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The self-construal is one of the most significant cultural markers in humans. Accordingly, mapping the relationship between brain activity and self-construal contributes to understanding the nature of such psychological traits. Existing studies have mainly focused on static functional brain activities in specific brain regions. However, evidence has suggested that the functional connectivity (FC) of the brain network is dynamic over time and the high-level psychological processes might require collaboration among multiple regions. In the present study, we explored the dynamic connection patterns of the two most representative types of self-construal traits, namely, independence and interdependence, using machine learning-based models. We performed resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI) on a sample of young adults ( $n=359$ ) who completed Singelis’ Self-Construal Scale, and constructed the efficiency-based dynamic FC networks. XGBoost Regression was subsequently applied to learn the relationship between the dynamic FC and the two self-construals without any priori bias or hypothesis. The performance of the regression model was validated by the nested tenfold cross-validation. The results showed that the efficiency-based dynamic FC could identify the orientations of independence and interdependence. The comparison analyses revealed that prediction accuracy using this dynamic FC method was significantly improved compared to the conventional static FC method. By exploring key connectivities selected by the regression model, we observed that the independence orientation was mainly characterized by the right-hemisphere FC, while the interdependence orientation by the left-hemisphere FC. The results suggest that the self-construals are associated with distributed neural networks the entire brain. These findings provide the pivotal ingredients toward the biological essence of culturally related variables in the brain by taking advances in cultural psychology, neuroscience, together with machine-learning analytic technologies.

ABSTRACTOsteoarthritis (OA) is a cartilage degenerative disease commonly observed in the elderly population and significantly impacts the normal life of OA patients. It has been reported that the development of pathological cell senescence in chondrocytes is involved in the pathogenesis of OA. Celecoxib is a common non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug, and it has been recently reported to exert therapeutic effects on OA. However, its underlying mechanism is still unclear. The present study intends to explore its mechanism and provide fundamental evidence for the application of Celecoxib in the treatment of clinical OA. Tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) was utilized to establish an in vitromodel of chondrocytes senescence. The elevated reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation, increased cell cycle arrest in G0/G1 phase, reduced telomerase activity, and upregulated senescence-associatedβ-galactosidase (SA-β-Gal) staining were all observed in TNF-α-treated chondrocytes, which were then dramatically reversed by 10 and 20 μM Celecoxib. In addition, the upregulated DNA damage biomarkers, p-ATM, and p-CHK2, observed in TNF-α-treated chondrocytes were significantly downregulated by 10 and 20 μM Celecoxib. Lastly, the expression level of p21 and p53 was greatly elevated in chondrocytes by stimulation with TNF-α which was then pronouncedly repressed by treatment with Celecoxib. Taken together, our data reveal that Celecoxib ameliorated TNF-α-induced cellular senescence in human chondrocytes.

Increases in the population's average age require government services to offer high-efficiency, low-cost services aimed at the elderly. An extended technology acceptance model (ETAM) embedded in a contextualized perspective is proposed to analyze elderly users' mobile government behavioral intentions. In this study, a questionnaire survey was conducted on 800 participants aged 60 and over to identify crucial influencing factors. One dependent variable, three independent variables, four intervening variables, and four control variables were used for the questionnaire design. The proposed model was tested based on structural equation modeling (SEM) under eight constructs. The empirical results showed that elderly users' attitudes, perceived external support, orientation level, and perceived ease-of-use have a significant positive impact on elderly users' acceptance of mobile government, while perceived risk has a relatively negative impact. Among these factors, both users' attitudes and perceived external support exhibit the strongest effect on behavioral intention.

Earlier work has demonstrated that attention is indirectly cognitively malleable by processes of self-association – processes by which agents explicitly associate an item with the self. We extend this work by considering the manipulation of attention to both salient and non-salient objects. We demonstrate that self-association impacts attentional processing not only of non-salient objects (i.e., shapes), but also regarding salient items known to command attention (i.e., images of food). This result indicates the flexibility and susceptibility of attentional processing to cognitive manipulation.

•Self-processing interacts with all the three attentional systems (alerting, orienting, and executive control) to produce optimal behavior.•Self-prioritization effects occur in a bottom-up manner but also can be set-up ‘on the fly’ in line with a top-down effect of knowledge.•Self-reference as a global modulator of attentional processing.

Nanocrystalline Ti54.5Ni45.5thin film was prepared by magnetron sputtering followed by rapid thermal annealing. The film displayed martensite structure and (001) compound twin substructure, and the transformation temperatures Msand Asare 313 and 365 K, respectively. The reflectivity for the wavelength from 200 to 800 nm at 298 and 393 K was investigated, and the results showed that the optical reflectivity contrast between martensite and austensite at 780, 650, 514 and 405 nm was 105.64, 170.83, 112.22 and 149.92%, respectively, which were larger than those of other reported optical recording materials.

