H. C. B. Liu

Teacher self-efficacy is one of the most critical factors influencing Students’ learning outcomes. Studies have shown that teacher-perceived principal leadership, teacher collaboration, and teaching experience are the critical factor that affects teacher self-efficacy. However, little is known about the mechanisms behind this relationship. This study examined whether teacher collaboration would mediate the relationship between teacher-perceived principal leadership and teacher self-efficacy, and the moderating role of teaching experience in the mediating process. With an analysis of a dataset from 14,121 middle school teachers in China, this study first testified to the positive role that teacher-perceived principal leadership played in teacher self-efficacy. Furthermore, it revealed that teacher collaboration mediates this relationship and the mediated path was moderated by teaching experience. Finally, it also indicated that the threshold of teaching experience linking the teacher-perceived leadership with teacher self-efficacy was approximately in the third year, and their relationship was stronger when teaching experience was below the threshold. This study highlighted the mediating and moderating mechanisms linking the teacher-perceived principal leadership and teacher self-efficacy, which has important theoretical and practical implications for intervention and enhancement of teacher self-efficacy.

From the perspective of philosophy of engineering in China, this study points out the shortcomings of the category of “Creating” and the role and advantages of the category of “Doing”. In this process, two concepts of “engineering” in the Chinese language were discovered. The research further points out that the fundamental characteristic of engineering is “Heavy result”, and the basic characteristic is planning, time limit and heterogeneity within the community. However, the accommodation of the two engineering philosophical frameworks remains to be further studied.

Objectives: The corona virus disease-2019 pandemic spread globally, and we aimed to investigate the psychosocial impact on healthcare workers in China during the pandemic.Methods: In this systematic review and meta-analysis, we searched seven electronic databases for cross-sectional studies on psychosocial impact on HWs in relation to COVID-19 from January 1, 2020 to October 7, 2020. We included primary studies involving Chinese HWs during the pandemic, and data were extracted from the published articles. Our primary outcome was prevalence of anxiety, depression, and stress disorders. We pooled prevalence value with their 95% confidence interval using random effect models and assessed study quality on the basis of an 11-item checklist recommended by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The study protocol was registered in PROSPERO.Results: We identified 25 articles comprising a total of 30,841 completed questionnaires and 22 studies for meta-analysis. The prevalence of anxiety, depression, and stress disorders was 34.4%, 31.1%, and 29.1% for HWs. The pooled prevalence of anxiety disorders for HWs from late January to early February was 46.4%, significantly higher than those in mid-term February and after late February. The pooled prevalence of depression disorders for HWs from late January to early February was 46.5%, significantly higher than those in mid-term February and after late February. HWs working in Hubei Province had a higher prevalence of anxiety and a lower prevalence of depression than those working in other regions. Nurses had a higher prevalence of anxiety and depression than other HWs.Conclusions: About one-third of HWs in China suffered anxiety, depression, and stress at the early epidemic of COVID-19. HWs in Hubei Province, especially nurses, had a higher prevalence of psychological disorders. During the pandemic, a negative psychological state may persist in a proportion of Chinese HWs, fluctuating with the control of the pandemic. The long-term impact should continue to be observed. Attention should be paid to HWs for their psychological impact due to the pandemic.Systematic Review Registration: The study protocol was registered with PROSPERO.

The extant research has attached increasing importance to the role of nonstandard managerial beliefs in affecting the decision-making process of firms. This study takes Zodiac year beliefs as an example of nonstandard managerial beliefs and investigates their influence on greenwashing, as well as the corresponding influence mechanism. The analysis is grounded in a dataset of A-share listed companies in China from 2009 to 2023. The results demonstrate that Zodiac year beliefs can inhibit firms from engaging in greenwashing. In addition, it is corroborated that Zodiac year beliefs can reduce the risk-taking level of firms, which in turn further mitigates the intention to engage in greenwashing. Finally, we also demonstrate that Confucianism can reinforce the negative influences of Zodiac year beliefs on greenwashing and risk-taking levels. The findings of this study provide some insights into how nonstandard managerial beliefs shape corporate unethical behaviour.

