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)

According to the three-tier hierarchy of motivational potency in the self system, the self can be divided into individual self, relational self, and collective self, and individual self is at the top of the motivational hierarchy in Western culture. However, the motivational primacy of the individual self is challenged in Chinese culture, which raises the question about whether the three-tier hierarchy of motivational potency in the self system can be differentiated in the collectivist brain. The present study recorded the event-related (...) potentials (ERPs) to evaluate brain responses when participants gambled for individual self, for a close friend (relational self), or for the class (collective self). The ERP results showed that when outcome feedback was positive, gambling for individual self evoked a larger reward positivity compared with gambling for a friend or for the class, while there is no difference between the latter two conditions. In contrast, when outcome feedback was negative, no significant effect was found between conditions. The present findings provide direct electrophysiological evidence that individual self is at the top of the three-tier hierarchy of the motivational system in the collectivist brain, which supports the classical pancultural view that individual self has motivational primacy. (shrink)

Social exclusion can cause negative changes on human beings both in the physiological and psychological aspects. Although considerable efforts have been devoted to study its effects on consumption behavior, little attention has been paid to the consequence that social exclusion might have on consumer’s color preference and the underlying mechanisms. Such social events can change individual’s behavior. This work examines the influence of social exclusion on consumers’ color preference as well as the moderation and mediation effects via three experiments: Experiment (...) 1 studies the impacts of social exclusion on consumer color choice. To further validate the robustness of the results, experiment 2 is designed by replicating the findings of experiment 1 in another product category and instructed the participants to choose products with different colors. Meanwhile, the mediation effect of self-threat is examined. In Experiment 3, the moderation effect of self-construal is investigated via a 2 × 2 × between-subjects design. Our results indicate that social exclusion makes people prefer warm colors rather than cold colors. However, these effects would be mediated by self-threat, which could be further moderated by self-construal. The present study establishes the relationship between social exclusion and consumers’ color preference, which is expected to provide guidance for companies to improve product design and promotion strategies to adapt to various contexts. (shrink)

It makes sense that the more information people share, the better they communicate. To evaluate the effect of knowledge overlap on the effectiveness of communication, participants played a communication game where the “director” identified objects to the “addressee”. Pairs either shared information about most objects' names (high overlap), or about the minority of objects' names (low overlap). We found that high-overlap directors tended to use more names than low overlap directors. High overlap directors also used more names with objects whose (...) names only they knew, thereby confusing their addressees more often than low-overlap directors. We conclude that while sharing more knowledge can be beneficial to communication overall, it can cause communication to be locally ineffective. Sharing more information reduces communication effectiveness precisely when there is an opportunity to inform—when people communicate information only they themselves know. (shrink)

This paper studies two dual notions in module theory—namely, radicals and socles—from the standpoint of reverse mathematics. We first consider radicals of Z-modules, where the radical of a Z-module M is defined as the intersection of pM={px:x∈M} with p taken from all primes. It shows that ACA0 is equivalent to the existence of radicals of Z-modules over RCA0. We then study socles of modules over commutative rings with identity. The socle of an R-module M is the largest semisimple submodule of (...) M. We show that the existence of socles of modules over a commutative ring with identity is equivalent to ACA0 over RCA0. Vector spaces are semisimple modules over fields. In general, semisimple modules possess nice properties of vector spaces. Lastly, we study characterizations of semisimple modules over commutative rings using techniques of reverse mathematics. (shrink)

Three hundred and seventy-six middle school students in Wenchuan County were assessed three and one-half years after the Wenchuan earthquake to examine the effects of rumination on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and posttraumatic growth (PTG). The results revealed that recent intrusive ruminations partly mediated the relationship between intrusive rumination soon after the earthquake with PTSD but not with PTG. Recent deliberate rumination partly mediated the relationship between intrusive rumination soon after the earthquake and PTG but not PTSD. Moreover, recent deliberate (...) rumination also partly mediated the relationship between recent intrusive rumination with PTG but not with PTSD. Overall, intrusive rumination soon after the earthquake had an effect on PTSD but not on PTG through recent intrusive rumination and affected PTG but not PTSD through deliberate recent rumination. Furthermore, intrusive rumination soon after the earthquake affected PTG but not PTSD by recent deliberate rumination following recent intrusive rumination. More importantly, the present study also found that PTSD exhibited no relation to PTG. These results suggest that PTSD and PTG are influenced by different mechanisms, which further indicates that PTSD and PTG represent two separate dimensions of experience after adversity. (shrink)

