With the implementation of national carbon emission reduction policies and the development of online shopping, manufacturers are making low-carbon efforts and selling products through dual channels. This paper constructs a dual-channel supply chain decision-making model composed of low-carbon emission reduction manufacturers and retailers and studies the optimal decision-making problem of the supply chain under subsidies by the government based on emission reduction R&D and per unit product emission reduction. The research results show the following: when the government subsidizes emission reduction (...) R&D, the emission reduction will have an impact on retailers’ optimal prices, manufacturers’ optimal wholesale prices, and optimal direct sales channel sales prices. The profit of the manufacturer increases with the increase in carbon emissions, and the profit of the manufacturer increases to a certain level and then appears to decline. When the government adopts a subsidy method based on the emission reduction per unit product, the manufacturer’s wholesale price and the selling price of direct sales channels, as well as the retailer’s own optimal price, will increase with the increase in emission reductions. Retailers’ profits will increase linearly with the increase in carbon emissions. Manufacturers’ profits will first increase in a straight line and then increase in a curve. (shrink)

Introduction: Few studies are available on the prevalence and sleep-related factors of dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) in Chinese older adults, aiming to explore the associations between sleep characteristics and DLB.Methods: A cross-sectional study with 7,528 individuals aged ≥65 years in 106 communities in Northern China was conducted from April 2019 to January 2020. Questionaries (including demographic characteristics, comorbidities, lifestyles, and sleep characteristics) were administered, and neuropsychological assessments and physical examination were conducted in phase I; screening for probable DLB was (...) done in phase II. Logistic regressions were used to assess associations.Results: A total of 919 (12.2%, 919/7,528) participants had dementia, and 101 (1.3%, 101/7,528) participants were diagnosed with DLB. The prevalence of dementia and DLB were slightly higher or equal in women, increased with age, and roughly decreased with nighttime sleep duration. Of the 101 participants, all of them (100.0%) had cognitive impairment, 46 (44.54%) displayed fluctuating cognition, 72 (71.29%) of them showed visual hallucination, 22 (21.78%) individuals reported RBD, and 27.71% showed Parkinsonism. Sleeping for 8 h had combined diagnostic value for DLB (AUC = 0.783, 95%CI: 0.734–0.831, p < 0.001).Conclusions: The current prevalence of DLB is 1.3% in Northern China. Short or long nighttime sleep duration is independently associated with the occurrence of dementia and DLB. (shrink)

Mystical experiences are often regarded as potential sources of epistemic justification for religious beliefs. However, the ‘disanalogy objection’ maintains that, in contrast to sense perceptions, mystical experiences lack social verifiability and are thus merely subjective states that cannot substantiate objective truths. This article explores a novel externalist response that involves the concept of angels. As spiritual beings, angels can directly perceive God and verify these perceptions in their celestial community. Thus, the ‘direct perception of God’ is not inherently incapable of (...) social verification. While invoking angels might appear contentious, it coheres with the externalist approach of conceptualising cognitive states under hypothetical settings. Despite the differences between humans and angels and their lack of interaction for verification purposes, our approach remains valid because mystics not only exemplify the same general type of ‘direct perception of God’ as angels but can also be preliminary members of a wider celestial community. (shrink)

This essay demonstrates that race is a property or trait, not a species. It shows that racism wrongly presupposes that race is a species and functions as a species; such a presupposition is metaphysically erroneous. It argues that a new metaphysics of race with the Aristotelian distinction between a species and a property/trait is fundamental to the present philosophical discourse of race.

