Xiao Zhang

PurposeAs fake information has become the norm on the internet, it is important to investigate how skepticism impacts an individual’s attitude toward word-of-mouth (eWOM). This study examines eWOM skepticism via three dimensions: suspicion of motivation, suspicion of truthfulness and suspicion of identity. It investigates not only which of the three dimensions is more influential in eWOM situations but also the variations and relationships among these three. Furthermore, this study evaluates how an individual’s dispositional trust and perceptions regarding structural assurance can impact each dimension, which in turn affects the assessment of the eWOM messages’ credibility.Design/methodology/approachUsing an online scenario-based survey, data were collected via Amazon Mechanical Turk from 195 participants in the U.S. PLS and cluster analysis were used to analyze the data.FindingsThe results reveal that the suspicion of identity play a major role in message credibility assessment and that people who are naturally less likely to trust others also hold higher suspicion of motivation and truthfulness. Further, structural assurance has significant negative effects on all three dimensions.Practical implicationsThe findings highlight the importance of enhancing the protective measures on eWOM platforms and call for stricter regulations to prevent organizations from adopting deceptive eWOM propagandas.Originality/valueThis research contributes to the literature by exploring the impact of skepticism on eWOM message credibility assessment and helping to validate this newly created construct by considering eWOM skepticism as a formative construct.

In this global village, easy access to news has resulted in many changes in the preferences and patterns of people for accessing news. Therefore, the present study has attempted to investigate the effects of news relevance, perceived quality, and news overloading on people’s news curation preferences. This study has also examined the mediating role of news avoidance between the news relevance, perceived quality, and news overloading on the news curation. A quantitative technique has been employed to check the relationships proposed in the study. A sample size of 217 has been analyzed to check these hypotheses. The findings of the study revealed that news relevance has a negative impact while news overload positively and significantly impact the news curation. However, the news avoidance only mediated the relationship of news quality and news curation. Theoretically, the study has contributed to the literature of journalism and social media by finding that relevance of news has a negative significant impact on the news curation behavior of people, such that if they do not find the news relevant, they happily curate it. Practically, the study implies that the people are more prone to the quality of news rather than quantity; therefore, it is important for the news agencies to ensure that they produce and deliver the quality based news considering the accuracy to penetrate the Theoretic lass level.

© 2015 Macmillan Publishers Limited All rights reserved. Genome-wide gene expression measurements have enabled comprehensive studies that integrate the changes of gene expression and phenotypic information to uncover their novel associations. Here we reported the association analysis between psychophysical phenotypes and genome-wide gene expression changes in human adaptation to one of the most extreme climates on Earth, the Antarctic Dome Argus. Dome A is the highest ice feature in Antarctica, and may be the coldest, driest and windiest location on earth. It is considered unapproachable due to its hostile environment. In 2007, a Chinese team of 17 male explorers made the expedition to Dome A for scientific investigation. Overall, 133 psychophysical phenotypes were recorded, and genome-wide gene expression profiles from the blood samples of the explorers were measured before their departure and upon their arrival at Dome A. We found that mood disturbances, including tension, depression, anger and fatigue, had a strong, positive, linear relationship with the level of a male sex hormone, testosterone, using the Pearson correlation coefficient analysis. We also demonstrated that significantly lowest-level Gene Ontology groups in changes of gene expression in blood cells with erythrocyte removal were consistent with the adaptation of the psychophysical characteristics. Interestingly, we discovered a list of genes that were strongly related to significant phenotypes using phenotype and gene expression PCC analysis. Importantly, among the 70 genes that were identified, most were significantly related to mood disturbances, where 42 genes have been reported in the literature mining, suggesting that the other 28 genes were likely novel genes involved in the mood disturbance mechanism. Taken together, our association analysis provides a reliable method to uncover novel genes and mechanisms related to phenotypes, although further studies are needed.

