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The biological life history (LH) theory has been increasingly utilized in psychology, especially in developmental psychology. However, there has not been a comprehensive text on the topic thatalso addresses applications in psychology. This Element fills this void. Organized into five sections, it initially delineates and explains the species-general concepts and principles forming LH theory, emphasizing that, although derived from observations between species, they can be used to explain individual differences within human populations. Grounded in the assumption of phenotypic plasticity, subsequent LH research conducted in psychology covers a wide range of cognitive and social behavioral domains. This body of LH research is discussed next. The Element concludes by presenting four broad recommendations, which, comprising one-quarter of the total content, provide specific directions for future LH research in psychology.
One species-general life history (LH) principle posits that challenging childhood environments are coupled with a fast or faster LH strategy and associated behaviors, while secure and stable childhood environments foster behaviors conducive to a slow or slower LH strategy. This coupling between environments and LH strategies is based on the assumption that individuals’ internal traits and states are independent of their external surroundings. In reality, individuals respond to external environmental conditions in alignment with their intrinsic vitality, encompassing both physical and mental states. The present study investigated attachment as an internal mental state, examining its role in mediating and moderating the association between external environmental adversity and fast LH strategies. A sample of 1169 adolescents (51% girls) from 9 countries was tracked over 10 years, starting from age 8. The results confirm both mediation and moderation and, for moderation, secure attachment nullified and insecure attachment maintained the environment-LH coupling. These findings suggest that attachment could act as an internal regulator, disrupting the contingent coupling between environmental adversity and a faster pace of life, consequently decelerating human LH.
In English law, the trust's third-party and bankruptcy effects contribute significantly to its wide use in commercial transactions. In view of the trust's attractiveness in conducting commercial dealings, China has also introduced the trust model into its domestic legal system to enhance its financial infrastructure. However, given the extent to which Chinese law has been influenced by the Roman-Germanic tradition, China's replication of the trust's third-party and bankruptcy effects has encountered doctrinal obstacles. Drawing upon the experience of its Northeast Asian forerunners, China has established two mechanisms to achieve the third-party and bankruptcy effects: the regime of trust fund independence and the granting of the right of rescission to beneficiaries. These two mechanisms represent the adjustments made by Chinese legislators in the process of transplanting the trust model into the Chinese legal context. Adopting a comparative law perspective, this article examines these mechanisms in the Chinese law setting for two reasons: first, to explore the mechanisms’ constituent elements and their operation, as well as the roles of both mechanisms in the Chinese trust law system; and second, to furnish comparative law scholarship with broader insights into rule transplantation and reconciliation.
The prevalence of non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) among adolescents underscores the importance of understanding the complex factors that drive this behaviour. Framed within broader constructs of emotional regulation theories, alexithymia and peer victimisation are thought to interact to influence NSSI behaviours.
Aim
This research addresses whether alexithymia and peer victimisation serve as risk factors for NSSI and, if so, how these factors interact with each other.
Method
This quantitative study analysed data from 605 adolescents, using a range of validated self-report measures including the Toronto Alexithymia Scale. Statistical analyses including one-way analysis of variance, multiple regression and structural equation modelling were employed to scrutinise the relationships among the variables.
Results
Alexithymia and peer victimisation significantly predicted NSSI behaviours. Specifically, the ‘difficulty in identifying feelings’ subscale of alexithymia emerged as a noteworthy predictor of NSSI (P < 0.001). Peer victimisation mediated the relationship between alexithymia and NSSI, explaining approximately 24.50% of alexithymia's total effect on NSSI. In addition, age was a significant predictor of NSSI, but gender and education years were not (P > 0.05). These relationships were found to be invariant across genders.
Conclusions
This study enriches our understanding of the interplay between alexithymia, peer victimisation and NSSI, particularly within the Chinese context. Its findings have significant implications for a rethinking of alexithymia's theoretical construct and interventions targeting emotional literacy and peer dynamics among adolescents. Future research could benefit from a longitudinal design to establish causality.
We design a scheme for laser-inertial odometry and mapping with bundle adjustment (BA-LIOM), which can greatly mitigate the problem of undesired ground warping due to sparsity of laser scans and significantly reduce odometry drift. Specifically, an Inertial measurement unit (IMU)-assisted adaptive voxel map initialization algorithm is proposed and elaborately integrated with the existing framework LIO-SAM, allowing for accurate registration in the beginning of the localization and mapping process. In addition, to accommodate to fast-moving and structure-less scenarios, we design a tightly coupled odometry, which jointly optimizes both the IMU preintegration constraints and scan matching with adaptive voxel maps. The voxels (edge and plane, respectively) are updated with BA optimization. And then the accurate mapping result is obtained by performing local BA. The proposed BA-LIOM is thoroughly assessed using datasets collected from multiple platforms over a variety of environments. Experimental results show the superiority of BA-LIOM over the state-of-the-art methods in robustness and precision, especially for large-scale scenarios. BA-LIOM improves the accuracy of localization by $61\%$ and $73\%$ on the buildings and lawn datasets, respectively, and has a $29\%$ accuracy improvement over LIO-SAM on the KITTI datasets. A supplementary video can be accessed at https://youtu.be/5l4ZFhTc2sw.
