Children across cultures respond emotionally to the acoustic environment.

Among human and non-human animals, the ability to respond rapidly to biologically significant events in the environment is essential for survival and development. Research has confirmed that human adult listeners respond emotionally to environmental sounds by relying on the same acoustic cues that signal emotionality in speech prosody and music. However, it is unknown whether young children also respond emotionally to environmental sounds.

Access to medicines through global health diplomacy.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) emphasizes that equitable access to safe and affordable medicines is vital to attaining the highest possible standard of health by all. Ensuring equitable access to medicines (ATM) is also a key narrative of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as SDG 3.8 specifies "access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all" as a central component of universal health coverage (UHC).

The Attitudes of Nursing Home Staff Toward Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Residents in Tokyo: A Vignette Survey.

This study aimed to elucidate the dimensions of reactions to lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) residents among staff of intensive-care nursing homes for older adults and the factors related to these dimensions. A questionnaire survey was administered by mail to the staff ( = 607) of 26 nursing homes in Tokyo whose directors agreed to cooperate. We used a vignette approach for the survey and asked the staff how they imagined the residents' wishes and their own reactions.

Is Every Law for Everyone? Assessing Access to National Legislation through Official Legal Databases around the World.

Countries all over the world document their statutory law in official legal databases (OLD), but the extent to which these provide effective access to (statutory) law remains unexamined. Ideally, an OLD should be (i) provided online and free for all without requiring registration or payment, (ii) searchable with regard to statutes' titles, (iii) searchable with regard to the full texts of statutes, (iv) provided in a reusable text-based format and (v) comprehensive in its coverage of at least the laws currently in force. To highlight the nature of OLDs as consumer products, we borrow a term from business operations research and refer to a database fulfilling these basic criteria as a 'minimum viable' OLD.

Natural resources, fiscal decentralization, and environmental quality in China: an empirical analysis from QARDL approach.

It is generally believed that fiscal decentralization is an essential way to increase the overall effectiveness and efficiency of the government through the transfer of financial autonomy to the local governments. On the same lines, this study attempts to confabulate the influence of two important economic indicators, (i) fiscal decentralization and (ii) natural resource rent in validation of the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis. Our current analysis is grounded upon a developing economy - China - and will serve as a stepping stone for the similar economies.

Probabilistic County-Level Population Projections.

Population projections provide predictions of future population sizes for an area. Historically, most population projections have been produced using deterministic or scenario-based approaches and have not assessed uncertainty about future population change. Starting in 2015, however, the United Nations (UN) has produced probabilistic population projections for all countries using a Bayesian approach.

Exploring the relationship between metacognitive awareness and Chinese EFL learners' listening skills.

Listening causes great difficulties for EFL learners and little is known concerning the contribution of EFL learners' metacognitive awareness to their listening performance and to their mastery of listening subskill. In the present study, the Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire (MALQ) and an in-house listening test were used to collect data from 567 Chinese EFL college students. The G-DINA package in R was adopted to identify students' mastery patterns of listening subskills.

Do you like it or not? Identifying preference using an electroencephalogram during the viewing of short videos.

Accurately predicting whether a short video will be liked by viewers is a topic of interest to media researchers. This study used an electroencephalogram (EEG) to record neural activity in 109 participants as they watched short videos (16 clips per person) to see which neural signals reflected viewers' preferences. The results showed that, compared with the short videos they disliked, individuals would experience positive emotions [indexed by a higher theta power, lower (beta - theta)/(beta + theta) score], more relaxed states (indexed by a lower beta power), lower levels of mental engagement and alertness [indexed by a lower beta/(alpha + theta) score], and devote more attention (indexed by lower alpha/theta) when watching short videos they liked.

Teaching Conversational English: Techniques for Unconscious Competence Versus Development of Thinking Skills.

The purpose of the article is to determine the role of critical thinking and unconscious competence in the implementation of effective communication during group discussions, debates and dialogues. The necessary conditions for creating an effective educational environment conducive to the development of students' conversational skills are demonstrated. An educational experiment was conducted with the participation of 75 third-year students from the School of [BLINDED], [BLINDED], during which the students practiced both critical thinking and unconscious competence in the process of group discussions.

