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This study validates Shane et al.'s Entrepreneurial Career Motives Scale across nations. A total sample of 948 undergraduate and postgraduate students from five nations (China = 229, Hong Kong = 213, Holland = 136, United States = 155, and Ghana = 215) were recruited to complete a survey designed to measure their entrepreneurial motives and other related constructs. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the hypothesized four-factor structure, namely, "perceived recognition," "sense of independence," "pursuit of learning," and "perceived roles." Results of the measurement invariance comparisons satisfactorily established measurement equivalence of the scale across nations, language versions, and genders. Both convergent and discriminant validities were established as the motives were associated with different constructs in an expected manner. Interestingly, different patterns in the entrepreneurial career motives emerged across nations. Overall, our findings provide support for the construct validity of the Entrepreneurial Motives Scale. Implications for practice, limitations, and future research directions are discussed.

• Cross-cultural differences existed in the parents' way to use speech and gestures. • Parental instructions demonstrated different facilitating effects across cultures. • Chinese caregivers tended to provide their children with instructions. • Culture moderated the instructions–children's learning relationship. • Speech instructions exerted more facilitating effects in the Chinese group. Instructions via speech and gestures provided by caregivers can facilitate children's learning. However, caregivers with different cultural backgrounds demonstrate diverse parental behaviors, which exert influences on children's learning in different ways. The current study aimed to explore the cultural differences between Chinese and American caregivers in regard to the way they use speech and gestures to instruct their children. The potential cross-cultural differences in the facilitating effects of parental instructions on children's learning were also examined. Two groups of children aged 3–4 years and their caregivers from China and the U.S. were invited to participate in our study (34 from China and 35 from the U.S.). The caregivers assisted their children in working with a difficult puzzle task. The caregivers' speech and gestural instructions from both cultural groups, as well as the children's learning performance, were coded and analyzed. The results showed that relative to the caregivers in the U.S., those from China provided more instructions to their children. Cultural background was a significant moderator in the relationship between parental instructions and children's learning performance, namely, speech instructions provided by Chinese caregivers had a more effective facilitating influence on their children's learning than did those provided by American caregivers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study aims to develop and validate a rapid, simple, and efficient bioanalytical method for the simultaneous quantification of phenobarbital and barbital in human whole blood using liquid-liquid extraction combined with direct analysis in real time (DART) and high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS)., Method: Phenobarbital-d5 and aprobarbital were selected as internal standards (ISs) of phenobarbital and barbital, respectively. A mixed solvent of o-xylene and ethyl acetate at a ratio of 1:6 was used to extract analytes of interest and ISs from 100 μL of human whole blood samples. Phenobarbital and barbital were detected by DART-HRMS. The proposed method has been validated in accordance with United States Food and Drug Administration Guidelines for Bioanalytical Method Validation in terms of selectivity, linearity, accuracy, precision, matrix effect, recovery, stability, and dilution integrity., Results: The lower limits of quantification (LLOQs) of phenobarbital and barbital were both 10 ng/mL. The linearities were in the range of 10-1000 ng/mL (R 2  ≥ 0.99). The mean recovery values of phenobarbital and barbital were 99.7% and 88.1%, respectively. The interday and intraday precision values were less than 10.4%, and the interday and intraday accuracy values ranged from 87.6 to 106.7%. Furthermore, the validated method was applied to four cases of phenobarbital poisoning at the Shanghai Institute of Forensic Science., Conclusion: The developed and fully validated method enabled the simultaneous quantification of phenobarbital and barbital in human whole blood and was successfully applied to authentic cases., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Japanese Association of Forensic Toxicology.)