Search

Psychological studies of the denial of prejudice and discrimination have suggested that although members of target groups are sensitive to episodes of discrimination, they may deny episodes of discrimination to maintain a positive self-image. Here, through two studies, we investigated the role of the perceiver and target gender in shaping perceived barriers to education from a transnational feminist perspective. The participants were 132 Japanese university students (Study 1) and 1143 students from four Asian countries (Bangladesh, China, Myanmar, and Japan) (Study 2). They read three vignettes depicting different types of obstacles to higher education and rated the extent to which each example constituted a barrier to education. Our results support the sensitivity hypothesis. Regardless of their cultural background, the female participants tended to perceive more barriers to education than their male counterparts. However, the denial hypothesis was not consistently supported. The authors discuss the meaning of denial of educational barriers among female students and future directions.

Aims: Prostate cancer patients face impaired body image and psychological distress during the diagnosis and treatment of the disease, which leads to changes in mood, cognition and behavior. Psychological resilience has been shown to buffer shocks and stresses from the disease. Therefore, this study investigates the relationship between family functioning and psychological resilience in prostate cancer patients and the mediating role of self-efficacy between family functioning and psychological resilience to provide a relevant theoretical basis for improving patients' psychological status by providing relevant theoretical basis. Method: Using a cross-sectional design, participants were 215 patients with prostate cancer admitted to and treated in a tertiary hospital in Jiangsu province, China. Questionnaires were administered using the general information questionnaire, the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC), the Family Adaptation, Partnership, Growth, Affection, and Resolution Index (APGAR), and the General Self-efficacy Scale (GSES). Data were analyzed using descriptive and correlational analyses and the bootstrap mediation test was used to test the effect relationship between the variables. Results: Family functioning, self-efficacy and psychological resilience were significantly and positively correlated (r = 0.526, P < 0.01; r = 0.378, P < 0.01; r = 0.358, P < 0.01). Themediating effect of psychological resilience between family functioning and psychological resilience was significant, accounting for 42.56%. Conclusion: Family function and self-efficacy have been shown to increase the level of psychological resilience in prostate cancer patients. Attention should be paid to the mental health problems of prostate cancer patients, early screening and intervention, and the use of patients' family resources to improve their confidence in recovering from the disease, thus increasing their psychological resilience and improving their mental health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: A Suicide Screening Questionnaire-Observer Rating (SSQ-OR) has been used to assess risk of suicide among individuals and to help clinicians identify and rescue individuals attempting suicide. To prevent the risk of suicide in China, a Chinese language SSQ-OR (CL-SSQ-OR) needs to be introduced. Objective: To test the validity and reliability of a CL-SSQ-OR. Method: A total of 250 individuals were enrolled in this study. Each completed a CL-SSQ-OR assessment, Patient Health Questionnaire-9, and the Beck Scale for Suicide Ideation. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was adopted to determine structural validity. Spearman correlation coefficients were adopted to determine criterion validity. An internal correlation coefficient (ICC) was used to test interconsistency and Cronbach's a coefficient was used to test split-half reliability. Results: CFA was conducted with use of the maximum variance method to evaluate the item results. All of the items received scores >0.40. In addition, good model fit indices were observed for the two-factor structure RMSEA = 0.046, TLI = 0.965, CFI = 0.977. The items' factor loading of the CL-SSQ-OR in the first factor ranged from 0.443 to 0.878. The items' factor loading of the CL-SSQ-OR in the second factor ranged from 0.400 to 0.810. The ICC of the total CL-SSQ-OR was 0.855. Cronbach's a was 0.873. Conclusion: The CL-SSQ-OR described here demonstrates ideal psychometric properties and is found to be a suitable tool for screening Chinese children/adolescents who are at risk of suicide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and objectives: Alzheimer's disease (AD) has an insidious onset, the early stages are easily overlooked, and there are no reliable, rapid, and inexpensive ancillary detection methods. This study analyzes the differences in handwriting kinematic characteristics between AD patients and normal elderly people to model handwriting characteristics. The aim is to investigate whether handwriting analysis has a promising future in AD auxiliary screening or even auxiliary diagnosis and to provide a basis for developing a handwriting-based diagnostic tool. Materials and methods: Thirty-four AD patients (15 males, 77.15 ± 1.796 years) and 45 healthy controls (20 males, 74.78 ± 2.193 years) were recruited. Participants performed four writing tasks with digital dot-matrix pens which simultaneously captured their handwriting as they wrote. The writing tasks consisted of two graphics tasks and two textual tasks. The two graphics tasks are connecting fixed dots (task 1) and copying intersecting pentagons (task 2), and the two textual tasks are dictating three words (task 3) and copying a sentence (task 4). The