People show biases to self-related information on a range of tasks. Key but controversial questions are whether self-related information is processed without attention, and whether self-related information determines what is attended. We examined this using patients showing visual extinction. We had patients associated shapes with themselves or their best friend prior to carrying out a shape identification task. We demonstrate that extinction was modulated by whether patients associated stimuli with themselves or their best friend. Notably, patients were biased to identify their own shape relative to the shape associated with their friend, when the two shapes were placed in competition. This occurred even when the self-associated shape fell in the contralesional field. The data indicate that self-relatedness can be computed pre-attentively and can cue attention to regions of space that would otherwise be ignored by neuropsychological patients.

We report two experiments showing that dynamically orienting our own face facilitates the automatic attraction of attention. We had participants complete a cueing task where they had to judge the orientation of a lateralized target cued by a central face that dynamically changed its orientation. Experiment 1 showed a reliable cueing effect from both self- and friend-faces at a long stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA), however, the self-faces exclusively generated a spatial cueing effect at a short SOA. In Experiment 2, event-related potential (ERP) data to the face cues showed larger amplitudes in the N1 component for self-faces relative to friend- and unfamiliar-faces. In contrast, the amplitude of the P3 component was reduced for self compared with friend- and unfamiliar-other cues. The size of the self-bias effect in N1 correlated with the strength of self-biases in P3. The results indicate that dynamic changes in the orientation of one’s own face can provide a strong ecological cue for attention, enhancing sensory responses (N1) and reducing any subsequent uncertainty (P3) in decision-making.

Although there is strong evidence that human decision-making is frequently self-biased, it remains unclear whether self-biases mediate attention. Here we review evidence on the relations between self-bias effects in decision-making and attention. We ask: Does self-related information capture attention? Do self-biases modulate pre-attentive processes or do they depend on attentional resources being available? We review work on (1) own-name effects, (2) own-face effects, and (3) self-biases in associative matching. We argue that self-related information does have a differential impact on the allocation of attention and that it can alter the saliency of a stimulus in a manner that mimics the effects of perceptual-saliency. However, there is also evidence that self-biases depend on the availability of attentional resources and attentional expectancies for upcoming stimuli. We propose a new processing framework, the Self-Attention Network (SAN), in which neural circuits responding to self-related stimuli interact with circuits supporting attentional control, to determine our emergent behavior. We also discuss how these-bias effects may extend beyond the self to be modulated by the broader social context—for example, by cultural experience, by an in-group as opposed to an out-group stimulus, and by whether we are engaged in joint actions. Self-biases on attention are modulated by social context.

The influence of annealing temperature on the shape memory effect (SME) and recovery ratio of cold-rolled dual-phase Ni58Mn25Ga16.9Gd0.1high-temperature shape memory alloy were investigated. The results showed that the SME can be improved by appropriate annealing. SME of 6.0% and recovery ratio of 98% were observed in the rolled alloy at 550 °C annealing, which were larger than that of the samples annealed at other temperatures. The annealing temperature was in between the recrystallization temperatures of the martensite and γphase, which leads to the work-hardening state of γphase kept unchanged during annealing process, and therefore, the critical slip stress of γphase increased. Thus, the plastic deformation of γphase reduced during the compression process, and the SME increased.

Biases to favour self-related information over information related to other people have been demonstrated across a range of both high- and low-level tasks, but it is unclear whether these tasks ‘tap’ the same types of self representation. Here we assess results from two patients with damage primarily to (i) left ventro-medial prefrontal (vmPFC) cortex and the insula (patient SC), and (ii) temporo-parietal (TP) cortex (patient RR). We report evidence from both low-level perceptual matching tasks and episodic memory showing that SC has a hypoself bias across the tasks. RR in contrast had a hyperself bias confined to perceptual matching. Both patients also showed hypobias effects for reward. We argue that the different brain lesions compromise (i) the use of a core self-representation which modulates both perceptual and memorial levels of processing (the vmPFC), and (ii) attentional responses to social cues (the TP cortex), and, furthermore, these effects can dissociate from those of reward and general effects of brain lesion and/or impaired executive control. We suggest that the vmPFC is critical for access to a core self-representation while TP damage can reduce top-down control of attention to salient stimuli and exaggerates the effects of strong (self-related) attentional signals.