Abstract“Medical Records of Integrating Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine: Yi Xue Zhong Zhong Can Xi Lu” (abbreviated as YXZZCXL), authored by the influential physician Xichun Zhang, a pioneering authority on the integration of Chinese and Western medicine, enriched the path of integrated medicine. The formulas documented in this work are renowned as “formulas of proven efficacy” with excellent clinical efficacy, playing a significant role in the development of modern Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). This raises a key question: what is the most effective way to study and understand YXZZCXL? Drawing on their learning journey, clinical practice, and prior research, we propose that commencing with the Qi philosophy concept of “Ascending-Descending-Exiting-Entering” (ADEE) provides a straightforward yet effective approach to comprehending the prescription composition within YXZZCXL and the underlying TCM treatment theories it encompasses. Crucially, this approach serves to synthesize Zhang’s scattered clinical insights into a coherent ADEE framework. The framework helps fill systematic gaps in the structure of his academic thought on formula design and treatment principles. Building upon this foundational ADEE framework, we may achieve a leap from ADEE theory towards the development of a novel Qi-movement-centered ADEE syndrome differentiation method. This method serves as a clinical diagnostic and therapeutic tool, effectively linking TCM’s ADEE theory to formulas exerting corresponding regulatory effects, and is particularly indicated for disorders characterized by abnormal Qi movement. It must be emphasized that utilizing ADEE for formula categorization in this study is not a mechanical exercise; rather, it offers four fundamental conceptual perspectives through which disease mechanisms and treatments can be understood. Notably, due to the lack of systematic elaboration on the specific concept of “Exiting-Entering” in classical Chinese medical texts, this study proposes a preliminary interpretation grounded in TCM Qi theory and invites scholarly discourse to refine its theoretical connotation. This three-stage research pathway—synthesizing classical theory, constructing a theoretical framework, and developing a novel differentiation method—is proposed as a potential model for studying other TCM classics. Overall, the most significant academic contribution of this study lies in the systematic proposal and construction of a novel theoretical framework for treatment based on syndrome differentiation, which emerges centuries after the last major advancement in TCM diagnostic approaches.

“Medical Records of Integrating Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine: Yi Xue Zhong Zhong Can Xi Lu” (abbreviated as YXZZCXL), authored by the influential physician Xichun Zhang, a pioneering authority on the integration of Chinese and Western medicine, enriched the path of integrated medicine. The formulas documented in this work are renowned as “formulas of proven efficacy” with excellent clinical efficacy, playing a significant role in the development of modern Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). This raises a key question: what is the most effective way to study and understand YXZZCXL? Drawing on their learning journey, clinical practice, and prior research, we propose that commencing with the Qi philosophy concept of “Ascending-Descending-Exiting-Entering” (ADEE) provides a straightforward yet effective approach to comprehending the prescription composition within YXZZCXL and the underlying TCM treatment theories it encompasses. Crucially, this approach serves to synthesize Zhang’s scattered clinical insights into a coherent ADEE framework. The framework helps fill systematic gaps in the structure of his academic thought on formula design and treatment principles. Building upon this foundational ADEE framework, we may achieve a leap from ADEE theory towards the development of a novel Qi-movement-centered ADEE syndrome differentiation method. This method serves as a clinical diagnostic and therapeutic tool, effectively linking TCM’s ADEE theory to formulas exerting corresponding regulatory effects, and is particularly indicated for disorders characterized by abnormal Qi movement. It must be emphasized that utilizing ADEE for formula categorization in this study is not a mechanical exercise; rather, it offers four fundamental conceptual perspectives through which disease mechanisms and treatments can be understood. Notably, due to the lack of systematic elaboration on the specific concept of “Exiting-Entering” in classical Chinese medical texts, this study proposes a preliminary interpretation grounded in TCM Qi theory and invites scholarly discourse to refine its theoretical connotation. This three-stage research pathway—synthesizing classical theory, constructing a theoretical framework, and developing a novel differentiation method—is proposed as a potential model for studying other TCM classics. Overall, the most significant academic contribution of this study lies in the systematic proposal and construction of a novel theoretical framework for treatment based on syndrome differentiation, which emerges centuries after the last major advancement in TCM diagnostic approaches.

