Despite research supporting the efficacy of family therapy for adolescent depression, little research has been done to clarify the therapeutic variables that Chinese families with depressed adolescents consider helpful in family therapy. This study explored Chinese depressed adolescents’ and their parents’ perceptions of the factors promoting improvement in family therapy. Twelve Chinese families with one adolescent child fulfilling the criteria for major depressive disorder were recruited. A total of 134 family therapy sessions were conducted by 4 therapists. After therapy, semi-structured (...) interviews about the clients’ perceptions of the helpful and effective aspects of therapy were conducted. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the transcribed dialogues. Five overarching themes emerged: factors supporting therapeutic alliance formation, the therapist’s systemic attitude, systemic therapy direction, effective systemic therapy techniques and strategies for dealing with current issues. A trustworthy therapy alliance with a competent and supportive therapist helped depressed adolescents improve by facilitating the expression of their emotions; exploring family interactions, beliefs and emotion flows related to their symptoms; promoting their self-development; and activating their resources. The families valued the respectfulness of the therapists and their collaborative and nonauthoritative approach. Adolescents’ academic difficulties and crises received special attention. The possible clinical implementations of our findings in the design of family therapy strategies for depressed Chinese adolescents are discussed. (shrink)

Body ownership concerns what it is like to feel a body part or a full body as mine, and has become a prominent area of study. We propose that there is a closely related type of bodily self-consciousness largely neglected by researchers—experiential ownership. It refers to the sense that I am the one who is having a conscious experience. Are body ownership and experiential ownership actually the same phenomenon or are they genuinely different? In our experiments, the participant watched a (...) rubber hand or someone else’s body from the first-person perspective and was touched either synchronously or asynchronously. The main findings: (1) The sense of body ownership was hindered in the asynchronous conditions of both the body-part and the full-body experiments. However, a strong sense of experiential ownership was observed in those conditions. (2) We found the opposite when the participants’ responses were measured after tactile stimulations had ceased for 5 s. In the synchronous conditions of another set of body-part and full-body experiments, only experiential ownership was blocked but not body ownership. These results demonstrate for the first time the double dissociation between body ownership and experiential ownership. Experiential ownership is indeed a distinct type of bodily self-consciousness. (shrink)

Background:Policemen all over the world are tasked with the heavy work of maintaining social security. With the imbalance in mentality brought about by high population density and social transformation, the work of the Chinese police is particularly hard. As the window of demographic dividend is closing and the number of newborns is insufficient, China has started to adjust its established fertility policy to encourage a family to have two children. However, the results have not met the expectations of the policy (...) adjustment. It is generally believed that factors such as high work pressure, high parenting costs, and low levels of happiness may be the main reasons for low fertility intentions. Studying this typical population of police officers may explore the relationship between work stress, happiness, and reproductive concerns, and provide evidence of Chinese sample.Objectives:To explore the relations between job burnout, subjective well-being, and generativity concern in Chinese police officers.Methods:The study used a cross-sectional survey to collect data from 494 police officers from H city in China. The participants completed the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), the Family Adaptability and Cohesion Scale (FACESII), the Loyola Generativity Scale (LGS), and the Satisfaction with life scale (SWLS). Moderated mediation effect models assessed the association between job burnout, subjective well-being, and generativity concern.Results:Job burnout had a significant negative predictive effect on both subjective well-being and generativity concern, and subjective well-being played a mediating role between job burnout and generativity concern. In addition, family intimacy and adaptability had a significant negative moderating effect between subjective well-being and generativity concern. In a conclusion, there is a moderated mediating effect between job burnout and generativity concern.Conclusion:Subjective well-being played a mediating role between job burnout and generativity concern. (shrink)

