C Zhou

Background: Previous systematic review indicated the prevalence of prenatal anxiety as 14–54%. Pregnant women are a high-risk population for COVID-19. However, the prevalence of anxiety symptoms and related factors is unknown in Chinese pregnant women during COVID-19 outbreak.Objective: To investigate the prevalence of anxiety symptoms and the related factors in Chinese pregnant women who were attending crisis intervention during the COVID-19 pandemic.Methods: The data of this cross-sectional study were collected in about 2 months. Data analysis was performed from April to May 2020. Participants completed a set of questionnaires via the Wechat Mini-program before starting the online self-help crisis intervention for COVID-19 epidemic. A total of 2,120 Chinese pregnant women who were attending a self-help crisis intervention participated in this study. A survey was developed to address possible stress-related factors in pregnant women during the COVID-19 outbreak, including demographic, socioeconomic, and pregnancy-related factors, as well as COVID-19 related factors. Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 scale and the 10-item perceived stress scale were, respectively, employed to measure anxiety and stress-related factors.Results: A total of 21.7% of pregnant women reported at least mild anxiety, and only 82 women reported moderate to severe anxiety. Factors associated with at least mild anxiety included living in Hubei province, nobody providing everyday life support, pelvic pain or vaginal bleeding, and higher perceived stress. Having relatives or neighbors with a diagnosis of COVID-19 was not associated with anxiety.Conclusions and Relevance: Our findings indicate that evaluation and intervention for maternal and infant health are necessary in pregnant women with anxiety during COVID-19 epidemic, especially those with higher perceived stress, less everyday life support, or vaginal bleeding. Interactions among these related medical, social and psychological factors need to be investigated in future studies.

BackgroundMore than 15% of Chinese respondents reported somatic symptoms in the last week of January 2020. Promoting resilience is a possible target in crisis intervention that can alleviate somatization.ObjectivesThis study aims to investigate the relationship between resilience and somatization, as well as the underlying possible mediating and moderating mechanism, in a large sample of Chinese participants receiving a crisis intervention during the coronavirus disease 2019 epidemic.MethodsParticipants were invited online to complete demographic information and questionnaires. The Symptom Checklist-90 somatization subscale, 10-item Connor–Davidson resilience scale, and 10-item Perceived Stress Scale were measured.ResultsA total of 2,557 participants were included. Spearman correlation analysis revealed that lower resilience was associated with more somatic symptoms. The conditional process model was proved. The interaction effects between perceived stress and sex predicted somatization.ConclusionResilience is a key predictor of somatization. The mediating effects of perceived stress between resilience and somatization work in the context of sex difference. Sex-specific intervention by enhancing resilience is of implication for alleviating somatization during the coronavirus disease 2019 epidemic.

The integration of AI-based conversational agents (CAs) in mental health aims to bridge the global “treatment gap.” However, high user attrition poses a critical ethical challenge, potentially compromising care continuity and distributive justice. This study quantifies attrition rates in AI-driven mental health interventions and evaluates their ethical implications for user autonomy and research integrity. Following PRISMA 2020 guidelines and registered with PROSPERO, this systematic review and meta-analysis synthesized evidence from six databases through September 2025. Employing a convergent parallel mixed-methods design, we analyzed 39 independent studies. A random-effects model was used to calculate pooled attrition rates, while meta-regression explored the correlation between attrition and clinical efficacy (improvement in depressive/anxiety symptoms). Qualitative narrative synthesis was further applied to contextualize user experiences. The meta-analysis revealed a pooled attrition rate of 17.04% (95% CI, 11.46%-23.38%) for AI interventions. Generative AI-based CAs exhibited significantly lower attrition rates (9.25%) compared to retrieval-based systems (23.12%, p = 0.044). Subgroup analysis identified intervention target, delivery platform, interaction mode, engagement reminders and safety measures as key moderators of engagement. Crucially, a significant inverse association between retention and treatment efficacy was observed in depression interventions, where lower attrition correlated with larger effect sizes (β = 0.97, p = 0.043). Furthermore, a pervasive “reporting gap” exists regarding the qualitative reasons for user withdrawal. High attrition rates in AI-based mental health interventions may represent more than technical disengagement, potentially implicating the ethical principles of beneficence and non-maleficence by disrupting the continuity of care. While generative AI shows promise in fostering a perceived therapeutic alliance and mitigating attrition, the observed association between disengagement and diminished efficacy suggests a risk of exacerbating structural health disparities. To address these challenges, we propose the “Ethics-oriented Engagement Framework”(EEF), which integrates transparent accountability, autonomy balance, safety-by-design, and inclusive beneficence. This framework provides a normative roadmap to reconcile the tension between promoting user engagement and upholding the foundational ethical mandates of patient safety and justice. PROSPERO (CRD420251275051).

