Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Social media and Umbrella Movement: insurgent public sphere in formation

The study examines the role of social media during the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong that lasted from September to December 2014. By interviewing a random sample of 1011 respondents over the telephone before the end of the Umbrella Movement, it was found that social media had become an insurgent public sphere (IPS) in the protest movement. Data showed that acquisition of political news through social media was related positively to support for the Umbrella Movement and adversely with satisfaction and trust of established political authorities, including the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government, the Hong Kong police, and the Chinese central government. The insurgent public sphere role of social media, its implications, and likely development vis-à-vis the state and the market are discussed.
Married Women's Employment in Rapidly Industrializing Societies: Examples from East Asia

A variety of explanations have addressed the phenomenon of secular change in married women's employment in rapidly industrializing countries. These include theoretical frameworks that emphasize female labor supply, the conditions of labor demand, patriarchal values, the international division of labor, and the effects of exported industrialization. This article examines two societies (South Korea and Taiwan) that showed considerable similarity in female labor supply conditions, female labor force participation, and cultural values 20 years ago but have since diverged in dramatic and puzziling ways. Using aggregate and microlevel data, this article shows that the emergent differences in married women's employment are best explained by the intersection of labor supply (similar in the two cases) and demand (markedly different). The article highlights the impact of government policy and foreign loan investment in shaping the nature of labor demand during rapid export-led industrialization in both countries.
Predicting drug-free days among at-risk youth

Summary Whether or not at-risk youth eschew illicit drugs because of its expected harm remains uncertain. In theory, expectancy is influential when the harm is valuable to the youth. Hence, to examine this possibility, this study employed a prospective design to collect data from 169 at-risk youths identified by social workers in Hong Kong, China. Findings Results revealed that when a youth has higher expectancy and valuation of harm in the baseline survey, he/she had considerably more drug-free days in the follow-up survey. However, neither the expectancy nor valuation alone introduced an effect on drug-free days. Applications These results sustained approaches to fostering the expectancy and valuation of harm for effective drug rehabilitation. Specifically, the approaches required to raise the expectancy of youth on the harm of drug abuse to their vigour and the value of sustaining their vigour simultaneously.
Age–period–cohort analysis of trends in blood pressure and body mass index in children and adolescents in Hong Kong

Background The declining or fluctuating trend in blood pressure (BP) despite the rising trend in body mass index (BMI) during childhood and adolescence is unexplained. We decomposed trends in BP and BMI to identify the relevance of early-life and contemporaneous factors. Methods We assessed the relative contribution of age, period and cohort to secular trends in BP in children and adolescents (9–18 years) from 1999 to 2014 and BMI (6–18 years) from 1996 to 2014 in Hong Kong, China. Results After accounting for age, period effects contributed more than cohort effects to the overall fluctuating BP trend and the rising BMI trend observed in this Chinese population. For both sexes, BP fell from the start of period to a low point in 2003–2005 but then rose. BMI rose strongly across the period before levelling off in 2009–2010. Earlier cohorts (born in 1983–1984) had higher BP and BMI than later cohorts. Conclusion With globalisation and associated lifestyle changes, successive generations of children and adolescents in a recently developed Chinese setting had lower BP and BMI, but this fall was offset until recently by population-wide increase in BMI. School-based health promotion efforts could have partly mitigated the population-wide rise in child and adolescent BMI, while socioeconomic transition or other factors could be relevant to changes in BP between generations. Explaining these trends will help identify early-life factors that may contribute to a healthier start as well as contemporaneous factors that may protect against rising trends in adiposity.
Dark Matter Search Results from the Commissioning Run of PandaX-II

