The Determinants Of Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure: Evidence From China

Employing the content analysis approach, this paper aims to identify the determinants of corporate social responsibility disclosure (CSRD) in China using the annual reports of over 800 A-share listed firms on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. We find that CSRD is positively associated with firm size, media exposure, share ownership concentration and institutional shareholding. Moreover, firms in High-Profile environmentally sensitive industries tend to disclose more corporate social responsibility (CSR) information than those in Low-Profile environmentally sensitive industries, supporting the view that political cost is the primary constraint for Chinese listed firms. Our results provide important insights for academics interested in the CSR issue in emerging economies, for enterprise managers interested in exploiting the annual reports as a strategy to legitimize their corporate social conduct, and for government regulators committed to improving CSR activities and information disclosure

Single-file Movement of Ants Stressed by a High Temperature

Single-file movement is a universal pattern in both nature and human society. In this paper, we investigate single-file movement of ants (Camponotus japonicus) driven by a high temperature in a narrow channel. Here, ants were placed in a chamber. The chamber was connected to a narrow channel which was 10 cm long and 0.6 cm wide so that the ants can escape through it one by one. Both chamber and narrow channel were in high temperature environment. In the channel, the random pause was observed due to the characteristic of ants. Moreover, ants were inclined to following the preceding one and trying to overtake it, which is different from the movement in natural investigation. On the other hand, the speed increased with distance headway when the distance headway is less than 0.26 cm, that is less than the body size of an ant. Furthermore, touching phenomenon was observed. When the following ants touched the preceding one, they could reduce speed, stop or move backward. On the contrary, the preceding ants increased their speed. Thus, the touching effect in multiple ants experiment can enhance the evacuation efficiency

The Economic Impact of Film Tourism: The Case of the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit

Film tourism, also known as popular culture tourism, is tourism in the wake of film shows. Research literature contains no established and accepted method for measuring the economic effects of film tourism. This paper takes the first step to evaluate the overall economic impacts of film tourism, with a particular focus on the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit filmed in New Zealand. A new approach that combines both econometric and computable general equilibrium modeling techniques is used in the impact assessment. The preliminary results show that the Lord of the Rings did not bring any significant impacts on the tourism and economy of New Zealand mainly due to its lack of appropriate marketing strategies. The Hobbit film, on the other hand, was found to have brought significant positive impacts on the New Zealand economy through film induced tourism

CryptoMask : Privacy-preserving Face Recognition

Face recognition is a widely-used technique for identification or verification, where a verifier checks whether a face image matches anyone stored in a database. However, in scenarios where the database is held by a third party, such as a cloud server, both parties are concerned about data privacy. To address this concern, we propose CryptoMask, a privacy-preserving face recognition system that employs homomorphic encryption (HE) and secure multi-party computation (MPC). We design a new encoding strategy that leverages HE properties to reduce communication costs and enable efficient similarity checks between face images, without expensive homomorphic rotation. Additionally, CryptoMask leaks less information than existing state-of-the-art approaches. CryptoMask only reveals whether there is an image matching the query or not, whereas existing approaches additionally leak sensitive intermediate distance information. We conduct extensive experiments that demonstrate CryptoMask's superior performance in terms of computation and communication. For a database with 100 million 512-dimensional face vectors, CryptoMask offers ${\thicksim}5 \times$ and ${\thicksim}144 \times$ speed-ups in terms of computation and communication, respectively.Comment: 18 pages,3 figures, accepted by ICICS202

Evaluation of freezing state of sandstone using ultrasonic time-frequency characteristics

