Hydrothermal alteration records fluid–rock interactions and can therefore be used to constrain element migrations during mineralization. Although hydrothermal alteration is widely developed in hydrothermal vein-type uranium deposits in South China, consideration of elemental mass changes during alteration has not been examined. The Egongtang uranium deposit in the central Nanling Range is mainly hosted by the Qingzhangshan granite in South China, and was strongly altered by K-feldspar, quartz, chlorite, illite, haematite, pyrite and carbonates. The alteration section can be divided into five horizontal zones: fresh granite (Zone V), a distal alkaline alteration zone (Zone IV), a chlorite-rich zone (Zone III), a close-to-ore sericite/illite alteration zone (Zone II) and a central mineralization zone with strong haematitization (Zone I). Whole-rock geochemistry of the altered samples indicates that from Zone IV to Zone I, the content of SiO2 and U increases significantly. The mass gains of SiO2, MgO and Fe2O3 were proportional to the concentration of U. The content of trace elements (such as Ba, K, La, Ce, Pr, Sr, P, Eu, etc.) gradually decreases from Zone V to Zone I. The rare earth elements manifest a decrease in light rare earth elements and a slight increase in heavy rare earth elements accordingly from Zone V to Zone I. This study shows that the ore materials of the Egongtang deposit were mainly derived from the Qingzhangshan granites. In the early alkali alterations, large amounts of U were partitioned into the fluids. In the ore-forming stage, ores precipitated accompanied by acid metasomatism such as chloritization, haematitization and carbonation.

This paper develops the estimation method of mean and covariance functions of functional data with additional covariate information. With the strength of both local linear smoothing modeling and general weighing scheme, we are able to explicitly characterize the mean and covariance functions with incorporating covariate for irregularly spaced and sparsely observed longitudinal data, as typically encountered in engineering technology or biomedical studies, as well as for functional data which are densely measured. Theoretically, we establish the uniform convergence rates of the estimators in the general weighing scheme. Monte Carlo simulation is conducted to investigate the finite-sample performance of the proposed approach. Two applications including the children growth data and white matter tract dataset obtained from Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative study are also provided.

Aberrant DNA methylation patterns in sperm are a cause of embryonic failure and infertility, and could be a critical factor contributing to male recurrent spontaneous abortion (RSA). The purpose of this study was to reveal the potential effects of sperm DNA methylation levels in patients with male RSA. We compared sperm samples collected from fertile men and oligoasthenospermia patients. Differentially methylated sequences were identified by reduced representation bisulfite sequencing (RRBS) methods. The DNA methylation levels of the two groups were compared and qRT-PCR was used to validate the expression of genes showing differential methylation. The results indicated that no difference in base distribution was observed between the normal group and the patient group. However, the chromosome methylation in these two groups was markedly different. One site was located on chromosome 8 and measured 150 bp, while the other sites were on chromosomes 9, 10, and X and measured 135 bp, 68 bp, and 136 bp, respectively. In particular, two genes were found to be hypermethylated in these patients, one gene was DYDC2 (placed in the differential methylation region of chromosome 10), and the other gene was NXF3 (located on chromosome X). Expression levels of DYDC2 and NXF3 in the RSA group were significantly lower than those in the normal group (P < 0.05). Collectively, these results demonstrated that changes in DNA methylation might be related to male RSA. Our findings provide important information regarding the potential role of sperm DNA methylation in human development.

This paper studied the use of eye movement data to form criteria for judging whether pilots perceive emergency information such as cockpit warnings. In the experiment, 12 subjects randomly encountered different warning information while flying a simulated helicopter, and their eye movement data were collected synchronously. Firstly, the importance of the eye movement features was calculated by ANOVA (analysis of variance). According to the sorting of the importance and the Euclidean distance of each eye movement feature, the warning information samples with different eye movement features were obtained. Secondly, the residual shrinkage network modules were added to CNN (convolutional neural network) to construct a DRSN (deep residual shrinkage networks) model. Finally, the processed warning information samples were used to train and test the DRSN model. In order to verify the superiority of this method, the DRSN model was compared with three machine learning models, namely SVM (support vector machine), RF (radom forest) and BPNN (backpropagation neural network). Among the four models, the DRSN model performed the best. When all eye movement features were selected, this model detected pilot perception of warning information with an average accuracy of 90.4%, of which the highest detection accuracy reached 96.4%. Experiments showed that the DRSN model had advantages in detecting pilot perception of warning information.

