BackgroundPlagiarism is common and threatens the integrity of the scientific literature. However, its detection is time consuming and difficult, presenting challenges to editors and publishers who are entrusted with ensuring the integrity of published literature.MethodsIn this study, the extent of plagiarism in manuscripts submitted to a major specialty medical journal was documented. We manually curated submitted manuscripts and deemed an article contained plagiarism if one sentence had 80 % of the words copied from another published paper. Commercial plagiarism detection software (...) was utilized and its use was optimized.ResultsIn 400 consecutively submitted manuscripts, 17 % of submissions contained unacceptable levels of plagiarized material with 82 % of plagiarized manuscripts submitted from countries where English was not an official language. Using the most commonly employed commercial plagiarism detection software, sensitivity and specificity were studied with regard to the generated plagiarism score. The cutoff score maximizing both sensitivity and specificity was 15 % (sensitivity 84.8 % and specificity 80.5 %).ConclusionsPlagiarism was a common occurrence among manuscripts submitted for publication to a major American specialty medical journal and most manuscripts with plagiarized material were submitted from countries in which English was not an official language. The use of commercial plagiarism detection software can be optimized by selecting a cutoff score that reflects desired sensitivity and specificity. (shrink)

End-of-life decision making frequently occurs in the intensive care unit (ICU). There is a lack of information on how a do-not-resuscitate (DNR) order affects treatments received by critically ill patients in ICUs. The objectives of this study were: (1) to compare the use of life support therapies between patients with a DNR order and those without; (2) to examine life support therapies prior to and after the issuance of a DNR order; and (3) to determine the clinical factors that influence (...) the initiation of a DNR order in ICUs in Taiwan. A prospective, descriptive, and correlational study was conducted. A total of 202 patients comprising 133 (65.8%) who had a DNR order, and 69 (34.1%) who did not, participated in this study. In the last 48 hours of their lives, patients who had a DNR order were less likely to receive life support therapies than those who did not have a DNR order. Older age, being unmarried, the presence of an adult child as a surrogate decision maker, a perceived inability to survive ultimate discharge from the ICU, and longer hospitalization in the ICU were significant predictors of issuing a DNR order for critically ill patients. This study will draw attention to how, when, and by whom, critically ill patients’ preferences about DNR are elicited and honored. (shrink)

This is an intellectual biography of Feng Youlan [Fung Yu-lan]. It explores Feng’s work and the trajectory of changes in Feng’s philosophical outlook against the social and political contexts of Feng’s life from the 1920s to 1990.

The prediction of the secondary structure of a protein from its amino acid sequence is an important step towards the prediction of its three-dimensional structure. However, the accuracy of ab initio secondary structure prediction from sequence is about 80 % currently, which is still far from satisfactory. In this study, we proposed a novel method that uses binomial distribution to optimize tetrapeptide structural words and increment of diversity with quadratic discriminant to perform prediction for protein three-state secondary structure. A benchmark (...) dataset including 2,640 proteins with sequence identity of less than 25 % was used to train and test the proposed method. The results indicate that overall accuracy of 87.8 % was achieved in secondary structure prediction by using ten-fold cross-validation. Moreover, the accuracy of predicted secondary structures ranges from 84 to 89 % at the level of residue. These results suggest that the feature selection technique can detect the optimized tetrapeptide structural words which affect the accuracy of predicted secondary structures. (shrink)

The problem of Confucius has been the subject of a most heated debate in philosophy circles for several years. Prior to 1962, the major points of debate were: whether the philosophical thought of Confucius is idealistic or materialistic; whether the political thought of Confucius represents [the interests of] the ruined slaveholders or the newly emerged landlord class; and whether the thoughts of Confucius are reactionary or progressive. However, since the spring of 1962 a new trend began to appear. Articles glorifying (...) Confucius began to appear in the press throughout the country. They dealt with Confucian ideas on a profusion of subjects, such as arts, music, military affairs, psychology, and so forth. Some of these articles presented an abstract analysis of Confucian thoughts as transcending all classes and times and made them eternal and "evergreen"; some went as far as to put Marxist ideology under the name of Confucius. Others maintained that we should treasure Confucian thoughts and that any criticism would ruin the legacy. Still others asserted that the policy of treasuring legacy of the Confucian thoughts should be "arrangement, consolidation, and elevation.". (shrink)