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English. COVID-19疫情的爆發，突顯出公共健康倫理中自主性與公共健康之間的緊張關係。以“publichealth”、“ethics”、“autonomy”為主題詞在WebofScience核心合集數據庫中進行文獻收集，借助CiteSpace6.1軟件進行信息可視化分析，發現2020年1月1日至2022年5月14日期間，生命倫理/公共健康倫理領域對於“自主性”概念的討論大體上集中在“知情同意”、“健康保健政策"、“健康質量”、“信息技術”和“老年歧視/老年群體”範圍。本文在此基礎上提煉分析COVID-19疫情中的四個“自主性‘‘難題 如何避免以公共健康/公共利益為名過度限制自主性、在數字技術應用中如何保障自主性、如何保障老年群體的自主性和生命權，如何通過促進自主性來推動公共健康目標的實現。COVID-19疫情是一個重塑公共健康倫理自主性概念的歷史契機。冷酷的病毒已經作為一種媒介把人類的命運緊密地聯繫起來，而基於關懷倫理和共同體倫理重塑的自主性概念則有望給疫情下的世界帶來團結、温暖和希望。 In the field of public health ethics, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the tension between autonomy and public health. Using CiteSpace 6.1 software and information visualization analysis, we performed a search of literature in the Web of Science core collection database using thematic words such as “public health”, “ethics” and “autonomy”, we found that from January 1, 2020 to May 14, 2022, discussions on the concept of “autonomy” within the field of bioethics/public health ethics were generally focused on the following topics: “informed consent”, “health care policy”, “health quality”, “information technology”, “ageism” and “elderly group”. In this paper, we distill and analyze four controversial issues: how can we avoid excessive restrictions on autonomy in the name of public health/public interest? How can we protect autonomy when using digital technology? How can we protect the autonomy and rights of the elderly? How can we advance the goals of public health by promoting autonomy? The COVID-19 pandemic is a unique historical opportunity to reshape the concept of autonomy within the field of public health ethics. Although the virus has bound the fate of humanity together, a reinvented concept of autonomy based on care and community ethics holds the promise of bringing solidarity, comfort, and hope to the world in the midst of the pandemic.

Aneuploidy with chromosome instability is a cancer hallmark. We studied chromosome 7 copy number variation in gliomas and in primary cultures derived from them. We found tumor heterogeneity with cells having Chr7-CNV commonly occurs in gliomas, with a higher percentage of cells in high-grade gliomas carrying more than 2 copies of Chr7, as compared to low-grade gliomas. Interestingly, all Chr7-aneuploid cell types in the parental culture of established glioma cell lines reappeared in single-cell-derived subcultures. We then characterized the biology of three syngeneic glioma cultures dominated by different Chr7-aneuploid cell types. We found phenotypic divergence for cells following Chr7 missegregation, which benefited overall tumor growth in vitro and in vivo. Mathematical modeling suggested the involvement of chromosome instability and interactions among cell subpopulations in restoring the optimal equilibrium of tumor cell types. Both our experimental data and mathematical modeling demonstrated that the complexity of tumor heterogeneity could be enhanced by the existence of chromosomes with structural abnormality, in addition to their mis-segregations. Overall, our findings show, for the first time, the involvement of chromosome instability in maintaining tumor heterogeneity, which underlies the enhanced growth, persistence and treatment resistance of cancers. © 2013 Hu et al.

DNA base pairing has been used for many years to direct the arrangement of inorganic nanocrystals into small groupings and arrays with tailored optical and electrical properties. The control of DNA-mediated assembly depends crucially on a better understanding of three-dimensional structure of DNA-nanocrystal-hybridized building blocks. Existing techniques do not allow for structural determination of these flexible and heterogeneous samples. Here we report cryo-electron microscopy and negative-staining electron tomography approaches to image, and three-dimensionally reconstruct a single DNA-nanogold conjugate, an 84-bp double-stranded DNA with two 5-nm nanogold particles for potential substrates in plasmon-coupling experiments. By individual-particle electron tomography reconstruction, we obtain 14 density maps at ~ 2-nm resolution. Using these maps as constraints, we derive 14 conformations of dsDNA by molecular dynamics simulations. The conformational variation is consistent with that from liquid solution, suggesting that individual-particle electron tomography could be an expected approach to study DNA-assembling and flexible protein structure and dynamics.

Objectives: The aim of the current study was to differentiate between neural activity that represents neural anomalies that are responsible for persistent developmental stuttering from the activity that is a result of compensating for stuttering. This was done by investigating alterations to the intrinsic functional architecture of speech-language processes of patients with PDS before and after a short-term intervention. Methods: The resting-state functional connectivity and cortical thickness were examined before and after the intervention. The structural data were used to validate the functional results. Fifteen stuttering patients who received intervention, 13 stuttering patients who did not receive intervention, and 13 fluent controls participated. Results: Before the intervention, both groups of PDS patients showed significant RSFC and cortical thickness reductions in the left pars-opercularis and RSFC increases in the cerebellum, as compared to fluent controls. The intervention was effective in reducing stuttering in PDS- patients and lowering their RSFC in the cerebellum to the level of fluent controls. The intervention effect was specific to the PDS-group. The intervention did not change RSFC and cortical thickness in the left PO, which remained at its preintervention level. Conclusions: The results suggest that the left PO is a locus where the intrinsic functional architecture of speech-language processes is altered in PDS patients, suggesting an etiologic role of this region in PDS. The cerebellum showed intervention-induced neural reorganization, suggesting a compensatory response when stuttering occurs. Copyright © 2012 by AAN Enterprises, Inc.