Recent research suggests more enhanced processing of task-relevantself-information in Westerners than in Easterners. The current study further tested the hypothesis that self-related task-irrelevantinformation is processed more extensively in Westerners than in Easterners. British and Chinese participants were asked to judge the relative length of horizontal and vertical lines of a cross presented peripherally, while ignoring centrally presented self-related or non-self stimuli consisting of faces (Experiment 1) or names/dates (Experiment 2). We found that, relative to non-self stimuli, self-related stimuli delayed responses to targets in the short stimulus duration for British but not for Chinese participants. The effect was independent of stimulus domain. Our findings provide evidence for cultural differences in the processing of self-information that is independent of task demands.

There is much evidence indicating that people are biased towards information relevant to themselves compared with information relevant to other people, but the nature of these effects is often unclear: Do they reflect stimulus familiarity? Do they reflect changes in perception? Do they occur automatically? Are the effects similar to changes in the perceptual saliency of stimuli? Do the effects reflect more basic underlying mechanisms, such as the differential reward value of stimuli? Answers to these questions are important for understanding the nature of perception and attention in the human brain. We focus on data derived from a novel associative learning procedure designed to assess effects of social (e.g., self-related) association with previously neutral stimuli. Evidence using this procedure suggests that social association does not reflect stimulus familiarity per se, that it can modify perception, that it can both occur automatically and alter expectancies, that it produces functional and neural changes equivalent to the effects of perceptual saliency, that it depends on specific neural circuitry and has some but not complete overlap with the effects of reward. We argue that perception is not isolated from the social associations we have with the environment.

As a high precision attitude measuring instrument in arc-second level, star sensor has become a necessary component for satellites, spacecraft and space station. However, star sensor misalignment angle can reach the arc-minute level and reduce the accuracy of the star sensor’s output severely. Since it’s difficult to measure the initial alignment error precisely on the ground, research applicable to star sensor misalignment angle calibration technique is necessary. To make the system get a high precision attitude control, a GPS-assisted Kalman filter modeling of the system was carried out. Finally, the misalignment angle from the board axes to the star sensor axes can be estimated by employing the derived relationship. The mathematical simulation results show the effectiveness of the calibration algorithm.

To reduce carbon dioxide emissions from buildings, we selected housing shape as research object. By deforming a simplified detached house model, we achieved optimal shape of WDH reducingLCCO2 by Genetic Algorithms (GA).

Among all elements of building which related to CO2 emissions, building shapes is a decisive factor. By deforming a cubic model, we achieved optimal shape of WDH reducingLCCO2 by Genetic Algorithms (GA).

In this paper, we proposed a simulation methodology for evaluating the performance of CO2 Emission (CE) of Green Roof shape Integrated Photovoltaic System (GRIPV) of a Wooden Detached House using GA. CE acting as evaluating indicator was studied. Three typical locations in Japan are taken into account: Sapporo, Tokyo and Naha. Optimal solution of each location was achieved.

Considering problems in the processes of roof design, a system for evaluating the performances of roofs is presented in this paper. Based on a basic analysis of the primary geometric figures, which simplified from 10 roofs of Japanese Wooden Detached House (WDH), application of the Topology theory in roof design is founded. Adapting the continuous transformation character of Topology theory, Genetic Algorithm (GA) is selected to have simulations on varied roofs derived from a suitable Basic Model (BM) and utilized to search for efficient roof for meeting our Indices. To certificate the validity of the developed system, a sample trail by operating a Curved Roof Surface Model (CRSM) for obtaining an optimal roof to minimization thermal loads from roof is proposed.

In this paper, we proposed a simulation methodology for evaluating the performance of CO2 Emission (CE) and Investment Value (IV) of Green Roof shape Integrated Photovoltaic System (GRIPV) of a Wooden Detached House using GA. CE and IV acting as evaluation indices were studied. It is an analytical comparative study of searching for efficient GRIPV by maximizing IV and minimizing CE simultaneously. Three typical locations in Japan are taken into account: Sapporo, Tokyo and Naha. We achieved optimal Pareto curve of each location.

Energy dissipation reduction design can achieve the performance-based seismic design. By contrasting the results of the frame with the SMA dampers and the original structure, the results prove that the SMA damper can reduce the seismic response effectively and achieve the important performance objective “no damage under moderate earthquake and maintainable under major earthquake”.

The analyses on the statistical response spectra have an important role in determining the earthquake demand. Elastic and inelastic spectra on acceleration of the 205 records on medium-stiff soil site for SDOF systems are presented in statistical analyses. The empirical probability distributions of the spectral values are derived according to the Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) goodness-of-fit test. The formula for statistical average spectra of the ground motion ensemble are recommended, which are valuable for current research and code revisal. The results show that the statistical averaged elastic α spectra fits well to the design spectra prescribed in Chinese code when the period is smaller than 2s. The inelastic responses decrease with the increase of ductility demand μ when μ<4. The coefficients of variance of the elastic and inelastic spectra are still large and the dispersion cannot be ignored. The probabilistic distribution of the spectra value on acceleration is validated as the lognormal distributions. The proposed formulas give a good fit to the statistical average values.

