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In this paper, we investigate the heterogeneous treatment effects of retirement on the mental health of older adults using the generalized random forest (GRF) method. GRF has high functional flexibility and can explore complex treatment heterogeneity by selecting covariates from high-dimensional data that contribute to heterogeneity. Results show that retirement significantly reduces the elderly group's depression as well as increases subjective well-being, implying that it will improve mental health. The best linear predictor test suggests that the effect of retirement on depression is heterogeneous among the data for 2014 and 2020 but not in the analysis of well-being. Retirement is more effective in improving depression for males who are at an unhealthy weight, are between the ages of 57 and 67, and have an Internet habit. The results of this paper provide support for promoting the optimization and individualized implementation of relevant policies and improving the lives of the elderly in their later years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the gender disparities and cohort differences in the health trajectories of older Chinese adults. Drawn on a nationally representative dataset from the 2008–2018 Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey, this paper uses a growth-curve model to identify the health trajectories of older adults in functional limitations, chronic diseases, depressive symptoms and cognitive skills. Older women are found to have slightly fewer functional limitations than older men at an earlier age; however, this gap is reversed later because of women's higher deterioration rate in physical function. Compared to men, older women have more chronic diseases at younger ages, but this trend is changed after age 90 years due to a faster decline rate in chronic diseases for women. The gender gap in the depressive symptom trajectories narrows with age, whereas the gap in the trajectories of cognitive skills widens. The cohort differences favouring later-born cohorts decrease with age in the trajectory of functional limitations. The latest cohort born in 1940 or after has the fastest increase in chronic diseases and depressive symptoms among all the cohorts. These results are further verified using the random-effect model and pooled ordinary least squares. Policymakers should promote gender equality and reduce cohort differences to achieve the national goal of "Healthy China". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though a continued increase in life expectancy is a significant public health achievement, keeping older adults active and maintaining their well-being is challenging. Active aging requires physical health, mental health, functional independence, economic stability, social participation, and spiritual identification. Among all these factors, social cohesion has significant importance, but there is a dearth of studies focusing on older adults' social cohesion. Thus, the present study focuses on the level of social cohesion among older adults and its variation among the different economic classes. This article uses data from the Study on Global AGEing and Adult Health (SAGE) conducted in China, Ghana, India, Mexico, Russia, and South Africa during 2007–10. Social cohesion scores have been constructed using Item Response Theory Partial Credit Model. Also, bivariate analysis, concentration curves, concentration indices, and multivariate regressions have been used for the analysis presented in this paper. This study confirms the strong predictive power of age, wealth, education, and working status of older adults on their social cohesion across the countries. Higher social non-cohesion is found among the economically poor older adults in Mexico, Russia, India, and China. In contrast, it is just opposite in the case of older adults in South Africa. Governments should develop policies to foster a society with a high level of social inclusion, social capital, and social diversity, to achieve further advancement in social cohesion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research aims to explore the mechanism of the online "spiritual solidarity" group for older adults who have lost their only child (shidu parents) in contemporary China. By examining a unique aging model of older adult Chinese who lost their only child, this study conducted an online survey in the "spiritual solidarity" group of the shidu parents through an ethnographic approach by interviews, questionnaires, participatory observation, and other methods. The findings can improve the "spiritually drawn together to old" process for the shidu parents to improve their quality of life and relieve their psychological stress. As a new pension model, the spiritual group takes a virtual information platform as the carrier to break through the limitations of regional activities, meet the various needs of the shidu parent, and provide them with an outlet for emotional energy. Understanding the mechanism of spiritual solidarity is of help to the shidu parents in obtaining spiritual comfort. It is also valuable for safeguarding their rights and interests to improve their quality of life on the spiritual and material levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Long-term nursing home (NH) care helps NH residents with their daily activities and improves their quality of life, but negatively affects their independent physical activities and increases the risk of dangerous events. Dangerous events in the elderly usually occur in the conversion of walking periods when forward striding has already happened, but the body has not yet entered a completely steady walking. Objectives: Compare the gait characteristics in Chinese long-term NH residents and community-living elderly during the walking Transitional Period (TP) and Stabilization Period (SP). Methods: 32 long-term NH residents and 33 age- and sex-matched community-living elderly were recruited. The 