We present the results of a search for WIMPs from the commissioning run of the PandaX-II experiment located at the China Jinping underground Laboratory. A WIMP search data set with an exposure of 306$\times$19.1 kg-day was taken, while its dominant $^{85}$Kr background was used as the electron recoil calibration. No WIMP candidates are identified, and a 90\% upper limit is set on the spin-independent elastic WIMP-nucleon cross section with a lowest excluded cross section of 2.97$\times$10$^{-45}$~cm$^2$ at a WIMP mass of 44.7~GeV/c$^2$.
Acoustic analysis of English lexical stress produced by Korean, Japanese and Taiwanese-Chinese speakers

Stressed vowels in English are usually produced using longer duration, higher pitch, and greater intensity than unstressed vowels. However, many English as a foreign language (EFL) learners have difficulty producing English lexical stress because their mother tongues do not have such features. In order to investigate if certain non-native English speakers (Korean, Japanese, and Taiwanese-Chinese native speakers) are able to produce English lexical stress in a native-like manner, speech samples were extracted from the L2 learners' corpus known as AESOP (the Asian English Speech cOrpus Project). Sixteen disyllabic words were analyzed in terms of the ratio of duration, pitch, and intensity. The results demonstrate that non-native English speakers are able to produce English stress in a similar way to native English speakers, and all speakers (both native and non-native) show a tendency to use duration as the strongest cue in producing stress. The results also show that the duration ratio of native English speakers was significantly higher than that of non-native speakers, indicating that native speakers produce a bigger difference in duration between stressed and unstressed vowels.
Childhood risk factors for developing fibromyalgia

Background Fibromyalgia is a disease process without an obvious etiology. While some evidence suggests that adverse experiences in childhood contribute to its development, specific evidence has been equivocal. Methods A total of 36 patients with fibromyalgia from the greater New York area were recruited and surveyed using the Centers for Disease Control’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System survey, and questions from the section on adverse childhood experiences were administered. The results were compared to those obtained from over 400,000 people surveyed by the Centers for Disease control each year, and were monitored for statistically significant differences. Results A statistically significant difference was noted among the control group, suggesting that individuals reported growing up with someone who was depressed when the respondents were between the ages of 0 and 18 years old. Moreover, respondents reported that they were hit by their parents in some way, were insulted or cursed at by their parents, and had been forced to have sex with someone at least 5 years older than them or with an adult. No correlation was found with the following variables and the development of fibromyalgia: growing up with divorced or separated parents; growing up with someone sentenced to serve time in jail; or having parents that abused each other. Additionally, statistically significant differences were found for the following categories: lack of emotional support; life dissatisfaction; fair or poor health; physical, mental or emotional disability; and being divorced or not married. Discussion Using this well-validated survey, it became clear that at least six specific adverse childhood experiences were correlated with the development of fibromyalgia. Data pertaining to disability, quality of life, life satisfaction, number of days of depression, emotional support, and marriage status illustrated the extent of subjective disability that these patients feel every day.
Risk of Liver Injury Associated with Chinese Herbal Products Containing Radix bupleuri in 639,779 Patients with Hepatitis B Virus Infection

Background Chinese herbal products (CHPs) containing Radix bupleuri are often prescribed for chronic hepatitis. There have been no epidemiological studies in populations with hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection. Our study was conducted to determine the association between the use of CHPs containing Radix bupleuri and the risk of hospitalisation related to liver injury among HBV-infected patients in Taiwan. Methods From a total of 639,779 patients with diagnoses related to HBV infection, we included hospitalised adult cases with a primary diagnosis of liver injury in the database of Taiwan's national health insurance during the period 1997–2004. Case-control and case-crossover designs were used to assess the risk of hospitalisation with conditional logistic regression models constructed and adjusted for 270 conventionally hepatotoxic drugs. Cumulative doses of these CHPs and Radix bupleuri were assessed for any dose-response relationship. Findings In total, we collected 1,080 cases fulfilled the inclusion criteria. In the case-control design, the adjusted odds ratio was 1.90 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.30 to 2.77). The risks from prescribing the CHPs Xiao-Chai-Hu-Tang and Long-Dan-Xie-Gan-Tang were significantly high, and dose-response relationships were found. The risk of adding each 19 gm dose of Radix bupleuri was 2.19 (95% CI: 1.66 to 2.89). The results using the case-crossover design remained similar. Conclusions Prescribing Xiao-Chai-Hu-Tang, Long-Dan-Xie-Gan-Tang, or CHPs containing more than 19 gram of Radix bupleuri in HBV-infected patients might increase their risks of liver injury. Further studies are indicated to corroborate the above findings.
Comparing Time-Varying Price Impact and Information Impounding Time Across Asian Stock Exchanges: An Adaptive Lasso Approach