Common problems in engineering projects that involve artificial ground freezing of soil or rock include inadequate thickness, strength and continuity of artificial frozen walls. It is difficult to evaluate the freezing state using only a few thermometer holes at fixed positions or with other existing approaches. Here we report a novel experimental design that investigates changes in ultrasonic properties (received waveform, wave velocity Vp, wave amplitude, frequency spectrum, centroid frequency fc, kurtosis of the frequency spectrum KFS, and quality factor Q) measured during upward freezing, compared with those during uniform freezing, in order to determine the freezing state in 150 mm cubic blocks of Ardingly sandstone. Water content, porosity and density were estimated during upward freezing to ascertain water migration and changes of porosity and density at different stages. The period of receiving the wave increased substantially and coda waves changed from loose to compact during both upward and uniform freezing. The trend of increasing Vp can be divided into three stages during uniform freezing. During upward freezing, Vp increased more or less uniformly. The frequency spectrum could be used as a convenient and rapid method to identify different freezing states of sandstone (unfrozen, upward frozen, and uniformly frozen). The continuous changes in reflection coefficient rφ, refraction coefficient tφ and acoustic impedance field are the major reason for larger reflection and refraction during upward freezing compared with uniform freezing. Wave velocity Vp, wave amplitude Ah, centroid frequency fc and quality factor Q were adopted as ultrasonic parameters to evaluate quantitatively the temperature T of uniformly frozen sandstone, and their application within a radar chart is recommended. Determination of Vp provides a convenient method to evaluate the freezing state and calculate the cryofront height and frozen section thickness of upward frozen sandstone, with accuracies of 73.37%–99.23%

Patient satisfaction with nurses' care is positively related to the nurse–patient relationship in Chinese hospitals: A multicentre study

BackgroundThe nurse–patient relationship and nursing care satisfaction are important factors that represent whether patients experience the care they expect from nurses. However, research is lacking on the relationship between nursing staff and patients, and the correlation between nursing care satisfaction and relationship care in China. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the correlation between the nurse–patient relationship and patients' satisfaction with nursing care, to form a basis for corresponding intervention measures.MethodsA total of 29,108 patients from 107 hospitals in 30 provinces/municipalities in China completed a general information questionnaire, the Nursing Care Satisfaction Scale, and Relational Care Scale.ResultsThe average nurse–patient relational care scale score was 4.38 ± 0.57, and the average patients' satisfaction with nursing care scale score was 5.40 ± 0.86. Nursing care satisfaction score was significantly related to differences among patients in different age, gender, marital status, education level, occupation, residence, family per capita monthly income, type of medical insurance, medical department, and regional patient characteristics. The correlation analysis showed that the total nurse–patient relational care score and its three dimensions of caring, trust, and professional ethics correlated positively with nursing care satisfaction scores. The multiple linear regression analysis showed that patients' age, marital status, region, department, income, type of medical insurance and the caring, trust, and professional ethics dimensions of relational care predicted nursing care satisfaction.ConclusionEnhancing nurse–patient relational care improves nursing care satisfaction, reduces nurse–patient disputes, promotes early rehabilitation of patients, and ensures patient safety

Childhood COVID-19 vaccine acceptance and preference from caregivers and healthcare workers in China: A survey experiment.

With approval of more COVID-19 vaccines for children, vaccine attributes may influence parental acceptance and choices. We aimed to assess effects of vaccine attributes and information on herd immunity on childhood COVID-19 vaccine acceptance. A survey experiment was conducted with caregivers of children aged 6 months to 11 years old and health care workers (HCWs) in China from September 14 to November 18, 2021. Respondents were randomly assigned to receive differing information on herd immunity (> 80% of the entire population must be vaccinated; or no information). Respondents then completed eight discrete choice tasks to assess vaccine acceptance based on attributes. 2331 (90.07%) of 2588 surveyed caregivers and 1576 (92.71%) of 1700 surveyed HCWs would accept COVID-19 vaccination for children, respectively. High Odds Ratios (OR) were found for acceptance of a vaccine with 90% over 50% efficacy (OR 6.70 [95% CI 6.11-7.35] for caregivers; 11.44 [10.12-12.95] for HCWs); and risk of adverse reactions to be 1 over 10 in 10,000 (3.96 [3.72-4.22] for caregivers; 2.98 [2.76-3.22] for HCWs). To achieve herd immunity target (> 80% vaccination coverage), vaccine efficacy should reach over 70% and risk of adverse reactions lower than 1 in 10,000. Knowledge on herd immunity target increased the odds of vaccine acceptance (1.82 [1.34-2.46] for caregivers; 2.42 [1.58-3.72] for HCWs). Childhood COVID-19 vaccine acceptance was high in China, independent of child's age, and depended on vaccine attributes