The choice of coping style of recruits under psychological stress in the process of military task execution has been an important topic in the promotion of military operations and cohesion of military forces. Taking a positive coping style under psychological stress can help recruits overcome the negative effects of stress and improve military morale and group combat effectiveness. Although soldiers' psychological stress in the process of military mission execution having an impact on coping style has been studied by a large (...) body of literature, very little literature has focused on the mechanism of self-efficacy and social support between recruits' psychological stress and coping style from the person-environment fit perspective. Therefore, this study was conducted to analyze the impact of recruits' psychological stress on coping style through a chain mediation model and to discuss the role of self-efficacy and social support in this relationship. Two waves of survey data were utilized to test the research hypotheses on a sample of 1028 Chinese recruits performing military tasks. The results indicated that recruits' psychological stress negatively impacted positive coping styles and positively correlated with negative ones. In addition, self-efficacy and social support mediated the relationship between psychological stress and positive coping style, and self-efficacy mediated the relationship between psychological stress and negative coping style. More importantly, self-efficacy and social support play the chain mediating effect between psychological stress and positive coping style. (shrink)

Liver transplantation (LT) activities during the COVID-19 pandemic have been curtailed in many countries. The impact of various policies restricting LT on outcomes of potential LT candidates is unclear. We studied all patients on the nationwide LT waitlists in Hong Kong and Singapore between January 2016 and May 2020. We used continuous time Markov chains to model the effects of different scenarios and varying durations of disruption on LT candidates.

Humans are born with the ability and the need for affection, but communicating affection as a social behavior is historically bound. Based on the digitized books of Google Ngram Viewer from 1960 through 2008, the present research investigated the affectionate communication (AC) in China and in the US, and its changing landscape along with social changes from collectivist to individualistic environments. In particular, we analyzed the frequency in terms of verbal affection (e.g., love you, like you), non-verbal affection (e.g., hug, (...) kiss), and individualism (indicated by the use of first-person singular pronouns, such as I, me, and myself) in Chinese and in American books. The results revealed a convergent increasing trend of AC over the past decades, although the frequency of affection words was lower in Chinese than in American books. Further, the individualism was found to be positively related to the frequency of affection words in both Chinese and American books. These results demonstrate the effect of cultural changes on AC, in that affection exchange becomes popular in adaptation to individualistic urban environments, which provide the evidence about the cross-cultural difference in love expression and the cultural universality of social change in Eastern and Western societies. (shrink)

Most neuroimaging research in stroke rehabilitation mainly focuses on the neural mechanisms underlying the natural history of post-stroke recovery. However, connectivity mapping from resting-state fMRI is well suited for different neurological conditions and provides a promising method to explore plastic changes for treatment-induced recovery from stroke. We examined the changes in resting-state functional connectivity (RS-FC) of the ipsilesional primary motor cortex (M1) in 10 post-acute stroke patients before and immediately after 4 weeks of robot-assisted bilateral arm therapy (RBAT). Motor performance, (...) functional use of the affected arm, and daily function improved in all participants. Reduced interhemispheric RS-FC between the ipsilesional and contralesional M1 (M1-M1) and the contralesional-lateralized connections were noted before treatment. In contrast, greater M1-M1 functional connectivity and disturbed resting-state networks were observed after RBAT relative to pre-treatment. Increased changes in M1-M1 RS-FC after RBAT were coupled with better motor and functional improvements. Mediation analysis showed the pre-to-post difference in M1-M1 RS-FC was a significant mediator for the relationship between motor and functional recovery. These results show neuroplastic changes and functional recoveries induced by RBAT in post-acute stroke survivors and suggest that interhemispheric functional connectivity in the motor cortex may be a neurobiological marker for recovery after stroke rehabilitation. (shrink)