Heterogeneity and spillover effects of carbon emission trading on green innovation.

The massive emission of greenhouse gases poses a serious threat to the ecological environment. In this context, the relevant effects of the carbon emission trading (CET) market, which promotes greenhouse gas emission reduction by market means, have been widely investigated. Taking the China's CET pilot as a research target, the heterogeneity and spillover effects of CET on green innovation are explored by using the sample data of 279 prefecture-level cities in China from 2008 to 2019.

Exploring the dynamic and multifaceted effects of globalization on renewable energy sources through advanced nonparametric modeling techniques.

There is a growing global demand for clean energy, driven by concerns over global warming and the need to decrease greenhouse gas emissions. This research uses a nonparametric approach to analyze the correlation between industrialization and the use of clean energy sources in 16 countries between 1995 and 2020. We utilize a technique called the local linear dummy variable estimate to monitor the effects of globalization on the development of sustainable power over time.

Do entrepreneurial resources drive startup activation? Mediating effect of entrepreneurial orientation.

In order to create an entrepreneurial ecosystem at the national level, this study aims to examine the mediating role of entrepreneurial orientation between entrepreneurial resources and startup activities. Our empirical results based on samples from the Adult Population Survey (APS) and Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) data revealed that entrepreneurial resources have a positive impact on startup activation and entrepreneurial orientation plays a significant role as a mediator in the entrepreneurial resource-startup activation relationship. Our results suggest that in a business ecosystem where entrepreneurial resources persistently exist, individuals are more likely to participate in startup activation, and entrepreneurial orientation can promote startup activity not only in countries rich in entrepreneurial resources but also in emerging countries where they are scarce.

Transnational online education in biochemistry during and after the COVID-19 pandemic in Binzhou Medical University: challenges, strategies and outcome.

Background: Due to the global outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic, schools were forced to shift teaching from face-face to online. During this period, a large number of studies on how to better carry out online teaching emerged. However, these studies were basically conducted with domestic students as teaching objects.

The Sustainable Development and Economic Impact of China's Belt and Road Initiative in Ethiopia.

The purpose of this research is to assess the economic growth and sustainable development of Ethiopia. To what extent does the Chinese investment contribute to the overall economic development of Ethiopia after the Belt Road Initiative (BRI)? What are the main focus areas for development in the region and how does the BRI initiative connect people in the country? This research examines the development process through the use of a case study and discursive analysis to know the result of the investigation. The study is deeply elaborated and the technique adds analytical and qualitative methods.

Influence of dialysis-related stigma on health-related indicators in Japanese patients undergoing hemodialysis.

Introduction: Focusing on impacts to health-related indicators in older Japanese patients, this study analyzed both the direct influence of dialysis-related stigma and influences of its intersectionality with other stigmatized characteristics.

Methods: Data were collected through a cross-sectional survey of 7461 outpatients in dialysis facilities. Other stigmatized characteristics include lower income, lower education, disabled activities of daily living, and diabetic end-stage renal disease (ESRD) as a cause for starting dialysis treatment.

When interlocutor's face-language matching alters: An ERP study on face contexts and bilingual language control in mixed-language picture naming.

The present study used event-related potentials (ERP) to examine Chinese-English bilinguals' reactive and proactive language control as they performed mixed-language picture naming with face cues. All participants named pictures in Chinese (first language, L1) and English (second language, L2) across three sessions: a 25% face-language matched session, a baseline session without face cues, and a 75% face-language matched session. Behavioral analyses for reactive language control showed that the asymmetrical switch cost was larger for L2 than L1 in the 25% session and for L1 than L2 in the 75% session.

Taoism and digital inclusive finance.

To help investors understand the profound impact of Taoism in society, this study systematically evaluates its impact on digital inclusive finance and its mechanisms. Based on theoretical analysis, this study makes an empirical analysis based on Chinese city-level data from 2011 to 2019, in which the core explanatory variable "Taoism" encompasses the Taoist places of religious activity in each city, and the explained variable "digital inclusive finance" is measured using the Peking University digital inclusive finance index. The results of this study show that (1) the Taoist concept of inaction requires people to put aside selfishness and prejudice, and treat others fairly, rationally, and leniently, which is conducive to the development of digital inclusive finance; (2) the dialectical wisdom of Taoism inspires positive psychological capital, which is conducive to digital and traditional technological innovations and the development of digital inclusive finance; and (3) further research indicates that Taoism encourages Chinese-listed enterprises to actively fulfill their social responsibilities by promoting the development of digital inclusive finance.

