Social Environment and Healthy Investment Behavior: Joint Influence of Culture and Institution on China

The influence of the social environment on healthy investment behavior is a vital research topic. This paper focuses on foreign direct investment (FDI) as an important part of its broad impact in improving the level of capital circulation and diversifying the non-systemic risk of a single country portfolio. Using data from 35 countries on direct investment in China, we find that the impact of the social environment on healthy investment behavior is mainly reflected in investors’ resistance to cultural distance and their benefit compensation across institutional distance. In addition, their joint influence is still negative, dominated by cultural distance, which can still verify that institutional distance mitigates the negative effect of cultural distance on FDI. Therefore, in order to promote international healthy investment behavior, it is feasible to improve both the mitigation effect of the institution in the short term and promote the level of cultural exchange in the long term, according to the research results of this paper.

Is Network Structure Important for Protest Mobilization? Findings from Agent-Based Modeling

In recent decades, the focus of civic engagement research has shifted towards studying social environments’ effects on individuals’ decisions on whether to participate in a given activity or not. Online communication has been increasingly influencing the scale of social environments as well as the features of both online and offline interpersonal communications. Surely, then, individuals’ decisions concerning protest mobilization are bound to be affected by network properties. Using a series of ABM models with different network structures, we try to identify the structural factors of networks that can influence individuals who are deciding whether to join a protest. The established research in this field traditionally points to two structural factors: network topology and homophily. To our knowledge, however, the literature has not considered two above-mentioned structural factors in combination. In other words, their joint influence on protest mobilization has not been tested. To fill this research gap, we combine several network topologies with enabled/disabled homophily and examine how the combination influences protest turnout and survival. Numerical experiments show that homophily is positively associated with the survival of the protest, but negatively with its size for any network topology. Since we infer this conclusion from a theory-based computational model, we also propose how empirical testing can be conducted. Acknowledgments: This research is supported by the Russian Science Foundation under grant no. 20-18-00274, HSE University.

Studying joint influence of a number of factors on borehole cleaning

Studying the behavior of cuttings transport under various conditions using experimental observations and computational fluid dynamics is the main method for analyzing the influence of cuttings, fluid and operating parameters on well cleaning. Despite the existing abundant models and recommendations of researchers, still there are problems with the accuracy of determining the cuttings layer height, critical velocity and other key parameters, which complicates the task of effective solution of the problem of borehole cleaning. The purpose of the study is to analyze the models obtained via the organization of a full factorial experiment and variance analysis to identify the influence of such factors as viscosity and flow rate of the drilling fluid in the annular space and the inclination angle of the well on the degree of cuttings transport. The studies of the kind are carried out using special devices called flow loops. Experimental data were taken from literature sources. To organize a full factorial experiment, the data of the dependent variable were combined into a combinational square, which simplified the coding of factor values. After setting the full factorial experiment, the models were obtained that made it possible to assess the contribution of the studied factors to the process of destruction product removal within the intervals determined while setting the research tasks. The obtained models allowed to determine the influence degree of each of the factors on the process under investigation. The results of the succeeding analysis of variance confirmed the indicated degree of influence and determined the rank of each of the factors in percentage.

The Effect of Cue Labeling in Multimedia Learning: Evidence From Eye Tracking

Cue labels are useful during multimedia learning. According to spatial contiguity principle, people learn more when related words and pictures are displayed spatially near one another. Well-arranged labels of multimedia material can greatly facilitate learning. This study used eye tracking to examine the joint influence of label size (large vs. small) and color (included vs. not) on multimedia learning. The results revealed that larger labels led to better retention test performance and a higher AOI glance count, but no cueing effect was found for color. Cues have a certain attention-leading function that promotes the learner remembering the content. These findings suggest that salient labels that provide explanatory information can guide learners’ attention and facilitate learning, though a combination of label size and color salience did not demonstrate a superior cueing effect.

