Can preservice physical educators’ implicit attitude toward students with disabilities be changed by adapted physical education training program? Based on an Implicit Association Test

Purpose: Aim to explore whether preservice physical educators’ implicit attitude toward students with disabilities could be improved by a mid-term adapted physical education training program. Design: A randomized and controlled trial was deployed in the current experiment. Subjects were randomly divided into two groups (Experimental group and control group) after the pre-test of IAT. Post-test IAT was conducted for two groups after the training program for the experimental group. Findings: Chinese preservice physical educators’ implicit attitudes toward students with disabilities were negative. They also had a prejudice against students with disabilities. But the implicit attitudes toward students with disabilities could be improved by mid-term adapted physical education training. Furthermore, gender and contact experience with disabilities had no significant influence on the change in their implicit attitude

Towards Tightly Secure Short Signature and IBE

Constructing short signatures with tight security from standard assumptions is a long-standing open problem. We present an adaptively secure, short (and stateless) signature scheme, featuring a constant security loss relative to a conservative hardness assumption, Short Integer Solution (SIS), and the security of a concretely instantiated pseudorandom function (PRF). This gives a class of tightly secure short lattice signature schemes whose security is based on SIS and the underlying assumption of the instantiated PRF. Our signature construction further extends to give a class of tightly and adaptively secure ``compact Identity-Based Encryption (IBE) schemes, reducible with constant security loss from Regev\u27s vanilla Learning With Errors (LWE) hardness assumption and the security of a concretely instantiated PRF. Our approach is a novel combination of a number of techniques, including Katz and Wang signature, Agrawal et al.\ lattice-based secure IBE, and Boneh et al.\ key-homomorphic encryption. Our results, at the first time, eliminate the dependency between the number of adversary\u27s queries and the security of short signature/IBE schemes in the context of lattice-based cryptography. They also indicate that tightly secure PRFs (with constant security loss) would imply tightly, adaptively secure short signature and IBE schemes (with constant security loss)

Capital structure and firm performance: Evidence from listed companies in China

The firm performance of capital institutions and corporations has been a matter of intense interest for researchers in finance. The economic market has witnessed sluggish global economic growth. China's economy has had to adapt by shifting from an investment-driven model to one driven by industrial upgrading and technological innovation. Consistent with the globalization of economic policy and financial markets, the profusion of investment and financing alternatives in the current economic climate is increasing the reliance of corporations on the capital markets. Capital is necessary to expand into new enterprises and for corporate growth. A company's performance is a direct reflection of its firm performance; consequently, a solid capital structure is essential to enhancing a company's performance and contributing to its sustainable growth. After reviewing a vast quantity of literature, we discovered that numerous studies have primarily focused on examining factors affecting the capital structure and firm performance, etc. Few academics have directly researched the relationship between capital structure and firm performance, and much of the relevant literature has focused on a single industry, which may not be representative. The key features of this study are: 1. The selection of numerous industries, initially as a total and subsequently by industry, which is more compelling and representative. 2. Overcome the limitations of prior studies about indicator selection and using a multi-indicator performance evaluation method. Considering the impact of the share splitting reform and the COVID-19, the period chosen is 2007-2019, which is reasonable and commensurate with reality. Capital structure theories have progressed through three stages of development: early theory, classical theory, and modern theory. Modern theory holds that capital structure will indirectly affect the firm performance of firms by directly influencing their market value. The purpose of this research is to study the relationship between capital structure and firm performance, using Chinese public corporations as an illustration. To undertake an empirical and quantitative analysis of these two factors, sample data for 3752 A-share companies listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange and the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in China between 2007 and 2019 were acquired from the wind database. Following the concept of overall analysis before sub-sector analysis, descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and the Hausman test were performed on the sample to determine if it was a random effect or fixed effect model to undertake benchmark regression analysis. Following the analysis of industry heterogeneity, a test of robustness was conducted. The empirical analysis revealed that all variables were highly significant, and that capital structure had a substantial impact on business success. “Debt to Equity Rate” was negatively related. This study is useful for establishing a reasonable capital structure to maximize firm performance and value, as well as for the creation of government policy