ObjectiveWhen regaining consciousness, patients who emerge from a minimally conscious state (EMCS) present with different levels of functional disability, which pose great challenges for treatment. This study investigated the frontoparietal activity in EMCS patients and its effects on functional disability.Materials and methodsIn this preliminary study, 12 EMCS patients and 12 healthy controls were recruited. We recorded a resting-state scalp electroencephalogram (EEG) for at least 5 min for each participant. Each patient was assessed using the disability rating scale (DRS) to determine (...) the level of functional disability. We analyzed the EEG power spectral density and sensor-level functional connectivity in relation to the patient’s functional disability.ResultsIn the frontoparietal region, EMCS patients demonstrated lower relative beta power (P < 0.01) and higher weighted phase lag index (wPLI) values in the theta (P < 0.01) and gamma (P < 0.01) bands than healthy controls. The frontoparietal theta wPLI values of EMCS patients were positively correlated with the DRS scores (rs = 0.629, P = 0.029). At the whole-brain level, EMCS patients only had higher wPLI values in the theta band (P < 0.01) than healthy controls. The whole-brain theta wPLI values of EMCS patients were also positively correlated with the DRS scores (rs = 0.650, P = 0.022). No significant difference in the power and connectivity between the frontoparietal region and the whole brain in EMCS patients was observed.ConclusionEMCS patients still experience neural dysfunction, especially in the frontoparietal region. However, the theta connectivity in the frontoparietal region did not increase specifically. At the level of the whole brain, the same shift could also be seen. Theta functional connectivity in the whole brain may underlie different levels of functional disability. (shrink)

The joint multifractal analysis is usually conducted in two different variables for their cross-correlations but rarely used for two records of one variable collected at two different places. It is important for the detection of change in multifractality in space. Besides, the cross-correlations in two analyzed series make the analysis of sources of joint multifractality difficult. There are few studies on the source of joint multifractality. We focus on the two issues for two level records at pairs of adjacent sites (...) along one river and carry out an extension of our previous work which is about the single multifractality of one record with the same data set. The data set is collected from 10 observation stations of a northern China river and contains about two million high-frequency river level records. Results of joint multifractal analysis via multifractal detrended cross-correlation analysis show that the change in joint multifractality at pairs of adjacent sites caused by weak cross-correlations can be detected by comparing the single generalized Hurst exponent with the joint scaling exponent function and reveal the effects of human activities on joint multifractality. This analysis provides an approach for detecting the change in multifractality. Following the idea of our previous work, two robust hypothesis tests via a set of pairs of surrogate series are proposed for the source testing of joint multifractality. The analysis of the effects of cross-correlations is carried out via a proposed simultaneously half-shifting technique which can both minimize the cross-correlations between original series and make full use of records. Results of source analysis show not only the effects of autocorrelations in series and probability distribution of river levels but also the effects of cross-correlations between series. (shrink)

A new three-order piecewise function was used to smoothen the model of Support Vector Machine( SVM) and a Third-order Piecewise Smooth SVM( TPSSVM) was proposed. By theory analyzing, approximation accuracy of the smooth function to the plus function is higher than that of the available. When dealing with the multi-class problem, a coding method of multi-class classification based on one-against-rest was proposed. Principal Component Analysis( PCA) was employed to extract the main features of face image set, and multi-class classification of (...) smooth SVM was used for face recognition. The experimental results on ORL and FERET face databases show that the recognition rate of smooth SVM for multi-class classification is better than the traditional identification methods. (shrink)

For scholars, practitioners, and legislators concerned about sexual minority adolescents, one of the main goals is to create more positive and inclusive learning environments for this minority group. Numerous factors, such as repeated patterns of homophobic bullying by classmates and others in school, have been a significant barrier to achieving this goal. In addition, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer adolescents encounter substantial inequality across a broad spectrum of wellbeing and education consequences. Compared with their heterosexual counterparts, LGBTQ adolescents experience (...) more anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, antisocial behavior, poorer academic performance, less school attachment and protection, and a weaker desire to finish their studies. Such discrepancies based on gender and sexuality were linked to more maltreatment encountered by LGBTQ adolescents. It is crucial to recognize the backgrounds and expectations of LGBTQ adolescents to offer them the best resources. To overcome the inequality and obstacles faced by these LGBTQ adolescents, it is essential to examine tools and techniques that can be utilized. This study examined the literature that explains why society fails to provide enough support to LGBTQ students. Specifically, mechanisms explaining how LGBTQ adolescents interact with others in the learning environment and how such discrepancies arise will be examined. Following that, violence and prejudice, which are fundamental causes of psychological problems among LGBTQ adolescents, will be explored. This review paper thus provides supportive strategies for schools to develop more inclusive learning environments for LGBTQ adolescents. (shrink)