Concerns with improper collection and usage of personal information by businesses or governments have been seen as critical to the success of the emerging electronic commerce. In this regard, computer professionals have the oversight responsibility for information privacy because they have the most extensive knowledge of their organization's systems and programs, as well as an intimate understanding of the data. Thus, the competence of these professionals in ensuring sound practice of information privacy is of great importance to both researchers and (...) practitioners. This research addresses the question of whether male computer professionals differ from their female counterparts in their self-regulatory efficacy to protect personal information privacy. A total of 103 male and 65 female subjects surveyed in Taiwan responded to a 10-item questionnaire that includes three measures: protection, non-distribution, and non-acquisition. The findings show significant gender differences exist in the subjects' overall self-regulatory efficacy for information privacy, and, in particular, that female subjects in this study exhibited a higher level of self-regulatory efficacy than males for the protection and non-acquisition of personal privacy information. The identification of the factorial structure of the self-regulatory efficacy concerning information privacy may contribute to future research directed to examining the links between privacy efficacy and psychological variables, such as ethical attitude, ethical intention, and self-esteem. Studies can also be extended to investigate how different cultural practices of morality and computer use in men and women may shape the different development patterns of privacy self-efficacy. Understanding the different cultural practices may then shed light on the social sources of privacy competence and the appropriate remedies that can be provided to improve the situation. (shrink)

本书主要内容包括:中国刑事证据制度的改革、论刑事法庭审判中证据的判断与运用、关于《人民法院统一证据规定》调研报告、证明负担动态论研究、中国证据立法的理想与现实等.

This paper mainly studies the communication performance of visible light communication link in fire smoke environment. Compared with the previous studies, this study no longer only considers a single wavelength and considers the influence of smoke and background light noise. Firstly, the variation of background light noise caused by sunlight during a day was analyzed, then signal-to-noise ratio and bit error rate of the visible light communication link in fire smoke environment with different visibility were calculated, and finally, the variation (...) of received power with the angle β between the LED optical axis and the communication link was analyzed. The results show that, during a day from 07:00 to 18:30, background light noise first increases and then decreases, BER changes in the same trend and reaches the maximum at about 13:00, while SNR changes in the opposite trend and reaches the minimum at about 13:00. When visibility is 100 m, the maximum difference of SNR between 7:00 and 13:00 is about 19 dB, and the maximum difference of BER is about 5.3E-10. At 7:00, the maximum difference of SNR is about 13 dB between the visibility of 1 m and the visibility of 100 m, and the maximum difference of BER is about 1.44E − 11, and received power decreases with the increase of β. In addition, SNR increases with visibility of fire smoke environment, and BER changes in the opposite trend. Lastly, in order to enhance the performance of visible light communication in fire smoke environment, this paper gives the transmitting power scheme. (shrink)

© 2015, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.Genetic studies have identified single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with the risk of prostate cancer. It remains unclear whether such genetic variants are associated with disease aggressiveness. The NCI-SPORE Genetics Working Group retrospectively collected clinicopathologic information and genotype data for 36 SNPs which at the time had been validated to be associated with PC risk from 25,674 cases with PC. Cases were grouped according to race, Gleason score and aggressiveness. Statistical analyses were used to compare the frequency (...) of the SNPs between different disease cohorts. After adjusting for multiple testing, only PC-risk SNP rs2735839 was significantly and inversely associated with aggressive and high-grade disease in European men. Similar associations with aggressive and high-grade disease were documented in African-American subjects. The G allele of rs2735839 was associated with disease aggressiveness even at low PSA levels in both European and African-American men. Our results provide further support that a PC-risk SNP rs2735839 near the KLK3 gene on chromosome 19q13 may be associated with aggressive and high-grade PC. Future prospectively designed, case-case GWAS are needed to identify additional SNPs associated with PC aggressiveness. (shrink)