In this paper we construct a parsimonious vector autoregression model with durations, trades and quote revisions to compare price impact and information impounding time in four Asian stock exchanges. We conduct simultaneous model selection and estimation using the adaptive lasso approach. We measure the price impact and the information impounding time via examining the impulse response of a new trade. Weekly estimation from January 2007 to August 2012 allows us to compare the time-varying price impacts. We find that the price impact and the information impounding time vary considerably across time. Traders in Korean and Japanese markets pay more attention to high price impact trades while traders in Hong Kong and Chinese markets pay less attention. Larger mean price impact has larger impact uncertainty measured by the price impact’s standard deviation. Longer mean information impounding time has higher convergence uncertainty measured by the information impounding time’s standard deviation. For many stocks, price impacts have spikes during the 2008 financial crisis. The price impact is negatively related to liquidity and positively related to systematic risk. The average correlation among price impacts of different stocks also varies across time. In Korean and Chinese markets, when systematic risk is high, the average correlation among price impacts is also high.
Are stocks a good hedge against inflation? evidence from emerging markets

Theory suggests that equities are a good hedge against inflation. However, most of the empirical evidence for industrialized economies suggests that the relationship between stock returns and inflation is negative. One explanation is the negative correlation between inflation and real output growth. This paper examines the relationship between inflation and stock returns for ten important Emerging Stock Market (ESM) markets, namely, Chile, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Thailand, S. Korea, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Philippines and Turkey, during the 1990s. To anticipate the results, the relationship between stock returns and inflation, for the whole sample period, is positive and statistically significant for three of the sample ESMs, while it is positive (but statistically insignificant) for a further three. Only for one ESM is the relationship negative and statistically significant. This result may be due to the role of money and the positive relationship between consumer prices and output.
A comparative analysis of independent director appointments on stock price behaviour: an empirical investigation based on the Markov regime-switching model

In 2002, the Taiwanese government regulated that new companies should appoint independent directors for good corporate governance. The purpose of this article is to compare appointing independent directors' motivation of structural changes in stock behaviour. The empirical results showed that the companies with mandatory or voluntary independent director appointments significantly reduced both stock returns and risks over 2000–2006.
Has China abandoned self-reliance?

ABSTRACT China is commonly seen as having abandoned the national route to development in favour of one centred on global integration. Zili gengsheng—conventionally translated as self-reliance—is viewed now as a historical term relevant only to the Maoist years. Instead China's increasing economic interdependence with the global economy is held to imply that China's capacity to retain the initiative for its own development is receding: China is being ‘internationalised’. This paper questions this assumption in three ways. It argues that there has been a greater degree of continuity in China's development strategy between the ‘revolutionary’ and ‘reform’ eras than is commonly recognized, and that in particular China has not yet made a significant shift from growth driven by factor accumulation to growth driven by technological renewal. Secondly, it suggests that China's capacity to use global integration to engineer technological convergence is constrained by the nature of global production systems, WTO intellectual property regulations, and the strategic perceptions of the lead economies to China's rise. Lastly, it argues that, if China's drive for technological renewal, evident since the 1990s, is not automatically correlated to either internal or external structural change, then it is best explained by calculations that are strategic and nationalist, rather than pragmatic and internationalist. In this way, if technological convergence is understood as the factor which binds national to international and economic to political, interdependence does not relieve China of the responsibility to develop by its own efforts but arguably enhances this.
Dynamic Stock Return–Volume Relation: Evidence from Emerging Asian Markets