30-Second Chair Stand Test (30-s CST), Timed Up and Go Test (TUGT), and Modified Falls Efficacy Scale (MFES) were used to assess their body function. The Xsens MVN BIOMECH system was used to collect and analyze the gait parameters of participants. Results: Compared to community-living elderly, NH residents had fewer numbers of 30-s CST, took more time to complete TUGT, and lower MEFS scores. NH residents showed slower gait speed (P < 0.001), less peak hip flexion (P = 0.022) and extension (P = 0.003), knee internal rotation (P = 0.023), and ankle plantarflexion (P = 0.001) and internal rotation (P = 0.007) angles during walking. When walking progressed from TP to SP, NH residents showed increased ankle dorsiflexion (P < 0.001), decreased hip internal rotation (P < 0.001), and community-living elderly had increased hip extension (P = 0.005) angles. Conclusions: Chinese long-term NH residents had reduced lower extremities strength and postural balance, and higher fear of falling compared to community-living elderly. Their walking performance also showed high fall risk. Besides, long-term NH residents adopted a distal strategy to propel the body forward, which may be a compensatory measure to compensate for inadequate proximal joint control from forward walking to stable walking, and long-term NH residents have reduced postural stability during this process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has explored age-related and cultural differences in moral evaluations of dishonesty; however, this has not yet been examined in an aging context. The present study provided a novel account of how younger and older adults (in Canada, Singapore, and China; N = 401) morally evaluate adults' truths and lies in antisocial, modesty, and politeness settings. Participants completed a questionnaire assessing how acceptable it is for adults to tell the truth or a lie in given social scenarios, and they reported on their levels of collectivism and individualism. In all countries, older adults provided more favorable evaluations to blunt and immodest truths than younger adults did. Compared with younger adults, older adults provided harsher evaluations to Polite Lies (in Canada and China) and Modesty Lies (in Canada and Singapore). Thus, there may be an age-related increase in the acceptability of direct honesty over good-intentioned lies, and this age effect is somewhat stable across cultures. Older adults were also more lenient in evaluations of an antisocial lie to conceal an affair compared to younger adults. Overall, adults in China tended to rate lies less negatively, and their greater levels of collectivism mediated their greater approval of polite lies. The present results demonstrate that evaluations of (dis)honesty differ as a function of age and culture and these results can assist in developing a more complete lifespan model of the morality of dishonesty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Encouraging farmers to adopt biopesticides is a crucial strategy for protecting the ecological environment and achieving sustainable agricultural development. This study utilizes data from a micro-survey of 454 banana farmers from Hainan Province of China and employs a logit model to analyze the effects of aging, land fragmentation, and their interactions on farmers' adoption of biopesticides, as well as the heterogeneity of farmers in different household life cycles. The findings reveal that aging and land fragmentation both hinder biopesticide adoption, with farmers experiencing higher levels of aging and more fragmented land holdings being less likely to utilize biopesticides in banana production. Mechanism analysis uncovers an interaction effect between aging and land fragmentation that hampers biopesticide adoption. Furthermore, the effects of aging, land fragmentation, and their interaction on biopesticide adoption behavior vary across farmers in different family life cycles. Specifically, aging negatively affects biopesticide adoption behavior for farmers in support households, while land fragmentation negatively influences farmers in dependency and burden households. The interaction between aging and land fragmentation adversely affects farmers in burden households. Our findings highlight the importance of aging agricultural labor and land fragmentation to promote green agriculture in China and call for more relevant policies to encourage farmers with different household life cycles to adopt biopesticides in farming practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on ethnographic research conducted in two nursing homes in China, this article examines how institutional eldercare reshapes the expectations and practices of filial piety. It finds that families accept institutional care as a solution to the elderly care deficit. They expect a new division of care between labor and love, assigned to paid care workers and family members, respectively. This ideal of care division is rooted in the "intimate turn" in Chinese family life. Nevertheless, many family members go beyond this care division and remain deeply involved in nursing homes. On the one hand, adult children take on the responsibility to manage surrogate caretakers to improve the quality of care. On the other hand, they continue to provide personal care and companionship. Sharing family time is made the highest priority, especially in the face of impending death. This study goes beyond the binary division between commercial care and family care and sheds light on the transformation of filial piety in the commodification of eldercare in contemporary China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Excessive accumulation of adipose tissue may accelerate brain aging, but the underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. Several adiposity indices were proposed to assess obesity, while their linkage with brain health in older adults remained unclear. Here we aimed to examine the associations of adiposity indices with global and regional