This study introduces a novel fuzzy algebraic structure, termed “convex ordered fuzzy subrings” (), within the framework of “ordered fuzzy rings” (). We provide a rigorous formalization of ‐subrings, ‐ideals, and ‐convex substructures, where denotes a complete lattice equipped with a binary, order‐compatible t‐norm, integrating concepts from convexity theory, fuzzy set theory, and Heyting algebra. We investigate the preservation of convexity and order under ordered fuzzy ring homomorphisms () and their kernels, focusing on convex ‐subrings that are closed under fuzzy addition, multiplication, and additive inverses. These substructures induce ‐convex structures with closure properties under Cartesian products and infima, and their behavior under homomorphisms highlights their algebraic and topological significance. Using an axiomatic framework, we establish conditions on lattice‐valued binary operations necessary to maintain convexity in fuzzy substructures. Illustrative examples, structural analyses, and interconnections are provided to substantiate these results. This work addresses existing theoretical gaps in fuzzification, ordering, convexity, and homomorphic mappings, offering a unified foundation for the study of with potential applications in algebraic analysis, logic, information theory, and soft computing.

The purposes of this study are to extract the essence from the in-depth study of entrepreneurial spirit and the exploration of China’s sports culture construction, find out the beneficial parts in line with China’s sports culture construction, and put forward operational suggestions and countermeasures for dealing with the relationship between entrepreneurial spirit and sports culture to help China’s sports culture construction move toward a new level. This exploration discusses the influence of entrepreneurial spirit on sports culture from the perspective of cognitive regulation, and explores the importance of entrepreneurial spirit from the aspects of social psychology, system, economy, and ethics. The structure of sports culture is analyzed, and the role of entrepreneurial spirit in promoting the construction of sports culture is expounded. Moreover, a questionnaire survey is conducted to investigate the impact of entrepreneurial spirit on the construction of sports culture from the cognitive regulation perspective. The results show that most people agree with the development of the entrepreneurial spirit and positively impact the promotion of entrepreneurial spirit. Most people are not satisfied with the attention and level of sports culture construction. In China’s sports culture, the proportion of the entrepreneurial spirit is still tiny. Thereby, entrepreneurial spirit education must be vigorously promoted to enhance the integration of entrepreneurial spirit and sports culture. The entrepreneurial spirit needs to be introduced in the construction of sports culture. It is essential to do a good job in promoting entrepreneurial spirit, improving the supporting facilities related to sports culture and strengthening the correlation between sports culture and the entrepreneurial spirit. By discussing the influence of entrepreneurial spirit on sports culture, this exploration puts forward relevant opinions for developing sports culture. It is expected that they can have some reference values. This exploration provides new ideas for promoting the combination of sports culture construction and the dissemination of entrepreneurial spirit, which has crucial theoretical and practical significance.

The "Belt and Road" initiative has significantly bolstered educational ties between China and nations along its path, including the Philippines. This paper examines the collaborative trajectory in educational management under this initiative, highlighting the pivotal role of the Philippines in Southeast Asia. It underscores the mutual benefits in resource sharing, talent development, and research collaboration between China and the Philippines. The paper mainly used literature review and case studies method to provide a deep understanding of the current state of China-Philippines educational cooperation. It advocates for enhanced policy dialogue and a robust cooperation framework to elevate educational management standards. It also identifies challenges like cultural and linguistic disparities, and educational inequality, proposing solutions such as cultural and language exchange programs, resource optimization, and a more integrated cooperation mechanism to foster educational advancement.

Although patterns of human activity show a large degree of freedom, they exhibit structural patterns subjected by geographic and social constraints. Aiming at various problems of personalized recommendation in mobile networks, a social network recommendation algorithm is proposed with a variety of context-aware information and combined with a series of social network analysis methods.Based on geographical location and temporal information, potential social relations among users are mined deeply to find the most similar set of users for the target user, then recommendations are carried out incorporating with social relations of the mobile users to effectively solve the problem of recommendation precision. The above study can not only help LBSN designers and developers to better understand their users and grasp their want, but also help to refine the design of their system to provide users with more appropriate applications and services.The experimental results on the real-world dataset verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, and it has higher prediction accuracy compared with existing recommendation algorithms.