Acid fracturing is the most important stimulation method in the carbonate reservoir. Due to the high cost and high risk of acid fracturing, it is necessary to predict the reservoir productivity before acid fracturing, which can provide support to optimize the parameters of acid fracturing. However, the productivity of a single well is affected by various construction parameters and geological conditions. Overfitting can occur when performing productivity prediction tasks on the high-dimension, small-sized reservoir, and acid fracturing dataset. Therefore, this study developed a stacking heterogeneous ensemble model with a hybrid wrapper-based feature selection strategy to forecast reservoir productivity, resolve the overfitting problem, and improve productivity prediction. Compared to other baseline models, the proposed model was found to have the best predictive performances on the test set and effectively deal with the overfitting. The results proved that the hybrid wrapper-based feature selection strategy introduced in this study reduced data acquisition costs and improved model comprehensibility without reducing model performance.

Based on social learning theory and the trickle-down effects, in which behavioral patterns cascade from one management level to the next, we attempt to answer whether upper-level managers’ temporal leadership can be transferred to lower-level managers to form their temporal leadership, and what the mediating mechanisms and boundary conditions for this occurrence are. By analyzing the data from 234 middle-level managers and 686 junior managers/employees, we found that top managers’ temporal leadership was positively associated with middle-level managers’ temporal leadership through the mediating role of middle-level managers’ temporal leadership perspective and that the relationship was moderated by middle-level managers’ identification with the top manager. Identification with the top manager, in particular, strengthens both the top manager’s positive effect on middle-level managers’ temporal leadership and the top manager’s temporal leadership’s mediating role in this relationship through their temporal leadership perspective. The theoretical and managerial implications of these findings are investigated.

ZUSAMMENFASSUNG Die vorliegende Untersuchung argumentiert, dass Schellings Spätphilosophie eine Theorie der, Ur-Subjektivität‘ als Antwort auf das Desiderat einer transzendentalphilosophischen Letztbegründung entwickelt. Diese Konzeption wird in einen kritischen Dialog mit der für den Deutschen Idealismus zentralen Theorie der Selbstkonstruktion gestellt. Während letztere die apriorische konstitutive Tätigkeit des Subjekts als gänzlich aus sich selbst hervorgehend begreift, offenbart deren Abhängigkeit von reflexiver Selbstbeziehung immanente Schranken. Diese manifestieren sich in einer Grenzdimension, die durch ein, konstruierbares‘ Sein markiert ist – eine grundlegende Dimension der Realität, die sich der restlosen Reduktion auf selbstkonstruktive Vollzüge entzieht. Als Reaktion darauf entwirft Schelling eine Theorie vorreflexiver, primordialer Subjektivität als, Seinsbildung‘. Hierdurch wird eine spezifische Form von Subjektivität konturiert, die geeignet ist, den Seinsbereich diesseits der Grenzen der Selbstkonstruktion zu fundieren.

The development of local ethnic music culture is affected by the impact of foreign music culture, the establishment of the teaching system of music culture knowledge, understanding of history, culture, social background to mobilise the sensory mechanism, based on the popular elements of ethnic music innovation, as well as enrichment of the regional ethnic music and cultural activities, and active promotion of the protection of the local ethnic music culture of the five factors. The five factors relationship value are 0.440, 0.517, 0.541, 0.498 are all greater than 0, and there is a significant relationship between the factors. The path coefficients of the refinement factors on the protection of local ethnic music culture are all greater than 0, and p=0.000.

