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AbstractSense of agency refers to the subjective perception of initiating and controlling one’s actions and their consequences within both individual and social contexts. It encompasses not only self-agency, where individuals feel in control of their actions from a first-person perspective, but also other-agency, where individuals comprehend the control exerted by others over their actions through mentalizing. This study explores the characteristics of implicit self-agency and other-agency in social interaction contexts using an interval estimation paradigm. The results indicate that voluntary actions lead to a temporal binding effect in individual contexts. Moreover, the reported intervals generated by the self in individual contexts are shorter than those in human-human and human-robot interaction contexts, suggesting a reduction in self-agency within social interaction contexts. Conversely, temporal intervals in human-human interactions are reported to be shorter than those in individual and human-robot interactions, indicating that other-agency remains unaffected. These findings highlight the distinct effects of social interaction contexts on self-agency and other-agency, offering novel empirical insights into human interaction behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sense of agency (SoA) refers to the feeling of being in control of one's actions and the subsequent consequence of these actions. Emotional context seems to alter the strength of sense of agency. The present study explored the influence of acute psychosocial stress on the SoA by means of the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST). Self-assessment manikin (SAM) and objective physiological indicators (e.g. heart rate, electrodermal activity, and salivary cortisol levels) were utilized to evaluate the effect of the TSST. We also employed the temporal binding effect as an implicit assessment of the participant's SoA. The results indicated that the stress level of the experimental group after TSST was significantly higher than the control group, whilst the temporal binding scores of the experimental group decreased after TSST manipulation. In short, acute psychosocial stress with intense emotional arousal weakened the sense of agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Chinese government has increased its emphasis on 'green GDP' and restricted bank lending to polluting firms. However, government interference may distort bank credit allocation and worsen the external financing environment of polluting firms. Bank competition as a market-based mechanism may play a role in pollution abatement. By matching the Annual Surveys of Industrial Firms dataset with the Ministry of Environmental Protection survey data and the city-level bank competition data, this article explores the effects of banking sector structure on firm-level pollution emissions under the context of bank deregulation. The findings of this study are mainly in four aspects. First, more bank competition can reduce pollution emissions per unit output value. Second, bank competition affects enterprise pollution emissions through alleviating financial constraints. To be more specific, credit availability, credit amount as well as credit cost are the channels for bank competition to affect enterprise pollution emissions. Third, strict environment regulation strengthens the negative effect of bank competition on pollution emissions. Fourth, the mandatory administrative means of impeding banks from lending to polluters did not achieve the aim of pollution reduction. This study provides evidence that the financial system of banks can have a material impact on firms' pollution emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper investigates the firm-value effects of the carbon management practices. Moreover, it also aims to respond to the recent calls, so as to investigate the firm value relevance of the carbon management practices. The findings from this study contribute to the literature that is based on the corporate responses to climate change initiatives. Centered on a sample of S&P 500 firms, from the year 2011–2018 (1780 firm-year observations), this study finds that carbon management practices (e.g. carbon reduction targets, external carbon assurance and carbon communication) are positively associated with the market value of equity, or in other words, the market capitalization. Empirical results from the study show that the external carbon assurance contributes an amount of 10% to the market value of the firms, as compared to an amount of 5% and 4% for the carbon targets and the carbon communication, respectively. These findings may assist managers in making informed estimations and judgement regarding the costs and benefit analysis of each of the carbon management practices. Overall, our results are robust enough to alternate the proxies for the firm performance and endogeneities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hydrological processes in hilly watersheds are significantly affected by variations in elevation; however, the hydrological functions of different vertical vegetation belts, have rarely been reported. The distributed hydrological model WEP-L (Water and Energy transfer Process in Large river basins) was applied to analyse vertical variations in the hydrological processes of Qingshui River basin (QRB), Wutai Mountain (altitude: 3058 m a.s.l.), China. The results show that the highest ratio of evapotranspiration to precipitation occurs at 1800 m a.s.l. Below 1800 m, evapotranspiration is mainly controlled by precipitation, and in regions above1800 m it is controlled by energy. The runoff coefficients for different vertical vegetation belts may be ranked as follows: farmland > grassland > subalpine meadow > evergreen coniferous shrub forest > deciduous broad-leaved forest. Grassland is the largest runoff production area, contributing approximately 39.10% to the annual water yield of the QRB. The runoff from forested land decreased to a greater extent than the grassland runoff. Increasing forest cover may increase evapotranspiration and reduce runoff. These results are important, not only for further understanding of the hydrological mechanisms in this basin, but also for implementing the sustainable management of water resources and ecosystems in other mountainous regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we developed a comprehensive three-dimensional vehicle-track coupled dynamics model considering the traction drive system and axle box bearing. In this model, dynamic interactions between the axle box bearing and other components, such as the wheelset and bogie frame, are considered based on a detailed analysis of the structural properties and working mechanism of the axle box bearing. A few complicated dynamic excitations, such as the time-varying mesh stiffness of gears, time-varying stiffness of bearing, bearing gaps and track irregularities, are considered. Then, the dynamic responses of the vehicle-track system are demonstrated via numerical simulations based on the established dynamics model. The results indicate that the traction drive system and track irregularities can significantly influence the dynamic interactions of the axle box bearing. The necessity of considering the excitation caused by gear meshing and track irregularities when assessing the dynamic performance of the axle box bearing is demonstrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]