cerebral blood flow (CBF) in older adults, while considering insulin resistance. Design: This was a cross-sectional population-based study that included older adults derived from the baseline participants in the ongoing Multimodal Interventions to Delay Dementia and Disability in rural China (MIND-China) study. Setting And Participants: The study included 103 Chinese rural-dwelling older adults (age≥60 years; 69.9% women) who underwent brain magnetic resonance imaging scans. Methods: We estimated eight adiposity indices based on anthropometric measures. We automatically quantified global and regional CBF using the arterial spin labeling scans. Insulin resistance was assessed using the triglyceride-glucose index and then dichotomized into high and low levels according to the median. Data were analyzed using general linear model and voxel-wise analysis. Results: Of the eight examined adiposity indices, only higher waist-to-height ratio (WHtR) and body roundness index (BRI) were associated with reduced global CBF (multivariable-adjusted β-coefficients and 95%CI: −1.76; −3.25, −0.27 and −1.77; −3.25, −0.30, respectively) and hypoperfusion in bilateral middle temporal gyri, angular gyri and superior temporal gyri, left middle cingulum and precuneus (P<0.05). There were statistical interactions of WHtR and BRI with levels of insulin resistance on CBF, such that the significant associations of higher WHtR and BRI with lower global and regional CBF existed only in people with high insulin resistance (P<0.05). Conclusion: Higher WHtR and BRI are associated with cerebral hypoperfusion in older adults, especially in people with high insulin resistance. This may highlight the pathological role of visceral fat in vascular brain aging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the increase of the ageing in the world's population, the ageing and degeneration studies of physiological characteristics in human skin, bones, and muscles become important topics. Research on the ageing of bones, especially the skull, are paid much attention in recent years. In this study, a novel deep learning method representing the ageing-related dynamic attention (ARDA) is proposed. The proposed method can quantitatively display the ageing salience of the bones and their change patterns with age on lateral cephalometric radiographs images (LCR) images containing the craniofacial and cervical spine. An age estimation-based deep learning model based on 14142 LCR images from 4 to 40 years old individuals is trained to extract ageing-related features, and based on these features the ageing salience maps are generated by the Grad-CAM method. All ageing salience maps with the same age are merged as an ARDA map corresponding to that age. Ageing salience maps show that ARDA is mainly concentrated in three regions in LCR images: the teeth, craniofacial, and cervical spine regions. Furthermore, the dynamic distribution of ARDA at different ages and instances in LCR images is quantitatively analyzed. The experimental results on 3014 cases show that ARDA can accurately reflect the development and degeneration patterns in LCR images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Companion animals have recently been proposed as ideal translational models of human aging due to their shared susceptibility for certain diseases, similar environments, and sophisticated veterinary medicine diagnostics, all of which are not possible in rodent laboratory models. Here, we introduce and propose the study of companion animals in China as a largely untapped resource in academic and veterinary aging research. Pet ownership rates along with economic gains in the pet industry have skyrocketed over the last decade in China. Yet, the majority of research institutions still focus on agricultural animal research, not companion animals. In this perspective, we compare available pet ownership rates between the USA, the European Union, and China before focusing on the potential of companion animal aging research in China. In addition, we highlight some ethical considerations that must be addressed before large-scale companion animal aging research can be completed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Freeze–thaw cycles, aging, and freeze–thaw cycles superimposed aging test on high-damping rubber bearings (HDR) were performed to study the durability of HDR for sea-crossing bridges in northern coastal areas. The change laws of horizontal mechanical properties of HDR under different tests were revealed. After freeze–thaw cycles, the equivalent damping ratio and yield force of HDR decreased, the post-yield stiffness increased slightly, but the horizontal equivalent stiffness wasn't change; The ultimate shear force and displacement of HDR abated. Under aging test, horizontal equivalent stiffness and post-yield stiffness increased significantly, and the change of its yield force could be ignored, while the equivalent damping ratio decreased. The horizontal equivalent stiffness and post-yield stiffness of HDR increased; however, the equivalent damping ratio and yield force decreased after the freeze–thaw cycles superimposed aging test. Besides, experimental results indicated considering freeze–thaw cycles or aging alone cannot accurately estimate the change of HDR's performances in the actual environment. This study is likely to provide a whole life cycle design and evaluation basis for coastal seismically isolated bridges with HDR in the cold regions of northern China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has experienced an increasing number of "drifting elderly" (elderly inter-province migrants because of non-employment reasons) due to urbanization and aging. Living in different environments, the elderly are susceptible to mental health problems. Thus we explore the well-being of the drifting elderly under the Chinese cultural context. According to the grounded theory approach, a qualitative study with 54 elderly inter-provincial migrant samples was conducted