Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Within-party mobility and economic performance in authoritarian regimes: Evidence from China

This study analyses a mechanism to explain how internal mobility in the dominant party enhances economic performance. We argue that authoritarian leaders incentivize their political agents to advance economic development by using age-based promotion and retirement rules. We empirically examine our theoretical claim using China’s cadre rejuvenation policy, which rewards younger leaders with more opportunities for career advancement. Drawing on panel data for prefectural party secretaries who were in office at some point between 2000 and 2012, we show that the principle of youthful rejuvenation leads the Communist Party of China to grant more promotions to party leaders who enter office at a younger age than to their older counterparts. Under such an incentive scheme, the regions served by younger entrants into the officialdom have better economic performance than those served by older entrants, holding ability and other regional characteristics constant.
Increased Risk of Major Depressive Disorder Following Tinnitus: A Population-Based Study

Background and Purpose In this study, we aimed to evaluate the relationship between tinnitus and a subsequent diagnosis of major depressive disorder (MDD) by studying the incidence of both entities. Design A retrospective cohort study. Methods Data for this observational follow-up study were retrieved from the Taiwan's National Health Insurance Dataset. A total of 375,272 patients with newly diagnosed tinnitus (study group) were retrieved. The date of first diagnosis of tinnitus was assigned as their index date. Comparison patients were selected by propensity score matching (one per case, n = 375,272 controls) from the same dataset, with their index date being the date of their first health service claim in the year of diagnosis of their matched index case. We tracked each patient's claims records for 1 year from the index date to identify those who received a diagnosis of MDD. Cox proportional hazards regression was performed to calculate the MDD hazard ratio for cases vs. controls. Results We found that the overall incidence rate for MDD was 0.78 (95% CI = 0.76~0.80) per 100 person-years, being 1.17 (95% CI = 1.14~1.21) among the study cohorts and 0.38 (95% CI = 0.36~0.40) among the comparison cohorts. The log-rank test revealed that the patients in the study cohort had significantly lower one-year MDD-free survival when compared to the comparison cohort (p < 0.001). Cox proportional hazards analysis showed that the patients in the study cohort had a higher hazard of developing MDD than the patients in the comparison cohort (adjusted HR = 3.08, 95% CI = 2.90~3.27). Conclusions In this study, we demonstrate that tinnitus is associated with an increased hazard of subsequent MDD in Taiwan.
Abusive Psychological Techniques used during Covid-19

Following the outbreak of Covid -19 Pandemic in March 2020, this paper will describe the use of various psychological and emotional techniques which were used by most Governments in the Western world who consider themselves to be Democracies, to gain compliance with measures designed to limit the spread of Covid -19. Chief among these techniques were the use of “nudges”, processes and procedures similar to Domestic Abuse and techniques of Brainwashing (Lifton, 1989) as used by the Chinese authorities following the Communist takeover in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The 8 aspects of Lifton’s model will be described in detail and how these were used by Western Governments during the Covid-19 pandemic. The conclusions reached regarding the use of such techniques demonstrate the unethical and abusive nature of how many Western Governments treated their citizens during the pandemic.
Reconstruction of CMB temperature anisotropies with primordial CMB induced polarization in galaxy clusters

Scattering of cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation in galaxy clusters induces polarization signals determined by the quadrupole anisotropy in the photon distribution at the location of clusters. This "remote quadrupole" derived from the measurements of the induced polarization in galaxy clusters provides an opportunity of reconstruction of local CMB temperature anisotropies. In this {\em Letter} we develop an algorithm of the reconstruction through the estimation of the underlying primordial gravitational potential, which is the origin of the CMB temperature and polarization fluctuations and CMB induced polarization in galaxy clusters. We found a nice reconstruction for the quadrupole and octopole components of the CMB temperature anisotropies with the assistance of the CMB induced polarization signals. The reconstruction can be an important consistency test on the puzzles of CMB anomaly, especially for the low quadrupole and axis of evil problems reported in WMAP and Planck data.
Application of Neural Networks to Identify of Fake News

