Yang Liu

As an important influencing factor of construction workers' safety performance, safety stressor has received increasing attention. However, no consensus has been reached on the relationship between different types of safety stressors and the subdimensions of safety performance, and the mechanism by which safety stressors influence safety performance remains unclear. This study proposed a multiple mediation model with ego depletion and self-efficacy as mediators between safety stressors and workers' safety performance. Data were collected from 335 construction workers in China. Results demonstrated that: the three types of safety stressors all had negative effects on workers' safety performance ; self-efficacy mediated all the relationships between the three safety stressors and safety performance; ego depletion only mediated part of the relationships between the three safety stressors and safety performance; and only part of the multiple-step mediating effects through ego depletion and self-efficacy were supported. This study made contributions by shedding light on the mechanism by which safety stressors influence workers' safety performance and providing more empirical evidence for the relationship between various safety stressors and the subdimensions of safety performance. Additionally, targeted strategies for improving workers' safety performance were proposed according to the findings.

Inhibitory control training is a promising method to improve individual performance of inhibitory control. Recent studies have suggested transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation as a novel approach to affect cognitive function owing to its ability to modulate the locus coeruleus-noradrenaline system. To examine the synergistic effects of combining ICT with tVNS, 58 young males in college were randomly assigned to four groups: ICT + tVNS, ICT + sham tVNS, sham ICT + tVNS, and sham ICT + sham tVNS. Participants were instructed to complete three sessions that comprised pre-training tests, a training session, and post-training tests sequentially. Results showed that the ICT + tVNS group significantly improved training and near-transfer effects on the stop-signal and Go/No-go tasks, and these effects were larger than those of the other groups. However, none of the groups exhibited the far-transfer effect on the color-word Stroop task. These results suggest that tVNS augments the intervention effects of training and similar inhibition tasks to achieve the synergistic effect; however, it does not modulate the effects of non-training tasks and obtain the far-transfer effect. ICT combined with tVNS may be a valuable intervention for improving IC in healthy individuals in certain industries and offers novel research ideas for using tVNS for cognitive improvement.

Recently, infrared human action recognition has attracted increasing attention for it has many advantages over visible light, that is, being robust to illumination change and shadows. However, the infrared action data is limited until now, which degrades the performance of infrared action recognition. Motivated by the idea of transfer learning, an infrared human action recognition framework using auxiliary data from visible light is proposed to solve the problem of limited infrared action data. In the proposed framework, we first construct a novel Cross-Dataset Feature Alignment and Generalization framework to map the infrared data and visible light data into a common feature space, where Kernel Manifold Alignment and a dual aligned-to-generalized encoders model are employed to represent the feature. Then, a support vector machine is trained, using both the infrared data and visible light data, and can classify the features derived from infrared data. The proposed method is evaluated on InfAR, which is a publicly available infrared human action dataset. To build up auxiliary data, we set up a novel visible light action dataset XD145. Experimental results show that the proposed method can achieve state-of-the-art performance compared with several transfer learning and domain adaptation methods.

In countries such as China, where Confucianism is the backbone of national culture, high-social-status entrepreneurs are inclined to engage in corporate social responsibility activities due to the perceived high stress from stakeholders and high ability of doing CSR. Based on a large-scale survey of private enterprises in China, our paper finds that Chinese entrepreneurs at private firms who have high social status are prone to engage in social responsibility efforts. In addition, high-social-status Chinese entrepreneurs are even more likely to engage in social responsibility efforts as they become more politically connected and as the region becomes more market-oriented. These findings extend the upper echelons perspective of CSR into Chinese context by shedding light on antecedents of CSR from a new perspective and clarifying the boundary conditions of the social status–CSR link from the institutional perspective.

The recent rapid development of information technology, such as sensing technology, communications technology, and database, allows us to use simulation experiments for analyzing serious accidents caused by hazardous chemicals. Due to the toxicity and diffusion of hazardous chemicals, these accidents often lead to not only severe consequences and economic losses, but also traffic jams at the same time. Emergency evacuation after hazardous chemical accidents is an effective means to reduce the loss of life and property and to smoothly resume the transport network as soon as possible. This paper considers the dynamic changes of the hazardous chemicals’ concentration after their leakage and simulates the diffusion process. Based on the characteristics of emergency evacuation of hazardous chemical accidents, we build a mixed-integer programming model and design a heuristic algorithm using network optimization and diffusion simulation. We then verify the validity and feasibility of the algorithm using Jinan, China, as a computational example. In the end, we compare the results from different scenarios to explore the key factors affecting the effectiveness of the evacuation process.

