Group Decision Making Under Risk: An Experiment with Student Couples

In an experiment, we study risk-taking of cohabitating student couples, finding that couples’ decisions are closer to risk-neutrality than single partners’ decisions. This finding is similar to earlier experiments with randomly assigned groups, corroborating external validity of earlier results.Risk experiment, Student couples, Group decision making

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

Summary of the Frontier Introduction of Preparation of Secondary Metabolites in Plant Cell Culture

Plant cell culture technology is a technology that applies the research results of cell engineering to produce plant biological products at the cellular level. In recent years, the secondary metabolites of plants have attracted more and more attention. The use of plant cell culture technology is a fast and efficient method of producing secondary metabolites

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

Tracing the Uncertain Chinese Mercury Footprint within the Global Supply Chain Using a Stochastic, Nested Input-Output Model

A detailed understanding of the mercury footprint at subnational entity levels can facilitate the implementation of the "Minamata Convention on Mercury", especially for China, the largest mercury emitter worldwide. Some provinces of China have more than 100 million people, with economic activities and energy consumption levels comparable to those of smaller G7 countries. We constructed a stochastic, nested multiregion input-output (MRIO) model, which regionalized the China block in the EXIOBASE global-scale MRIO table, to model the mercury footprint associated with global supply chains spanning China's regions and other countries. The results show that Tianjin, Shanghai, and Ningxia had the highest per capita mercury footprint in China, which was comparable to the footprint of Australia and Norway and exceeded the footprint of most other countries. Some developed regions in China (e.g., Guangdong, Jiangsu) had higher mercury final product-based inventories (FBI) and consumption-based inventories (CBI) than production-based inventories (PBI), emphasizing the role of these regions as centers of both consumption and economic control. Uncertainties of Chinese provincial mercury footprint varied from 8% to 34%. Our research also revealed that international and inter-regional final product and intermediate product trades reshape the mercury emissions of Chinese provinces and other countries to a certain extent

Evaluation of n-Butane Gas Adsorption Performance of Composite Adsorbents Used for Carbon Canister

AbstractA novel adsorbent design technique was proposed to composite adsorbent used for carbon canister for improving the adsorption performance of n-butane gas. Two kinds of activated carbons were tested to produce composite adsorbents and evaluate the performance by measuring the adsorption isotherms of butane and pore structure characteristics. The volume-based amount of adsorption for the adsorbents prepared at sodium silicate solution concentration of 0.1wt% is 1.04 and 1.53 times that of the raw activated carbons (AC1 and AC2). The packing density of the composite adsorbent increased with the increase of sodium silicate solution concentration

TextScanner: Reading Characters in Order for Robust Scene Text Recognition

Driven by deep learning and the large volume of data, scene text recognition has evolved rapidly in recent years. Formerly, RNN-attention based methods have dominated this field, but suffer from the problem of \textit{attention drift} in certain situations. Lately, semantic segmentation based algorithms have proven effective at recognizing text of different forms (horizontal, oriented and curved). However, these methods may produce spurious characters or miss genuine characters, as they rely heavily on a thresholding procedure operated on segmentation maps. To tackle these challenges, we propose in this paper an alternative approach, called TextScanner, for scene text recognition. TextScanner bears three characteristics: (1) Basically, it belongs to the semantic segmentation family, as it generates pixel-wise, multi-channel segmentation maps for character class, position and order; (2) Meanwhile, akin to RNN-attention based methods, it also adopts RNN for context modeling; (3) Moreover, it performs paralleled prediction for character position and class, and ensures that characters are transcripted in correct order. The experiments on standard benchmark datasets demonstrate that TextScanner outperforms the state-of-the-art methods. Moreover, TextScanner shows its superiority in recognizing more difficult text such Chinese transcripts and aligning with target characters.Comment: Accepted by AAAI-202

voxel2vec: A Natural Language Processing Approach to Learning Distributed Representations for Scientific Data

Relationships in scientific data, such as the numerical and spatial distribution relations of features in univariate data, the scalar-value combinations' relations in multivariate data, and the association of volumes in time-varying and ensemble data, are intricate and complex. This paper presents voxel2vec, a novel unsupervised representation learning model, which is used to learn distributed representations of scalar values/scalar-value combinations in a low-dimensional vector space. Its basic assumption is that if two scalar values/scalar-value combinations have similar contexts, they usually have high similarity in terms of features. By representing scalar values/scalar-value combinations as symbols, voxel2vec learns the similarity between them in the context of spatial distribution and then allows us to explore the overall association between volumes by transfer prediction. We demonstrate the usefulness and effectiveness of voxel2vec by comparing it with the isosurface similarity map of univariate data and applying the learned distributed representations to feature classification for multivariate data and to association analysis for time-varying and ensemble data.Comment: Accepted by IEEE Transaction on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG

Realization of a three-dimensional photonic topological insulator

Confining photons in a finite volume is in high demand in modern photonic devices. This motivated decades ago the invention of photonic crystals, featured with a photonic bandgap forbidding light propagation in all directions. Recently, inspired by the discoveries of topological insulators (TIs), the confinement of photons with topological protection has been demonstrated in two-dimensional (2D) photonic structures known as photonic TIs, with promising applications in topological lasers and robust optical delay lines. However, a fully three-dimensional (3D) topological photonic bandgap has never before been achieved. Here, we experimentally demonstrate a 3D photonic TI with an extremely wide (> 25% bandwidth) 3D topological bandgap. The sample consists of split-ring resonators (SRRs) with strong magneto-electric coupling and behaves as a 'weak TI', or a stack of 2D quantum spin Hall insulators. Using direct field measurements, we map out both the gapped bulk bandstructure and the Dirac-like dispersion of the photonic surface states, and demonstrate robust photonic propagation along a non-planar surface. Our work extends the family of 3D TIs from fermions to bosons and paves the way for applications in topological photonic cavities, circuits, and lasers in 3D geometries