improving the ‘blood making’ capacity of the poor population, namely the Chinese mode. (...) Education is the fundamental way of such a mode. China has always focused on nine-year compulsory education in implementing anti-poverty policies; conducted classified and tiered efforts in education against poverty and made policies more targeted; adopted diverse policy instruments and shifted the focus from subsidy to educational capacity building; developed quantified poverty alleviation indexes to set standards for policy evaluation; and included educa... (shrink)

This study examines the impact of mandatory Corporate Social Responsibility reporting on firms’ financial reporting quality using a quasi-natural experiment in China that mandates a subset of firms to report their CSR activities starting in 2008. We find that mandatory CSR disclosure firms constrain earnings management after the policy. The result is robust to a battery of sensitivity tests and more prominent for firms with lower analyst coverage. Further analyses reveal that upward earnings management by mandatory disclosure firms is more (...) likely to be caught after the policy. The findings suggest that mandatory CSR disclosure mitigates information asymmetry by improving financial reporting quality. (shrink)

As part of the wider theoretical framework of Zha Changping’s so-called world-picture logic, “world relational aesthetics” constitutes a theoretical system for critiquing pioneering contemporary Chinese art. Against the backdrop of the Western history of aesthetics, this paper attempts a categorization of world relational aesthetics in terms of its methodology and theory, treating it as a continuation in the tradition of theological aesthetics that offers unique insight into China’s pioneering art.

Insect white wax is a type of biological wax, mainly produced in Jiading Fu (now Leshan, Sichuan province) in southern Sichuan province, also known as Sichuan wax. It is a special export product in China and an important source of income for local wax farmers. From the seventeenth century onward, Westerners who traveled deep into southwestern China studied the wax, including its geographical distribution, biological experiments, and production techniques. They assessed its commercial prospects and strove to introduce it to Europe (...) and the areas it controlled. Based on the reports of the European scholars’ expeditions, travelogues, conference proceedings, and correspondence, this paper examines the history of Western research on the insect white wax and aims to investigate the underlying motivations for the exploration activities, proposes the concept of “object colonialism,” and discusses the impact of adopting objects from their countries of origin on the world’s political and economic landscape. (shrink)

"Using hundreds of examples from newsrooms large and small, author Ron F. Smith challenges readers to determine how they would face moral dilemmas on the job. Chapters evaluate the search for principles, accountability, truth and objectivity, errors and corrections, diversity, "faking" the news, reporters and their sources, privacy, the government watch, deception, compassion, the business of news, journalists and their communities, and financial concerns. New to this edition: a chapter on improving coverage of minorities, expanded discussion of broadcast journalism and (...) reporting on the Internet, and stories from recent front pages and TV news programs."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

Family financing has become a powerful channel for entrepreneurs to obtain entrepreneurial funding. How do family members use intent and quality signals to select new ventures to provide lending support? Building on the signaling theory, this study provides the first quantitative evidence using a sample of 166 samples of family lenders in China. Our findings reveal that psychological capital can support entrepreneurs to obtain family lending. As an intent signal, psychological capital becomes more influential when quality signals, corporate competitive advantage, (...) and firm performance perform more positively. This study emphasizes that family financing support is not only out of love or altruism and extends the literature concerning the influence of positive psychological capital in financial investment decisions. (shrink)

Introduction: Platonic dramatology -- The political and philosophical problems. Using pre-Socratic philosophy to support political reform: the Athenian stranger ; Plato's Parmenides: Parmenides' critique of Socrates and Plato's critique of Parmenides ; Becoming Socrates ; Socrates interrogates his contemporaries about the noble and good -- Paradigms of philosophy. Socrates' positive teaching ; Timaeus-Critias: completing or challenging Socratic political philosophy? ; Socratic practice -- The trial and death of Socrates. The limits of human intelligence ; The Eleatic challenge ; The trial (...) and death of Socrates -- Conclusion: Why Plato made Socrates his hero. (shrink)

Many people are worried about the harmful effects of climate change but nevertheless enjoy some activities that contribute to the emission of greenhouse gas (driving, flying, eating meat, etc.), the main cause of climate change. How should such people make choices between engaging in and refraining from enjoyable greenhouse-gas-emitting activities? In this chapter, we look at the answer provided by decision theory. Some scholars think that the right answer is given by interactive decision theory, or game theory; and moreover think (...) that since private climate decisions are instances of the prisoner’s dilemma, one rationally should engage in these activities provided that one enjoys them. Others think that the right answer is given by expected utility theory, the best-known version of individual decision theory under risk and uncertainty. In this chapter, we review these different answers, with a special focus on the latter answer and the debate it has generated. (shrink)