Cholesteryl ester transfer protein mediates cholesteryl ester transfer from the atheroprotective high density lipoprotein cholesterol to the atherogenic low density lipoprotein cholesterol. In the past decade, this property has driven the development of CETP inhibitors, which have been evaluated in large scale clinical trials for treating cardiovascular diseases. Despite the pharmacological interest, little is known about the fundamental mechanism of CETP in CE transfer. Recent electron microscopy experiments have suggested a tunnel mechanism, and molecular dynamics simulations have shown that the flexible N-terminal distal end of CETP penetrates into the HDL surface and takes up a CE molecule through an open pore. However, it is not known whether a CE molecule can completely transfer through an entire CETP molecule. Here, we used all-atom molecular dynamics simulations to evaluate this possibility. The results showed that a hydrophobic tunnel inside CETP is sufficient to allow a CE molecule to completely transfer through the entire CETP within a predicted transfer time and at a rate comparable with those obtained through physiological measurements. Analyses of the detailed interactions revealed several residues that might be critical for CETP function, which may provide important clues for the effective development of CETP inhibitors and treatment of cardiovascular diseases.

© 2015 Taylor & Francis. This analysis compares the climate impacts over North America during winter associated with various El Niño-Southern Oscillation indices, including the Niño 3.4 index, the leading tropical Pacific outgoing longwave radiation and sea surface temperature covariability, and the eastern Pacific and central Pacific types of ENSO identified from both partial-regression-empirical orthogonal function and regression-EOF approaches. The traditional Niño 3.4 SST index is found to be optimal for monitoring the tropical Pacific OLR-SST covariability and for the tropical SST impact on North America. The circulation anomalies associated with the Niño 3.4 index project on both the Pacific/North American and Tropical/Northern Hemisphere patterns. The ENSO associated with the PNA tends to come from both the EP and CP ENSOs, whereas that associated with the TNH comes more from the EP ENSO. The variability of ENSO significantly affects North American temperature and precipitation, as well as temperature and precipitation extremes. For either the EP or CP types of ENSO, qualitatively similar patterns of climate and climate extreme anomalies are apparent associated with the indices identified by the two EOF approaches, with differences mainly in the anomalous amplitude. The anomalous patterns are generally field significant over North America for the EP ENSO but not field significant for the CP ENSO. The circulation anomalies associated with ENSO are reinforced and maintained by synoptic vorticity fluxes in the upper troposphere. The anomalous surface temperature is mainly determined by the anomalies in surface radiative heating in the face of upward surface longwave radiative damping. The precipitation anomalies are supported by the vertically integrated moisture transport. The differences in atmospheric circulation, surface temperature, and precipitation among the various ENSO indices, including the intensity and spatial structure of the fields, can be attributed to the corresponding differences in synoptic eddy vorticity forcing, surface radiative heating, and vertically integrated moisture transport.

Commonly used methods for determining protein structure, including X-ray crystallography and single-particle reconstruction, often provide a single and unique three-dimensional structure. However, in these methods, the protein dynamics and flexibility/fluctuation remain mostly unknown. Here, we utilized advances in electron tomography to study the antibody flexibility and fluctuation through structural determination of individual antibody particles rather than averaging multiple antibody particles together. Through individual-particle electron tomography 3D reconstruction from negatively-stained ET images, we obtained 120 ab-initio 3D density maps at an intermediate resolution from 120 individual IgG1 antibody particles. Using these maps as a constraint, we derived 120 conformations of the antibody via structural flexible docking of the crystal structure to these maps by targeted molecular dynamics simulations. Statistical analysis of the various conformations disclosed the antibody 3D conformational flexibility through the distribution of its domain distances and orientations. This blueprint approach, if extended to other flexible proteins, may serve as a useful methodology towards understanding protein dynamics and functions.