This paper empirically examines the dynamic stock return–volume relations for six emerging Asian markets: Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand. Evidence is found that trading volume Granger causes stock return in quantiles and the causal effects of volume are heterogeneous across quantiles. This shows that volume carries some information to the return and could be interpreted in light of theoretical models. In addition, we find that there is bi‐directional causality between stock return and trading volume in most of the markets. The finding indicates that those Asian emerging markets with different institutions and information flows than more mature markets have present similar causal effects on the stock return–volume relation. Furthermore, the cross‐country evidence shows that the US market helps to predict the returns of the emerging Asian markets.
Educational and psychological risk factors for South Korean children and adolescents

ABSTRACT To say that China, Malaysia, South Korea, and other East Asian countries have undergone immense change in the previous 20 years is an understatement. In fact, the phrase “The Four Asian Tigers” has been used to reference the rapidly emerging economies and changing cultures of Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. Currently, these countries support highly developed educational and scientifically minded communities to maintain continued progress. Traditional views of mental health coupled with a strong cultural emphasis on achievement and scientific progress exert significant psychological pressures across educational, familial, and institutional settings in this time of rapid growth. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Republic of Korea (South Korea), where the costs of rapid expansion and high educational expectations have also been associated with high levels of stress and other negative outcomes, including depression, anxiety, and suicide. This paper addresses the mental health and educational needs of students in South Korea, and particularly as these needs are communicated to various stakeholders in the country.
Group B streptococcal meningitis in adults: recent increase in Southeast Asia.

BACKGROUND Meningitis caused by Streptococcus agalactiae (Group B Streptococcus) is rare in adults and usually affects patients with predisposing conditions. AIMS To describe an increase in adult group B streptococcal meningitis occurring in parallel in Hong Kong and Singapore. METHODS All cases of bacterial meningitis admitted to the Prince of Wales Hospital, Hong Kong and Singapore General Hospital in 1998, aged 15 years or above, were reviewed. Medical records for the previous ten years were searched for previous cases of adult group B streptococcal meningitis. RESULTS In 1998, 29 adult patients with bacterial meningitis were admitted to the two hospitals. S. agalactiae was isolated in 11 cases, Streptococcus pneumoniae in three cases, Klebsiella pneumoniae in two cases, and Pseudomonas pseudomallei in one case. In 11 cases no bacteriological diagnosis could be made. Two patients with adult group B streptococcal meningitis had predisposing conditions for infection. One patient died before a definite diagnosis could be established. A ten year review of records revealed one previous case of adult group B streptococcal meningitis in a patient with multiple risk factors. CONCLUSIONS An increase of group B streptococcal meningitis has occurred among adults admitted to two major hospitals in two Southeast Asian cities. In the majority of cases there were no identifiable predisposing conditions. The cause of this increase of group B streptococcal remains unclear.
Interleukin-34 in rheumatoid arthritis: potential role in clinical therapy.