We examined the trade-off between the cost of response redundancy and the gain in output quality on the popular crowdsourcing platform Mechanical Turk, as a partial replication of Kosinski et al. (2012) who demonstrated a significant improvement in performance by aggregating multiple responses through majority vote. We submitted single items from a validated intelligence test as Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs) and aggregated the responses from “virtual groups” consisting of 1 to 24 workers. While the original study relied on resampling from a relatively small number of responses across a range of experimental conditions, we randomly and independently sampled from a large number of HITs, focusing only on the main effect of group size. We found that – on average – a group of six MTurkers has a collective IQ one standard deviation above the mean for the general population, thus demonstrating a “wisdom of the crowd” effect. The relationship between group size and collective IQ was characterised by diminishing returns, suggesting moderately sized groups provide the best return on investment. We also analysed performance of a smaller subset of workers who had each completed all 60 test items, allowing for a direct comparison between a group’s collective IQ and the individual IQ of its members. This demonstrated that randomly selected groups collectively equalled the performance of the best-performing individual within the group. Our findings support the idea that substantial intellectual capacity can be gained through crowdsourcing, contingent on moderate redundancy built into the task request.

It is important to understand the impact of individual differences in decision making from childhood to adulthood. This cohort-based study extends our knowledge by comparing decision making of children across the age range of 8 to 17 years and their parents. Based on prior research and theory focusing on different types of framing effects, we uncover several key differences across ages, including levels of risk taking and sensitivity to expected value differences between risky and riskless choices. Furthermore, we find that measures such as Numeracy and Surgency help explain both age-related and individual differences on our tasks, especially for decisions involving risk. We discuss the role of diverse task measures in understanding how individual difference factors affect different aspects of decision making, including the ability and effort to process numerical information and the ability to suppress affective reactions to stimulus labels.

By manipulating the scale in graphs, this study demonstrated a new evaluation bias caused by attribute salience in graphical representations. That is, (de)compressing the graph axis scale changed the relative distance with respect to the options of a given attribute and thus changed the salience of the information in graphical representations. Experiment 1 showed that the differences in the graphical representations had a significant impact on the evaluation. Experiment 2 repeated the scale manipulation effect in a different scenario and extended it to a multi-options context. Experiment 3 disentangled the effect of scale distance manipulation from the other variables (e.g., scale resolution and assignment of attributes to axes) and further supported the finding of Experiment 1. These results indicated that attribute salience in graphical representations clearly affects evaluations and that graphs can be manipulated to cause very different impressions of the same data. This finding is not consistent with the axioms of normative economic theory. Experiment 3 also tested the attribute importance hypothesis, but the evidence indicated that the participants did not regard the longer axis as the more important attribute. Finally, we related our findings to the impact of visual processing on decision making and discussed them from the perspective of two-system cognitive theory.

Visitors to zoos are a source of potential stress to certain captive-housed animals. Much research has focused on Europe and America, whereas the effect of human audiences on the behaviour of captive animals in Chinese parks has so far not been investigated. Sika deer (Cervus nippon) housed in Zhu-Yu-Wan Park, Yangzhou City, Jiangsu Province, China, were studied to determine the effect of different visitor density levels on the animals’ activity. From June 21 to December 10, 2006, and again from February 21 to July 10, 2007, 21 subjects were observed for 10 h per week for a total of 44 weeks. Continuous focal animal sampling was used to quantify behaviours, and visitor density was recorded every minute. Friedman's tests were used to examine the effects of visitor density on the behaviour of sika deer. Results showed that high visitor density was significantly related to foraging, resting, watching and ‘non-visible’ behaviours. The findings demonstrate that high numbers of visitors have an effect on the welfare of sika deer.

Policy makers should understand people’s attitudes towards opt-out nudges to smoothly promote and implement the policies. Our research compares people’s perceptions of opt-in and three improved versions of opt-out (transparency, emphasis on the low-cost opt-out option, education) in pro-social and pro-self policy domains, e.g., organ donation (N=610), carbon emission offset (N=613), and retirement saving (N=602). We found that people acknowledged more practical and societal benefits of opt-out than opt-in in organ donation and retirement saving but less so in carbon emission offset. Improved opt-out policies failed to address ethical concerns and most emotional discomfort concerns in organ donation whereas opt-out transparency and emphasis on low-cost opt-out were more successful than education at addressing concerns in retirement saving and carbon emission offset. Nonetheless, transparency and education may raise consciousness of policies’ aims. The results suggest that 1) acceptability of opt-out approaches may be more difficult to enhance in some domains than others; 2) policy makers should ensure the public understands that opt-out is a convenient choice and may consider combining all forms of improvement to increase people’s acceptance of opt-out nudges.