Through the legacies of somatics and modern dance, Contact Improvisation (CI) has adopted eurocentric assumptions about a presumed natural body, and these concepts have negatively impacted inclusion and equity in CI. In this chapter, the author traces the concept of the natural body through the developments of modern dance and somatics to illuminate how the natural body transmits ideas of race, gender, class, and liberation. The chapter then demonstrates how the natural body transforms into the neutral body and continues to assert influence on CI. The author identifies ways in which current CI practices reinforce or repudiate conceptions of the natural/neutral body, leading to the question: how can the exclusion and inequity that are caused by conceptions of the natural body be attenuated, negotiated, and ultimately changed? Thus, the author argues that through analyzing and challenging the natural body, CI can address its past to make equitable and inclusive choices for the future.

This chapter investigates foundational practices of listening touch, used in Contact Improvisation, and proposes new touch techniques where space brought into awareness to enhance empathic modes of being with and among Others. Informed by new materialist scholarship concerning the entangled nature of relationships, the author explores touch as a way of being in the world and examines listening as a haptic practice that can make possible encounters with Otherness. Building upon foundational somatic listening practices, the new touch techniques proposed include hovering, accompanying, and listening in action. In these techniques, space is proposed to enhance an individual’s ability to stay with disturbing sensations, strong emotions, arousal, and encounters with the unknown or an Otherness within. Taking from Leah Basel’s essay “The Politics of Listening,” space is considered to enhance empathy and compassion and in this research is applied in touch and embodied in dance to support ethical and sustainable ways of co-becoming with diverse cultures and differences. The author draws from lab group research with CI colleagues that form part of her community in Berlin, and she reflects also on an extended CI practice that involves dancing outdoors with environmental matter. These varied contexts and sources support reflections on how receptively humans can relate with other material life forms, and assist her in developing techniques of listening that suggest deeply embedded, environmental ways of attending with Others on micro and macro terms.

This chapter explores the undercurrents of the Underscore, a group framework for dance improvisation originated by Contact Improvisation (CI) pioneer, Nancy Stark Smith (1952–2020). The author describes three experiences, including an influential encounter with Nancy Stark Smith at a weekly Underscore practice in Northampton, Massachusetts; an Underscore with 150+ participants during a 50th anniversary celebration of CI; and an Underscore posthumously honoring Nancy Stark Smith at her alma mater, Oberlin College. In sourcing personal stories, as well as Caught Falling (Smith and Koteen, 2008) and terminology and pictorial “glyphs” from the written outline of the Underscore, this chapter reflects on the far-reaching contributions of the Underscore as part of Nancy Stark Smith’s legacy and considers how the form will expand and evolve in the years to come.

The Stand, also known as the small dance, is a form of meditation described by Steve Paxton in the early 1970s as a means of mitigating physical dangers that Contact Improvisation (CI) dancers navigate. It is now being recognized within the global CI community that the challenges being navigated are not simply physical. The ability to stabilize attention and the skills of staying awake within disorientation are increasingly challenged, yet remain critical foundations in CI. Aside from the obvious physical risks CI dancers navigate, the potential for enmeshed, harmful, and fraught interactions in CI is massive. Through concepts of interpersonal neurobiology, osteopathic philosophy, and CI practice research, the Stand is explored as a listening practice, as a means of training awareness, of stabilizing attention, of developing trust in one’s own rapidly self-organizing system in gravity, and as a pragmatic way of establishing connection with oneself before making contact with another.

This chapter proposes an approach to the concept of Contact Improvisation through Sara Ahmed’s Queer Phenomenology. Starting from the suggested dialogue between bodies and objects, in which the spatial and the social are intertwined, this chapter explores the term queer and the collective practice of improvisation as an experience of disorientation, co-perception, and inclination. Instead of the table invoked by Ahmed, one delights in the wheelchair, an iconic object in the history of Contact Improvisation, whose artistic experimentation allows one to imagine other directions in dance and other contact policies.Se propone un acercamiento al concepto de Contact Improvisation a través de la Fenomenología Queer de Sara Ahmed. Partiendo del diálogo sugerido entre cuerpos y objetos, en el que se entrelazan lo espacial y lo social, este capítulo explora el término queer y la práctica colectiva de la improvisación como una experiencia de desorientación, co-percepción e inclinación. En lugar de la mesa invocada por Ahmed nos deleitamos en la silla de ruedas, un objeto icónico en la historia de la improvisación de contacto, cuya experimentación artística nos permite imaginar otras direcciones en la danza y otras políticas de contacto.