Smart homes create a beneficial environment for the lives of elderly people and enhance the quality of their home lives. This study aims to explore the design of age-friendly interfaces that can meet the emotional needs of self-care elderly people from the perspective of functional realization of the operating interface. Sixteen elderly users aged fifty-five and above were selected as subjects with healthy eyes and no excessive drooping eyelids to obscure them. Four representative age-friendly applications with different interface designs were selected from the Android application market as the stimulus material for the experiment, and a total of fifteen pages were browsed independently. During the experiment, the ErgoLAB human-computer environment synchronization cloud platform was used to monitor and record the subjects' multidimensional physiological indicators of eye movements, skin electricity, and heart rate variability when using different styles of mobile application interfaces. Combined with the post-experimental PAD emotion scale data, the preferences of emotional interface design elements of the self-care elderly were analyzed to guide the subsequent design practice. The results show that: on the layout characteristics of the home page, a simple and intuitive multi-column layout or card layout combined with a bottom navigation bar type main navigation is used; on the choice of the main color, a single color with low saturation is used as the main color, with high saturation color accents to play a role in highlighting key information; on the information density of the home page, a moderate proportion of graphics and text is adopted, with low information density; on the arrangement of the page content, they try to give priority to information content with high user relevance.

Intracellular cargo transport relies on a microtubule (MT) network and its molecular motors, dynein and kinesin. While conventional models emphasize motor‐driven cargo movement along stationary MT tracks, emerging evidence suggests that dynamic movements of MTs also contribute to directional transport. We propose a model of cargo co‐migration with moving MTs, exemplified by nuclear migration in developing neurons. This transport mode may operate across cell types, provided that cargo‐MT tethering and directional MT movements are present. We hypothesize multiple complementary mechanisms, including motor catch‐bond formation and clustering, as well as MT‐associated protein‐mediated anchorage. We further discuss how directional MT movements can be generated through motor‐driven sliding, cortical gliding, actin‐MT crosslinking, and dynamic MT instability. This coupled transport mechanism provides an additional layer of directional control that supplements motor‐stepping‐dependent transport. Potential experimental approaches to validate this hypothesis are discussed. Understanding MT‐mediated cargo delivery could refine our current models of intracellular transport and reveal new insights into neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders.

A new theory of the neuropsychological underpinnings of phenomenal consciousness, “asynchronous introspection theory,” is proposed that emphasizes asynchrony between different neurocognitive processes. We provide a detailed explanation of how a mind might arrive at a cognitive structure isomorphic to the cognitive structure that would emerge from experiential qualia. The theory suggests that a temporal illusion is created because of the mismatch between the real physical timeline and the neurally constructed timeline composed inside a person’s brain. This temporal illusion leads to the origination of a thought that one has had a certain experience wherein the thought and the feeling seem synchronous to the person but, in fact, are not. This leads to the thought, “I had a feeling.” The theory is elaborated via a metaphorical “robot supervisor model” and is shown to explain many current problems of phenomenal consciousness.

This paper explores the profound philosophical implications of the theoreti cal conception of Transcendental Topological Order (TTO). The core features of TTO—characterization of quantum dimensions by transcendental numbers, res onant dependence of physical properties on observation scale, and the potential emergence of topological order in the time dimension—collectively point to a fun damental question: Are the physical laws we know the only possible “successful” form? This paper argues that the mathematical self-consistency of TTO provides a theoretical possibility for the “diversity of forms of physical laws,” prompting us to re-examine: 1) whether the algebraic number basis of physical constants is necessary; 2) whether the criterion for “cosmic success” is limited to supporting the material structures and life forms we know; and 3) whether the essence of time and space may be intertwined in a more profound way. By situating TTO within contemporary discussions of the multiverse, mathematical realism, and cognitive boundaries, this paper reveals the universal intellectual insights, far beyond the scope of condensed matter physics, triggered by this specific physical conception.

