An Empirical Study on the Core Competencies of College Counselors in China

From the perspective of empirical research, this paper conducts a specific study on the core competencies of college counselors. 450 participants from 4universities participated the research. A questionnaire of college counselors’ core competencies from the aspects of the design of an open questionnaire was designed and implemented, a predictive questionnaire was tested and analyzed, and a formal questionnaire was implemented. The results of the formal questionnaire show that component one mainly concerns ideological awareness and values, component two mainly concerns professional ethics, moral accomplishment, quality, character, and attitude, while component three refers to various abilities at work, and component four involves professional and cultural knowledge. Through analysis and discussion, it is concluded that the key elements of college counselors’ core competencies include values, moral quality, vocational ability, and cultural knowledge, and a structural model of their core competencies is constructed.From the perspective of empirical research, this paper conducts a specific study on the core competencies of college counselors. 450 participants from 4universities participated the research. A questionnaire of college counselors’ core competencies from the aspects of the design of an open questionnaire was designed and implemented, a predictive questionnaire was tested and analyzed, and a formal questionnaire was implemented. The results of the formal questionnaire show that component one mainly concerns ideological awareness and values, component two mainly concerns professional ethics, moral accomplishment, quality, character, and attitude, while component three refers to various abilities at work, and component four involves professional and cultural knowledge. Through analysis and discussion, it is concluded that the key elements of college counselors’ core competencies include values, moral quality, vocational ability, and cultural knowledge, and a structural model of their core competencies is constructed

Influencing Factors of Anger Induced by Patients in Medical Situations

Objective: This study was made to explore the inducing factors of patients’ anger in medical treatment in order to provide a solid and reliable theoretical basis for preventing doctor-patient conflicts, improving doctor-patient relationship, and promoting doctor-patient harmony and social harmony. Method: develop the “Questionnaire of the Inducing Factors of Anger in the Doctor-patient Relationship”and use the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory-2 (STAXI-2) to survey the 111 patients that had experienced medical disputes or doctor-patient conflicts and actually got angry in the conflicts in the Hospital of Dali University.The SPSS22.0 statistical software was used to establish database and analyze the obtained data. Result: 1. The Influence of demographic variable on the anger of patients. The anger of the patients between 46-55 years old was significantly higher than that of patients below 25, between 25-35 or above 66. Patients with junior high school degree or lower had the highest emotion of anger, and then those with senior high school degree (including technical secondary school) followed. Patients with no jobs had the highest emotion of anger, and then farmers and workers followed, which were significantly higher than that of patients engaged in other occupations. Patients with the monthly income of RMB 2000 yuan or lower had the highest emotion of anger, and then those with no stable source of income followed, which were significantly higher than those with higher monthly income. 2. The anger of patients was significantly negatively correlated to their trustfulness in medial workers, but significantly positively correlated to medical costs, the communication with medical workers, their cognition of the medical condition, medical workers’ disclosure of patients’ condition, the medical treatment effect, medical workers’ problem-solving ability, medical facilities and environment and medical workers’ professional level. Conclusion: In the medical treatment, the main inducing factors that may evoke the anger of patients are: the communication with medical workers; the attitude of medical workers; medical treatment effect; medical workers’ professional level

Response of water use efficiency to summer drought in a boreal Scots pine forest in Finland

The influence of drought on plant functioning has received considerable attention in recent years, however our understanding of the response of carbon and water coupling to drought in terrestrial ecosystems still needs to be improved. A severe soil moisture drought occurred in southern Finland in the late summer of 2006. In this study, we investigated the response of water use efficiency to summer drought in a boreal Scots pine forest (Pinus sylvestris) on the daily time scale mainly using eddy covariance flux data from the Hyytiala (southern Finland) flux site. In addition, simulation results from the JSBACH land surface model were evaluated against the observed results. Based on observed data, the ecosystem level water use efficiency (EWUE; the ratio of gross primary production, GPP, to evapotranspiration, ET) showed a decrease during the severe soil moisture drought, while the inherent water use efficiency (IWUE; a quantity defined as EWUE multiplied with mean daytime vapour pressure deficit, VPD) increased and the underlying water use efficiency (uWUE, a metric based on IWUE and a simple stomatal model, is the ratio of GPP multiplied with a square root of VPD to ET) was unchanged during the drought. The decrease in EWUE was due to the stronger decline in GPP than in ET. The increase in IWUE was because of the decreased stomatal conductance under increased VPD. The unchanged uWUE indicates that the trade-off between carbon assimilation and transpiration of the boreal Scots pine forest was not disturbed by this drought event at the site. The JSBACH simulation showed declines of both GPP and ET under the severe soil moisture drought, but to a smaller extent compared to the observed GPP and ET. Simulated GPP and ET led to a smaller decrease in EWUE but a larger increase in IWUE because of the severe soil moisture drought in comparison to observations. As in the observations, the simulated uWUE showed no changes in the drought event. The model deficiencies exist mainly due to the lack of the limiting effect of increased VPD on stomatal conductance during the low soil moisture condition. Our study provides a deeper understanding of the coupling of carbon and water cycles in the boreal Scots pine forest ecosystem and suggests possible improvements to land surface models, which play an important role in the prediction of biosphere-atmosphere feedbacks in the climate system.Peer reviewe