The problem of determining information reliability is especially acute in connection with significant social unrest, which often manifests itself in recent times. At the same time, news resources use aggregated data from social networks, which is increasingly difficult to verify. Various classification algorithms make it possible to speed up this process, however, in critical conditions, the accuracy of the forecast becomes low. For the current study, it was determined to investigate the effectiveness of using neural networks to detect fake news. To increase the accuracy of the classification, it was decided to create a data preprocessing algorithm based on the basic principles of natural language processing. Based on the results of this study, linguistic patterns of fake news were identified. The resulting templates became the basis for data preprocessing. The features of convolutional and recurrent neural networks and their modifications for the analysis of text data are disclosed. To compare certain models, a set of indicators characterizing the efficiency of the algorithms was chosen. The classification accuracy of these models was tested on data related to the election of the President of the United States and the large-scale invasion of the Russian Federation into the territory of Ukraine. The resulting indicator of the effectiveness of the classification of fake news allows us to state the feasibility of using certain modifications of both models to verify the reliability of the information.
The Implementation of the International Health Regulations on Vector-Borne Diseases: A Scoping Review of the Qualitative Evidence Performed Worldwide

Introduction: The International Health Regulations were created by the World Health Organization with the purpose of preventing the international spread of diseases. The 196 signatory countries are bound by this international agreement. In this article, we conducted a scoping review of the literature concerning the implementation and operationalization of measures at both the continental and national levels to prevent the spread of vector-borne diseases. The purpose was to understand the main strategies and policies adopted, as well as how they have been operating. Methods: Out of an initial search on PubMed™, SCOPUS™, and Web of Science™ using combinations of “International Health Regulations” and “vector-borne diseases”, 75 references were obtained, of which 27 were included after careful qualitative analysis. Results: Publication dates of included articles ranged from 1996 to 2022. Four major categories of measures were identified: (a) surveillance and epidemic intelligence; (b) Declaration of Public Health Emergency of International Concern; (c) measures in Points of Entry; and (d) vaccination status. Implemented measures were found in all continents: Africa, Oceania (Australia), Asia (China, India, Taiwan), Europe (Ireland, the Netherlands, and Mediterranean countries), North America (USA), and South America (Brazil). Yellow fever, Zika, Dengue, and Chikungunya were the most cited vector-borne diseases but Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, Japanese encephalitis, Lyme disease, Malaria, Leishmaniasis, Tick-borne encephalitis, and West Nile fever were also mentioned. Conclusion: There are severe asymmetries across countries on the implementation of international regulations with regards to vector-borne diseases, particularly on the issue of surveillance systems. State Parties should consider the lessons learned from the pandemic and perfect their core capacities to prevent future outbreaks of infectious diseases.
Direct Participation in and Indirect Exposure to the Occupy Central Movement and Depressive Symptoms: A Longitudinal Study of Hong Kong Adults.

Despite the extensive history of social movements around the world, the evolution of population mental health before, during, and after a social movement remains sparsely documented. We sought to assess over time the prevalence of depressive symptoms during and after the Occupy Central movement in Hong Kong and to examine the associations of direct and indirect exposures to Occupy Central with depressive symptoms. We longitudinally administered interviews to 909 adults who were randomly sampled from the population-representative FAMILY Cohort at 6 time points from March 2009 to March 2015: twice each before, during, and after the Occupy Central protests. The Patient Health Questionnaire-9 was used to assess depressive symptoms and probable major depression (defined as Patient Health Questionnaire-9 score ≥10). The absolute prevalence of probable major depression increased by 7% after Occupy Central, regardless of personal involvement in the protests. Higher levels of depressive symptoms were associated with online and social media exposure to protest-related news (incidence rate ratio (IRR) = 1.28, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.06, 1.55) and more frequent Facebook use (IRR = 1.38, 95% CI: 1.12, 1.71). Higher levels of intrafamilial sociopolitical conflict was associated with more depressive symptoms (IRR = 1.05, 95% CI: 1.01, 1.09). The Occupy Central protests resulted in substantial and sustained psychological distress in the community.
The impact of the COVID 19 pandemic on motivation to stay: a comparison between Chinese and non-Chinese international students in Nova Scotia, Canada

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately impacted international students due to unexpected changes in policies and regulations regarding their visa status and immigration, travel restrictions, and heightened scrutiny against foreigners. Such changes potentially disrupt and affect international students’ post-graduation migration plan: whether they decide to go back to their home country or stay in Canada and apply for permanent residency. This may particularly be the case for Chinese international students, the 2nd largest group of international students in Canada, due to the rise of anti-Asian racism and the stigmatization that the COVID-19 is a ‘Chinese virus’. Using ‘intellectual migration’ as our analytical framework, we pay particular attention to the experiences of Chinese international students in the province of Nova Scotia, an intellectual periphery in Canada. Drawing upon data from online surveys and focus groups, this study compares the experiences of Chinese and non-Chinese international students during the pandemic and whether these experiences have impacted their post-migration plans and their motivation to stay in Nova Scotia, Canada.
Retrievals for the Rainfall Rate over Land Using Special Sensor Microwave Imager Data during Tropical Cyclones: Comparisons of Scattering Index, Regression, and Support Vector Regression