Good balance between product and service is the key in the innovative design of product service systems. In this study, the evolution route of the PSS based on Teoriya Resheniya Izobretatelskikh Zadatch ideal final result was provided. The function model of the PSS was constructed according to the service blueprint and function system diagrams. On this basis, an innovation design method of the PSS based on function incentive was established. The function incentive strategies included function synergy, function supplement, and function substitution. Finally, the PSS design process of agricultural machinery based on computer-aided innovation platform was analyzed to verify this method.

Given the discovery of a distributed language and motor functional network, surprisingly few studies have explored whether language processing is related to motor skill training. To address this issue, the present study used functional magnetic resonance imaging to compare whole-brain activation between nonexperts and experts in table tennis, an open skill sport in which players make rapid decisions in response to an ever-changing environment. Whole-brain activation was assessed in 30 expert table tennis players with more than 7 years’ experience and 35 age-matched nonexpert college students while they performed both a size and a semantic judgment task of words presented on a monitor. Compared with nonexperts, expert table tennis players showed greater activation in the left middle occipital gyrus and right precuneus while judging the size of the words versus during baseline fixation. They also showed greater activation in the left lingual gyrus during the semantic judgment task versus during baseline fixation. Our findings indicate that the visual regions engaged in language processing are associated with open motor skill training.

The aim of this study is to conduct a comprehensive stylistic and semiotic analysis of contemporary Chinese piano performance to identify its distinctive characteristics, cultural influences, and artistic significance. A total of 60 Chinese pianists – categorized according to their affiliation with the Beijing conservative school, the Shanghai modernist-synthetic school, the diaspora, and postmodern innovators – and 60 Western performers (German-Austrian tradition, n = 20; Russian pedagogy, n = 15; American eclecticism, n = 15; specialists in Asian repertoire, n = 10) participated in a ten-week intercultural pedagogical project. Performance recordings obtained before and after the intervention were evaluated by expert raters using a 10-point scale across five dimensions: technical proficiency, musicality, interpretative depth, emotional expressiveness, and stage presence. Interrater reliability exceeded the accepted threshold (ICC > 0.85). In addition, participants completed questionnaires developed using a mixed-methods approach, incorporating both Likert-scale items and open-ended questions. A survey of 60 Western pianists highlighted high evaluations of Chinese performers in intercultural exchange (4.10 out of 5), technical proficiency (4.05), and influence on competition culture (4.00). The study’s results indicate that Chinese pianists excel in technical proficiency (8.5 vs. 8.3) but lag behind in musicality (8.2 vs. 8.6), interpretation (7.9 vs. 8.4), and emotional expressiveness (7.7 vs. 8.5) compared to their Western counterparts. This research contributes significantly to understanding current trends in global piano artistry and outlines prospects for further study of the interaction between different performance schools.

Humans are born with the ability and the need for affection, but communicating affection as a social behavior is historically bound. Based on the digitized books of Google Ngram Viewer from 1960 through 2008, the present research investigated the affectionate communication (AC) in China and in the US, and its changing landscape along with social changes from collectivist to individualistic environments. In particular, we analyzed the frequency in terms of verbal affection (e.g., love you, like you), non-verbal affection (e.g., hug, kiss), and individualism (indicated by the use of first-person singular pronouns, such as I, me, and myself) in Chinese and in American books. The results revealed a convergent increasing trend of AC over the past decades, although the frequency of affection words was lower in Chinese than in American books. Further, the individualism was found to be positively related to the frequency of affection words in both Chinese and American books. These results demonstrate the effect of cultural changes on AC, in that affection exchange becomes popular in adaptation to individualistic urban environments, which provide the evidence about the cross-cultural difference in love expression and the cultural universality of social change in Eastern and Western societies.