Previous research has shown that virtuous leader behavior in the form of benevolent leadership has considerable impact on employee creativity. However, little is known as to how and under what conditions these constructs are linked. In the current research, we proposed and tested a moderated mediation model positing leader–member exchange as a mediator, and employee power-distance orientation as a moderator of this relationship. Two studies were conducted to test our hypothesized model. In Study 1, repeated measured data collected from 284 (...) Chinese employees in an information technology company demonstrated that benevolent leadership had a lagged effect on LMX. In Study 2, analyses of multisource and lagged data from 391 Chinese employees in 42 research and development teams, and their direct supervisors indicated that benevolent leadership was positively related to supervisor-rated employee creativity via LMX. In addition, the relationship between benevolent leadership and LMX was stronger for employees high in power-distance orientation. Theoretical implications of benevolent leadership’s research and practical contributions concerning promoting creativity in organizations where benevolent leaders prevail are also discussed. (shrink)

On 19 October 2013, the Chinese government issued the Opinions on Further Regulation on Party and Political Leaders and Cadres Working Part-Time in Enterprises, also known as the 18th Decree, to regulate government officials’ employment with businesses. The 18th Decree is widely perceived as having had a significant impact on the use of independent directors with political backgrounds by firms, given the prevalence of this business practice. This paper examines the market reaction to the 18th Decree to ascertain the value (...) effect of political connections in China. We note a negative relationship between the political connections of independent directors and market reaction. We also note that the negative relationship between political connections and market reaction is moderated by ownership type and state of regional development. Specifically, we find that the negative relationship holds only for private firms in less developed regions. These results support our prediction that political connections add value to Chinese firms and that the value effect of political connection is contingent on institutional factors. (shrink)

Supply chain management is critical for addressing uncertainties caused by random demand and production yield. In this study, a random yield supply chain, in which the production process of fresh agricultural products is easily affected by factors, such as weather, soil, or plant diseases and insect pests, was considered. Therefore, the actual output is typically less than the planned output. A model in which the producer faces yield uncertainty was considered, and the influence of the producer’s fairness concerns on the (...) planned output of the contract-farming supply chain was considered. Methods to motivate the producer to increase planned output through reasonable contracts were investigated. The results revealed that the producer’s fairness concern considerably influences the optimal expected profit. In the case of the random output, the planned output and maximum expected profits reduce when the farmer exhibits fairness concerns. As the degree of the producer’s fairness concern increases, the planned output and expected profit gradually decrease The cost-sharing contract can effectively encourage the producer to increase his planned output and expected utility. Finally, the results were verified numerically. (shrink)

AimTo investigate the status of positive mental characters and humanistic care ability among Chinese nursing students, and confirm the association between positive mental characters and humanistic care ability.MethodsA cross-sectional survey was conducted. Nine hundred eighty-one Chinese nursing students were recruited from hospitals and community healthcare services in Changsha, Hunan, China. Three different self-reported questionnaires were applied: The Demographic Characteristics Questionnaire, Humanistic care ability of Nursing Undergraduates Assessment Scale and Positive Mental Characters Scale for Chinese College Students. Pearson correlation analysis and (...) multiple liner regression analysis were performed to analyze the association between positive mental character and humanistic care ability for Chinese nursing students.ResultsThe mean scores of nursing students' humanistic care ability and positive mental character were 125.94 ± 21.19, 233.18 ± 38.59, respectively. The Pearson correlation results showed that positive mental character was significantly associated with humanistic care ability. Multiple liner regression analysis indicated that positive mental characters, four dimensions of courage, humanity, justice and transcendence in positive mental character, care from classmates were found to be independent predictors of humanistic care ability.ConclusionPositive mental characters are important considerations in the development, implementation and evaluation of humanistic care ability interventions. (shrink)

