Household Decision Making in Rural China: Using Experiments to Estimate the Influences of Spouses

Many economic decisions are made jointly within households. This raises the question about spouses' relative influence on joint decisions and the determinants of relative influence. Using a controlled experiment (on inter-temporal choice), we let each spouse first make individual decisions and then make joint decisions with the other spouse. We use a random parameter probit model to measure the relative influence of spouses on joint decisions. In general, husbands have a stronger influence than wives. However, in richer households and when the wife is older than the husband, we find a significantly stronger influence of the wife on joint decisions.household decision making, spouses, relative influence, random parameter model, field experiment, time preferences

La interacción entre identidad y emoción de los jóvenes profesores de IDAI (idiomas distintos al inglés) en los inicios de su carrera profesional: La teoría sociocultural

There is conflicting evidence regarding the relationship between teachers’ identities and emotions. The inconsistency may be explained by a one-way causal relationship or two-way support. However, from a sociocultural perspective, the two might dialectically influence each other. Furthermore, most studies on teacher identities have focused solely on teaching and research identities without considering their social service roles as well. Further, little is known about LOTE (Languages Other than English) teachers in higher education, and even less is known about younger novice teachers. To fill these gaps, this study included a survey of 843 young LOTE teachers and in-depth interviews with three respondents at universities to gain a deeper understanding of their identities and emotions. As a result, the interaction between the two variables in the teaching dimension was observed to have a more robust relationship. Teachers’ identities and emotions were inextricably linked in either a positive or negative manner. Specifically, a higher sense of identity and positive emotion correlated closely, whereas a lower sense of identity and negative emotion walked together. As a result of the weak sense of research identity, this relationship was evident in teaching and social service, de-emphasizing research. The present study provides additional evidence with respect to the dialectical relationship between teacher identity and teacher emotion. FUNDING INFORMATION. The project has been primarily supported by Research Fund for Yunshan Outstanding Scholar, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies (No. 2023RC031), the MOE Project at Center for Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Shanghai International Studies University Peak Discipline (Linguistics) Construction Project (N0. 41004525/001), and Shanghai International Studies University Mentor Academic Leadership Program (N0. 2022113041). The paper has also been supported by: An Empirical Study on the Impact of Public Sponsored Study Abroad on the Professional Development of University Teachers-Taking Guangdong as an Example (N0: GD22CJY10).La literatura existente es contradictoria sobre la relación entre las identidades y las emociones de los profesores. La inconsistencia puede explicarse mediante una relación causal unidireccional o un apoyo bidireccional. Sin embargo, desde una perspectiva sociocultural, ambas podrán influenciarse dialéctica. Además, la mayoría de los estudios sobre las identidades de los profesores ha habido centrado en las enseñanzas e investigadoras sin el servicio social. Por lo demás, se ha investigado poco sobre los profesores IDAI (idiomas distintos al inglés) y aún menos sobre los profesores jóvenes. Para colmar estas lagunas, el estudio incluyó encuestas a 843 jóvenes profesores y entrevistas con tres de los encuestados. Mostró que las dos interacciones destacaron en la enseñanza y el servicio social, mientras que se restaron importancia a la investigación debido al débil sentido de la identidad investigadora. Y las identidades y emociones se desarrollaron en un patrón inextricable en una tendencia positiva o negativa. Un mayor sentido de la identidad y la emoción positiva estuvieron estrechamente relacionados, mientras que la identidad de bajo sentido o de reconstrucción y la emoción negativa caminaron juntos. El presente estudio demuestra una evidencia adicional con respecto a la relación dialéctica entre las identidades y las emociones de los profesore

Automatic extraction of water inundation areas using Sentinel-1 dnata for large plain areas.

Accurately quantifying water inundation dynamics in terms of both spatial distributions and temporal variability is essential for water resources management. Currently, the water map is usually derived from synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data with the support of auxiliary datasets, using thresholding methods and followed by morphological operations to further refine the results. However, auxiliary datasets may lose efficacy on large plain areas, whilst the parameters of morphological operations are hard to be decided in different situations. Here, a heuristic and automatic water extraction (HAWE) method is proposed to extract the water map from Sentinel-1 SAR data. In the HAWE, we integrate tile-based thresholding and the active contour model, in which the former provides a convincing initial water map used as a heuristic input, and the latter refines the initial map by using image gradient information. The proposed approach was tested on the Dongting Lake plain (China) by comparing the extracted water map with the reference data derived from the Sentinel-2 dataset. For the two selected test sites, the overall accuracy of water classification is between 94.90% and 97.21% whilst the Kappa coefficient is within the range of 0.89 and 0.94. For the entire study area, the overall accuracy is between 94.32% and 96.7% and the Kappa coefficient ranges from 0.80 to 0.90. The results show that the proposed method is capable of extracting water inundations with satisfying accuracy

AgentSims: An Open-Source Sandbox for Large Language Model Evaluation

With ChatGPT-like large language models (LLM) prevailing in the community, how to evaluate the ability of LLMs is an open question. Existing evaluation methods suffer from following shortcomings: (1) constrained evaluation abilities, (2) vulnerable benchmarks, (3) unobjective metrics. We suggest that task-based evaluation, where LLM agents complete tasks in a simulated environment, is a one-for-all solution to solve above problems. We present AgentSims, an easy-to-use infrastructure for researchers from all disciplines to test the specific capacities they are interested in. Researchers can build their evaluation tasks by adding agents and buildings on an interactive GUI or deploy and test new support mechanisms, i.e. memory, planning and tool-use systems, by a few lines of codes. Our demo is available at https://agentsims.com .Comment: submit to EMNLP2023 demo trac

Abnormal Plasma Levels of Steroids and Their Ratios in Patients With Prurigo Nodularis: A Pilot Study

Background: It has been suggested that cortisol levels are abnormal in chronic urticaria and atopic dermatitis, but other steroids, such as dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) and testosterone, are still unknown, and whether these hormones affect the maintenance of skin homeostasis or the pathogenesis of skin diseases is not fully understood. Limited data are available on steroid levels in prurigo nodularis (PN)-related research, and no study has examined the association between pruritus severity and steroid levels in PN patients.Aims: This pilot study aimed to investigate the differences in the levels of five steroids combined with their ratios in plasma between PN patients and controls and to examine the associations between the biomarkers and pruritus severity.Methods: Plasma concentrations of five steroids, including cortisol, cortisone, testosterone, progesterone, and dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), in 36 patients with PN were compared with concentrations in thirty-six and matched healthy controls. The concentrations of steroids were quantitated using liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. The PN symptoms, including pruritus severity, pain, and life quality, were assessed with the use of the visual analog scale, prurigo score index, numerical rating scale, and verbal rating scale and dermatology life quality index scores.Results: In comparison with controls, PN patients had lower levels of plasma cortisol and cortisone, which negatively correlated with PN symptoms. PN patients had higher levels of cortisone and testosterone to cortisol, which positively correlated with pruritus severity. Additionally, there were no significant differences in plasma concentrations of DHEA and testosterone between the two groups. We found no correlation between plasma concentrations of DHEA and testosterone and pruritus severity.Conclusion: This pilot study suggests that there may be abnormalities in peripheral blood levels of cortisol, and cortisone and the ratios of cortisone and testosterone to cortisol in patients with PN, and they are related to pruritus severity. The plasma concentrations of testosterone and DHEA may be not abnormal in PN patients and may not be associated with pruritus severity