This paper presents a human-computer interaction model with a three layers learning mechanism in a pervasive environment. We begin with a discussion around a number of important issues related to human-computer interaction followed by a description of the architecture for a multi-agent cooperative design system for pervasive computing environment. We present our proposed three- layer HCI model and introduce the group formation algorithm, which is predicated on a dynamic sharing niche technology. Finally, we explore the cooperative reinforcement learning and fusion algorithms; the paper closes with concluding observations and a summary of the principal work and contributions of this paper.

Over several decades, Liangkang Ni has developed a distinctive perspective on the parallels and divergences between Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology and Buddhism, particularly Yogācāra Buddhism. Despite the significance of his contributions, Ni’s writings remain largely unavailable in English and have thus had limited exposure in Western phenomenological discourse. This article addresses that gap by offering a thematic reconstruction of Ni’s key insights. The first part examines Ni’s reading of Husserl’s own philosophical reflections on Buddhism in relation to phenomenology. The second part explores Ni’s reconstruction of genetic and structural parallels between Husserl’s genetic phenomenology and Yogācāradoctrines such as vijñaptimātra (consciousness-only), ālaya-vijñāna, and manas. The article assumes some familiarity with Husserl and uses his framework as an entry point to introduce Buddhist concepts. Rather than offering new empirical data, the article provides conceptual clarification and theoretical integration aimed at informing contemporary debates in consciousness studies.

Common spatial pattern is an effective algorithm for extracting electroencephalogram features of motor imagery ; however, CSP mainly aims at multichannel EEG signals, and its effect in extracting EEG features with fewer channels is poor—even worse than before using CSP. To solve the above problem, a new combined feature extraction method has been proposed in this study. For EEG signals from fewer channels, wavelet packet transform, fast ensemble empirical mode decomposition, and local mean decomposition were used to decompose the band-pass filtered EEG into multiple time–frequency components, and the corresponding components were selected according to the frequency characteristics of MI or the correlation coefficient between its time–frequency components and the original EEG signal. Furthermore, phase space reconstruction was performed on the selected components after the three time-frequency decompositions, the maximum Lyapunov index was calculated, and the features were reconstructed; then, CSP projection mapping was used for the reconstructed features. The support vector machine probability output model was trained by the obtained three mappings. Probability outputs by three different support vector machines were then obtained. Finally, the classification of test samples was determined by the fusion of the Dempster–Shafer evidence theory at the decision level. The results showed that the accuracy of the proposed method was 95.71% on data set III of BCI competition II, which was 2.88% higher than the existing methods. On data set IIb of BCI competition IV, the average accuracy was 86.60%, which was 2.3% higher than the existing methods. This study verified the effectiveness of the proposed method and provided an approach for the research and development of the MI-BCI system based on fewer channels.

Based on 2010 to 2019 Chinese outward foreign direct investment panel data from 39 host countries, this paper studies the relationships between host country cultural characteristics and Chinese OFDI. The OLS regression results show that the cultural tolerance and trust in the host countries are significantly positively correlated with Chinese OFDI, which are robust according to the system GMM tests. Further analysis reveals that cultural tolerance is more positively related to Chinese OFDI in host countries with higher legislation and economic freedom, while cultural trust is positively associated with Chinese OFDI in host countries with lower legislation and economic freedom. In addition, higher cultural tolerance and trust promote Chinese OFDI in countries with greater cultural distance. Unlike traditional studies based on cultural distance in international trade, using more representative cultural characteristics, this paper provides references to Chinese OFDI decision-making based on the root characteristics associated with heterogeneous cultural influences.

We consider Geanakoplos and Polemarchakis’s generalization of Aumman’s famous result on “agreeing to disagree", in the context of imprecise probability. The main purpose is to reveal a connection between the possibility of agreeing to disagree and the interesting and anomalous phenomenon known as dilation. We show that for two agents who share the same set of priors and update by conditioning on every prior, it is impossible to agree to disagree on the lower or upper probability of a hypothesis unless a certain dilation occurs. With some common topological assumptions, the result entails that it is impossible to agree not to have the same set of posterior probabilities unless dilation is present. This result may be used to generate sufficient conditions for guaranteed full agreement in the generalized Aumman-setting for some important models of imprecise priors, and we illustrate the potential with an agreement result involving the density ratio classes. We also provide a formulation of our results in terms of “dilation-averse” agents who ignore information about the value of a dilating partition but otherwise update by full Bayesian conditioning.