Histone post-translational modifications play important roles in transcriptional regulation. It is known that multiple histone modifications can act in a combinatorial manner. In this study, we investigated the effects of multiple histone modifications on expression levels of five gene categories in coding regions. The combinatorial patterns of modifications for the five gene categories were also studied in the regions. Our results indicated that the differences in the expression levels between any two gene categories were significant. There were some corresponding differences (...) in multiple histone modification levels among the five gene categories. Multiple histone modifications jointly impacted expression levels of every gene category. Four mutual combinations of histone modifications were found and analyzed. (shrink)

This essay explores numerous and complicated naturalized epistemology against the background of pragmatism. We distinguish three programmes of naturalized epistemology: strong, moderate, and weak. By considering commitments of pragmatism on which different programmes depend, we point out the close-knit relationship between pragmatism and naturalized epistemology. We also illustrate the essential origin of today's controversy over naturalized epistemology and predict the uptrend of naturalized epistemology.

Accumulating research has identified the interactive effects of catechol-O-methyltransferase gene Val158Met polymorphism and environmental factors on aggression. However, available evidence was mainly based upon correlational design, which yields mixed findings concerning who are more affected by environmental conditions and has been challenged for the low power of analyses on gene–environment interaction. Drawing on a mixed design, we scrutinized how COMT Val158Met polymorphism impacts on aggression, assessed by hostility, aggressive motivation, and aggressive behavior, under different social conditions in a sample of (...) 70 Chinese male undergraduate students. We found that both Val/Val homozygote and Met alleles carriers showed differences in the feelings of hostility and aggressive motivation under conditions of exclusion versus inclusion, but these differences were more pronounced for Met allele carriers. These findings implied that COMT Val158Met polymorphism did not respond to environmental stimuli in an all-or-none way and shed light on the importance of examining the gene–environment interaction using a mixed design. (shrink)

Given the centrality of learners’ individual differences in their academic achievement, a plethora of research has been done on various individual difference variables and their associations with learners’ increased achievement. Yet, the role of creativity and self-efficacy in EFL learners’ academic achievement has not been extensively studied. Further, no review inquiry has simultaneously probed into the consequences of these two individual difference variables for learners’ academic achievement. This study strives to fill this underappreciated gap by addressing the positive consequences of (...) creativity and self-efficacy for EFL learners’ academic achievement. The desirable consequences of creativity and self-efficacy beliefs were clarified using the available evidence. Finally, the conclusions and consequences of the findings are discussed. (shrink)

In poor and remote areas, teachers frequently encounter serious ongoing challenges and experience teacher exhaustion due to the uneven distribution of resource supply, and a shortage of professional support. Maintaining teachers’ professional wellbeing in an unfavorable teaching environment has become a major challenge. The current study explores teachers’ professional wellbeing in the context of a five-month-long professional development program designed for teachers in areas of deep poverty in China. This study adopted the method of narrative enquiry and collected diaries written (...) before and after the program from 46 primary school English teachers. Based on the manually analyzed data, it was found that teachers’ overall wellbeing at work was enhanced in terms of their professional meaning, engagement, and achievement. The systematic analysis of the diaries helped to better understand how the program exerted such an effect on teachers’ learning experiences and their wellbeing. (shrink)

This study aimed to discuss the relationships among the brand image of universities (external variables), university satisfaction (mediating variables) and customer lifetime value (internal variables). The findings can serve as a reference for higher educational institutions in strengthening their advantages and overcoming their shortcomings, as well as for administrative decision-making. A questionnaire survey was conducted on university students in Taiwan, and 470 valid samples were retrieved. The data were analysed with structural equation modelling and multi-group analysis. The results showed that (...) brand image influences customer satisfaction, which in turn affects customer lifetime value. Satisfaction is a partial mediating variable between brand image and customer lifetime value. Multi-group analysis found that gender has no interfering effect between brand image and satisfaction, nor does it between satisfaction and customer lifetime value or between brand image and customer lifetime value. (shrink)

This paper proposes a novel robust fixed-time control for the robot manipulator system with uncertainties. Based on the uniform robust exact differentiator algorithm, a robust control term is constructed. Then, a robust fixed-time inverse dynamics control is proposed. For the proposed control method, the fixed-time stability of a closed-loop system with uncertainties is strictly proved. The newly proposed method exhibits the following two attractive features. First, the proposed control scheme extends the existing fixed-time IDC for the robot manipulator system to (...) the robust control scheme. Second, the proposed method is strictly nonsingular rather than the commonly used approximate approach. Simulation result demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme. (shrink)