Since the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 in China, people have been exposed to a flood of media news related to the pandemic every day. Studies have shown that media news about public crisis events have a significant impact on individuals' depression. However, how and when the duration of attention to pandemic news predicts depression still remains an open question. This study established a moderated mediating model to investigate the relationship between the duration of attention to pandemic news and depression, (...) the mediating effect of risk perception, and the moderating effect of future time perspective on the relationship. In early February 2020, 701 individuals from 29 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities across China were asked to self-report their duration of attention to pandemic news, level of depression, risk perception, and future time perspective during the COVID-19 outbreak. Results show that there is a significant positive correlation between the duration of attention to news on COVID-19 and depression; risk perception mediates the association between the duration of attention to pandemic news and depression; and future time perspective plays a moderating role between risk perception and depression. The findings of the present study provide theoretical implications and practically throw some light on alleviating the public's depression during pandemic periods. We highlight that the individual's hope for a better future, focusing on positive news, and time perspective balance during an epidemic disease are also beneficial to promoting positive emotion and reducing depression. (shrink)

One of the indicators that symbolize the success of an academic field is its academic publications in well-established citation indices. This article first explored the bibliometric characteristics of publications on “teachers' emotional labor” in the Social Sciences Citation Index and the Arts & Humanities Citation Index, two prestigious citation indices available in the Web of Science. Search with the term “teacher emotional labor” retrieved 173 publications that included this term in their titles, abstracts, or keywords in the WoS database between (...) 1900 and 2020. The bibliometric characteristics pertaining to numbers of publications, document types, research categories, research areas, authors, journals, universities, and countries were reported. Then, CiteSpace was utilized to visualize TEL research and to obtain insights into its research focuses and its future directions. The findings will contribute to TEL research by informing scholars in the fields of L2 research and psychology and others. (shrink)

It is part of a global trend today that new relationships are being forged between religion and society, between spirituality and materiality, giving rise to announcements that we live in a ‘postsecular’ or ‘desecularized’ world. Taking up two educational movements, the mindfulness movement in the West and the revival of Confucian education in China, this paper examines what and how postsecular orientations and sensibilities penetrate educational discourses and practices in different cultural contexts. We compare the two movements to reveal a (...) new quality of hybrid modernization in that they react, in different ways, to certain pathologies that are identified as consequences of secular modernity. Burnout syndrome, the sense of a spiritual void, but also the loss of a spiritual and cultural identity are being perceived as correlating to a one-sided push towards a modernity that emphasizes secular rationalization over mindfulness and Westernization over cultural particularity. The two case studies mark a critical insight on the present condition and limits of secularism and highlights the ongoing negotiations of values and modes of self-cultivation in schools. In an increasingly pluralistic world, the entanglement of the secular, spiritual, religious and wisdom traditions provides the opportunity to rethink education as a creative realm and an impossible possibility to re-engage the minds and lives of those in the hybrid pedagogical time. (shrink)

While collaborative curriculum design has gained increasing attention in the field of education, there is scant research as to how EFL teachers implement it in authentic design contexts. The present case study places particular emphasis on teacher activities during collaborative EFL curriculum development in China. The researchers adopt Activity Theory as an analytical tool to understand the relationships between EFL teachers, reform goals, and various aspects of the sociocultural context in which CCD is advocated, highlighting the pivotal role that mediation (...) of knowledge/experience plays in the teacher learning community. Research findings indicate that the TDTs’ collaborative process is a socially constructed and culturally mediated activity that promotes EFL teacher development. Moreover, in-service teachers are prone to take challenges through educational reforms out of teacher motives and external stimuli. Limitations of the CCD model are also discussed to shed light on future research. (shrink)

LoGart, and especially its image search function Page with Image (PWI), allows for the use of local gazetteers to trace the development of new institutions and spaces for science in China in a geographically more diverse assortment of places than historians of science have hitherto examined. This essay looks at how results obtained by using LoGart help to map out a new spatiality of science in modern China.

The Mohists develop the concept of yi 義 to denote what is morally right in a normative sense. We argue that this concept has, as one of its necessary conditions, a requirement to not harm others. Additionally, we will show that the motivation of developing this concept is that it can be both universalized and publicly agreed upon, thus serving the Mohists’ endeavor to overcome human conflicts that make the world chaotic and unlivable. We argue therefore that the Mohist notion (...) of gongyi 公義 is best captured by the requirement of “not harming.” Moreover, we shall show that the Mohists themselves committed to this requirement as the first principle of all their core doctrines. Finally, we argue that due to the justifiability and universalizability of the requirement of “not harming,” the Mohists’ commitment to it as a prerequisite normatively justifies their other values in a way that was unprecedented at the time. (shrink)

Sleep is consciousness naturally folded back to itself in the self-come-home-to-self, to find life nourished, renovated, and vitalized, all beyond objective management. Sleep can never be understood with direct conscious approach, but must be approached indirectly, implicatively, and alive coherently, as tried here. Sleep (A) is Spontaneity, (B) Self-Fullness, and so (C) sleep is life’s Gospel of Self-ing.