This paper presents one new configuration called little-character-toggle-brace. This paper analyses the effect of different toggle-brace position in the story and different angle of the toggle-brace to the magnification factor and provides the damping radio of the structure. Based on vibration control test of the structure with energy dissipation devices, the dynamic behavior and dynamic response of the structure with little-character brace, diagonal brace or little-character- toggle-brace have been investigated. The different control effects of the structure with the different energy dissipation braces have been studied. The result demonstrates that the little-character-toggle- brace is the best energy dissipation brace.

The analyses on the statistical probability of the response spectra have an important role in determining the earthquake demand. Elastic and inelastic spectra on acceleration of the 369 records with a long characteristic period for SDOF systems were presented in statistical analyses. The empirical probability distributions of the spectral values were derived according to the Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) goodness-of-fit test. And the spectra considering the probability guaranty were developed to investigate the characteristic of the response spectra. The formula for statistical average spectra of the ground motion ensemble were recommended, which were valuable for current research and code revisal. The results show:(1)the inelastic responses decrease with the increase of ductility demand μ when μ&lt;4, and they decrease unclearly when μ≥4;(2) the inelastic spectra has a large value of Cov (coefficient of variance),the Cov range from 0.2 to 0.3 when T&lt;1s,and it increases linearly when T≥1s;(3)the probabilistic distribution of the spectra value on acceleration is validated as the lognormal or the Gumbel type I distributions;(4) the probabilistic spectra may be a feasible way to determine earthquake load in the future.

In this paper, a new type SMA damper making use of SMA wire was designed. When the damper was in a tensile, compressed or tensional condition, the SMA wire is always in the condition of tension. The passive energy dissipation control of seismic vibration makes use of the super elasticity and high damping of tensile SMA wire. On the basis of the study of a 10-story building, five groups of the placement of the damper are used in time-history dynamic analysis .By contrasting the five different results, the influencing rules of the placement of the damper on seismic response of the structure can be concluded.

In this paper, a new type of rolling ball isolator was developed. The rolling ball isolator isolates horizontal earthquake with SMA dampers to restore to normal position, and dissipate energy. The optimization of SMA-Rolling ball isolator is studied. Adopt MATLAB to build the shear model, and contrasts the earthquake response between the isolated structure and the un-isolated structure.

There exists an increasing need for Milli-Arc-Seconds (MAS) accuracy pointing measurement for current and future space systems. To meet the 0.1″space pointing measurement accuracy requirements of spacecraft in future, the influence of spacecraft micro-vibration on a 0.1″Space Pointing Measuring Instrument (SPMI) is studied. A Quasi-Zero Stiffness Device (QZSD) with adaptive adjustment and variable stroke was proposed. Then, a series of micro-vibration experiments of the SPMI were carried out. The influence of the micro-vibration generated by Guidance Navigation Control (GNC) attitude control components under different attitudes on the SPMI was analyzed. Point spread function of image motion in micro-vibration was also derived. Further, the changes of image motion under the micro-vibration environment were evaluated by extracting the gray centroid of the images, and the experiment processes and results are deeply discussed. The results show that the first-order frequency of the QZSD system is 0.114 Hz, and it is induced by a double pendulum system; the image motion of single flywheel spinning reached 0.015 pixels; whilst the image motion reached 0.03 pixels when three flywheels are combined spinning. These latest findings provide a beneficial theoretical and technical support for the development of spacecraft with 0.1″pointing accuracy.

This study investigated whether neural mechanisms of self-face recognition are modulated by attention by recording event-related brain potentials associated with self-face recognition. Participants identified head orientations of self-faces and familiar or unfamiliar other faces presented briefly at the center of the visual field. Event-related brain potentials to self-faces and other faces were recorded when self-faces and familiar or unfamiliar other faces were either task relevant (attended) or irrelevant (unattended) in separate blocks of trials. We found that early face-specific event-related brain potential components such as the N170 and vertex positive potential did not differ between self-faces and other faces. Relative to familiar faces, however, self-faces induced an increased positivity over the frontocentral area at 220–700 ms. The increased positivity to self-faces relative to familiar faces between 500 and 700 ms was reduced in the attended relative to the unattended conditions, which arose from the fact that the amplitude to familiar faces during this time window was increased in the attended relative to the unattended conditions, whereas the event-related brain potential amplitude to self-faces was not influenced by attention. The event-related brain potential results suggest an automatic process of self-face recognition in human brains that occurs after face structure encoding and is independent of task relevance.