In two studies, people were reluctant to trade items they own, but glad to accept upgrades with identical end states. The framing of the transaction makes a difference. A mediational analysis suggests that the relationship between the frame of the transaction and measures of value (willingness to accept, WTA) depends on perceived losses. Losses are perceived as greater when the transaction is a trade than as an upgrade. We manipulated perceptions of loss across descriptions of transactions and found that, when the difference in perceptions of losses with trades versus upgrades was large, framing effects were strong. But when the difference was small, framing effects disappeared. These framing effects with identical end states influence WTA because trades are associated with perceived losses, while upgrades are associated with perceived costs.

Understanding cross-cultural differences in attitudes to animal welfare issues is important in maintaining good international relations, including economic and trade relations. This study aimed to investigate the attitudes of stakeholders towards improving the welfare of animals during slaughter and transport in four key SE and E Asian countries: China, Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia. Logistic regression analysis of the associations between demographic factors and attitudes identified nationality as the most significant factor influencing attitude. Motivating factors for improving welfare were ranked according to their importance: religion, knowledge levels, monetary gain, availability of tools and resources, community issues, approval of supervisor and peers. Strong beliefs in the influence of animal welfare laws, the power of the workplace and the importance of personal knowledge were shared by all countries. In addition, religion and peer consideration were significantly associated with attitudes in Malaysia and Thailand, respectively. The findings of this research will assist in the development of international animal welfare initiatives.

Difficulty making decisions is one of the symptoms of the depressive illness. Previous research suggests that depressed individuals may make decisions that differ from those made by the non-depressed, and that they use sub-optimal decision-making strategies. For this study we constructed an instrument that aims to measure a variety of decision-making styles as well as the respondent’s view of him or herself as a decision-maker (decisional self-esteem). These styles and estimates of decisional self-esteem were then related to depressive symptoms. Depressive symptomatology correlated negatively with perception of self as a decision-maker. Those with higher depression severity scores characterized themselves as being more anxious about decisions, and more likely to procrastinate. They also reported using fewer productive decision-making strategies, depending more on other people for help with decisions, and relying less on their own intuitions when making decisions. Further research is needed to determine the extent to which these decision-making styles are antecedents to depressive symptomatology or are instead products of, or aspects of, the phenomenology associated with depression.

Bias Blind Spot (BBS) is the phenomenon that people tend to perceive themselves as less susceptible to biases than others. In three pre-registered experiments (overall N = 969), we replicated two experiments of the first demonstration of the phenomenon by Pronin et al. (2002). We found support of the BBS hypotheses, with effects in line with findings in the original study: Participants rated themselves as less susceptible to biases than others (d = –1.00 [–1.33, –0.67]). Deviating from the original, we found an unexpected effect that participants rated themselves as having fewer shortcomings (d = –0.34 [–0.46, –0.23]), though there was support for the target’s main premise that BBS was stronger for biases than for shortcomings (d = –0.43 [–0.56, –0.29]). Extending the replications, we found that beliefs in own free will were positively associated with BBS (r ∼ 0.17–0.22) and that beliefs in both own and general free will were positively associated with self-other asymmetry related to personal shortcomings (r ∼ 0.16–0.24). Materials, datasets, and code are available on https://osf.io/3df5s/.

Time preference reversal refers to systematic inconsistencies between preferences and bids for intertemporal options. From the two eye-tracking studies (N1 = 60, N2 = 110), we examined the underlying mechanisms of time preference reversal. We replicated the reversal effect in which individuals facing a pair of intertemporal options choose the smaller-sooner option but assign a higher value to the larger-later one. Results revealed that the mean fixation duration and the proportion of gaze time on the outcome attribute varied across the choice and bid tasks. In addition, time preference reversals correlated with individual differences in maximizing tendencies. Findings support the contingent weighting hypothesis and strategy compatibility hypothesis and allow for improved theoretical understanding of the potential mechanisms and processes involved in time preference reversals.

With the dangerous and troublesome nature of hollow defects inside building structures, hollowness inspection has always been a challenge in the field of construction quality assessment. Several methods have been proposed for inspecting hollowness inside concrete structures. These methods have shown great advantages compared to manual inspection but still lack autonomy and have several limitations. In this paper, we propose a range-point migration-based non-contact hollowness inspection system with sensor fusion of ultra-wide-band radar and laser-based depth camera to extract both outer surface and inner hollowness information accurately and efficiently. The simulation result evaluates the performance of the system based on the original range-point migration algorithm, and our proposed one and the result of our system show great competitiveness. Several simulation experiments of structures that are very common in reality are carried out to draw more convincing conclusions about the system. At the same time, a set of laboratory-made concrete components were used as experimental objects for the robotic system. Although still accompanied by some problems, these experiments demonstrate the availability of an automated hollow-core detection system.