in Shanghai. Drawing from the "cognition, affection, and conation" theory and the migration theory, we built a framework for the drifting elderly's well-being, including the impact factors (motivation, adaption pressure, and personality), well-being status (subjective well-being, psychological well-being, and social well-being), and consequences (future plan). Implications and future research directions are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a long-lasting debate about whether urban settings are beneficial to the health of rural-to-urban migrants. Research in some low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) has documented that exposure to urban life negatively impacts their health, especially in terms of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), and attributed the association to health-related behaviors. However, it is unclear if such patterns exist in China, the biggest LMIC and home to 19% of the world population. Meanwhile, given the severe population aging trend, previous research lacks focus on rural-to-urban migrants of older age groups. In addition, different extents of urban life exposure among migrants are either ignored or indirectly measured, and the mediating effects of health behavioral factors have not been quantified. Using data from 2011 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), this study examined three major NCD risk factors, hypertension, general obesity, and abdominal obesity, among older adults (45 +) with different residential types (N = 11,126). Employing logistic regression models and mediation analysis, I find that rural-to-urban migrants have significantly higher odds of having all three NCD risk factors than rural dwellers, and have similar risk profiles as urban residents. Among rural-to-urban migrants, years lived in cities significantly and cumulatively predict hypertension. However, health-related behaviors, including tobacco use, alcohol consumption, and physical activity, only account for a small proportion of the differences between rural-to-urban migrants and rural dwellers, implying other pathways through which urban settings shape older rural-to-urban migrants' health outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

T cell receptor excision circles (TRECs) are small circularized DNA elements produced during rearrangement of T cell receptor (TCR) genes. Because TRECs are fairly stable, do not replicate during mitosis, and are not diluted during division of naïve T cells (Dion et al. [1]), they are suitable for assessing the number of newly formed T cells (Ping and Denise [2]). In this study, we detected TRECs in 521 healthy Chinese children aged 0–18 years in different clinical settings. The TRECs decrease with aging and show lower levels in preterm and low birth weight (BW) babies compared to those in full-term infants, while the preterm babies can also show comparable levels of TRECs when they have a gestation age (GA)–matched BW. We found a strong correlation between TRECs and peripheral CD4 naïve T cell numbers, which was age-related. We also analyzed the TRECs in different PIDs. Since T cell defects vary in PIDs, TREC levels change inconsistently. For example, in Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome (WAS), combining the level of TREC with lymphocyte subsets can help to distinguish subtypes of disease. Conclusion: We established the reference value range for TRECs by evaluating children below 18 years old in China, which could be used to screen for PIDs during early life. What is Known: • The TREC levels are decreased with age, and there is a positive correlation between TRECs and the numbers of naïve T cells. What is New: • This is the largest study to determine TREC reference levels in healthy Chinese pediatric, we provide solid data showing a correlation between CD4 naïve T cell counts and TREC levels according to age. We point out the GA matched BW is need to be considered during the SCID newborn screening. We are the first group showed that TREC levels can help clinician distinguish different WAS phenotype. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Evidence of the association between marital status and cognitive function in Chinese older adults is limited. Aims: To examine the relationship between marital status and cognitive function and to explore the role of gender amongst older adults from three Chinese communities. Methods: A total of 1376 participants aged 60 years or over were included in this cross-sectional study. Cognitive function was assessed using the Chinese version of the mini-mental state examination (MMSE). Marital status and other variables were collected using a standardized questionnaire. Multiple linear regression models were used to examine associations between marital statuses and cognitive function amongst the target population. The moderating role of gender in these potential associations has also been explored. Results: In univariate linear regression models, compared to being married, both being widowed (β [95% CI]: −1.46[−2.78 to − 0.13]) and being single (β [95% CI]: − 4.88[−6.43 to − 3.38]) were associated with lower MMSE scores. After adjustment for confounding factors, the significant association of being widowed with MMSE scores disappeared (β [95% CI: − 0.08[− 1.04 to 0.86]), but the association of being single with MMSE scores still existed (β [95% CI]: − 1.87[− 3.17 to − 0.58]). Furthermore, the association of being single with MMSE scores was statistically significant in men (β [95% CI]: − 5.25[− 7.17 to − 3.33]) but not in women (β [95% CI: 0.88[− 0.87 to 2.64]). Discussion and conclusions: Being single was associated with poorer cognitive function compared with their married counterparts in older Chinese men but not in women. More preventive measurements should be implemented for single men to reduce or delay cognitive decline. This is particularly important in the context of an aging population in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]