Impact of language anxiety and self-efficacy on accessing Internet sites.

Language interface plays a critical role as the foundation of communication. Possessing greater fluency in the host language can lead to increased opportunities for interaction with host members. This research is to examine the impact of language and Internet usage anxiety and self-efficacy on the intended uses of Internet sites, respectively. By the same token, whether Internet/language self-efficacy would mediate the effects of Internet/language anxiety on the intention of the Internet site use is also examined. A valid sample of 368 undergraduates was tested in this study. The path analysis results mostly supported the model tested. The results display that the anxiety of language and Internet use have significantly influenced self-efficacy of Internet use and language, respectively. Anxiety about language and Internet use have also significantly influenced the intention to use Internet sites individually. Furthermore, language self-efficacy has significantly influenced the intention to use Internet sites, but Internet self-efficacy has not. The implications are discussed at the end of the paper.     

Parental Psychological Control and Adolescents’ Problematic Mobile Phone Use: The Serial Mediation of Basic Psychological Need Experiences and Negative Affect

Journal of Child and Family Studies - Drawing on self-determination theory and problem-behavior theory, we tested the relation between parental psychological control and adolescents’...     

略谈《齐民要术》中古代山东的蚕桑技术

古代山东地区的蚕桑丝织业一直在全国居于中心地位,无论是生产规模、普及程度以及绢帛质量都居全国之首,其基础就在于山东地区有先进、发达的蚕桑丝织技术。本文以《齐民要术》的有关记载,结合其它资料,从种桑、养蚕、初加工、颜料诸方面了解一下古代山东的蚕桑和生产技术。     

冠心病患者药物支架的合理应用

药物支架的出现使冠脉成形术产生了质的飞跃,合理地应用药物支架将对患者带来福音。但是药物支架同样有中、晚期血栓形成,再狭窄等弊病。介入医生应从药物支架的适应证、禁忌证,支架操作的技术层面及中国国情,价/效比几个方面详细考虑应用药物支架的得失,遵循指南的建议,使患者获益并保证手术安全是最基本的要求。     

幽门螺杆菌感染的检测

幽门螺杆菌感染的诊断方法,按检测原理不同可分为形态学检查、细菌培养、尿素酶依赖性试验、血清免疫学、基因分子生物学检测五大类。而按照检测创伤性的不同可分为侵入和非侵入检查两类。本文将对这些方法分类介绍评价。     

Active coping with stress suppresses glucose metabolism in the rat hypothalamus

We used 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose small-animal positron-emission tomography to determine whether different styles of coping with stress are associated with different patterns of neuronal activity in the hypothalamus. Adult rats were subjected to immobilization (IMO)-stress or to a non-immobilized condition for 30 min, in random order on separate days, each of which was followed by brain-scanning. Some rats in the immobilized condition were allowed to actively cope with the stress by chewing a wooden stick during IMO, while the other immobilized rats were given nothing to chew on. Voxel-based statistical analysis of the brain imaging data shows that chewing counteracted the stress-induced increased glucose uptake in the hypothalamus to the level of the non-immobilized condition. Region-of-interest analysis of the glucose uptake values further showed that chewing significantly suppressed stress-induced increased glucose uptake in the paraventricular hypothalamic nucleus and the anterior hypothalamic area but not in the lateral hypothalamus. Together with the finding that the mean plasma corticosterone concentration at the termination of the IMO was also significantly suppressed when rats had an opportunity to chew a wooden stick, our results showed that active coping by chewing inhibited the activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis to reduce the endocrine stress response.     

The AB Identification Survey: Identifying Absolute versus Relative Determinants of Happiness

This article introduces a simple survey method to distinguish between two types of variables that affect happiness—type A, which exerts an absolute effect on happiness, and type B, which affects happiness only through social context. The authors validate the method by comparing its findings with the findings of a theoretically superior but less practical experimental method, and use the method to identify the AB nature of a variety of naturally-occurring variables among both college students and people with work experience. We conclude by discussing the limitation of this method as well as its potential to inform policymakers about where to invest resources in order to improve people’s happiness over time.     

Distinct processing for pictures of animals and objects: evidence from eye movements

Many studies have suggested that emotional stimuli orient and engage attention. There is also evidence that animate stimuli, such as those from humans and animals, cause attentional bias. However, categorical and emotional factors are usually mixed, and it is unclear to what extent human context influences attentional allocation. To address this issue, we tracked participants' eye movements while they viewed pictures with animals and inanimate images (i.e., category) as focal objects. These pictures had either negative or neutral emotional valence, and either human body parts or nonhuman parts were near the focal objects (i.e., context). The picture's valence, arousal, position, size, and most of the low-level visual features were matched across categories. The results showed that nonhuman animals were more likely to be attended to and to be attended to for longer times than inanimate objects. The same pattern held for the human contexts (vs. nonhuman contexts). The effects of emotional valence, category, and context interacted. Specifically, in images with a negative valence, focal animals and objects with human context had comparable numbers of gaze fixations and gaze duration. These results highlighted the attentional bias to animate parts of a picture and clarified that the effects of category, valence, and picture context interacted to influence attentional allocation.     

The prevalence of loneliness among adults: a case study of the United Kingdom

Within contemporary Western (post) modern societies, loneliness is seen as a problem that is particularly associated with old age. Much less attention has been given to examining variations in loneliness across age groups. We examine patterns of loneliness across adults aged 15 years and older in the United Kingdom using data from the European Social Survey. We first consider the prevalence of loneliness among the adult population; then the relationship between loneliness and a range of key risk factors, and finally the relationship with age for each of our risk factors. Loneliness demonstrates a nonlinear U-shaped distribution, with those aged under 25 years and those aged over 65 years demonstrating the highest levels of loneliness. Depression is associated with loneliness for all age groups. Poor physical health is associated with loneliness in young adult and midlife but not later life. For those in mid and later life, the quality of social engagement is protective against loneliness, while for young adults it is the quantity of social engagement. This indicates that different factors may endow vulnerability (or protect) against loneliness at different stages of life and suggests that preventative strategies or interventions that reflect these variations need to be developed.