Zusammenfassung Der Begriff des Absoluten hängt in der Wissenschaftslehre von 1804-II aufs Engste mit dem Begriff der Transzendentalphilosophie zusammen. Der vorliegende Beitrag fasst die Konzeption des „reinen Wissens“ in dieser Fassung der Wissenschaftslehre als den Kreuzpunkt zwischen der Fichteschen Figur der „Transzendentalität“ und der spekulativen Rede des „Absoluten“. Es soll zunächst gezeigt werden, dass Fichtes Begriff des reinen Wissens durch einen radikal transzendental-kritischen Ansatz gegen die klassische Annahme der Präsenz-Identität geprägt ist. Ausgehend von der daraus herauskristallisierten These Fichtes, dass die Identität vielmehr stets mit der Differenz bzw. mit dem Abstand und dem Überschuss dieser Identität mitgegeben wird, soll weiterhin gezeigt werden, dass dieser transzendentale-kritische Weg insofern mit dem spekulativen Weg zu der „absoluten Einheit“ koinzidiert, als der transzendental-kritische Weg Fichte es erlaubt, die Identität und die Differenz in ihrem Wechselbezug, in ihrer gegenseitigen Beweglichkeit zu beobachten, und mehr noch, den Sinn des philosophischen Einheitskonzepts nicht mehr durch die statische Vorgegebenheit der Identität zu interpretieren, sondern durch die wechselseitig- bewegliche Einheit zwischen Identität und Differenz einzuholen. Diese bewegliche Einheit ist für Fichte als das „reine Wissen“ zu verstehen, weil sie auf eine „reine“ bewegliche sowie unsichtbare Dimension des Wissens verweist, die die „Genesis“ bzw. die Ermöglichung des Präsenz-Werdens der Identität markiert. In einem abschließenden Blick auf das Problem, wie das reine Bewegliche in einer Theorie „fixiert“ werden könnte, soll die „Theorieform“ der Wissenschaftslehre als eine Performanz bzw. eine performative reflexive Bewegung des Denkens verdeutlicht werden: In dieser Performanz ergibt sich das „Begreifen des Unbegreiflichen“.

This article aims to demonstrate that Fichte, in his work „Science of Knowledge 1804-II,“ introduced a concept of transcendentality that leads to the proposition that the transcendental principle, which enables our understanding of objective reality, possesses a distinct sui generis mode of being. It is argued that this mode of being is expressed through Fichte’s conception of ‘pure knowledge’. Through a closer examination of Fichte’s idea of the need for a ‘genetic’ explanation of pure knowledge in the first four lectures of the Science of Knowledge 1804-II, it will be made explicit that the figure of transcendentality characterized as the ‘being of knowledge’ is not to be identified with an omnipresent subject-center. In conclusion, the conception of pure knowledge will be interpreted and reconstructed as a genetic field of the inner identity of knowledge: one that must be conceived not from a pure identity given a priori, but from the relationality between unity and duality – by virtue of this relationality, they always dynamically refer to each other and open up to each other despite their irreducible distance.

As globalization and informatization progress, businesses have transitioned from solely pursuing economic interests to actively embracing social responsibility. However, in-depth exploration of the marginal effect of urban policies on corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure is still relatively limited. This paper employs the establishment of cross-border e-commerce comprehensive pilot areas as a quasi-natural experiment to investigate the impact of these policies on CSR disclosure and the underlying mechanisms. It is found that these policies significantly promote CSR disclosure by increasing industry competition and strengthening external supervision pressure. The heterogeneity analysis of grouping tests shows that the attributes of high-tech and heavily polluting industries strengthen the policy effect. The generalized random forest algorithm reveals the conditional average treatment effect (CATE) of these policies and finds that firm characteristics do not exhibit a simple linear relationship with CATE. These findings offer theoretical and practical implications for policymakers and corporate managers aiming to foster sustainable business practices.

This study presents a critical review of the emerging field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Sociology, examining the social implications and ethical considerations of AI technologies. Through a qualitative methodology incorporating a systematic literature review and thematic analysis, this research explores the intersection of AI and sociology, aiming to bridge the gap between technological advancement and societal impact. The study investigates key theoretical frameworks, including critical theory and actor-network theory, to analyse power relations, social stratification, and the dynamic interplay between AI and society. The findings reveal the multifaceted influence of AI on social structures, ethical challenges, and the need for interdisciplinary approaches to address the societal implications of AI.

