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Religious beliefs in Chinese cultural background, especially in Chinese secular society, have rarely been systematically investigated. The nonreligious-based population in China endorses certain supernatural beliefs or has related transcendent experience, even though they usually claim themselves as non-believers. Therefore, the current research examined the spirituality-prosociality association in Chinese secular background, demonstrating how spiritual connection with the transcendence related to individual secular social life. A total of 440 Chinese participants completed our questionnaires in three survey studies. The results showed that: 1) for the nonreligious-based population in China, spirituality was positively connected with personal prosocial trait, prosocial attitude, and prosocial behavior; 2) the prosocial trait of compassionate love partially mediated the association between spirituality and daily prosocial expenses on time and money; and 3) personal emphasis on moral principles such as ultimate justice beliefs partially mediated the association between spirituality and interpersonal altruism in organizational settings. Limitations and future directions were discussed.

This study focuses on Chinese listed companies, aiming to explore the relationship between digital finance, corporate digital transformation, and ESG performance, and further analyze the mediating role of digital transformation in this process. Based on data from Chinese Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies between 2012 and 2022, this study uses ESG performance data published by the Huazheng ESG Rating and the digital financial index from Peking University. To empirically test how digital finance would impact corporate ESG performance, this study uses the panel data model with two-way fixed effects. This study addresses endogeneity issues by employing lagged one-period ESG data for robustness checks and replacing the core explanatory and dependent variables to ensure the robustness of the conclusions. Additionally, a heterogeneity analysis is performed based on ownership type (state-owned vs. non-state-owned) and regional location (eastern, central, western). The findings indicate that: (1) the development of digital finance significantly contributes to improving corporate ESG performance, and the conclusion remains robust even after considering endogeneity and replacing variables; (2) mechanism analysis reveals that digital transformation is an important mediating variable through which digital finance affects corporate ESG performance; (3) heterogeneity analysis shows that digital finance has a more significant effect on the ESG performance of state-owned enterprises, possibly due to their advantages in resource acquisition and policy support. Additionally, digital finance has a stronger impact on enhancing ESG performance in the central and western regions of China compared to the eastern region.

Taking the organizational neuroscience approach, we integrate evolutionary theories of sex differences and neuroscientific theory of the self-regulation system to develop a neurological index explaining the distinct relationships between job stress and moral disengagement for female versus male employees. We surveyed 179 full-time working adults and measured their brain activity using resting-state fMRI. The results show a significant relationship between job stress and moral disengagement for male but not for female employees. As hypothesized, job stress is positively associated with the brain’s self-regulation system indicated by resting-state functional connectivity of core regions in the central-executive network, salience network, and default mode network (i.e., RSFC of CEN-SN/DMN) for females only, which reduces their moral disengagement. Further analyses of these data and data from our supplementary experiment reveal an introspective mechanism females rely on that prevents them from moral disengagement, which does not exist in males. Overall, our findings provide insights into an important neurological pathway of RSFC of CEN-SN/DMN as well as introspection in the sex-specific self-regulation mechanism underlying the job stress—moral disengagement relationship, which have important theoretical and practical implications for organization ethics.

The pattern, process, and mechanism of residential heterogeneity vary significantly with different geographical scales. However, most traditional methods ignore the checkboard and modifiable areal unit problem, which may cover up the complexity and hierarchy of social space. Taking Hangzhou city as an example, a multiscalar method was proposed based on the information entropy theory to estimate residential heterogeneity and its scale sensitivity. Based on the sixth population census of Hangzhou and the housing price database of 6,536 residential districts from 2008 to 2018, we explore the scale effect and dynamic characteristics of residential heterogeneity. The results of spatial simulation and geostatistical analysis based on Python Spatial Analysis Library module show that the multiscalar algorithm better presents the real segregation pattern than traditional method, which is one of the new models and technologies in urban geography complex system. Exploring residential heterogeneity through multiscalar lens provides an important basis for the gradual and refined urban renewal.