data were analyzed by using Student's t-test and Mann-Whitney U test to obtain statistically significant handwriting characteristics. Moreover, seven classification algorithms, such as eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGB) and Logistic Regression (LR) were used to build classification models. Finally, the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve, accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), negative predictive value (NPV), and Area Under Curve (AUC) were used to assess whether writing scores and kinematics parameters are diagnostic. Results: Kinematic analysis showed statistically significant differences between the AD and controlled groups for most parameters (p < 0.05, p < 0.01). The results found that patients with AD showed slower writing speed, tremendous writing pressure, and poorer writing stability. We built statistically significant features into a classification model, among which the model built by XGB was the most effective with a maximum accuracy of 96.55%. The handwriting characteristics also achieved good diagnostic value in the ROC analysis. Task 2 had a better classification effect than task 1. ROC curve analysis showed that the best threshold value was 0.084, accuracy = 96.30%, sensitivity = 100%, specificity = 93.41%, PPV = 92.21%, NPV = 100%, and AUC = 0.991. Task 4 had a better classification effect than task 3. ROC curve analysis showed that the best threshold value was 0.597, accuracy = 96.55%, sensitivity = 94.20%, specificity = 98.37%, PPV = 97.81%, NPV = 95.63%, and AUC = 0.994. Conclusion: This study's results prove that handwriting characteristic analysis is promising in auxiliary AD screening or AD diagnosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Farmers' entrepreneurial income is related to poverty alleviation and common prosperity. The clan network is an important social capital for farmers. However, research on effects of this relationship is still scant. We classifies farmers' social capital as endowed social capital such as clan networks and leapfrogging social capital that needs to be operated. Using the data of CFPS 2010-2018 in China, this study investigates the influence of clan networks and farmers' entrepreneurial income. Based on the social capital theory, we adopt a semilogarithmic model, and propensity score matching method for robustness checks. The results show that the clan network, as an endowed social capital of farmer, has a significant and positive effect on entrepreneurial income for both men and women. And the clan network has the greatest impact on middle-income farmers. Our results have important implications for policymakers in other developing economies who seek to increase farmers' income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though numerical wave models have been applied widely to significant wave height prediction, they consume massive computing memory and their accuracy needs to be further improved. In this paper, a two-dimensional (2D) significant wave height (SWH) prediction model is established for the South and East China Seas. The proposed model is trained by Wave Watch III (WW3) reanalysis data based on a convolutional neural network, the bidirectional long short-term memory and the attention mechanism (CNNBiLSTM-Attention). It adopts the convolutional neural network to extract spatial features of original wave height to reduce the redundant information input into the BiLSTM network. Meanwhile, the BiLSTM model is applied to fully extract the features of the associated information of time series data. Besides, the attention mechanism is used to assign probability weight to the output information of the BiLSTM layer units, and finally, a trainingmodel is constructed. Up to 24-h prediction experiments are conducted under normal and extreme conditions, respectively. Under the normal wave condition, for 3-, 6-, 12- and 24-h forecasting, the mean values of the correlation coefficients on the test set are 0.996, 0.991, 0.980, and 0.945, respectively. The corresponding mean values of the root mean square errors are measured at 0.063 m, 0.105 m, 0.172 m, and 0.281 m, respectively. Under the typhoon-forced extreme condition, the model based on CNN-BiLSTM-Attention is trained by typhooninduced SWH extracted from the WW3 reanalysis data. For 3-, 6-, 12- and 24-h forecasting, the mean values of correlation coefficients on the test set are respectively 0.993, 0.983, 0.958, and 0.921, and the averaged root mean square errors are 0.159 m, 0.257 m, 0.437 m, and 0.555 m, respectively. The model performs better than that trained by all the WW3 reanalysis data. The result suggests that the proposed algorithm can be applied to the 2D wave forecast with higher accuracy and efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and objective The incidence of lung cancer is increasing annually. Clinicians pay special attention to lung tests during physical examinations. Due to the popularity of low-dose computed tomography, not only can lung cancer be diagnosed early, but physical examinations often reveal the presence of pulmonary nodules, an important health issue that cannot be ignored. Patients with pulmonary nodules are prone to adverse emotions such as anxiety and depression. Many studies have shown that patients with emotional disorders have immune system dysfunction and changes in inflammation levels. This study aimed to investigate the changes in anxiety, depression, the ratios of T helper cells 17 (Th17) and regulatory T cells (Tregs), and inflammation levels in patients with pulmonary nodules. Methods A total of 143 subjects from The First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University were included from April 2019 to July 2019. All of the subjects were assessed with the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) and