Behind the rainbow, "Tongqi" wives of men who have sex with men in China: a systematic review

open access articleBackground: Due to the restrictions and stigmatization of homosexuality in China, there has emerged the “Tongqi,” or the wives of men who have sex with men (MSM). There are around 14 million Tongqi wives whose needs for support are often overshadowed. This phenomenon has been largely under researched, this review is the first to address the current data on the Tongqi. The aim of this systematic review is to begin to provide insight into the pre-existing data and the further support that is needed for the wives of MSM. Methods: The researchers searched PubMed, Web of Science, EMBASE, PsycINFO, CNKI, Sinomed and WangFang databases from their inception date until June 7, 2019. Handsearching was also completed to provide a rich data set. Results: The articles were summarized and analyzed for thematic clusters. From the selected article, five themes emerged, including Sexual Health Issues, Intimate Partner Violence, Mental Health Status, Marriage Dissatisfaction, and Coping Strategies. These themes often intersected to provide a complex understanding of the current gaps in support provided to Tongqi. Conclusion: Tongqi wives remain a hidden population in Chinese mainstream society, who deserves a sensitive approach to support. The study revealed that the MSM wives suffer severe mental, physical, health, and life related harms. However, instead of situating them into the victim roles, many women take on an identity of empowerment and are working together, aiming to make social changes. In order to address the Tongqi phenomenon, it is also essential to reduce the discrimination toward homosexuality. Tongqi are a special group of Chinese women, they require further intensive research attention

The impact of government ownership on performance: Evidence from major Chinese banks

Chinese banking system plays increasingly more important role in the word financial system and has attracted a lot of attention during recent years. The purpose of this paper is to study and analyze the relationship between government ownership and major Chinese banks’ performance.Our paper studies the sample data collected during the period between 2000 and 2011, and regression analysis is conducted for the purpose of examining how the government ownership change would impact the bank performance. As indicated by previous literature about bank performance, bank performance is often affected by bank size, capital ratio and net interest margin (NIM). Our results show that decreased government ownership can improve major Chinese banks’ performance

An Ensemble Model with Ranking for Social Dialogue

Open-domain social dialogue is one of the long-standing goals of Artificial Intelligence. This year, the Amazon Alexa Prize challenge was announced for the first time, where real customers get to rate systems developed by leading universities worldwide. The aim of the challenge is to converse "coherently and engagingly with humans on popular topics for 20 minutes". We describe our Alexa Prize system (called 'Alana') consisting of an ensemble of bots, combining rule-based and machine learning systems, and using a contextual ranking mechanism to choose a system response. The ranker was trained on real user feedback received during the competition, where we address the problem of how to train on the noisy and sparse feedback obtained during the competition.Comment: NIPS 2017 Workshop on Conversational A

High Levels of Oxidative Stress and Skin Microbiome are Critical for Initiation and Development of Chronic Wounds in Diabetic Mice.

A balanced redox state is critical for proper healing. Although human chronic wounds are characterized by high levels of oxidative stress (OS), whether OS levels are critical for chronic wound development is not known. For these studies, we used our chronic wound model in diabetic mice that has similar characteristics as human chronic wounds, including naturally developed biofilm. We hypothesize that OS levels in wound tissues are critical for chronic wound initiation and development. We show that increased OS levels in the wound correlate with increased chronicity. Moreover, without increased OS levels, biofilm taken from chronic wounds and placed in new excision wounds do not create chronic wounds. Similarly, high OS levels in the wound tissue in the absence of the skin microbiome do not lead to chronic wounds. These findings show that both high OS levels and bacteria are needed for chronic wound initiation and development. In conclusion, OS levels in the wound at time of injury are critical for biofilm formation and chronic wound development and may be a good predictor of the degree of wound chronicity. Treating such wounds might be accomplished by managing OS levels with antioxidants combined with manipulation of the skin microbiome after debridement