In this philosophically sophisticated and historically significant work, John H. Zammito reconstructs Kant's composition of The Critique of Judgment and reveals that it underwent three major transformations before publication. He shows that Kant not only made his "cognitive" turn, expanding the project from a "Critique of Taste" to a Critique of Judgment but he also made an "ethical" turn. This "ethical" turn was provoked by controversies in German philosophical and religious culture, in particular the writings of Johann Herder and the (...) Sturm und Drang movement in art and science, as well as the related pantheism controversy. Such topicality made the Third Critique pivotal in creating a "Kantian" movement in the 1790s, leading directly to German Idealism and Romanticism. The austerity and grandeur of Kant's philosophical writings sometimes make it hard to recognize them as the products of a historical individual situated in the particular constellation of his time and society. Here Kant emerges as a concrete historical figure struggling to preserve the achievements of cosmopolitan Aufkl-rung against challenges in natural science, religion, and politics in the late 1780s. More specifically Zammito suggests that Kant's Third Critique was animated throughout by a fierce personal rivalry with Herder and by a strong commitment to traditional Christian ideas of God and human moral freedom. "A work of extraordinary erudition. Zammito's study is both comprehensive and novel, connecting Kant's work with the aesthetic and religious controversies of the late eighteenth century. He seems to have read everything. I know of no comparable historical study of Kant's Third Critique."-Arnulf Zweig, translator and editor of Kant's ;IPhilosophical Correspondence, 1759-1799;X "An intricate, subtle, and exciting explanation of how Kant's thinking developed and adjusted to new challenges over the decade from the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason to the appearance of the Critique of Judgment. "--John W. Burbidge, Review of Metaphysics "There has been for a long time a serious gap in English commentary on Kant's Critique of Judgment Zammito's book finally fills it. All students and scholars of Kant will want to consult it."--Frederick Beiser, Times Literary Supplement. (shrink)

In 'Een handvol filosofen' staan de filosofen centraal die sinds de oprichting van de Vrije Universiteit in 1880 aan deze instelling verbonden zijn geweest. Het gaat hierbij niet alleen om de inhoud van hun werk, maar ook om de personen zelf. Er waren filosofiedocenten die zich met de universiteit identificeerden en zich volledig konden ontplooien. Er waren er echter ook voor wie dit niet gold, die geïsoleerd of in gewetensnood raakten. Veel filosofiestudenten waren actief betrokken bij wat er in hun (...) faculteit gebeurde. Zij namen initiatieven, protesteerden soms tegen de gang van zaken en kozen partij in conflictsituaties. Sinds het eind van de jaren zestig van de twintigste eeuw verloor de Vrije Universiteit geleidelijk haar christelijk karakter. Tegenwoordig werken alle stafleden vanuit hun eigen motivatie mee aan een hoofdzakelijk seculier geworden universiteit, die ruimte biedt voor religieuze en levensbeschouwelijke diversiteit. (shrink)

The study aims to help primary and secondary school students develop a good habit of physical exercise by exploring the current situation of physical exercise of primary and secondary school students and analyzing the factors affecting their physical exercise. Then, intervention strategies are figured out for different groups of students and help them develop a good habit of physical exercise. From the perspective of educational psychology and parents’ entrepreneurship education, the research on the physical exercise of primary and secondary school (...) students is conducted by a questionnaire survey, mathematical statistics and literature review. A total of 280 students from five schools in Tianjin are selected as the research subjects, and the current situation of students’ physical exercise in these five schools is investigated. The results show that 40.5% of boys and 39.4% of girls can take physical exercise more than three times a week; 48.9% of the students do physical exercise for more than 30 mins each time; the students who usually take regular exercise at school account for 82.1%. The physical exercise that students always do is running, badminton and table tennis, which rank the top three among the sports they do. The students usually play basketball, volleyball, and football, and they rarely do the sports like swimming, Wushu, and aerobics. This result is closely related to the characteristics and places of primary and middle school students. The survey shows that the physical exercise awareness of most primary and secondary school students is correct; most students can participate in physical exercise, but few students can do it regularly; parents’ support, parents’ habits of doing exercise, and family’s spending on physical exercise have a significant impact on developing students’ habits of doing physical exercise. Based on the above, it is concluded that the primary and secondary stage is very important for students. Physical education teachers should follow the principle of teaching different students with different methods, enrich teaching materials, and improve teaching quality. The study provides a reference for the reform of PE to guide primary and middle school students to participate in sports activities, improving students’ physical quality. (shrink)