We examine the effect of the cross-border merger and acquisition (M&A) activities of Chinese firms on their corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance. We find that Chinese acquirers significantly increase CSR performance and CSR spending following cross-border M&As. The legal origins and social norms of host countries are found to positively affect the acquirers’ CSR performance and CSR spending in the post-M&A period. The results are consistent with Chinese acquirers signaling their commitment toward CSR through cross-border M&As to respond to diverse (...) stakeholder demands and strengthen corporate reputation. We also provide evidence that Chinese firms’ knowledge acquisition through cross-border M&As boosts green innovation. In addition, we show that the financial performance of Chinese acquirers does not suffer in the long term, indicating that strategic CSR investments can be integrated with other corporate investment activities. Our study demonstrates how cross-border M&As affect stakeholder value beyond value for shareholders. (shrink)

Bromodomain‐containing 4 (BRD4), a member of Bromo and Extra‐Terminal (BET) family, recognizes acetylated histones and is of importance in transcription, replication, and DNA repair. It also binds non‐histone proteins, DNA and RNA, contributing to development, tissue growth, and various physiological processes. Additionally, BRD4 has been implicated in driving diverse diseases, ranging from cancer, viral infection, inflammation to neurological disorders. Inhibiting its functions with BET inhibitors (BETis) suppresses the progression of several types of cancer, creating an impetus for translating these chemicals (...) to the clinic. The diverse roles of BRD4 are largely dependent on its interaction partners in different contexts. In this review we discuss the molecular mechanisms of BRD4 with its interacting partners in physiology and pathology. Current development of BETis is also summarized. Further understanding the functions of BRD4 and its partners will facilitate resolving the liabilities of present BETis and accelerate their clinical translation. (shrink)

As an important component to promote the development of affective brain–computer interfaces, the study of emotion recognition based on electroencephalography (EEG) has encountered a difficult challenge; the distribution of EEG data changes among different subjects and at different time periods. Domain adaptation methods can effectively alleviate the generalization problem of EEG emotion recognition models. However, most of them treat multiple source domains, with significantly different distributions, as one single source domain, and only adapt the cross-domain marginal distribution while ignoring the (...) joint distribution difference between the domains. To gain the advantages of multiple source distributions, and better match the distributions of the source and target domains, this paper proposes a novel multi-source joint domain adaptation (MSJDA) network. We first map all domains to a shared feature space and then align the joint distributions of the further extracted private representations and the corresponding classification predictions for each pair of source and target domains. Extensive cross-subject and cross-session experiments on the benchmark dataset, SEED, demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model, where more significant classification results are obtained on the more difficult cross-subject emotion recognition task. (shrink)

Previous research has mostly focused on Internet use behaviors, such as usage time of the Internet or social media after individuals experienced offline social exclusion. However, the extant literature has ignored online response behaviors, such as online review responses to social exclusion. To address this gap, drawing on self-protection and self-serving bias, we proposed three hypotheses that examine the effect of offline social exclusion on online reviews, which are verified by two studies using different simulating scenarios with 464 participants. The (...) results show that when individuals are socially excluded offline, regardless of where the exclusion comes from, they will be more likely to give negative online reviews. In addition, brand awareness moderates the effect of offline social exclusion on online reviews. Specifically, if the brand is less known, compared with social inclusion, offline social exclusion will lead individuals to give more negative online reviews; conversely, for well-known brands, no significant difference exists in the online reviews between social exclusion and inclusion. (shrink)

With the development of distributed networks, the remote controllability of the distributed energy objects and the vulnerability of user-side information security protection measures make distributed energy objects extremely vulnerable to malicious control by attackers. Hence, the large-scale loads may produce abnormal operation performance, such as load casting/dropping synchronously or frequent and synchronous casting and dropping, and hence, it can threaten the security and stable operation of the distribution networks. First, we analyze the security threats faced by industrial controllable load, civil (...) controllable load, and the gains and losses of attacks on the distribution networks. Considering the factors of cyber attacks, we propose a control model and cyber attack model in active distribution networks. And, three types of attacks that the target suffered are defined on the basis of “on” and “off” modes for control. Then, the controllable load was maliciously controlled as the research object, and a suitable scenario is selected. The impact of malicious control of the controllable load on the power supply reliability and power quality of the distribution networks are simulated and analyzed, and risk consequences for different types of attacks are provided. (shrink)