This paper has two main parts. In the first part, we motivate a kind of indeterminate, suppositional credences by discussing the prospect for a subjective interpretation of a causal Bayesian network, an important tool for causal reasoning in artificial intelligence. A CBN consists of a causal graph and a collection of interventional probabilities. The subjective interpretation in question would take the causal graph in a CBN to represent the causal structure that is believed by an agent, and interventional probabilities in a CBN to represent suppositional credences. We review a difficulty noted in the literature with such an interpretation, and suggest that a natural way to address the challenge is to go for a generalization of CBN that allows indeterminate credences. In the second part, we develop a decision-theoretic foundation for such indeterminate suppositional credences, by generalizing a theory of coherent choice functions to accommodate some form of act-state dependence. The upshot is a decision-theoretic framework that is not only rich enough to, so to speak, ground the probabilities in a subjectively interpreted causal network, but also interesting in its own right, in that it accommodates both act-state dependence and imprecise probabilities.

Sentence length reflects cognitive constraints and stylistic decisions about speech and text segmentation for effective communication, but whether sentence length distributions follow universal patterns across languages and genres remains unclear. This study investigates whether sentence lengths and sub‐sentence lengths—defined as the number of words between sentence‐ending punctuation marks and between adjacent punctuation marks—follow a unified probabilistic distribution across languages, whether this reflects linguistic genealogy, and whether the distribution is affected by genre. Given the links between sentence length, cognitive constraints, and stylistic decisions, we predicted that sentence and sub‐sentence lengths would follow a unified probabilistic distribution across languages, modulated by linguistic genealogy and genre. Analyzing news texts in 10 languages, we found that sentence and sub‐sentence length distributions both conform to a probabilistic model, the Extended Positive Negative Binomial distribution, which was previously shown to capture sentence length distributions in certain languages. To assess whether these differences align with linguistic typology, we performed cluster analysis based on mean length and distribution parameters, with results mirroring known linguistic genealogical relationships. To examine the genre effects, we analyzed sentence and sub‐sentence length distributions across three written genres in English and Chinese. Generalized linear models revealed systematic influences of both genre and language, but with varying results on different linguistic levels: genre accounted for more variance in sentence‐level metrics, whereas language exerted stronger effects at the sub‐sentence level. Sentence and sub‐sentence length distributions reflect a universal probabilistic pattern in punctuation‐based sentence segmentation, influenced by cognitive constraints and genre‐driven adaptability across languages.

Considering the importance of China’s digital economy, industrial Internet, and high-quality development, this study analyzed China’s urban network from the perspective of the communications technology service industry. Three sub-networks and a comprehensive network were constructed. The density, centrality, and cohesive subgroups of the above network were identified. The results show that: cohesion of urban networks in China is weak and resource sharing is low. From west to east, the urban network forms a multilevel diamond structure in the periphery, a parallelogram structure in the semiperiphery, and a triangle structure in the center. The spatial distribution of cohesive subgroups is scattered, disobeying the first law of geography. By constructing sub-networks and a comprehensive network, the subnetworks that dominate China’s urban networks were identified and their typical characteristics described. This study clarifies the technical support pattern behind China’s digital economy development and industrial internet construction and provides a basis for policy-makers to optimize the country’s high-quality development in the future.