Peer assessment is employed as one fundamental practice of classroom-based assessment in terms of its learning-oriented and formative nature. The exercise of peer assessment has multiple and additional benefits for student learning. However, research into the learning processes in peer assessment is scarce both in theory and in practice, making it difficult to evaluate and pinpoint its value as a tool in assessment as learning. This study focuses both on the learning process and outcome through assessment activities. We set out (...) with three goals in mind: to examine students' assessment performance in context, to evaluate its impact on student progress, and to illuminate teachers on organizing assessment activities. Three specific research questions are answered in this study: How do student raters perform in the process of PA in an advanced English class? To what extent do assessment activities influence the students' speaking ability? What are students' perceptions of PA regarding its benefits and caveats? A total of 29 undergraduate students participated in two assessment activities on argumentative speaking. Many-Facet Rasch Model analysis was conducted to measure the rater effects both at the group level and the individual level. Bias/interaction analyses were performed to diagnose rater behavior in different contexts including the rating session, speaking session, and peer assessment vs. self-assessment. Questionnaire and semi-structured interview data were also collected to explore factors and strategies that could interfere with PA as AaL. Results show that students exhibited stable rating behavior and made progress in argumentative speaking in all dimensions, including delivery, organization, and language use. They are more stringent with themselves than with peers although there is one rare case with a bias against peers. Participants acknowledged the benefits of PA but also shared reasonable concerns in practice. This study validated the feasibility and the effectiveness of PA for student learning. Discussion on findings and guidelines for effective implementation of PA as AaL are provided. (shrink)

Leadership styles, especially empowering leadership, affect the psychological relationship between employees and organizations, and then affect employees’ positive behavior in the organization. In this research, we studied the effects of empowering leadership and psychological distance on employees’ pro-environmental behavior and explored the mechanism of green organizational climate. By adopting correlation analysis, statistical analysis, and regression analysis, we conducted a multisource field study of 873 valid employee questionnaires to verify our theoretical model. The results showed that empowering leadership had a significant (...) positive impact on psychological distance and employees’ pro-environmental behavior; and psychological distance played a partly intermediation role in the relationship between empowering leadership and employees’ pro-environmental behavior. Moreover, GOC can promote employees’ pro-environmental behavior, but it cannot regulate between psychological distance and employees’ pro-environmental behavior. The findings obtained some intriguing insights that could help to better guide employees toward pro-environmental behavior. (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)

Paul Ricoeur develops a hermeneutics of tradition centered on a threefold conception of tradition which involves the notions of traditionality, traditions, and Tradition. These refer to form, content, and truth-claims within the framework of the hermeneutics of historical consciousness. This hermeneutics of tradition is treated in a panchronic and ternary way. Both methods operate at the levels of past, future and present, while the ternary method also consists in the rhetoric of truth-claims, the dialectic of remoteness vs. de-distanciation and that (...) of question vs. answer. This article attempts to study three aspects of the panchronic and ternary approach: (1) a living and ternary tradition with an ongoing dialectic interweaving the ecstases of time; (2) tradition in relation to historical consciousness and the spatialization of historicity; (3) temporalizing history and historicizing schematism in threefold mimesis. (shrink)