This paper examines the effects of environmental factors on the ethical behavior of managers using computers at work in Mainland China. In this study, environmental factors refer to senior management, peer groups, company policies, professional practices, and legal considerations. Ethical behaviors include attitudes to disclosure, protection of privacy, conflict of interest, personal conduct, social responsibility, and integrity. A questionnaire survey was used for data collection, and 125 mainland Chinese managers participated in the study. The results show that peer groups, professional (...) practices, and legal considerations do influence the ethical behavior of mainland Chinese managers in the areas of social responsibility, integrity, and accountability. A discussion of the implications of the results is also provided in this paper. (shrink)

In this study, we attempt to explain the divergent results found in the relationships between supervisor–subordinate guanxi and employee work outcomes. Specifically, we propose that the relationships between supervisor–subordinate guanxi and participatory management, turnover intentions, and organizational commitment are mediated by job satisfaction. Based on the data collected from a sample of 196 employees of three local manufacturing firms in Zhejiang Province, China, we found that job satisfaction fully mediated the effects of supervisor–subordinate guanxi on participatory management and intentions to (...) leave, but partially mediated the relationship between supervisor–subordinate guanxi and organizational commitment. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

This article reviews Cognitive Sociolinguistics Revisited 9783110738513.

Access to legal information is fundamental to access to justice. Yet accessibility refers not only to making legal documents available to the public, but also rendering legal information comprehensible to them. A vexing problem in bringing legal information to the public is how to turn formal legal documents such as legislation and judgments, which are often highly technical, to easily navigable and comprehensible knowledge to those without legal education. In this study, we formulate a three-step approach for bringing legal knowledge (...) to laypersons, tackling the issues of navigability and comprehensibility. First, we translate selected sections of the law into snippets (called CLIC-pages), each being a small piece of article that focuses on explaining certain technical legal concept in layperson’s terms. Second, we construct a Legal Question Bank, which is a collection of legal questions whose answers can be found in the CLIC-pages. Third, we design an interactive CLIC Recommender. Given a user’s verbal description of a legal situation that requires a legal solution, CRec interprets the user’s input and shortlists questions from the question bank that are most likely relevant to the given legal situation and recommends their corresponding CLIC pages where relevant legal knowledge can be found. In this paper we focus on the technical aspects of creating an LQB. We show how large-scale pre-trained language models, such as GPT-3, can be used to generate legal questions. We compare machine-generated questions against human-composed questions and find that MGQs are more scalable, cost-effective, and more diversified, while HCQs are more precise. We also show a prototype of CRec and illustrate through an example how our 3-step approach effectively brings relevant legal knowledge to the public. (shrink)

Depression is a common mental health illness worldwide that affects our quality of life and ability to work. Although prior research has used EEG signals to increase the accuracy to identify depression, the rates of underdiagnosis remain high, and novel methods are required to identify depression. In this study, we built a model based on single-channel, dry-electrode EEG sensor technology to detect state depression, which measures the intensity of depressive feelings and cognitions at a particular time. To test the accuracy (...) of our model, we compared the results of our model with other commonly used methods for depression diagnosis, including the PHQ-9, Hamilton Depression Rating Scale, and House-Tree-Person drawing test, in three different studies. In study 1, we compared the results of our model with PHQ-9 in a sample of 158 senior high students. The results showed that the consistency rate of the two methods was 61.4%. In study 2, the results of our model were compared with HAM-D among 71 adults. We found that the consistency rate of state-depression identification by the two methods was 63.38% when a HAM-D score above 7 was considered depression, while the consistency rate increased to 83.10% when subjects showed at least one depressive symptom. In study 3, 68 adults participated in the study, and the results revealed that the consistency rate of our model and HTP drawing test was 91.2%. The results showed that our model is an effective means to identify state depression. Our study demonstrates that using our model, people with state depression could be identified in a timely manner and receive interventions or treatments, which may be helpful for the early detection of depression. (shrink)