In recent years, there are many reasons for the frequent safety accidents in the construction field. The most controversial and typical one that firmly correlated with China’s national condition is the low-price bid winning and the general subcontracting management, which probably have a great impact on the unsafe behavior intention of workers on the construction site. In order to figure out their internal relation, a quantitative statistical analysis of the unsafe behavior intentions of construction workers in the Beijing area was (...) conducted through the on-site questionnaire considering three main variables, namely, general subcontract management, reasonable low-cost bid winning, and construction experiences. Meanwhile, the correlation, regression, and mediating effects of different influencing factors were analyzed through a regressive model to quantify the impact of each variable on the unsafe behavior intention of construction workers. The results showed that the influence of low-price bid winning on the unsafe behavior intention of on-site workers is faint. This is mainly because, in the case of labor buyer’s market, the actual salary of workers is not relevant to whether the project is awarded at a low price. However, the general subcontracting management has a great impact on the unsafe behavior intention of on-site workers. At the same time, low-price bid winning also indirectly affects the strength of general subcontracting safety management, which has an indirect impact on the unsafe behavior intention of on-site workers. Generally, it is of greater significance to enhance the strength of the general subcontracting management and to formulate relevant regulations to guarantee the safety of construction workers. (shrink)

Air pollution has become a serious issue that affects billions of people worldwide. The relationship between air pollution and social behaviour has become one of the most widely discussed topics in the academic community. While the link between air pollution and risk-averse and unethical behaviours has been explored extensively, the relationship between air pollution and prosocial behaviour has been examined less thoroughly. Individual blood donation is a typical form of prosocial behaviour. We examined the effect of air pollution on prosocial (...) behaviour using the Poisson regression quasi-maximum likelihood based on the panel data related to air pollution and blood donations. We also employed a set of control variables and robustness checks. The findings indicate that air pollution does not affect whole blood donation, although it does affect component blood donation. We also find that the effect of air pollution on blood donation is heterogeneous in terms of gender, age, and other factors. These results show that the relationship between air pollution and prosocial behaviour is limited. Not all types of prosocial behaviour are affected by air pollution, perhaps because air pollution affects only specific psychological motivations and because different types of prosocial behaviour have different motivations. (shrink)

Application of artificial intelligence is accelerating the digital transformation of enterprises, and digital content optimization is crucial to take the users' attention in social media usage. The purpose of this work is to demonstrate how social media content reaches and impresses more users. Using a sample of 345 articles released by Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises on their official WeChat accounts, we employ the self-determination theory to analyze the effects of content optimization strategies on social media visibility. It is found (...) that articles with enterprise-related information optimized for content related to users' psychological needs achieved higher visibility than that of sheer enterprise-related information, whereas the enterprise-related information embedded with material incentive brings lower visibility. The results confirm the positive effect of psychological needs on the diffusion of enterprise-related information, and provide guidance for SMEs to apply artificial intelligence technology to social media practice. (shrink)

Burnout is a serious problem in the teaching profession. Research suggests that career calling could be regarded as a protective factor against burnout; however, the mediating mechanism underlying this relationship remains to be explored. The purpose of this study was to test the mediating roles of work engagement and teachers' psychological capital. A total of 3,300 teachers completed a self-report questionnaire. Results showed that the relationship between career calling and burnout was mediated by work engagement and teacher psychological capital. These (...) findings provide insights for preventing burnout among teacher groups. (shrink)

The topic of shame has attracted little attention in Augustinian scholarship. This article will provide a detailed analysis of Augustine’s case studies of Lucretia’s rape and Adam’s act of covering himself after the Fall in De ciuitate Dei. It will be argued that Augustine’s subtle depiction of shame-feeling in the context of guilt and sin offers us an illuminating interpretation of shame and its intimate relation to personal identity.