The paper examines the role of organizational commercial slack (OCS) in mediating the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and the effectiveness of knowledge transfer (KT) in universities. The paper identifies two types of commercial slack in the university setting: financial and promotional. Four research hypotheses are proposed. Pooled data, that is, a combination of a questionnaire survey of 110 Taiwanese universities with a data set of university KT effectiveness from the Ministry of Education, Taiwan, are collected to test the aforementioned (...) research hypotheses. The empirical results indicate that the EO of a university enables the university to provide appropriate OCS. Furthermore, the commercial slack of a university positively mediates the relationship between EO and KT effectiveness. The paper concludes that developing EO and OCS are crucial for improving the KT effectiveness of a university. Moreover, some managerial and policy implications for promoting EO and OCS in universities are suggested. (shrink)

Competition for land is increasing as demand for multiple land uses and ecosystem services rises. Land regulation of the principles of landscape ecology is necessary to develop more sustainable approaches to land use planning. The research evaluated the present land patterns and determined best practices for its regulation of Dongwang Township in Quyang County, located in the Taihang Mountain area of Hebei Province, China. The research used the landscape ecology theory to construct an index system for landscape pattern analysis based (...) on the GIS and Fragstats 3.3 software. In this study, we examined the specific reasons that landscape ecology is superior to traditional methods in land consolidation planning and design, which is conducive to the comprehensive development of land ecological benefits. Landscape ecological planning can effectively reduce landscape fragmentation and improve intensive management. The result found that the descending order of the Shannon index was current landscape, landscape ecological planning, and traditional planning. Landscape ecological planning could protect the natural diversity than traditional planning. Landscape ecological planning enables the creation of long corridors, with higher densities and connectivity and lower average corridor widths than traditional planning. Besides, it can improve ecological service function values in the study area to varying degrees, thus discouraging residents from limiting themselves to grain production. This research has great potential to improve the visibility of ecosystem services in local land use planning and, thus, to improve the ecological functioning of future landscapes. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic spread catastrophically over the world since the spring of 2020. In this paper, a heterogeneous branching process with immigration is established to quantify the human-to-human transmission of COVID-19 in local communities, based on the temporal and structural transmission patterns extracted from public case disclosures by four provincial Health Commissions in China. With proper parameter settings, our branching model matches the actual transmission chains satisfactorily and, therefore, sheds light on the underlying COVID-19 spreading mechanism. Moreover, based on our (...) branching model, the efficacy of home quarantine and social distancing are explored, providing a reference for the effective prevention of COVID-19 worldwide. (shrink)

Urban streetscapes are outdoor areas in which the general public can appreciate green landscapes and engage in outdoor activities along the street. This study tested the extent to which the degree of awareness of urban street trees impacts attention restoration and perceived restorativeness. We manipulated the degree of awareness of street trees. Participants were placed into four groups and shown different images: (a) streetscapes with absolutely no trees; (b) streetscapes with flashes of trees in which participants had minimal awareness of (...) the content; (c) streetscapes with trees; and (d) streetscapes with trees to which participants were told to pay attention. We compared the performance of 138 individuals on measures of attention and their evaluations of perceived restorativeness. Two main findings emerged. First, streetscapes with trees improved the performance of participants on attentional tests even without their awareness of the trees. Second, participants who had raised awareness of street trees performed best on the attentional test and rated the streetscapes as being more restorative. These findings enhance our knowledge about the role of an individual's awareness of restorative elements and have implications for designers and individuals who are at risk of attentional fatigue. (shrink)