AbstractTropical cyclones, also known as typhoons or hurricanes, are among the most devastating events in nature and often strike the western North Pacific region (including the Philippines, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, China, and others). This paper focuses on addressing the rainfall retrieval problem for quantitative precipitation forecast during tropical cyclones. In this study, Special Sensor Microwave Imager (SSM/I) data and Water Resources Agency (WRA) measurements of Taiwan were used to quantitatively estimate precipitation over the Tanshui River basin in northern Taiwan. Various retrievals for the rainfall rate over land are compared by five methods/techniques. They are the single-channel regression, multichannel linear regressions (MLR), scattering index over land approach (SIL), support vector regression (SVR), and the proposed SIL–SVR. This study collected 70 typhoons affecting the studied watershed over the past 12 years (1997–2008). The measurements of the SSM/I satellite comprise the brightness tem.
The Determinants of the Level of Cooperation and Conflict in Cross-Strait Relations after 1990

This dissertation investigates negative or-positive patterns and the behavioral stability of cross-strait relations with a time-series analysis. It aims to clarify the impacts of these four factors in cross-strait relations: the Cold War legacy, the Chinese Civil War legacy, economic interdependence, and Taiwanese domestic politics. The key findings are as follows. First, most factors suggested by the existing literature only influence the stability, rather than negative-or-positive patterns, of cross-strait relation. For the Cold War legacy, although the United States played an important role in the formation of the U.S.-China-Taiwan triangle, the U.S. influence mainly works on the stability of cross-strait relations in an indirect way. Regarding the Chinese Civil War legacy, the legacy is the only factor that can influence both negative-or-positive patterns and the stability of cross-strait relations. China’s tit-for-tat response to Taiwan is the only significant pattern related to the negative-or-positive change of cross-strait relations, which suggests Taiwan’s special status in China’ policy-making process since 1949. For economic interdependence and Taiwan’s domestic politics, the decline of economic interdependence and the approach of Taiwan’ presidential election both create instability rather than conflict for cross-strait relations. In short, the validity of existing international relations theories, like the commercial peace theory and “election to fight” mechanisms, is not supported by the statistical analysis in this dissertation. Second, the importance of Taiwan is evident, and the conventional wisdom about the conflictive and instable effects of the pro-independence leadership in Taiwan may be more like a myth in cross-strait relations. The results in this dissertation show no evidence to support the presence of a conflictive tendency when Taiwan’s pro-independence leaders are in power. More importantly, with the evidence of China’s tit-fir-tat response to Taiwan since 1979, building an environment to induce Taiwan’s persistent cooperation to China is the key to reduce the future tension in the Taiwan Strait. Finally, although the impact of leadership change in Taiwan is limited, it still works as a good proxy to identify the priorities of Taiwan and China’s behaviors in different periods and synthesize the factors coming from both international and domestic levels. INDEX WORDS: Cross-Strait Relations, U.S.-China-Taiwan Relations, Strategic Triangle, Election, Economic Interdependence, Event Data THE DETERMINANTS OF THE LEVEL OF COOPERATION AND CONFLICT IN CROSSSTRAIT RELATIONS AFTER 1990
Digital Government Worldwide: A e-Government Assessment of Municipal Web Sites

This article evaluates the current practice of digital government in large municipalities worldwide. The study assesses 84 cities from around the world that use a five-stage e-government framework. Our research and methodology goes beyond previous research by utilizing 92 measures that were translated into the native language of each city. In addition, the assessment of each municipal web site was conducted by a native speaker of the municipalityâ€™s language between June and October of 2003. We reviewed relevant e-government literature for evaluating Web sites nationally and internationally, and discussed our sample selection, methodology, theoretical framework, findings, and recommendations. Our results indicate that Seoul, Hong Kong, Singapore, New York, and Shanghai are the top five large cities for providing digital government opportunities to citizens online. Our research also suggests a difference in the digital government capabilities among the 30 developed nations belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and lesser developed (non-OECD) nations.
The Changing Physical and Social Environment of Newsgathering: A Case Study of Foreign Correspondents Using Chat Apps During Unrest