ObjectivePregnancy leads to long-lasting changes in brain structure for healthy women; however, little is known regarding alterations in the cortical features of pregnant women with malformed fetuses. Isolated clefts of the lip and/or palate (ICL/P) are the most common congenital anomaly in the craniofacial region, which is highly gene-associated. We speculated that pregnant women carrying fetuses with ICL/P may have associated risk genes and specific brain changes during pregnancy.MethodsIn this study, we investigated T1-weighted brain magnetic resonance imaging data from 48 (...) pregnant women: 24 women carrying fetuses with ICL/P (ICL/P group) and 24 women carrying normal fetuses (normal controls), then explored intergroup differences in gray matter volume (GMV), cortical thickness (CT) and cortical complexity (gyrification).ResultsCompared with controls, the ICL/P group had decreased total intracranial volume (TIV) than normal controls; besides, they exhibited increased GMV in the left cuneus, decreased GMV in the right superior temporal gyrus; increased CT in the left precuneus and left superior parietal gyrus, decreased CT involving parsopercularis, fusiform, middle temporal in the left hemisphere and supramarginal, precentral gyrus (PreCG) in the right hemisphere; increased gyrification in the left insula and PreCG, the left middle temporal, and the right supratemporal gyrus.ConclusionPregnant women with ICL/P fetuses had brain morphology changes involving language, auditory, vision, and sensory cortex, which may be their special brain changes compared to normal pregnant women. This study may provide clues for the early detection of fetuses with ICL/P, and be vital for preconception and prenatal counseling with non-invasive methods. (shrink)

Food safety risk is becoming a vital issue for public health, and improving public awareness of FSR through social media is necessary. This study aims to explore specific mechanisms of FSR perception; it first categorizes 19 risk characteristics into two variables, dread and efficacy, and then examines how social media use affects perceived FSR through both variables. Additionally, the study explores the moderating effects of source credibility and science literacy on the mechanisms of FSR perception. Based on a nationwide online (...) survey of more than six salient food safety issues in China, the study found that exposure to food safety risk information on social media can help improve perceived FSR based on the proposed “dread–efficacy processing model”, where dread stimulates perceived risk, while efficacy suppresses risk perception. Moreover, source credibility intensifies the effect of social media use on efficacy appraisal, whereas science literacy exerts a “double-weakening” influence on dread appraisal. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed. (shrink)

The signals in numerous complex systems of engineering can be regarded as nonlinear parameter trend with noise which is identically distributed random signals or deterministic stationary chaotic signals. The commonly used methods for parameter estimation of nonlinear trend in signals are mainly based on least squares. It can cause inaccurate estimation results when the noise is complex. This paper proposes a calibration method for this issue in the case of single parameter via nonstationarity measure from the perspective of the stationarity (...) of residual sequence. Some numerical studies are conducted for validation. Results of numerical studies show that the proposed calibration method performs well for various models with different noise strengths and types and can significantly improve the accuracy of initial estimates obtained by least squares method. This is the first time that the nonstationarity measure is applied to the parameter calibration. All these results will be a guide for future studies of other parameter calibrations. (shrink)

Background and aimDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, an Internet-Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program was delivered and may be better than an in-person approach. Our study evaluated the effects of iMBSR intervention on mental health, self-efficacy, and body image in women with breast cancer in Taiwan.Materials and methodsSixty-seven women with breast cancer were allocated to a 6-week iMBSR program or a waitlist control group, without heterogeneity between group characteristics. Patients from both groups were measured at baseline and postintervention using three scales: Depression, Anxiety, (...) and Stress Scale, General self-efficacy scale, and Body Image Scale. Descriptive dataset analysis, paired t-test, and Student’s t-test were used to evaluate the data.ResultsAlthough iMBSR did not significantly improve depression and stress between groups, iMBSR could improve anxiety with medium effect sizes. Significant benefits were found for body image and self-efficacy, with large effect sizes.ConclusionOur preliminary study supports iMBSR as a program that can improve mental health, body image, and self-efficacy in women with breast cancer. During the COVID-19 pandemic, medical professionals can use Internet-based clinical health education. (shrink)