With renewable energy being increasingly connected to power grids, pumped storage plants play a very important role in restraining the fluctuation of power grids. However, conventional control strategy could not adapt well to the different control tasks. This paper proposes an intelligent nonlinear model predictive control strategy, in which hydraulic-mechanical and electrical subsystems are combined in a synchronous control framework. A newly proposed online sequential extreme learning machine algorithm with forgetting factor is introduced to learn the dynamic behaviors of the (...) coupling system. Specifically, the initial learning parameters are optimized by prior-knowledge learning and a new self-adaptive adjustment strategy is also put forward. Subsequently, the stair-like control strategy and artificial sheep algorithm are used in rolling the optimization mechanism to replace the existing complex differential geometric solutions. Comparative experiments are carried out under different working conditions based on a PSP in China. The results show that the influence from coupling factors can be considerable and the proposed MPC strategy indicates superiority in voltage and load adjustment as well as the frequency oscillation suppression. (shrink)

Includes translations of the important manuscripts in silk found at the famous Mawangdui Tomb in 1973.

There has been no consensus on the neural dissociation between emotion-label and emotion-laden words, which remains one of the major concerns in affective neurolinguistics. The current study adopted dot-probe tasks to investigate the valence effect on attentional bias toward Chinese emotion-label and emotion-laden words. Behavioral data showed that emotional word type and valence interacted in attentional bias scores with an attentional bias toward positive emotion-laden words rather than positive emotion-label words and that this bias was derived from the disengagement difficulty (...) in positive emotion-laden words. In addition, an attentional bias toward negative emotion-label words relative to positive emotion-label words was observed. The event-related potential data demonstrated an interaction between emotional word type, valence, and hemisphere. A significant hemisphere effect was observed during the processing of positive emotion-laden word pairs rather than positive emotion-label, negative emotion-label, and negative emotion-laden word pairs, with positive emotion-laden word pairs eliciting an enhanced P1 in the right hemisphere as compared to the left hemisphere. Our results found a dynamic attentional bias toward positive emotion-laden words; individuals allocated more attention to positive emotion-laden words in the early processing stage and had difficulty disengaging attention from them in the late processing stage. (shrink)

Background: Healthcare workers in the front line of diagnosis, treatment, and care of patients with coronavirus disease 2019 are at great risk of both infection and developing mental health symptoms. This study aimed to investigate the following: whether healthcare workers in general hospitals experience higher mental distress than those in psychiatric hospitals; the role played by religion and alexithymic trait in influencing the mental health condition and perceived level of happiness of healthcare workers amidst the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic; (...) and factors that influence the resilience of healthcare workers at 6 weeks' follow-up.Methods: Four-hundred and fifty-eight healthcare workers were recruited from general and psychiatric hospitals, and 419 were followed-up after 6 weeks. All participants filled out the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale, five-item Brief-Symptom Rating Scale, and the Chinese Oxford Happiness Questionnaire.Results: Under the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic, 12.3% of frontline healthcare workers in general hospitals reported having mental distress and perceived lower social adaptation status compared with those working in psychiatric hospitals. Christians/Catholics perceived better psychological well-being, and Buddhists/Taoists were less likely to experience mental distress. The results at 6 weeks of follow-up showed that the perceived lower social adaptation status of general hospital healthcare workers was temporary and improved with time. Christian/Catholic religion and time had independent positive effects on psychological well-being; however, the interaction of Christian/Catholic religion and time had a negative effect.Conclusions: Collectivism and individualism in the cultural context are discussed with regard to alexithymic trait and Buddhist/Taoist and Christian/Catholic religious faiths. Early identification of mental distress and interventions should be implemented to ensure a healthy and robust clinical workforce for the treatment and control of the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

The development of access rights as, perhaps, a replacement for copyright in digital rights management (DRM) systems, draws our attention to the importance of ‚the balance problem’ between information industries and the individual user. The nature of just what this ‚balance’ is, is often mentioned in copyright writings and judgments, but is rarely discussed. In this paper I focus upon elucidating the idea of balance in intellectual property and propose that the balance concept is not only the most feasible way (...) to examine whether past solutions to copyright problems are fair, but it also provides the ability to predict what will be the better solution for all affected parties. Based upon an envy-free contribution towards predicting the efficient balance, game theory is applied in a novel manner to the DRM problem to infer where and what might be the optimal balance in the debate over the nature of access right. (shrink)