The event-triggered consensus control for leader-following multiagent systems subjected to external disturbances is investigated, by using the output feedback. In particular, a novel distributed event-triggered protocol is proposed by adopting dynamic observers to estimate the internal state information based on the measurable output signal. It is shown that under the developed observer-based event-triggered protocol, multiple agents will reach consensus with the desired disturbance attenuation ability and meanwhile exhibit no Zeno behaviors. Finally, a simulation is presented to verify the obtained results.

Objective: This study aimed to explore the relationship among cognitive fusion, experiential avoidance, and obsessive–compulsive symptoms in patients with obsessive–compulsive disorder.Methods: A total of 118 outpatient and inpatient patients with OCD and 109 healthy participants, gender- and age-matched, were selected using cognitive fusion questionnaire, acceptance and action questionnaire−2nd edition, Yale–Brown scale for obsessive–compulsive symptoms, Hamilton anxiety scale, and Hamilton depression scale for questionnaire testing and data analysis.Results: The levels of cognitive fusion and experiential avoidance in the OCD group were significantly higher than those in the healthy control group. Regression analysis results showed that, in predicting the total score of obsessive–compulsive symptoms, AAQ-II and CFQ entered the equation, which explained 17.1% variance. In predicting anxiety, only AAQ-II entered the equation, which explained 13% variance. In the prediction of depression, AAQ-II entered the equation, which explained 17.7% variance.Conclusion: Cognitive fusion and experiential avoidance may be important factors for the maintenance of OCD, and experiential avoidance can positively predict the anxiety and depression of OCD patients.

Interpersonal physiological synchrony has been consistently found during collaborative tasks. However, few studies have applied synchrony to predict collaborative learning quality in real classroom. To explore the relationship between interpersonal physiological synchrony and collaborative learning activities, this study collected electrodermal activity and heart rate during naturalistic class sessions and compared the physiological synchrony between independent task and group discussion task. The students were recruited from a renowned university in China. Since each student learn differently and not everyone prefers collaborative learning, participants were sorted into collaboration and independent dyads based on their collaborative behaviors before data analysis. The result showed that, during group discussions, high collaboration pairs produced significantly higher synchrony than low collaboration dyads. Given the equivalent engagement level during independent and collaborative tasks, the difference of physiological synchrony between high and low collaboration dyads was triggered by collaboration quality. Building upon this result, the classification analysis was conducted, indicating that EDA synchrony can identify different levels of collaboration quality.

The behavior of somatic stem cells is regulated by their niche. Interaction between hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) and their niches are a representative model to understand stem cell‐niche interplay. Here, we provide an overview of crosstalk between HSCs and their niches in bone marrow and extramedullary organs following the life journey of HSCs from emergence, development, maturation until aging. We highlight the unique differences of HSC niches in different life stages within various organs focusing on recent literature to propose new speculations and hypotheses.

This study examines the effects of corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance of Chinese firms on the formation of cross-border alliances with partners in developed countries. We use signaling theory and the co-evolutionary perspective as bases in proposing that the signaling effects of CSR performance on cross-border alliance formation are subject to the influences of subnational, national, and cross-national institutions. By using a longitudinal data set, we find that the signaling effects of CSR performance on cross-border alliance formation emerged only after a national system of CSR-related institutions had been established. Once this framework was set up, the effectiveness of CSR as a signal was subject to subnational (intra-country) and cross-national (inter-countries) institutional differences. We conclude that combining signaling theory with the co-evolutionary perspective contributes to CSR research in emerging markets.

CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) activation (CRISPRa) in bacteria is an attractive method for programmable gene activation. Recently, a eukaryote‐like, σ54‐dependent CRISPRa system has been reported. It exhibits high dynamic ranges and permits flexible target site selection. Here, an overview of the existing strategies of CRISPRa in bacteria is presented, and the characteristics and design principles of the CRISPRa system are introduced. Possible scenarios for applying the eukaryote‐like CRISPRa system is discussed with corresponding suggestions for performance optimization and future functional expansion. The authors envision the new eukaryote‐like CRISPRa system enabling novel designs in multiplexed gene regulation and promoting research in the σ54‐dependent gene regulatory networks among a variety of biotechnology relevant or disease‐associated bacterial species.