A Multistep Prediction of Hydropower Station Inflow Based on Bagging-LSTM Model

The inflow forecasting is one of the most important technologies for modern hydropower station. Under the joint influence of soil, upstream inflow, and precipitation, the inflow is often characterized by time lag, nonlinearity, and uncertainty and then results in the difficulty of accurate multistep prediction of inflow. To address the coupling relationship between inflow and the related factors, this paper proposes a long short-term memory deep learning model based on the Bagging algorithm (Bagging-LSTM) to predict the inflows of future 3 h, 12 h, and 24 h, respectively. To validate the proposed model, the inflow and related weather data come from a hydropower station in southern China. Compared with the classical time series models, the results show that the proposed model outperforms them on different accuracy metrics, especially in the scenario of multistep prediction.

Degradation processes in tungsten filaments at high temperatures

Degradation processes in tungsten filaments of lighting lamps under normal operating conditions are experimentally studied. The duration of each measurement in continuous mode is about 18 hours. To increase the measurement accuracy, subtraction (compensation) of the constant component of the voltage is used. To compensate for the constant component of the voltage, a low noise reference DC voltage source is used. Using this scheme allowed decreasing the influence of the inherent noise of power supplies without suppressing degradation processes. It is shown that the relative change in resistance during the measurement does not exceed 2.8·10−3. It is also shown that the joint influence of voltage fluctuations of power supplies and low noise reference voltage source on the measurement results corresponds to a relative change in a resistance equal to 2.8·10−4. The study of degradation processes can be used to assess the reliability (and durability) of products in electrical engineering and radio electronics.

Influence of adiposity and physical activity on the cardiometabolic association pattern of lipoprotein subclasses to aerobic fitness in prepubertal children

Aerobic fitness (AF) and lipoprotein subclasses associate to each other and to cardiovascular health. Adiposity and physical activity (PA) influence the association pattern of AF to lipoproteins almost inversely making it difficult to assess their independent and joint influence on the association pattern. This study, including 841 children (50% boys) 10.2 ± 0.3 years old with BMI 18.0 ± 3.0 kg/m2 from rural Western Norway, aimed at examining the association pattern of AF to the lipoprotein subclasses and to estimate the independent and joint influence of PA and adiposity on this pattern. We used multivariate analysis to determine the association pattern of a profile of 26 lipoprotein features to AF with and without adjustment for three measures of adiposity and a high-resolution PA descriptor of 23 intensity intervals derived from accelerometry. For data not adjusted for adiposity or PA, we observed a cardioprotective lipoprotein pattern associating to AF. This pattern withstood adjustment for PA, but the strength of association to AF was reduced by 58%, while adjustment for adiposity weakened the association of AF to the lipoproteins by 85% and with strongest changes in the associations to a cardioprotective high-density lipoprotein subclass pattern. When adjusted for both adiposity and PA, the cardioprotective lipoprotein pattern still associated to AF, but the strength of association was reduced by 90%. Our results imply that the (negative) influence of adiposity on the cardioprotective association pattern of lipoproteins to AF is considerably stronger than the (positive) contribution of PA to this pattern. However, our analysis shows that PA contributes also indirectly through a strong inverse association to adiposity. The trial was registered 7 May, 2014 in clinicaltrials.gov with trial reg. no.: NCT02132494 and the URL is https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?term=NCT02132494&cntry=NO.

The Influence of Signaling on the Disfluency Effect in Multimedia Learning

Do students learn better with texts that are slightly harder-to-read (i.e., disfluent)? Previous research has yielded conflicting findings. The present study identified the boundary condition that determines when disfluent texts benefit learning. We used eye-tracking to examine the joint influence of text legibility (fluent vs. disfluent) and signaling (signaling vs. non-signaling) on multimedia learning. The results revealed that both disfluent text and signaling led to better transfer test performance, and there was also an interaction between them. Specifically, the disfluent text led to better learning outcomes with or without signaling; however, in the fluent text condition, only signaling facilitated learning. Eye movement analyses indicated that signaling guided learners to pay more attention to important content in the learning materials. The current results suggest that signaling can enhance individuals’ perceived fluency or familiarity to the material and guide the attention during multimedia learning, and the positive impact of disfluency on multimedia learning seems to be more stable and ubiquitous. We discuss these under the framework of disfluency effect and attention-guiding effect.