Traffic congestion is a common problem in many countries, especially in big cities. At present, China’s urban road traffic accidents occur frequently, the occurrence frequency is high, the accident causes traffic congestion, and accidents cause traffic congestion and vice versa. The occurrence of traffic accidents usually leads to the reduction of road traffic capacity and the formation of traffic bottlenecks, causing the traffic congestion. In this paper, the formation and propagation of traffic congestion are simulated by using the improved medium (...) traffic model, and the control strategy of congestion dissipation is studied. From the point of view of quantitative traffic congestion, the paper provides the fact that the simulation platform of urban traffic integration is constructed, and a feasible data analysis, learning, and parameter calibration method based on RBF neural network is proposed, which is used to determine the corresponding decision support system. The simulation results prove that the control strategy proposed in this paper is effective and feasible. According to the temporal and spatial evolution of the paper, we can see that the network has been improved on the whole. (shrink)

This research examines wearable, fashionable interaction design to mediate the narrative and semiotic concepts found in technology and fashion. We discuss the principles of design anthropology using Taiwan proverbs to transmit the “people-situation-reason-object” method and analyze five case studies that provide new approaches for designers engaged in future industry. Design anthropology attempts to engage physiological and psychological design through technological function, meaning formation, and fashion aesthetics to achieve cognition between people and the environment. The wearable, fashionable interaction displays characteristics of (...) narrative and semantics transmitted through craft culture as well as collective, cheerful, and creative performance. It is a confident and innovative attempt, which bears a joyful and fundamental interface. This study takes two directions, with cultural thinking serving as the basis to establish a set of traditional craft designs and interactive objects that assist designers in using the senses to inform and initiate new lifestyle values. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated levels of stress and anxiety for P-12 teachers around the globe. The present study aims to understand teachers’ emotional experiences and feelings of burnout during the pandemic, and how individual (i.e., emotion regulation strategies) or contextual factors (e.g., school administrative support) intersect with different facets of their emotional experiences. Using a sequential explanatory mixed methods design, we collected and examined survey and interview data from teachers in the southeastern United States. The structural equation model confirmed (...) the relationships among the following latent variables: negative emotion, emotion regulation, autonomy support, burnout, and teacher enthusiasm. Qualitative findings provide further insight in the contextualized nature of these relationships and how they play out across various schools and districts. (shrink)

BackgroundDreams can be affected by recent life events and long-term life experiences. Previous evidence has shown that childhood adverse experiences are associated with sleep quality and dream experiences.ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to explore the relationship between childhood adverse experiences and dream content in adults.Participants and SettingA total of 163 participants without current or past physical or mental disorders aged between 18 and 35 were screened in the hospital. Among them, 120 subjects who completed a dream content record at (...) home and whose anxiety and depression levels and sleep quality were within the normal range were included in the data analysis.MethodsA cross-sectional survey was conducted from June 2017 to December 2019. Dream content for 10 consecutive days was recorded by the participants and coded by the Hall and Van de Castle coding system. Childhood adversity was assessed by the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire. In the end, 719 dreams out of 626 nights for 120 participants were included in the data analysis, gender differences between groups were analyzed using t-tests or U tests, and Spearman’s partial correlation and multiple linear regression were used to investigate the relationship between childhood trauma and dream content.ResultsChildhood adversity was associated with characters, friendly interactions, and objects in dream content. Regression models of childhood adversity predicting characters and objects in dream content were constructed. There were no gender differences in general demographic data, sleep quality, emotional state, childhood adversity, dream recall frequency, or dream content.ConclusionChildhood adversity is associated with adult dream content. (shrink)