This study explores how to optimize and improve the strategical development of urban schools in China from a policy analysis perspective. Geographically, urban school layout emphasizes the regional distribution of schools, which is affected by the geographical environment; Economically, urban school layout involves the adjustment and allocation of students' sources, educational funds, educational facilities and other elements. In terms of policy, urban school layout is the result of mutual consultation among different stakeholders, which is related to the flow of students (...) and teachers, the satisfaction of students' needs and the educational needs of families. The strategical development of urban schools refers to a set of technical and management procedures applied to planning the spatial distribution and characteristics of schools, which can be applied to match the development of schools with the distribution of the school-age population and promote the achievement of educational policy objectives. (shrink)

This thesis aims to develop a domain-independent system for repairing faulty Datalog-like theories by combining three existing techniques: abduction, belief revision, and conceptual change. Accordingly, the proposed system is named the ABC repair system. Given an observed assertion and a current theory, abduction adds axioms, which explain that observation by making the corresponding assertion derivable from the expanded theory. Belief revision incorporates a new piece of information which conflicts with the input theory by deleting old axioms. Conceptual change uses the (...) reformation algorithm for blocking unwanted proofs or unblocking wanted proofs. The former two techniques change an axiom as a whole, while reformation changes the language in which the theory is written. These three techniques are complementary. But they have not previously been combined into one system. We are working on aligning these three techniques in ABC, which is capable of repairing logical theories with better result than each individual technique alone. In addition, ABC extends abduction and belief revision to operate on preconditions: the former deletes preconditions from rules, and the latter adds preconditions to rules. Datalog is used as the underlying logic of theories in this thesis, but the proposed system has the potential to be adapted to theories in other logics.Abstract prepared by Xue Li by taking directly from the thesis.E-mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

There is increasing interest in integrating Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) into political analysis. However, CDS has largely centered around Western Europe, the USA and Australia, and barely touc...

Background: The factors influencing parents’ willingness to enroll their children in biobanks are poorly understood. This study sought to assess parents’ willingness to enroll their children, and their perceived benefits, concerns, and information needs under different consent and data-sharing scenarios, and to identify factors associated with willingness. Methods: This large, experimental survey of patients at the 11 eMERGE Network sites used a disproportionate stratified sampling scheme to enrich the sample with historically underrepresented groups. Participants were randomized to receive one of (...) three consent and data-sharing scenarios. Results: In total, 90,000 surveys were mailed and 13,000 individuals responded (15.8% response rate). 5737 respondents were parents of minor children. Overall, 55% (95% confidence interval 50–59%) of parents were willing to enroll their youngest minor child in a hypothetical biobank; willingness did not differ between consent and data-sharing scenarios. Lower educational attainment, higher religiosity, lower trust, worries about privacy, and attitudes about benefits, concerns, and information needs were independently associated with less willingness to allow their child to participate. Of parents who were willing to participate themselves, 25% were not willing to allow their child to participate. Being willing to participate but not willing to allow one’s child to participate was independently associated with multiple factors, including race, lower educational attainment, lower annual household income, public health care insurance, and higher religiosity. Conclusions: Fifty-five percent of parents were willing to allow their youngest minor child to participate in a hypothetical biobank. Building trust, protecting privacy, and addressing attitudes may increase enrollment and diversity in pediatric biobanks. (shrink)

This study aims to unpack policy evaluation and measurement of creating world-class universities in China from an integrated policy analysis. Specifically, an integrated policy analysis of policy evaluation of creating world-class universities concentrated on exploring the world class evaluation index released by the university rankings organization and the scholars’ views on the assessment criteria for world-class disciplines. The characteristics of policy evaluation of creating world-class (First-Class) universities included adhering to diversified comprehensive evaluation; clear educational objectives and positioning; taking students as (...) the foundation and cultivate first-class talents and paying attention to scientific research and produce first-class achievements. In the meanwhile, problems existing in the policy evaluation of creating world-class universities were also explored in this study. The suggestion and implications were offered to deepen theoretical research and enhance the practical effect of third-party evaluation and improve the evaluation system for "Double Tops" construction and balance the two characteristics of "Chinese characteristics" and "world-class" and respect the development rules of universities and disciplines and create a systematic ecology of orderly competition. (shrink)