The amyloid beta-protein deposited in brains of Alzheimer's disease patients is proteolytically derived from a large Abeta precursor protein . APP gene expression patterns in the AD brain region indicate that abnormalities of gene regulation may be important in AD pathology. To understand the contribution of different cell types to APP gene expression, we studied it at four levels: promoter activity , DNA-nuclear protein interaction , RNA message and protein . APP mRNA and protein expression levels were greater in neuroblastoma and PC12 cells than in glial or cervix epithelial cells. Relative activity among 12 different promoter regions and within single regions varied according to cell type/cell line. An upstream regulatory region containing a GATA-1 site is necessary for activity in PC12 and glial cells but not in neuroblastoma cells. DNA-protein interactions were examined in three distal and one proximal promoter elements in nuclear extracts belonging to neuronal and non-neuronal cells. The proximal promoter region is important for cell line-specific APP gene expression. Characterization of the APP regulatory region's interaction with cell type-specific nuclear factor is important to understand tissue-specific expression of APP seen in AD subjects

Ritualistic consumption refers to integrating ritual elements into the process of product design and usage. By conducting three studies, we find that ritualistic consumption can offer new and interesting experiences and help consumers gain a sense of control. Both positive and negative emotions can promote ritualistic consumption tendencies. However, their underlying psychological mechanisms are different. Specifically, positive emotion can arouse consumers’ desire for interesting experience and thus promotes their preference for ritualistic consumption, while negative emotion can arouse consumers’ need for control and thus promote their preference for ritualistic consumption. Our research results offer a theoretical contribution and practical inspiration for emotional marketing.

Environmentality teases out the multilayered human-environment contacts and connections in terms of human agency and governmentality, ecological objects and their (in)dependence, power/knowledge and environmental (in)justice. “Sustainable Development Goals” recognize that ending poverty and other deprivations must go hand-in-hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth – all while tackling climate change and working to preserve our environment. This paper outlines the scopes, scales, and methods of Chinese storytelling and multimedia exhibitions on deforestation and afforestation, pollution and purification, and wastelands and eco-systems in industrial, de-industrial, and post-industrial times. The author considers short stories, novellas, novels, reportages, nonfiction writings, and visual artworks, with specific focus on trees, forests, and plant writing. By reading Kong Jiesheng’s “Forest Primeval,” Ah Cheng’s “King of Trees,” Xu Gang’s Loggers, Wake Up!, Yan Lianke’s Garden No. 711: The Ultimate Last Memo of Beijing, and Chen Yingsong’s The Forest Is Silent, the author aims to bring to light the awakening and formation of Chinese ecological consciousness, the token of marred humanity and ecocritical reflection, the manifestation of biophilia-biophobia experiences, as well as the structural transformation of private feelings and public emotions in modern and contemporary China.

With the view toward improving the racial diversity in organizations, this work seeks to uncover the reasons why larger groups have an advantage in terms of job opportunities. Based on people’s preference for diversity in commodity selection, we propose a potential feature that may exist in human resource management and call it the isolated choice effect, which unconsciously affects the racial diversity of organizations. Specifically, when making selections in isolation, people are less likely to choose the one whose race would increase group diversity than when making selections in collections. We set up eight experiments in which participants make hiring or firing decisions among choices that are more white people than black people. We find that participants in the isolated choice group are less likely to choose black people, the smaller group, than those in the collective choice group. Our results show a potentially important contributing factor to the underrepresentation of black people in many organizations because hires are often made in isolation while layoffs are often made in collections, which provides a starting point for improving racial diversity in organizations by avoiding the isolated choice effect.

The coronavirus pandemic has resulted in the recommended/required use of face masks in public. The use of a face mask compromises communication, especially in the presence of competing noise. It is crucial to measure the potential effects of wearing face masks on speech intelligibility in noisy environments where excessive background noise can create communication challenges. The effects of wearing transparent face masks and using clear speech to facilitate better verbal communication were evaluated in this study. We evaluated listener word identification scores in the following four conditions: (1) type of mask condition (i.e., no mask, transparent mask, and disposable face mask), (2) presentation mode (i.e., auditory only and audiovisual), (3) speaking style (i.e., conversational speech and clear speech), and (4) with two types of background noise (i.e., speech shaped noise and four-talker babble at −5 signal-to-noise ratio). Results indicate that in the presence of noise, listeners performed less well when the speaker wore a disposable face mask or a transparent mask compared to wearing no mask. Listeners correctly identified more words in the audiovisual presentation when listening to clear speech. Results indicate the combination of face masks and the presence of background noise negatively impact speech intelligibility for listeners. Transparent masks facilitate the ability to understand target sentences by providing visual information. Use of clear speech was shown to alleviate challenging communication situations including compensating for a lack of visual cues and reduced acoustic signals.