In this paper, a two-level green supply chain composed of a manufacturer and a retailer is taken as the background. Considering the consumer’s double consumption preference and the manufacturer’s green product R&D investment, a differential game model of the green supply chain under the government cost subsidy strategy is constructed. Firstly, the equilibrium points of the system are solved and their stability is discussed and analyzed. Secondly, the dynamic evolution process of Nash equilibrium under the parameters of green degree, green (...) preference coefficient, retail channel preference coefficient, coefficient of the sensitivity of price, and adjustment speed are described by numerical simulation. The results show that the two ways of a system entering chaos are Flip bifurcation and N-S bifurcation, respectively, by 2D bifurcation graph, and it is also verified in 1D bifurcation diagram. When the bifurcation parameters are small, the system maintains Nash equilibrium stability. If the green degree of products is increased, the green preference coefficient will also increase; on the contrary, the retail preference coefficient will decrease. Research and development cost subsidy policy can effectively improve the green degree of products and increase the sales volume of products, so as to improve the profit of supply chain members. (shrink)

Taiwan has a complete semiconductor industry chain and is important in global semiconductor manufacturing. In addition to considering operational conditions, companies have also attached importance to corporate social responsibility (CSR) in recent years. This research thus takes 60 integrated circuit (IC) companies in Taiwan as a research sample and adopts the Meta Two-stage dynamic RDM DDF (range directional model directional distance function) under an exogenous CSR model to explore their market stage efficiency and production stage efficiency. This study aimed to (...) analyze whether incorporating a company's CSR performance into performance evaluations affects the production and profitability efficiency of Taiwanese IC companies. The findings are as follows: Most IC companies practice CSR and demonstrate good CSR performance. The market stage efficiency and production stage efficiency of the IC packaging and testing group are better than those of other groups. (shrink)

Background: Informed consent is essential for the ethical conduct of clinical research and is a culturally sensitive issue. But, a measurable Chinese version of the scale to evaluate the informed consent process has not yet been explored in the existing literature. Research objectives: This study aimed to develop and psychometrically test the Chinese version of the Informed Consent Process Scale. Research design: Back-translation was conducted to develop the Chinese version of the questionnaire. A cross-sectional survey was administered, after which an (...) exploratory factor analysis was conducted. Participants: We recruited a total of 375 participants who had experience in signing an informed consent form within the previous 3 years in Taiwan. Ethical considerations: This study was approved by two Institutional Review Boards and the autonomy of the participants was respected. Findings: The Chinese version of the Informed Consent Process Scale is composed of three factors with 23 items showing evidence of acceptable reliability and validity. Three major factors were extracted and labeled: Factor 1 – ‘Understanding of the research’, Factor 2 – ‘Trust and confidence’ and Factor 3 – ‘Doubt and uncertainty’. The three factors accounted for is 52.954 of the total variance with Cronbach’s α of.917. Discussion and conclusion: The finding corroborates previous studies showing that participants had too little understanding on the informed consent forms they signed and implied the need to clarify the critical points in clinical research. The psychometric results indicated good internal consistency and validity for this newly constructed instrument, and it was found worthy of conducting further testing and application. (shrink)

As an effective cognitive and behavioral strategy, coping helps to overcome negative events. Although coping and its effects have been widely studied in psychology, little is known about the combination of entrepreneurs’ coping and its connection with firms’ innovation ambidexterity. To fill these gaps, in this study, the authors collected 106 samples through two serial-wave surveys of the Bohai Economic Rim in China and tested the theoretical hypotheses using polynomial regression with response surface analysis. The results showed that alignment coping (...) combination enhanced innovation ambidexterity by reshaping an entrepreneur’s cognitive structure. Misalignment coping combination was found to enhance innovation ambidexterity by eliciting an entrepreneur’s different types of information processing systems. This study contributes to the literatures of coping, innovation ambidexterity, and upper echelons theory from the entrepreneurial cognition approach. (shrink)