Temporal and spatial ensemble statistics are formed by distinct mechanisms

Our brains can extract a summary representation of the facial characteristics provided by a group of faces. To date, there has been a lack of clarity as to what calculations the brain is actually performing during this ensemble perception. For example, does ensemble processing average the fiducial points (e.g., distance between the eyes, width of the mouth) and surface characteristics (e.g., skin tone) of a set of faces in a fashion that produces what we call a ‘morph average’ face from the group? Or does ensemble perception extract a general ‘gist average’ of the face set (e.g., these faces are unattractive)? Here, we take advantage of the fact that the ‘morph average’ face derived from a group of faces is more attractive than the ‘gist average’. If ensemble perception is performing morph averaging, then the adaptation aftereffects elicited by a morphed average face from a group should be equivalent to those elicited by the group. By contrast, if ensemble perception reflects gist averaging, then the aftereffects produced by the group should be distinct from those elicited by the more attractive morphed average face. In support of the morph averaging hypothesis, we show that the adaptation aftereffects derived via temporal ensemble perception of a group of faces are equal to those produced by the group's morphed average face. Moreover, these effects increase as a linear function of increasing attractiveness in the underlying group. We also reveal that spatial ensemble processing is not equal to temporal ensemble processing, but instead reflects the ‘gist’ attractiveness of the group of faces; e.g., these faces are unattractive. Finally, gist averaging of a spatially presented group of faces is abolished when a temporal manipulation is additionally employed; under these circumstances, morph averaging becomes apparent again. In summary, we have shown for the first time that temporal and spatial ensemble statistics reflect qualitatively different perceptual calculations.Ministry of Education (MOE)Nanyang Technological UniversitySupported by Nanyang Technological University Research Scholarship (HY), Undergraduate Research Experience on Campus (AC), College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Incentive Scheme (HX), and Ministry of Education - Singapore Academic Research Fund (AcRF) Tier 1 (HX). H. Ying is also supported by the Ministry of Education - China Project of Humanities and Social Sciences (19YJC190030), the City & University strategy-Soochow University Leading Research Team in Humanities and Social Sciences. Parts of this research (data from Exp 1) were presented at the Annual Meeting of Visual Science Society (VSS), May 2017, St. Pete Beach, Florida. The research reported here forms part of H. Ying's Ph.D. thesis at Nanyang Technological University

Forensic Evidence Identification and Modeling for Attacks against a Simulated Online Business Information System

Forensic readiness of business information systems can support future forensics investigation or auditing on external/internal attacks, internal sabotage and espionage, and business fraud. To establish forensics readiness, it is essential for an organization to identify which fingerprints are relevant and where they can be located, to determine whether they are logged in a forensically sound way and whether all the needed fingerprints are available to reconstruct the events successfully. Also, a fingerprint identification and locating mechanism should be provided to guide potential forensics investigation in the future. Furthermore, mechanisms should be established to automate the security incident tracking and reconstruction processes. In this research, external and internal attacks are first modeled as augmented attack trees based on the vulnerabilities of business information systems. Then, modeled attacks are conducted against a honeynet that simulates an online business information system, and a forensic investigation follows each attack. Finally, an evidence tree, which is expected to provide the necessary contextual information to automate the attack tracking and reconstruction process in the future, is built for each attack based on fingerprints identified and located within the system

A shared everyday ethic of public sociability: outdoor public ice rinks as spaces for encounter

Everyday life in urban public space means living amongst people unknown to one another. As part of the broader convivial turn within the study of everyday urban life (Wise & Noble, 2016), this article examines outdoor public ice rinks as spaces for encounter between strangers. With data drawn from 100 hours of naturalistic and participant observation at free and accessible outdoor public non-hockey ice rinks in two Canadian cities, we show how ‘rink life’ is animated by a shared everyday ethic of public sociability, with strangers regularly engaging in fleeting moments of sociable interaction. At first glance, researching the outdoor public ice rink may seem frivolous, but in treating it seriously as a public space we find it to be threaded through with an ethos of interactional equality, reciprocal respect, and mutual support. We argue that the shared everyday ethic of public sociability that characterizes the rinks that we observed is a function of the (1) public and (2) personal materiality required for skating; (3) the emergence of on ice norms; (4) generalized trust amongst users; (5) ambiguities of socio-spatial differentiation by skill; and (6) flattened social hierarchies, or what we call the quotidian carnivalesque. Our data and analysis suggest that by drawing together different generations and levels of ability, this distinct public space facilitates social interactions between strangers, and so provides insights relevant to planners, policy makers and practitioners