Background: Losing one’s only child may lead to post-traumatic stress disorder, of which re-experiencing is the core symptom. However, neuroimaging studies of sex differences in re-experiencing in the context of the trauma of losing one’s only child and PTSD are scarce; comparisons of the functional networks from the hippocampal subfields to the thalamus might clarify the neural basis.Methods: Thirty couples without any psychiatric disorder who lost their only child, 55 patients with PTSD, and 50 normal controls underwent resting-state functional magnetic (...) resonance imaging. The functional connectivity from the hippocampal subregions to the thalamus and the correlations of FC with re-experiencing symptoms were analyzed within and between the sexes.Results: Compared with husbands without PTSD, wives without PTSD had higher re-experiencing symptoms and weaker FC between the right hippocampal cornu ammonis 3 and the right thalamus. Moreover, only the correlation between the RCA3-RT FC and re-experiencing in wives without PTSD was significant. Among the three groups, only the RCA3-RT FC in female subjects was markedly different. Additionally, the RCA3-RT FC in wives without PTSD was remarkably lower relative to female patients with PTSD.Conclusion: Wives without PTSD who lost their only child had worse re-experiencing symptoms relative to their husbands, which was associated with the FC alteration between the hippocampal subregions and the thalamus. Importantly, the low level of the RCA3-RT FC may play a potentially protective role against the development of PTSD in wives who have lost their only child. (shrink)

Inhibitory control training is a promising method to improve individual performance of inhibitory control. Recent studies have suggested transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation as a novel approach to affect cognitive function owing to its ability to modulate the locus coeruleus-noradrenaline system. To examine the synergistic effects of combining ICT with tVNS, 58 young males in college were randomly assigned to four groups: ICT + tVNS, ICT + sham tVNS, sham ICT + tVNS, and sham ICT + sham tVNS. Participants were instructed (...) to complete three sessions that comprised pre-training tests, a training session, and post-training tests sequentially. Results showed that the ICT + tVNS group significantly improved training and near-transfer effects on the stop-signal and Go/No-go tasks, and these effects were larger than those of the other groups. However, none of the groups exhibited the far-transfer effect on the color-word Stroop task. These results suggest that tVNS augments the intervention effects of training and similar inhibition tasks to achieve the synergistic effect; however, it does not modulate the effects of non-training tasks and obtain the far-transfer effect. ICT combined with tVNS may be a valuable intervention for improving IC in healthy individuals in certain industries and offers novel research ideas for using tVNS for cognitive improvement. (shrink)

This paper presents a new method to recognize human activities based on weighted classification for the features extracted by human body. Towards this end, new features depend on weight taken from image or video used in proposed descriptor. Human pose plays an important role in extracted features; then these features are used as the weight input with classifier. We use machine learning during two steps of training and testing images of standard dataset that can be used during benchmarking the system. (...) Unlike previous methods that need size or length of shapes mainly to represent the cues when machine learning is used to recognize human activities, accurate experimental results coming from appropriate segments of the human body proved the worthiness of proposed method. Twelve activities are used in challenging of availability comparison with dataset to demonstrate our method. The results show that we achieved 87.3% in training set, while in testing set, we achieved 94% in terms of precision. (shrink)

The capacitive voltage transformer is a special measuring and protecting device, which is commonly applied in high-voltage power systems. Its measurement accuracy is affected seriously by the stray capacitances of the capacitance voltage divider to ground and other charged parts. In this study, based on the boundary element method, a mathematical model was established firstly to calculate the stray capacitance. Then, the voltage distribution of the CVD was obtained by the CVD’s equivalent circuit model. Next, the effect of stray capacitance (...) on the voltage distribution and the voltage difference ratio of CVD was analysed in detail. We finally designed three types of shield and optimized their structure parameters to reduce VDR. The results indicated that the average deviation rate between calculated and experimental measured voltages is only 0.015%; that is to say, the method has high calculation precision. The stray capacitance of the CVD to ground is far larger than that of the CVD to the high-voltage terminal. It results in the inhomogeneous distribution of voltage and the increase of VDR. For the test CVT, its VDR exceeds the requirement of class 0.2. Among all of the three types of shield, the C type reduced the VDR of the test CVT the most. After optimizing the structure parameters of C-type shield, the VDR is further reduced to 0.08%. It is not only in accord with the requirement of class 0.2 but also has an adequate margin. (shrink)