Affective Norms for Chinese Words of Typical Life Scenes Rated by Older Adults (ANCO).

The present study provides an affective norm collected from older adults for 1,050 Chinese words that are closely related to the typical life scenes commonly encountered by older adults. Data were collected for key affective dimensions of valence and arousal using the method of adapted Self-Assessment Manikin (Bradley & Lang, 1994) in a paper-and-pencil procedure. The results showed that the current database (ANCO) was of high reliability and validity.

Did Religious Freedom Exacerbate COVID-19? A Global Analysis.

Did countries that became more repressive of religion during the COVID-19 pandemic, experience more COVID-19 cases and associated fatalities than countries that did not restrict religious freedom? As the pandemic raged across the world, many houses of worship defied governmental orders against public worship, leading many pundits, policy makers, and critics of religion to express concern that churches, mosques, synagogues, and other houses of worship would become incubators of COVID-19. In this view, religious freedom was seen as an obstacle to combatting the virus. In this article, we evaluate this proposition.

Developmental trajectories of numerical magnitude representations of fractions and decimals.

We examined the development of numerical magnitude representations of fractions and decimals from fourth to 12th grade. In Experiment 1, we assessed the rational number magnitude knowledge of 200 Chinese fourth, fifth, sixth, eighth, and 12th graders (92 girls and 108 boys) by presenting fraction and decimal magnitude comparison tasks as well as fraction and decimal 0-1 and 0-5 number line estimation tasks. Magnitude representations of decimals became accurate earlier, improved more rapidly, and reached a higher asymptotic accuracy than magnitude representations of fractions.

Assessing COVID-19 pandemic policies and behaviours and their economic and educational trade-offs across US states from Jan 1, 2020, to July 31, 2022: an observational analysis.

Background: The USA struggled in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, but not all states struggled equally. Identifying the factors associated with cross-state variation in infection and mortality rates could help to improve responses to this and future pandemics. We sought to answer five key policy-relevant questions regarding the following: 1) what roles social, economic, and racial inequities had in interstate variation in COVID-19 outcomes; 2) whether states with greater health-care and public health capacity had better outcomes; 3) how politics influenced the results; 4) whether states that imposed more policy mandates and sustained them longer had better outcomes; and 5) whether there were trade-offs between a state having fewer cumulative SARS-CoV-2 infections and total COVID-19 deaths and its economic and educational outcomes.

Nexus among financial inclusion and sustainability in Asia: role of banking sector.

Promoting shared prosperity, economic success, and the expansion of the financial sector to individual development supported by financial inclusion to reduce poverty. Financial inclusion in Asian countries is generally considered relatively low. Thus, the purpose of this study is to explore the connection between the accessibility of financial services and the dependability of the financial sector.

Easily readable? Examining the readability of lay summaries published in Autism Research.

Communicating science to the general public could sometimes be problematic partly because the language used in scientific writing was difficult to understand for people outside the scientific community. Against this backdrop, lay summaries were introduced to the research community. Lay summaries are short, non-technical summaries of scientific articles that are aimed at a lay audience.

Translation directionality and translator anxiety: Evidence from eye movements in L1-L2 translation.

While considerable research on the impact of anxiety on second language learning has been carried out in international contexts, the impact of anxiety on the translator's undertaking L2 translation, a sort of anxiety arising from the translation directionality, as well as the structure of cognitive mechanism for translational anxiety, remain under-explored. Adopting the eye-tracking and key-logging approach to data collection, this study implemented an eye-tracking experiment with EFL learners at a Chinese university to probe into how the participants responded to L1 and L2 translation-tasks and the mechanism involved in these processes. It is found that translation directionality does have a great impact on the processing of translation, which causes the change of cognitive load and then leads to the change of levels in translator anxiety.