Unresolved excess accumulation of myelin-derived cholesterol contributes to scar formation after spinal cord injury

Background: Spinal cord injury triggers complex pathological cascades, resulting in destructive tissue damage and incomplete tissue repair. Scar formation is generally considered as a barrier for regeneration in central nervous system (CNS), while the intrinsic mechanism of scar-forming after spinal cord injury has not been completed deciphered. Methods: We assessed cholesterol hemostasis in spinal cord lesions and injured peripheral nerves using confocal reflection microscopy and real-time PCR analyses. The involvement of the proteins, which were predicted to promote cholesterol efflux in spinal cord lesions, were assessed with Liver X receptor (LXR) agonist and Apolipoprotein E (APOE) deficiency. The role of reverse cholesterol transport (RCT) in cholesterol clearance was examined in APOE KO mice injured sciatic nerves and myelin-overloaded macrophages in vitro. Finally, we determined the consequence of excess cholesterol accumulation in CNS by transplantation of myelin into neonatal spinal cord lesions. Results: We found that excess cholesterol accumulates in phagocytes and is inefficiently removed in spinal cord lesions in young-adult mice. Interestingly, we observed that excessive cholesterol also accumulates in injured peripheral nerves, but is subsequently removed by RCT. Meanwhile, preventing RCT led to macrophage accumulation and fibrosis in injured peripheral nerves. Furthermore, the neonatal mouse spinal cord lesions are devoid of myelin-derived lipids, and able to heal without excess cholesterol accumulation. We found that transplantation of myelin into neonatal lesions disrupts healing with excessive cholesterol accumulation, persistent macrophage activation and fibrosis, indicating myelin-derived cholesterol plays a critical role in impaired wound healing

A Type IIb, but Not Type IIa, GnRH Receptor Mediates GnRH-Induced Release of Growth Hormone in the Ricefield Eel

Multiple gonadotropin-releasing hormone receptors (GnRHRs) are present in vertebrates, but their differential physiological relevances remain to be clarified. In the present study, we identified three GnRH ligands GnRH1 (pjGnRH), GnRH2 (cGnRH-II), and GnRH3 (sGnRH) from the brain, and two GnRH receptors GnRHR1 (GnRHR IIa) and GnRHR2 (GnRHR IIb) from the pituitary of the ricefield eel Monopterus albus. GnRH1 and GnRH3 but not GnRH2 immunoreactive neurons were detected in the pre-optic area, hypothalamus, and pituitary, suggesting that GnRH1 and GnRH3 may exert hypophysiotropic roles in ricefield eels. gnrhr1 mRNA was mainly detected in the pituitary, whereas gnrhr2 mRNA broadly in tissues of both females and males. In the pituitary, GnRHR1 and GnRHR2 immunoreactive cells were differentially distributed, with GnRHR1 immunoreactive cells mainly in peripheral areas of the adenohypophysis whereas GnRHR2 immunoreactive cells in the multicellular layers of adenohypophysis adjacent to the neurohypophysis. Dual-label fluorescent immunostaining showed that GnRHR2 but not GnRHR1 was localized to somatotropes, and all somatotropes are GnRHR2-positive cells and vice versa at all stages examined. GnRH1 and GnRH3 were shown to stimulate growth hormone (Gh) release from primary culture of pituitary cells, and to decrease Gh contents in the pituitary of ricefield eels 12 h post injection. GnRH1 and GnRH3 stimulated Gh release probably via PLC/IP3/PKC and Ca2+ pathways. These results, as a whole, suggested that GnRHs may bind to GnRHR2 but not GnRHR1 to trigger Gh release in ricefield eels, and provided novel information on differential roles of multiple GnRH receptors in vertebrates