This chapter explores how Contact Improvisation and other embodied ephemeral forms endure through time. It foregrounds the physical action of rolling as it is often done in Contact Improvisation as an act of knowing, in contrast to a conventional static image of knowledge described by Tim Ingold as a logic of inversion. It develops this form of knowing in two ways, both drawing on the thinking of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. First it shows how rolling establishes a dynamic intensive system and then how it works between smooth and striated space. Throughout, the concepts are illustrated with examples from the author’s reflections on a year of intensive dancing.

Taken to task and inspired by the generative intervention of Ishmael Houston-Jones and Fred Holland’s Wrong Contact Manifesto, this conversation investigates the (lost/erased/fugitive) legacies of the aesthetics of the Black radical tradition in Contact Improvisation’s history. From the contemporary cultural currency of racial optics and their effect on some Contact Improvisation communities, to deeper historical strata going back to the invention of jazz and to Fred Moten’s philosophy of blackness and improvisation, this conversation asks: What kind of gestures are made possible, and what kind of gestures are hindered when the haptics of race come to the foreground?

This chapter provides an overview of the practice of Contact Improvisation (CI) in India. Starting from tracing the introduction of the form by international teachers, it follows the emergence of local facilitators and their adaptation of the CI practice to the context of India, in order to discuss the potential of the form to challenge established norms of social interactions. The chapter briefly addresses aspects of living in India, including casteism, colonial influence on regulating the power dynamics related to gender, and social and economic status. Based on this, the chapter outlines the process of developing a community of independent Indian facilitators and touches on the issues of colonialism in the arts and power dynamics between international and Indian teachers. The chapter then discusses in more detail the adaptation of teaching and organizing of CI events according to the constraints of social norms in India. Through practical examples, the chapter describes the principles around which the teaching of CI is centered—emphasizing the autonomy, self-authority of an individual while fostering collaboration and collective attention of a group. It concludes with a reflection on the practice of CI as providing a more expansive understanding of human experience and therefore becoming a potentially revolutionary practice of inclusion and diversity that can challenge and expand the structures of the society.

This memoir, manifesto, and manual provide a road map for Contact Improvisation jams wanting to create “safer brave spaces”—spaces that consciously support consent culture, making being brave safer, especially for marginalized people. The author uses her experience of sexual violence in an open jam and its aftermath to contrast groups supporting rape culture and those creating consent culture. The Beaulieu Test measures whether jam guidelines prioritize looking after each other and the group and listening for “yes,” or taking care of oneself, setting boundaries, and saying “no.” Community accountability, democratic governance, and sensitive response processes grounded in restorative, transformative, and transitional justice can operationalize consent culture values. A precipitating event often mobilizes outside pressure and committed insiders to transition to safer brave space. Past harm may be embodied in the jam, so it is best addressed. The chapter applies to other voluntary groups in which participants risk vulnerability, especially with touch.

Using a framework of neuroplasticity and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, this chapter explores a beginner’s experience of Contact Improvisation (CI) and how it affects the mind and body over time. It makes use of personal anecdotes, data around perceptual systems, and an intersectional history of CI to hash out how this dance form affects dancers and how an informed use of these trends can contribute to an overall practice. The chapter includes the experience of writing the chapter in real time and how the process was complicated by a myopic exposure to the history of CI, participation in residency at Oberlin College, as well as attending the CI @ 50 festival in 2022.

This roundtable discusses the presence and evolution of Contact Improvisation (CI) in mainland China and Taiwan. The participants come from various backgrounds from Beijing, Hangzhou, and Taiwan and share their personal journeys with CI, highlighting its introduction, development, and significance in their dance communities. They reflect on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on CI activities and the role of CI in fostering connections, trust, and spirituality in their local communities. In terms of CI’s future in these regions, they express optimism and emphasize its inclusive and open nature. They also stress the importance of overcoming language barriers to facilitate international exchange and understanding within the global CI community. This conversation sheds light on the unique perspectives and contributions of mainland China and Taiwan to the world of Contact Improvisation.

In this chapter, the authors articulate how elements of Contact Improvisation can be adapted for a broader audience who may have limited access to the kind of interpersonal contact that humans need to thrive. Research on the therapeutic benefits of touch is interwoven with the authors’ personal and professional experiences: Brandes is a licensed psychotherapist who infuses body-based modalities and somatic education into his Body&Being sessions; Revlock is a professional dancer, educator, and the creator of Restorative Contact, a partner mindfulness practice. Their holistic perspective bridges the gap between the body and mind, offering a connection between individuals and the transformative potential of touch. Specific aspects of Contact Improvisation that are explored in the chapter include compression, reciprocal touch, bonding with the earth, spherical space, attunement, and weight-sharing.