OBJECTIVE To investigate, whether interleukin (IL)-34 can be used as marker for treatment effectiveness in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). METHODS Serum samples were collected from 35 healthy participants and 83 patients with RA before as well as 4 weeks and 12 weeks after treatment initiation with the tumor necrosis factor α (TNF-α) inhibitor Etanercept. Related clinical data and hand radiograms of the patients were evaluated and serum IL-34, IL-6, IL-8, TNF-α, matrix metalloproteinase-3 (MMP-3) in addition to anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide (CCP) antibody concentrations were measured by ELISA. RESULTS Serum concentrations of IL-34, IL-6, IL-8, TNF-α, MMP-3 and anti-CCP antibodies were markedly elevated in RA patients compared with controls (P<0.001), significantly decreased during treatment and correlated with erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), C-reactive protein (CRP) and RA disease activity (P<0.05). IL-34 correlated withIL-6, IL-8, TNF-α, MMP-3 and anti-CCP antibodies in RA patients at baseline (P<0.01) and also with IL-8, MMP-3, IL-6, and DAS28 changes during therapy. Patients in stage III of hand X-ray RA scores had higher IL-34 serum concentrations than in stage II (P<0.05). IL-34 level decreased significantly (P<0.01) starting from 4 weeks after therapy initiation. CONCLUSIONS IL-34 serum concentrations correlated with inflammatory cytokines before and during therapy and were significantly higher in stage III of hand X-ray score patients than in stage II participants. IL-34 might be used both as a biomarker for RA diagnosis and therapy efficiency.
Rhupus syndrome

A 45-year-old female presented with a facial rash for 2 weeks. She also had arthralgia of the hand and wrist joints with morning stiffness persisting for 1 hour. On physical examination, there was a typical malar rash on her face (Fig. 1). She had a swan-neck deformity of her left third finger and swelling and tenderness of the bilateral metacarpophalangeal (MCP), proximal interphalangeal (PIP), wrist, and knee joints. The laboratory results were as follows: erythrocyte sedimentation rate 91 mm/hr (normal, < 20), C-reactive protein 2.69 mg/dL (normal, 0.01 to 0.3), white blood cell 3,110/μL (normal, 4,000 to 10,000, lymphocytes 27.7%), hemoglobin 9.6 g/dL, platelet 190,000/ μL, anti-nuclear antibody 1:40 (a mixed homogenous and speckled pattern), anti-dsDNA antibody 14.2 IU/mL (normal, < 7.0), rheumatoid factor 98 IU/mL (normal, 3 to 18), and anti-CCP antibody > 300 U/mL (normal, < 5). In addition, the serum complement levels were decreased with C3 62 mg/dL (normal, 86 to 160), and C4 6.20 mg/dL (normal, 17 to 47), and the direct Coombs’ test was positive for immunoglobulin G. The urine protein/ creatinine ratio was 561.93 mg/g. However, anti-cardiolipin, anti-b2 glycoprotein 1, and lupus anticoagulant antibodies were negative. Plain radiographs of both hands showed periarticular osteopenia, joint space narrowing, and marginal erosions at the MCP, PIP, and carpal joints (Fig. 2). Based on the clinical, laboratory, and radiographic results, she was diagnosed with both rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus or “rhupus syndrome. ” She was treated with hydroxychloroquine 400 mg, celecoxib 200 mg, prednisolone 5 mg, and methotrexate 10 mg/week and her arthralgia and facial malar rash improved.
Women's Relationship Quality is Associated with Specifically Penile-Vaginal Intercourse Orgasm and Frequency

A growing empirical literature demonstrates that the only sexual behavior consistently associated with indices of better physiological and psychological function is the one sexual behavior relevant to potential gene propagation. In the present study, 30 Portuguese women reported on their frequency of different sexual behaviors and corresponding orgasm rates and also completed the Perceived Relationship Quality Components (PRQC) Inventory. As hypothesized, frequency of penile-vaginal intercourse correlated positively with PRQC dimensions: Satisfaction, Intimacy, Trust, Passion, Love (all r ≥ .40) and Global Relationship Quality (r = .55). Noncoital sexual behaviors with a partner were uncorrelated with the PRQC dimensions. Masturbation frequency was inversely associated with Love (r = −.38). Penile-vaginal orgasmic frequency correlated positively with PRQC dimensions: Satisfaction, Intimacy, Passion, Love (all r ≥ .44) and Global Relationship Quality (r = .52). Penile-vaginal intercourse orgasmic consistency was inversely associated with masturbation frequency. Social desirability scores did not confound the associations. Results are discussed in terms of both evolutionary and psychoanalytic theories.