Differential responses of carbon-degrading enzyme activities to warming: implications for soil respiration

Extracellular enzymes catalyze rate‐limiting steps in soil organic matter decomposi-tion, and their activities (EEAs) play a key role in determining soil respiration (SR).Both EEAs and SR are highly sensitive to temperature, but their responses to cli-mate warming remain poorly understood. Here, we present a meta‐analysis on theresponse of soil cellulase and ligninase activities and SR to warming, synthesizingdata from 56 studies. We found that warming significantly enhanced ligninase activ-ity by 21.4% but had no effect on cellulase activity. Increases in ligninase activitywere positively correlated with changes in SR, while no such relationship was foundfor cellulase. The warming response of ligninase activity was more closely related tothe responses of SR than a wide range of environmental and experimental method-ological factors. Furthermore, warming effects on ligninase activity increased withexperiment duration. These results suggest that soil microorganisms sustain long‐term increases in SR with warming by gradually increasing the degradation of therecalcitrant carbon pool

Global warming and shifts in cropping systems together reduce China's rice production

Climate warming is widely expected to affect rice yields, but results are equivocal and variation in rice cropping systems and climatic conditions complicates country-scale yield assessments. Here we show, through meta–a- nalysis of field warming experiments, that yield responses to warming differ strongly between China's rice cropping systems. Whereas warming increases yields in “single rice” systems, it decreases yields in “middle rice” systems and has contrasting effects for early and late rice in “double rice” systems. We further show that the contribution of these cropping systems to China's total rice production has shifted dramatically over recent decades. We estimate that if the present structure of rice cropping systems persists, warming will reduce China's total rice production by 5.0% in 2060. However, if the recent decline in the area of double rice systems con- tinues, China's rice production may decrease by 13.5%. Our results underline the need for maintaining the current area of China's “double rice” cropping system and for technological innovations in multiple rice cropping systems to ensure food security in a warming climate

Anthropogenic heat release due to energy consumption exacerbates European summer extreme high temperature

Anthropogenic heat release (AHR) is the release of heat generated by anthropogenic energy consumption. The global mean flux of AHR is 0.03 W m−2, while AHR is geographically concentrated and fundamentally correlates with economic activ- ity; furthermore, AHR can reach a level sufficient for impacting regional even large-scale climate. In this study, the impacts of AHR on the summer European heatwaves (EHWs) are examined by using the Community Earth System Model version 1 (CESM1). The results show that in Europe, AHR increases the summer mean 2-m temperature by 0.26 °C and the surface minimum and maximum temperatures by 0.14 °C and 0.41 °C, respectively. AHR exacerbates the extreme high temperatures in the summer in Europe, increasing EHW days by 1–2 days in central and eastern Europe in the summer annually from 1992 to 2013. AHR strengthens the surface wind that flows from the ocean to the land in Europe by increasing the land surface temperatures. AHR decreases the lower-troposphere stability (LTS) and reduces the low-cloud amounts in Europe, which leads to more solar shortwave radiation reaching the surface. AHR affects water vapor and the surface energy balance in Europe, which impacts on European summer heatwaves further. AHR acts as a non-negligible factor for summer extreme high temperature in Europe and a potential factor impacting EHW days

Implementation of trait-based ozone plant sensitivity in the Yale interactive terrestrial biosphere model v1.0 to assess global vegetation damage

A major limitation in modeling global ozone (O3) vegetation damage has long been the reliance on empiri- cal O3 sensitivity parameters derived from a limited num- ber of species and applied at the level of plant functional types (PFTs), which ignore the large interspecific variations within the same PFT. Here, we present a major advance in large-scale assessments of O3 plant injury by linking the trait leaf mass per area (LMA) and plant O3 sensitivity in a broad and global perspective. Application of the new ap- proach and a global LMA map in a dynamic global veg- etation model reasonably represents the observed interspe- cific responses to O3 with a unified sensitivity parameter for all plant species. Simulations suggest a contemporary global mean reduction of 4.8 % in gross primary productivity by O3, with a range of 1.1 %–12.6 % for varied PFTs. Hotspots with damage > 10 % are found in agricultural areas in the eastern US, western Europe, eastern China, and India, accompanied by moderate to high levels of surface O3. Furthermore, we simulate the distribution of plant sensitivity to O3, which is highly linked with the inherent leaf trait trade-off strategies of plants, revealing high risks for fast-growing species with low LMA, such as crops, grasses, and deciduous trees