In the present study, we tested the effectiveness of color coding on the programming learning of students who were learning from video lectures. Effectiveness was measured using multimodal physiological measures, combining eye tracking and electroencephalography. Using a between-subjects design, 42 university students were randomly assigned to two video lecture conditions. The participants’ eye tracking and EEG signals were recorded while watching the assigned video, and their learning performance was subsequently assessed. The results showed that the color-coded design was more beneficial than the grayscale design, as indicated by smaller pupil diameter, shorter fixation duration, higher EEG theta and alpha band power, lower EEG cognitive load, and better learning performance. The present findings have practical implications for designing slide-based programming learning video lectures; slides should highlight the format of the program code using color coding.

Researchers have suggested that infants exhibiting baby schema are considered cute. These similar studies have mainly focused on changes in overall baby schema facial features. However, whether a change in only eye size affects the perception of cuteness across different facial expressions and ages has not been explicitly evaluated until now. In the present study, a paired comparison method and 7-point scale were used to investigate the effects of eye size on perceived cuteness across facial expressions and ages. The results show that stimuli with large eyes were perceived to be cuter than both unmanipulated eyes and small eyes across all facial expressions and age groups. This suggests not only that the effect of baby schema on cuteness is based on changes in a set of features but also that eye size as an individual feature can affect the perception of cuteness.

Graphical AbstractCRISPR activation (CRISPRa) in bacteria is an attractive method for programmable gene activation. In article number 1900252, Yang Liu and Baojun Wang summarize the current state-of-the-art in this area of high potential, and present the powerful features and capabilities of a newly reported eukaryote-like, σ54-dependent CRISPRa system. The eukaryote-like bacterial CRISPRa enables novel designs in synthetic gene regulation and promotes research in the σ54-dependent gene networks with broad applications envisioned.

At present, with the continuous rise in public consumption level, the pressure on college students’ entrepreneurship or employment is increasingly severe. Under the concept of positive psychological intervention, the present work aims to alleviate the entrepreneurial pressure of college students and improve college students’ entrepreneurial education through the analysis of enterprise management elements. A 3-month intervention experiment, including the pre-test, preventive curriculum intervention, post-test, and delayed test, is conducted on a control group and an experimental group, to investigate entrepreneurial intention, emotional management ability, and ability to deal with entrepreneurial pressure of college students. In addition, based on a complex adaptive system, the enterprise management elements are analyzed, and a three-layer network model is constructed. Meanwhile, new diversified elements of enterprise management are defined to discuss the effectiveness and psychological impact of diversified management, proving that psychological security plays an intermediary role in the cross-layer relationship chain in the three-layer CAS network. The experimental results indicate that on the whole, the positive psychological intervention reduces the pressure of students in the experimental group, significantly ameliorates depression and anxiety, and promotes the positive personality in all directions. Besides, in the delayed test after 3 months, the experimental group can maintain a relatively better state than the control group. By exploring the role effectiveness and characteristics of diversified management, this experiment confirms that the improvement of psychological security under positive psychological intervention has a positive impact on the effectiveness of diversified management. The present work discusses the hierarchical construction in enterprise management and puts forward reasonable suggestions and theoretical development for the influence of the entrepreneurial practice of college students.

In organisms, ribonucleic acid plays an essential role. Its function is being discovered more and more. Due to the conserved nature of RNA sequences, its function mainly depends on the RNA secondary structure. The discovery of an approximate relationship between two RNA secondary structures helps to understand their functional relationship better. It is an important and urgent task to explore structural similarities from the graphical representation of RNA secondary structures. In this paper, a novel graphical analysis method based on the triple vector curve representation of RNA secondary structures is proposed. A combinational method involving a discrete wavelet transform and fractal dimension with sliding window is introduced to analyze and compare the graphs derived from feature extraction; after that, the distance matrix is generated. Then, the distance matrix is analyzed by clustering and visualized as a clustering tree. RNA virus and noncoding RNA datasets are applied to perform experiments and analyze the clustering tree. The results show that the proposed method yields more accurate results in the comparison of RNA secondary structures.