Mobile chat apps have shaped multiple forms of communication in everyday life, including education, family, business, and health communication. In journalism, chat apps have taken on a heightened significance in reporting political unrest, particularly in terms of audience/reporter distinctions, sourcing of information, and community formation. Mobile phones are now essential components in reporters’ everyday communication, and particularly during political unrest. In East Asia, the latest trends point toward private networking apps, such as WeChat and WhatsApp, as the most important digital tools for journalists to interact with sources and audiences in news production. These apps provide a set of private (and, increasingly, encrypted) alternatives to open, public-facing social media platforms. This article is the first to examine foreign correspondents’ usage of chat apps for newsgathering during political unrest in China and Hong Kong since the 2014 “Umbrella Movement,” a time when the use of chat apps in newsgathering became widespread. This article identifies and critically examines the salient features of these apps. It then discusses the ways these journalistic interactions on chat apps perpetuate, disrupt, and affect “social” newsgathering. This article argues that chat apps do not represent one interactive space; rather they are hybrid interactions of news production embedded in social practices rather than pre-existing physical/digital spaces. This research is significant as the emergence of chat apps as tools in foreign correspondents’ reporting has implications for journalistic practices in information gathering, storage, security, and interpretation and for the informational cultures of journalism.
Kobe University Repository : Kernel タイトル Tit le Using Mult ivariate Stat ist ical Techniques to Analyze the Writ ing of East Asian Learners of English 著者

The primary purpose of Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis (CIA) (Granger, 1996) is to reveal first language factors that influence the development of a learner language by comparing the performance of learners who speak different native languages. In the present study, we use CIA to investigate differences in the linguistic features of writing by different L2 East Asian learners of English. Multivariate statistical techniques, namely correspondence analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis, were used to examine the use of a wide range of linguistic features, such as (a) vocabulary, (b) parts-of-speech, (c) semantic categories for the major word classes, and (d) grammatical characteristics, in the writing of East Asian learners of English from different countries, including Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan. Data on the frequency of each linguistic feature are crucial for analyzing differences between learner language groups. Samples were sourced from ICNALE (Ishikawa, 2011), a corpus of a million words writing samples from EFL learners, which is considered to be the largest East Asian composition database. The purpose of this study was to identify the linguistic features that can be used to discriminate between different East Asian EFL learners and to distinguish native and non-native speakers of English to build up a general picture of interlanguage use. We expect our findings to contribute to our understanding of learner language development from multiple linguistic perspectives.
Using a combined PLS path and MCDM approach in determining the effectiveness of Taiwan's outward FDI policy

Various studies have looked at outward foreign direct investment (FDI) from the host country perspective but have paid little attention to parent country determinants. Does the outward FDI policy (investment upper limit regulation) matter? In this paper, we propose a combined partial least squares (PLS) path model and multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach to study Taiwan's outward FDI to China. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the determinants of Taiwanese firms' decisions in making FDI into China. Using data from Taiwanese optoelectronics firms doing business in Taiwan between 1998 and 2007), the results of the proposed model show that the outward FDI policy of the parent country is a key factor in Taiwan's outward FDI into China. It is also found that the macroeconomic environment of the host country was a stronger determinant than the parent country on Taiwan's outward FDI into China.
Title GITRL modulates the activities of p 38 MAPK and STAT 3 topromote Th 17 cell differentiation in autoimmune arthritis

The glucocorticoid-induced TNFR family-related protein (GITR) and its ligand play a critical role in the pathogenesis of autoimmune arthritis by enhancing the Th17 cell response, but their molecular mechanisms remain largely unclear. This study aims to define the role of p38 mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPK) and signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) signaling in GITRL-induced Th17 cells in autoimmune arthritis. We found that the p38 phosphorylation was enhanced by GITRL in activated CD4+T cells, and the p38 inhibitor restrained the GITRL-induced Th17 cell expansion in a dose-dependent manner. Moreover, there was decreased STAT3 activity on Tyr705 and Ser727 with the p38 inhibitor in vitro. Notably, the p38 inhibitor could prevent GITRL-treated arthritis progression and markedly decrease the Th17 cell percentages. The phosphorylation of the Tyr705 site was significantly lower in the GITRL-treated CIA mice administrated with the p38 inhibitor. A significantly higher phosphorylation of p38 was detected in RA patients and had a positive relationship with the serum level of anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide (anti-CCP) antibody. Our findings have indicated that GITRL could promote Th17 cell differentiation by p38 MAPK and STAT3 signaling in autoimmune arthritis.