Studies have shown that performance‐dependent monetary rewards facilitate visual perception. However, no study has examined whether such a positive effect is limited to the rewarded task or may be generalized to other tasks. In the current study, two groups of people were asked to perform two visual perception tasks, one being a reward‐relevant task and the other being a reward‐irrelevant task. For the reward‐relevant task, the experimental group received performance‐dependent monetary rewards, whereas the control group did not. For the reward‐irrelevant (...) task, both groups were not rewarded. The two tasks were randomly intermixed trial by trial (Experiment 1) or presented block by block (Experiment 2) or session by session (Experiments 3a, 3b, and 3c). Results showed that performance‐dependent monetary rewards improved participants' performance on the relevant task in all experiments and impaired their performance on the irrelevant task in Experiments 2, 3a, 3b, and 3c. These results suggested that monetary rewards might incur a cost on reward‐irrelevant tasks. Finally, the benefit of monetary rewards disappeared when they were no longer provided during the final session. This is the first study that reveals both the bright and dark sides of the performance‐dependent monetary rewards in visual perception. (shrink)

BackgroundThe research objective was to investigate social and cultural factors affecting breast cancer survivors’ experiences in Lebanese.MethodsA snowball sampling of 20 breast cancer survivors participated in the study. Semi-structured open-ended interviews were used to collect data.ResultsThe results showed that family support and religious beliefs were the primary supporting sources for breast cancer survivors. On the other hand, their body image and children were the major concerns. Thus, family and religious beliefs were needed to overcome breast cancer’s daily burden.ConclusionWomen with breast (...) cancer perceived their cancer experience through their social roles, reflecting a concern for image and role preservation. (shrink)

Although the advising literature has emphasized the importance of good academic advising, there has been little emphasis on ethical issues. NACADA: The Global Community for Academic Advising provides Core Values to guide ethical behavior. This study used an experimental design to examine perspectives of ethical behavior among faculty, staff, and students. All groups could differentiate between ethical and unethical extremes, but students had difficulty differentiating between ethical and neutral behavior. All groups hesitated to rate advisors as highly ethical or unethical. (...) Even when behavior was seen as less ethical, students and faculty/staff perceived limited opportunity for students to do something about that behavior, such as change advisors. Suggestions are offered to increase the likelihood of more ethical behavior within advisement. (shrink)

This study was aimed at examining the impacts of the Sharing economy on the individual and community Quality of Life and wellbeing by looking at their associated influencing factors using Village Savings and Loans Associations as a model of sharing economy in Malawi. An online community-based cross-sectional study design was conducted from November 2020 through January 2021. In the survey, 402 Village Savings and Loans Associations members from the Mzuzu City area participated, recruited using snowball and respondent-driven sampling techniques. The (...) sample size was computed using a single population proportion using the Yamane formula. Descriptive statistics and ordinal logistic regression model techniques were also employed. Additionally, we used the Chi-Square test, two-way ANOVA, and Ordinal regression model to determine statistical associations between socioeconomic data and QOL and wellbeing variables with a 5% level of significance. On the aspect of community wellbeing, the findings of our study indicated that income provided members with options to live a better QOL and wellbeing within the community by either facilitating payment for better education, eating healthier foods, acquiring assets, etc. Further, the absence of discrimination provided a platform for voice, inclusion, and social trust, enhancing freedom of expression. We also found that education facilitated better earnings and knowledge of public health-related issues. As for the contribution to the sharing economy, our study has emphasized the role played by trust in enhancing sharing economy. We recommend and encourage people to join these VSLAs so as to improve their QOL and wellbeing. However, there is a need to replicate the study on a larger scale to validate our study findings for effective policy formulation and implementation geared to improving the overall quality of people’s lives. Based on these findings, we further recommend that authorities reinstate programs like National Strategy for Financial Inclusion 2016–2020 and Savings and Loan Groups Best Practice Guidelines 2016–2017 that could further enhance the future of VSLAs, which are vital for QOL and community wellbeing of the people in developing countries like Malawi. (shrink)