Scientific articles have been traditionally written from single points of view. In contrast, new knowledge is derived strictly from a dialectical process, through interbreeding of partially disparate perspectives. Dialogues, therefore, present a more veritable form for representing the process behind knowledge creation. They are also less prone to dogmatically disseminate ideas than monologues, alongside raising awareness of the necessity for discussion and challenging of differing points of view, through which knowledge evolves. Here we celebrate 250 years since the discovery of (...) the chemical identity of the inorganic component of bone in 1769 by Johan Gottlieb Gahn through one such imaginary dialogue between two seasoned researchers and aficionados of this material. We provide the statistics on ups and downs in the popularity of this material throughout the history and also discuss important achievements and challenges associated with it. The shadow of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot is cast over the dialogue, acting as its frequent reference point and the guide. With this dialogue presented in the format of a play, we provide hope that conversational or dramaturgical compositions of scientific articles—albeit virtually prohibited from the scientific literature of the day—may become more pervasive in the future. (shrink)

Hemodynamic response to motor execution (ME) and motor imagery (MI) was investigated using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). We used a 31 channel fNIRS system which allows non-invasive monitoring of cerebral oxygenation changes induced by cortical activation. Sixteen healthy subjects (mean-age 24.5 yeas) were recruited and the changes in concentration of hemoglobin were examined during right and left hand finger tapping tasks and kinesthetic MI. To suppress the systemic physiological interference, we developed a preprocessing procedure which prevents over-activated reporting in NIRS-SPM. (...) In the condition of ME, more activation was observed in the anterior part of the motor cortex including the pre-motor and supplementary motor area (pre-motor and SMA), primary motor cortex (M1) and somatosensory motor cortex (SMC; t (15) > 2.27), however, in the condition of MI, more activation was found in the posterior part of motor cortex including SMC ( t (15) > 1.81), which is in line with previous observations with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). (shrink)

A revival of Confucianism in post-Mao China helped the government legitimate its power in the face of a new socio-political and economic situation. This paper specifically explores the role of Confucian self-cultivation in China’s governance. Drawing on Beetham’s theory of legitimation of power and Weber’s tri-typology of authority, we argue that self-cultivation, appealing to ingrained cultural values and traditions, fulfils the criteria of legitimation of power through two principles, namely, differentiation and community interest. In the context of suzhi education and (...) China’s national university entrance exam, we interrogate tensions and paradoxes between the need for a presentation of modern and liberal authority and the CCP’s one-party rule. The paper illustrates the complexity of China’s authoritarianism and the intricacies and intrinsic relevance of self-cultivation in current practice. (shrink)

We characterize, by easily verifiable properties, abstract ternary relations isomorphic to the causal betweenness introduced by Hans Reichenbach.

Game experiments designed to test the effectiveness of reward and/or punishment incentives in promoting cooperative behavior among their participants are quite common. Results from two such recent experiments conducted in Beijing, based on the Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) game and Public Goods Game respectively, are summarized here. The unexpected empirical outcomes for the repeated PD game, that cooperation actually decreased when the participants had the option of using a costly punishment strategy and that participants who used costly punishment in some round (...) of the repeated game often did so in the first round, are discussed in terms of differences in attitudes toward reputation in Chinese culture compared to other locations (mostly in Western society) where similar experiments have been conducted. The second experiment models an institution providing incentives to increase contribution levels (i.e., cooperation) to the public good. The results show that combined institutional reward and punishment is the most effective means to increase cooperation, followed by a scheme using only punishment. It is shown how these empirical results are related to the theoretical predictions that assume players play rationally by optimizing their personal payoff given their opponents’ actions in these multi-player games. (shrink)

The statement “Building the socialist harmonious society” contains the recognition and understanding of the conflicts of values in the contemporary society. The connotation of socialist harmonious society contains its own dominant values: In the relations of person-to-person, it requires democracy to guarantee the achievement of freedom and rule of law to ensure social fairness and justice. In the relationship of human and nature, it demands harmony between man and nature and the coordinated and sustainable development of economy, society and ecology. (...) Putting-people-first is the essential principle. The construction of contemporary values is a basic approach of building the socialist harmonious society. (shrink)

We applied the theoretical perspective of the dual filial piety model to consider the diversity of parent–child conflict resolution strategies in order to determine whether Chinese adolescents use strategies other than self-sacrifice to practice filial piety when in conflict with their parents. Study 1 utilized a cross-sectional design with 247 valid responses. The structural equation modeling analysis indicated that Taiwanese adolescents’ authoritarian filial piety beliefs are positively related to use of a self-sacrifice strategy, and reciprocal filial piety beliefs are positively (...) related to use of compatibility and compromise strategies. Adolescents’ AFP and RFP beliefs are negatively related to use of utility and escape strategies. Study 2 applied a temporal separation procedure with a 1-year lag to remedy common method variance bias. Analysis of 1,063 valid responses replicated the findings of Study 1 and indicated that adolescents’ function-oriented appraisal of conflict can play a mediating role between RFP and the use of the compatibility and compromise strategies. These findings broaden the understanding of filial piety in modern Chinese societies and have implications for adolescents’ well-being and family life. (shrink)

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