Adenosine‐to‐inosine (A‐to‐I) RNA editing, capable of protein recoding, has evolved independently in animals and fungi. This study proposes adaptive hypotheses regarding its origins and phenotypic significance, suggesting that A‐to‐I editing enhances adaptability by alleviating genetic trade‐offs. In metazoans, its emergence may have been driven by a development‐defense trade‐off associated with transposable element activation during the evolution of multicellularity. Late Devonian cooling and End‐Permian warming are hypothesized to have driven the emergence of extensive A‐to‐I recoding in coleoid nervous systems and Sordariomycete sexual fruiting bodies, respectively. These adaptations may have influenced key evolutionary innovations, including the evolution of metazoan nervous systems, coleoid intelligence, and shell loss, and fungal sexual reproductive structures. Additionally, extensive A‐to‐I recoding is proposed to facilitate accelerated development and specific life‐history strategies in both animals and fungi. This paper provides new perspectives on the evolutionary forces shaping A‐to‐I RNA editing and its role in phenotypic diversity across taxa.

The integration of AI technologies in academic writing has become an increasingly prevalent practice. However, existing discussions have primarily focused on analyzing practitioners’ perceptions of AI use in academic writing, with limited attention given to authentic examples of AI-generated content in such practices. This study analyzes 91 instances of undeclared AI-generated content in published research articles listed on Retraction Watch, a watchdog organization that tracks retractions of scientific papers. The results indicate that undeclared uses of AI serve three primary functions: adding new content (49%), organizing existing content (33%), and performing language and formality checks (18%). These AI-generated instances are most frequently found in introduction and literature review sections (34%), followed by results and discussion sections (31%), and least in methodology sections (22%) of research articles. The study raises ethical concerns about the undeclared use of AI, underscoring its potential to compromise academic integrity and knowledge production within the academic community.

The current COVID-19 pandemic and the previous SARS/MERS outbreaks of 2003 and 2012 have resulted in a series of major global public health crises. We argue that in the interest of developing effective and safe vaccines and drugs and to better understand coronaviruses and associated disease mechenisms it is necessary to integrate the large and exponentially growing body of heterogeneous coronavirus data. Ontologies play an important role in standard-based knowledge and data representation, integration, sharing, and analysis. Accordingly, we initiated the development of the community-based Coronavirus Infectious Disease Ontology in early 2020. As an Open Biomedical Ontology (OBO) library ontology, CIDO is open source and interoperable with other existing OBO ontologies. CIDO is aligned with the Basic Formal Ontology and Viral Infectious Disease Ontology. CIDO has imported terms from over 30 OBO ontologies. For example, CIDO imports all SARS-CoV-2 protein terms from the Protein Ontology, COVID-19-related phenotype terms from the Human Phenotype Ontology, and over 100 COVID-19 terms for vaccines (both authorized and in clinical trial) from the Vaccine Ontology. CIDO systematically represents variants of SARS-CoV-2 viruses and over 300 amino acid substitutions therein, along with over 300 diagnostic kits and methods. CIDO also describes hundreds of host-coronavirus protein-protein interactions (PPIs) and the drugs that target proteins in these PPIs. CIDO has been used to model COVID-19 related phenomena in areas such as epidemiology. The scope of CIDO was evaluated by visual analysis supported by a summarization network method. CIDO has been used in various applications such as term standardization, inference, natural language processing (NLP) and clinical data integration. We have applied the amino acid variant knowledge present in CIDO to analyze differences between SARS-CoV-2 Delta and Omicron variants. CIDO's integrative host-coronavirus PPIs and drug-target knowledge has also been used to support drug repurposing for COVID-19 treatment. CIDO represents entities and relations in the domain of coronavirus diseases with a special focus on COVID-19. It supports shared knowledge representation, data and metadata standardization and integration, and has been used in a range of applications.

This paper investigates a two-player contest with a multiplicative sabotage effect, showing it can be converted into a standard Tullock contest with a nonlinear, endogenous cost function. We prove the existence and uniqueness of a pure strategy equilibrium. Our findings suggest that sabotage activities can be more pronounced when the productivity difference between players is small, and the more productive player might not necessarily undergo more attacks. Lazear and Rosen (1981) first-best outcome is attainable for symmetric players if sabotage is sufficiently ineffective or costly. When it is unattainable, optimal pay difference induces positive sabotage only if sabotage is ineffective but relatively inexpensive. Optimal pay difference decreases with effectiveness and increases with the marginal cost of destructive effort, exhibiting a non-monotonic relationship with productive-effort effectiveness. This non-monotonicity contrasts with the monotonicity of the first best pay difference when sabotage is infeasible.