Chinese mind-body exercises are positively associated with executive function, but their effects on EF, from synthesized evidence using systematic and meta-analytic reviews, have not been conducted. Therefore, the present systematic review with meta-analysis attempted to determine whether CMBEs affect EF and its sub-domains, as well as how exercise, sample, and study characteristics moderate the causal relationship between CMBEs and EF in middle-aged and older adults. Seven electronic databases were searched for relevant studies published from the inception of each database through (...) June 2020. Randomized controlled trials with at least one outcome measure of CMBEs on EF in adults of mean age ≥ 50 years with intact cognition or mild cognitive impairment and with or without chronic diseases were included. A total of 29 studies ultimately were included in this study. The results indicated that CMBEs improved overall EF, as well as its sub-domains of working memory and shifting. The beneficial effects of CMBEs on EF occurred regardless of type, frequency of group classes, session time, total training time, and length of the CMBEs, in addition to that more frequent participation in both group classes and home practice sessions resulted in more beneficial effects. The positive effects of CMBEs on EF were also demonstrated, regardless of participants mean age, sex, and cognitive statuses, health status, as well as training mode and study language. This review thus suggests that CMBEs can be used as an effective method with small to moderate and positive effects in enhancing EF, and that more frequent group classes and home practice sessions may increase these effects. However, certain limitations, including strictly design studies, limited ES samples for specific variables, and possible biased publications, required paying particular attention to, for further exploring the effects of CMBEs on EF. (shrink)

Student employability is a key aspect of any university degree. The relationship between high student learning outcomes and high employability is a problem that needs to be addressed and improved by colleges and universities. Students with high employability can find good jobs after graduation and perform well in the workplace. Employability is associated with the success of university education, thus giving the university a good reputation. This study explores the development of employability, alongside teaching and student learning abilities to examine (...) how these variables affect student employability. The study collected 442 responses to a questionnaire to investigate the relationship between pedagogy for employability, problem-based learning, absorptive capacity, and student employability based on a structural model. The SEM results show that pedagogy for employability and problem-based learning positively correlate to absorptive capacity; pedagogy for employability and absorptive capacity positively correlate to student employability. We then analyzed a case study teaching intervention strategy with 221 students from the school of management and discuss the differential results of all variables. Results showed that the test group was superior to the control group in each variable performance, indicating that the intervention strategy proved effective. Based on these findings, this study proposes suggestions for future research. (shrink)

The structure and “metabolism” (movement and conversion of goods and energy) of urban areas has caused cities to be identified as “super‐organisms”, placed between ecosystems and the biosphere, in the hierarchy of living systems. Yet most such analogies are weak, and render the super‐organism model ineffective for sustainable development of cities. Via a cluster analysis of 15 shared traits of the hierarchical living system, we found that industrialized cities are more similar to eukaryotic cells than to multicellular organisms; enclosed systems, (...) such as factories and greenhouses, paralleling organelles in eukaryotic cells. We further developed a “super‐cell” industrialized city model: a “eukarcity” with citynucleus (urban area) as a regulating centre, and organaras (enclosed systems, which provide the majority of goods and services) as the functional components, and cityplasm (natural ecosystems and farmlands) as the matrix. This model may improve the vitality and sustainability of cities through planning and management. (shrink)

Social media users have increased rapidly in recent years; however, most are “silent users” who rarely share information online. To maintain social media companies’ stable operation and development, this research explored the effects of flow experience and identity formation on users’ intrinsic motivation to facilitate aggressive, spontaneous, and habitual participation in virtual communities. A total of 487 valid questionnaires were collected and underwent regression analysis. The results revealed that all three intrinsic motivations had a significant impact on social media participation, (...) with social interaction exerting the strongest influence. Flow experience and identification had significant, partial mediating effects on the relationship between motivation and participation. Several suggestions were provided based on the results to help social media enterprises increase user participation. It is hoped that this research could facilitate in transforming users into habitual participants to keep the operations of the virtual community stable and enduring. (shrink)