This study presents a critical review of the emerging field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Sociology, examining the social implications and ethical considerations of AI technologies. Through a qualitative methodology incorporating a systematic literature review and thematic analysis, this research explores the intersection of AI and sociology, aiming to bridge the gap between technological advancement and societal impact. The study investigates key theoretical frameworks, including critical theory and actor-network theory, to analyse power relations, social stratification, and the dynamic interplay between AI and society. The findings reveal the multifaceted influence of AI on social structures, ethical challenges, and the need for interdisciplinary approaches to address the societal implications of AI.

Short circuit is a key factor which drastically affects the efficiency of metal electrorefining. Infrared image of the intercell busbar region is used to perform short circuit detection. To cope with the high thermal background, a two-level short circuit detection method is designed. Firstly, with background subtraction, high intensity short circuit electrodes, as well as the background, are removed, and normal working electrodes are preserved. In the second stage, suspicious short circuit areas are sifted out by normal electrode detecting and texture period estimation. Gaussian difference filter which is based on the human visual system is improved to match the target gray distribution. A comparative experiment indicates that the proposed orthogonal DoG outperforms the original DoG and top-hat in the accuracy of normal electrode detection. The two-level detection method in this paper is applied in a copper electrolysis plant and exhibits superiority in locating short circuits and avoiding miss detection.

BackgroundIndividuals with mind-wandering experience their attention decoupling from their main task at hand while others with flow experience fully engage in their task with the optimum experience. There seems to be a negative relationship between mind-wandering and flow. However, it remains unclear to what extent mind-wandering exerts an impact on flow. And it is also elusive whether physical activity and mindfulness, which are as important factors that affected individuals’ attentional control and psychological health, are beneficial in explaining the association between mind-wandering and flow. The current study investigated the relationship between mind-wandering and flow, and the potential mediation effects of physical activity and mindfulness in this association.MethodsA cross-sectional exploratory study design, including multiple scales such as the Mind-Wandering Questionnaire, the International Physical Activity Questionnaire Short Form, Mindfulness Attention and Awareness Scale, and the Short Dispositional Flow Scale was applied. Descriptive statistics and bivariate correlation coefficients were applied in the analysis of these data. A multiple mediation model was used to examine the relationships between mind-wandering, flow, physical activity, and mindfulness.ResultsMind-wandering was inversely associated with physical activity, mindfulness and flow, respectively; and flow was positively related to physical activity and mindfulness, respectively. Moreover, multiple mediation results demonstrated that physical activity and mindfulness, respectively, mediated the relationship between mind-wandering and flow.ConclusionThese findings are helpful to understand how our minds attend to the present moment, and the crucial roles of physical activity and mindfulness in the association between mind-wandering and flow. An implication of these is the possibility that the effective strategies aimed at enhancing both the levels of physical activity and mindfulness are needed to reduce the negative impact of mind-wandering on flow.

Resumo: Não apenas as famílias aristocráticas indígenas, mas também as famílias de imigrantes do norte que viviam no Leste de Zhejiang, estavam envolvidas nos debates sobre teoria monetária e pensamento político, na Dinastia Jin Oriental e Dinastias do Sul. Os debates geralmente se concentravam nos preços das commodities e no trabalho forçado no Leste de Zhejiang. Esse fenômeno histórico especial reflete duas questões. Por um lado, o caos causado pela guerra no Norte e as famílias de estudiosos, migrando para o Sul, promoveram muito o desenvolvimento do Sul da China, o que tornou os cinco condados do leste de Zhejiang as áreas mais importantes e ativas da economia. Por outro lado, reflete as mudanças de relacionamento entre imigrantes e nobres indígenas. Ou seja, as famílias aristocráticas indígenas e as famílias imigrantes do Norte cooperaram na economia para aumentar a prosperidade e o desenvolvimento do Leste de Zhejiang. Mais tarde, com o surgimento de “povo comum (寒人)”, o status econômico dos estudiosos foi cada vez mais impactado, o que resultou em ansiedade e consciência de crise dos nobres.