This study explored how perceived control affects consumers' willingness to purchase self-improvement products under self-deficit situations. For this purpose, three experiments were conducted to examine the following sources of control: the controllability of self-deficits ; the locus of control ; and situational perceived control. According to the results, higher perceived control can reduce consumers' defensive reaction tendencies, thus increasing their willingness to purchase products that claim to improve their current deficits. Moreover, the aforementioned effect only occurs in within-domain improvement products, rather than without-domain improvement products.

In public health emergencies, people are more willing to save money rather than spending it, which is not conductive to economic development and recovery. Due to the absence of relevant research, the internal logic of this phenomenon is not clear. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, this study systematically explored whether and why public health emergencies stimulate consumers' preference for saving. We conducted two online surveys and used methods including stepwise regression analysis and bootstrapping to test the hypotheses. The first survey, with 1,511 participants from China in February 2020, indicates that the severity of emergencies has a significant positive impact on the populations' willingness to save. Risk perception plays a mediating role between the severity of emergencies and consumers' saving willingness. Materialism plays a moderating role between risk perception and an individual's saving willingness, individuals who are more materialistic have a lower saving willingness when they perceive the risks of the pandemic. To verify the duration of the above effects, we conducted a follow-up survey consisted of 466 instances in August 2020. It is noteworthy that the above effects are not significant during the post-pandemic period. Thus, spending behavior in public health emergencies can be motived by reducing risk perception and increasing materialism. These findings can provide a valuable inspiration for public health, crisis management, and economic recovery during public health emergencies.

In this paper, we present a probabilistic-based method to predict malaria disease at an early stage. Malaria is a very dangerous disease that creates a lot of health problems. Therefore, there is a need for a system that helps us to recognize this disease at early stages through the visual symptoms and from the environmental data. In this paper, we proposed a Bayesian network model to predict the occurrences of malaria disease. The proposed BN model is built on different attributes of the patient’s symptoms and environmental data which are divided into training and testing parts. Our proposed BN model when evaluated on the collected dataset found promising results with an accuracy of 81%. One the other hand, F1 score is also a good evaluation of these probabilistic models because there is a huge variation in class data. The complexity of these models is very high due to the increase of parent nodes in the given influence diagram, and the conditional probability table also becomes more complex.

This paper examines Chinese imagery of smokestacks both as a concrete object and an abstract concept emerging from early futurist eulogy to modernist allergy, and from Maoist propaganda to post-Fifth Generation environmental reflections. In the Republican era, writers from the Creation Society eulogize the smokes of steamboat smokestacks as beautified symbols of modern civilization. Yet members from the Beijing School convey their concerns about the Janus face of industrialization and environmental impairments. After 1949, smokestacks are eulogized as an icon of socialist industrialization and pervade cinematic productions, literary imaginations, and artistic exhibitions. Since the 1980s, smokestacks have been gradually understood as vestiges of problematic socialist practice. The growing ecological deterioration in the 21st century propels public intellectuals and film directors to expose industrial pollution and to invoke environmental protection. Yet another type of representation arises in the post-Fifth Generation films, where smokestacks are visualized as a token of the “insulted and injured” working class, individual discovery, and collective sentiment worn out by the post Mao-Deng global developmentalism and social injustice. The metamorphoses of smokestacks in literary, cinematic, and artistic imaginations envision and exhibit the structural transformation of modern Chinese environmental and ecological consciousness.

On Mill’s view, aesthetic education or the education of the feelings and the cultivation of the beautiful, like intellectual education or moral education, is an important ingredient of human culture, which is indispensable to the completeness of the human being. By historically analyzing the difference of ideas of virtue, which may have been existing between the British people and those of the European Continent, namely, for the former, virtue is almost exclusively an affair of duty, but for the latter, virtue is an affair of the sentiments, Mill believes that a higher and nobler form of expressing the feelings and the beautiful, i.e. Art, enables both sides to aim at a complete and perfect virtue. His reason is as follows, since the perfection is itself the object of Art, Art enables the human mind to maintain a high tone, consequently, the human mind with a high tone will regard human life as a work of Art and will strive for improving it. Mill’s this view of life as Art fully conforms to his belief on self-development and moral progress, and both of them represent his profound understanding and insights of individual person and individual life.