the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II). Overall, 40 cases were healthy controls (HC) and 103 cases were patients with pulmonary nodules. The patients were divided into two groups according to the scale scores: 62 cases in a non-anxiety and non-depression (NAD) group and 41 cases in an anxiety and/ or depression (AD) group. The percentage of Th17 and Tregs in the peripheral blood and inflammatory factors in the serum were detected. The absolute Th17 cell counts were calculated and the differences between the groups and correlations between these indicators were analyzed. Results There were statistically significant differences in the percentage of Th17 cells, the absolute counts of Th17 and Th17/Treg cells, and the levels of interleukin-2 (IL-2), IL-6, and tumor necrosis factor-a (TNF-a) among three groups (all P<0.001). The AD group was higher than the HC and NAD groups (all P<0.05). There was no statistically significant difference between the HC and NAD groups (all P>0.05). The previously described indicators had no significant correlation with the severity of anxiety and depression (P>0.05). There were no significant differences in the percentage of Tregs or levels of IL-4 and IL-10 between the groups (all P>0.05). The proportion of anxiety and/or depression in female patients with pulmonary nodules was higher than that in males (P<0.05). Conclusion Patients with pulmonary nodules are prone to varying degrees of anxiety and depression, which leads to immune dysfunction and low-grade inflammation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Identifying the various factors that affect the intensity of a flood event, such as its duration and volume, is essential for strategic planning and flood management. Further, quantifying the impacts of these major factors on flood intensity using the contribution rate is essential, but technically challenging. In this study, the authors have adopted the projection pursuit model to quantify the contribution rates of peak flood stage and peak flood discharge, flood duration, and total flood volume (the maximum 12-, 24-, and 72-hour flood volumes) in the Wujiang River in Southern China. This study showed that peak flood discharge and total flood volume were the two dominant factors impacting flood intensity. Although flood duration can be a major factor for some flood events, it contributed the least to flood intensity for most of the historic flood events studied. Likewise, the maximum 24-hour and 72-hour flood volumes contributed little to flood intensity. Findings from this study not only demonstrated the successful adoption of the projection pursuit model for contribution rates, but also provided critical information for planning and managing the regional hydraulic resources in the Wujiang River. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dynamic triaxial test at room temperature is performed and the influence of the joint action of freeze-thaw cycle and train load is analyzed. This article studied the influence of the number of freeze-thaw cycles, the melting temperature and amplitude of dynamic stress on the resilient deformation and accumulated permanent deformation of the silty clay along the Qinghai-Tibet Railway. According to the analysis results, (1) As the number of freeze-thaw cycles increases, the accumulative plastic strain of the silty clay on the Qinghai-Tibet Railway grows with the increase of the number of vibration. Meanwhile, its failure mode slowly evolves from brittle failure to plastic failure; (2) Resilient strain shows a growing trend with the increase of the number of freeze-thaw cycles and the corresponding resilient modulus is declining, but the effect of freeze-thaw cycles is larger than that of the last two factors, both showing only mild changes; (3) As the temperature during thawing rises, the accumulative plastic strain increases, which causes the rise of resilient strain and the drop of the corresponding resilient modulus; the larger the dynamic strain amplitude, the greater the influence of temperature during thawing on accumulative plastic strain is. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: China''s Shanghai and Shenzhen 300 stock index futures returns series distribution shows the character of fat tail and the peak. So at the assumption of normality the risk would be underestimated greatly. Extreme value theory can describes the distribution tail quantile and forecast the emergency accurately. Using POT model of the extreme value theory and the generalized Pareto distribution to estimate the 300 stock index futures margin level, the empirical study shows that the optimal level of margin was 10%., the current Shanghai and Shenzhen 300 stock index futures margin level of China Financial Futures Exchange covers price risk faced by the market. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Objective To determine the effect of luteinized unruptured follicle (LUF) cycles on frozen thawed embryo transfer (FET). Design A retrospective analysis comparing the clinical outcomes after FET among 144 cases of luteinized unruptured follicle (LUF) cycles and 866 cases of ovulation cycles. Setting Reproductive medical center, Beijing China. Patient(s) Chinese infertile women who underwent FET. Intervention(s) None. Main outcome measure(s) Clinical pregnancy rate (PR), implantation rate. Result(s) The implantation rate, clinical pregnancy rate, ongoing pregnancy rate and live birth rate in LUF group were 12.76% (49/384), 27.78% (40/144), 24.31% (35/144) and 19.44% (28/144), respectively, and in ovulation group, 14.74% (332/2251), 31.29% (271/866), 28.29% (245/866) and 22.23% (193/866), respectively (p>0.05). Conclusion(s) LUF does not affect the clinical outcomes of FET. Patients of LUF should be included in FET treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]