UI Layout Generation with LLMs Guided by UI Grammar

The recent advances in Large Language Models (LLMs) have stimulated interest among researchers and industry professionals, particularly in their application to tasks concerning mobile user interfaces (UIs). This position paper investigates the use of LLMs for UI layout generation. Central to our exploration is the introduction of UI grammar -- a novel approach we proposed to represent the hierarchical structure inherent in UI screens. The aim of this approach is to guide the generative capacities of LLMs more effectively and improve the explainability and controllability of the process. Initial experiments conducted with GPT-4 showed the promising capability of LLMs to produce high-quality user interfaces via in-context learning. Furthermore, our preliminary comparative study suggested the potential of the grammar-based approach in improving the quality of generative results in specific aspects.Comment: ICML 2023 Workshop on AI and HC

Exploring Multi-Programming-Language Commits and Their Impacts on Software Quality: An Empirical Study on Apache Projects

Context: Modern software systems (e.g., Apache Spark) are usually written in multiple programming languages (PLs). There is little understanding on the phenomenon of multi-programming-language commits (MPLCs), which involve modified source files written in multiple PLs. Objective: This work aims to explore MPLCs and their impacts on development difficulty and software quality. Methods: We performed an empirical study on eighteen non-trivial Apache projects with 197,566 commits. Results: (1) the most commonly used PL combination consists of all the four PLs, i.e., C/C++, Java, JavaScript, and Python; (2) 9% of the commits from all the projects are MPLCs, and the proportion of MPLCs in 83% of the projects goes to a relatively stable level; (3) more than 90% of the MPLCs from all the projects involve source files in two PLs; (4) the change complexity of MPLCs is significantly higher than that of non-MPLCs; (5) issues fixed in MPLCs take significantly longer to be resolved than issues fixed in non-MPLCs in 89% of the projects; (6) MPLCs do not show significant effects on issue reopen; (7) source files undergoing MPLCs tend to be more bug-prone; and (8) MPLCs introduce more bugs than non-MPLCs. Conclusions: MPLCs are related to increased development difficulty and decreased software quality.Comment: Preprint accepted for publication in Journal of Systems and Software, 2022. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2103.1169

Role of Iodine Recycling on Sea-Salt Aerosols in the Global Marine Boundary Layer

Heterogeneous uptake of hypoiodous acid (HOI), the dominant inorganic iodine species in the marine boundary layer (MBL), on sea-salt aerosol (SSA) to form iodine monobromide and iodine monochloride has been adopted in models with assumed efficiency. Recently, field measurements have reported a much faster rate of this recycling process than previously assumed in models. Here, we conduct global model simulations to quantify the range of effects of iodine recycling within the MBL, using Conventional, Updated, and Upper-limit coefficients. When considering the Updated coefficient, iodine recycling significantly enhances gaseous inorganic iodine abundance (similar to 40%), increases halogen atom production rates (similar to 40% in I, >100% in Br, and similar to 60% in Cl), and reduces oxidant levels (-7% in O-3, -2% in OH, and -4% in HO2) compared to the simulation without the process. We appeal for further direct measurements of iodine species, laboratory experiments on the controlling factors, and multiscale simulations of iodine heterogeneous recycling.Peer reviewe

Observations of nitryl chloride and modeling its source and effect on ozone in the planetary boundary layer of southern China

Nitryl chloride (ClNO2) plays potentially important roles in atmospheric chemistry, but its abundance and effect are not fully understood due to the small number of ambient observations of ClNO2 to date. In late autumn 2013, ClNO2 was measured with a chemical ionization mass spectrometer (CIMS) at a mountain top (957 m above sea level) in Hong Kong. During 12 nights with continuous CIMS data, elevated mixing ratios of ClNO2 (>400 parts per trillion by volume) or its precursor N2O5 (>1000 pptv) were observed on six nights, with the highest ever reported ClNO2 (4.7 ppbv, 1 min average) and N2O5 (7.7 ppbv, 1 min average) in one case. Backward particle dispersion calculations driven by winds simulated with a mesoscale meteorological model show that the ClNO2/N2O5-laden air at the high-elevation site was due to transport of urban/industrial pollution north of the site. The highest ClNO2/N2O5 case was observed in a later period of the night and was characterized with extensively processed air and with the presence of nonoceanic chloride. A chemical box model with detailed chlorine chemistry was used to assess the possible impact of the ClNO2 in the well-processed regional plume on next day ozone, as the air mass continued to downwind locations. The results show that the ClNO2 could enhance ozone by 5-16% at the ozone peak or 11-41% daytime ozone production in the following day. This study highlights varying importance of the ClNO2 chemistry in polluted environments and the need to consider this process in photochemical models for prediction of ground-level ozone and haze. Key Points First observation of ClNO2 in the planetary boundary layer of China Combined high-resolution meteorological and measurement-constrained chemical models in data analysis ClNO2 enhances daytime ozone peak by 5-16% in well-processed PRD air.Department of Civil and Environmental Engineerin

Variable Selection with False Discovery Control

Technological advances that allow routine identification of high-dimensional risk factors have led to high demand for statistical techniques that enable full utilization of these rich sources of information for genome-wide association studies (GWAS). Variable selection for censored outcome data as well as control of false discoveries (i.e. inclusion of irrelevant variables) in the presence of high-dimensional predictors present serious challenges. In the context of survival analysis with high-dimensional covariates, this paper develops a computationally feasible method for building general risk prediction models, while controlling false discoveries. We have proposed a high-dimensional variable selection method by incorporating stability selection to control false discovery. Comparisons between the proposed method and the commonly used univariate and Lasso approaches for variable selection reveal that the proposed method yields fewer false discoveries. The proposed method is applied to study the associations of 2,339 common single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) with overall survival among cutaneous melanoma (CM) patients. The results have confirmed that BRCA2 pathway SNPs are likely to be associated with overall survival, as reported by previous literature. Moreover, we have identified several new Fanconi anemia (FA) pathway SNPs that are likely to modulate survival of CM patients

Chemical interactions between ship-originated air pollutants and ocean-emitted halogens

Ocean-going ships supply products from one region to another and contribute to the world's economy. Ship exhaust contains many air pollutants and results in significant changes in marine atmospheric composition. The role of Reactive Halogen Species (RHS) in the troposphere has received increasing recognition and oceans are the largest contributors to their atmospheric burden. However, the impact of shipping emissions on RHS and that of RHS on ship-originated air pollutants have not been studied in detail. Here, an updated WRF-Chem model is utilized to explore the chemical interactions between ship emissions and oceanic RHS over the East Asia seas in summer. The emissions and resulting chemical transformations from shipping activities increase the level of NO and NO2 at the surface, increase O3 in the South China Sea, but decrease O3 in the East China Sea. Such changes in pollutants result in remarkable changes in the levels of RHS as well as in their partitioning. The abundant RHS, in turn, reshape the loadings of air pollutants and those of the oxidants with marked patterns along the ship tracks. We, therefore, suggest that these important chemical interactions of ship-originated emissions with RHS should be considered in the environmental policy assessments of the role of shipping emissions in air quality and climate.Fil: Li, Qinyi. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. Instituto de Química Física; EspañaFil: Fernandez, Rafael P.. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mendoza. Instituto Interdisciplinario de Ciencias Básicas. - Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Instituto Interdisciplinario de Ciencias Básicas; ArgentinaFil: Mahan, Anoop. No especifíca;Fil: Lopez, Ana Isabel. Universidad Tecnológica Nacional. Facultad Regional de Mendoza; ArgentinaFil: Shanshan, Wang. Key Laboratory Atmospheric Particle Pollution Research; ChinaFil: Puliafito, Salvador Enrique. Universidad Tecnológica Nacional. Facultad Regional de Mendoza; ArgentinaFil: Cuevas, Carlos A.. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. Instituto de Química Física; EspañaFil: Saiz Lopez, Alfonso. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. Instituto de Química Física; EspañaEGU General Assembly 2021AustriaEuropean Geosciences Unio