The efficient separation of hexane isomers from the light naphtha fraction is a significant challenge in the petrochemical industry. 5A zeolite adsorbent is used commercially to sieve alkane isomers. In this study, 5A zeolites were synthesized using a low-cost natural clay mineral precursor, i.e. palygorskite (PAL), with the addition of crystallization directing agent (CDA). By varying the mass ratio of CDA/deionized water, 5A zeolites were obtained as CDA-5%, CDA-7.5%, and CDA-10%. All products were submicron particles with an average particle size of 400–800 nm. A sieving test of CDA-induced 5A zeolites was carried out on hexane adsorbates including n-hexane (nHEX), 2-methylpentane (2MP), and 3-methylpentane (3MP). According to vapor-phase batch adsorption experiments, a significant equilibrium amount (0.149 g/g) of nHEX and only 0.0321 g/g 2MP and 0.0416 g/g 3MP were adsorbed on the 5A zeolite product with CDA-5%. The dynamic adsorption performance of 5A zeolite (CDA-5%) was evaluated by breakthrough curves of binary mixtures of nHEX/2MP and nHEX/3MP. Palygorskite 5A (PAL 5A) zeolite achieved maximum dynamic adsorption capacities of nHEX (0.16 g/g in both cases) at 200°C and 1.2 MPa total pressure. This work provided an economic alternative for the synthesis of 5A zeolites using natural clay minerals instead of chemical raw materials.
Adolescence is a pivotal stage vulnerable to mental health problems such as anxiety and depression. Although self-acceptance and social comparison are known to affect adolescent mental health, their interactive and moderating roles are not fully understood.
Aims
To explore the role of self-acceptance, social comparison and attributional style in predicting these mental health outcomes among adolescents in clinical settings.
Method
A cross-sectional study was conducted on a sample of 242 adolescents. Participants completed measures assessing self-acceptance, social comparison, attributional style and mental health outcomes (depression and anxiety). Mediation models and multi-group analysis were used to examine the relationships among these variables.
Results
Our findings demonstrated a significant relationship between self-acceptance, social comparison, depression and anxiety (rs = 0.32–0.88). Specifically, lower self-acceptance and higher social comparison were associated with higher levels of depression and anxiety. Additionally, individuals with external attributional tendencies reported higher depression (Cohen's d = 0.61) and anxiety (d = 0.58) compared with those with internal tendencies. Mediation modelling showed that social comparison is a mediator between self-acceptance and depression (effect size −0.04, 95% CI −0.08 to −0.01) and anxiety (effect size −0.06, 95% CI −0.10 to −0.02). Crucially, multi-group analysis showed that the impact of social comparison on mental health outcomes varied significantly based on attributional style.
Conclusions
These findings underscore the importance of considering self-acceptance, social comparison and attributional style in understanding and addressing mental health challenges during adolescence. This could inform the development of targeted interventions to promote mental health and well-being among adolescents. However, further research is needed to confirm these findings in diverse populations and to explore the underlying mechanisms in greater detail.
This chapter analyses the practice of regulatory oversight of charitable trusts. It first analyses the powers and responsibilities assigned to each of the regulators and the relationship between them in law. This analysis shows that the vagueness of the law creates scope for regulators to consider extra-legal factors when engaging with the law. Next, the chapter examines the regulatory practice in light of China’s particular political, social, and economic conditions. The findings from semi-structural qualitative interviews point towards three factors that are especially influential in the decision-making of regulatory officials: the regional development agenda, the tension between regulatory capacity and regulatory objectives, and the regulators’ perceptions of risk. The chapter provides an in-depth analysis of each factor and highlights the regional differences in regulatory practice caused by these factors.
This chapter introduces the legal definition of ‘charitable trust governance’ and outlines the hypothesis, research questions, and research methods of this monograph. This monograph first defines the governance of charitable trusts as a set of mechanisms that ensure the trustee of a charitable trust complies with its duties. Based on this definition, Chapter 1 explains the hypothesis to be demonstrated in the rest of the monograph; that is, the governance framework for Chinese charitable trusts can only be fully understood in light of relevant laws, administrative practices, and private actions undertaken by trust parties. Three research questions are accordingly outlined to direct the study: (a) how has the charity law helped shape the governance structure of charitable trusts?; (b) how have regulators implemented the legal regulatory framework?; and (c) what private actions have trust parties taken when engaging with the law? Based on these questions, the chapter finally explains the methods adopted in the study: (a) textual analysis; (b) translation of Chinese sources; and (c) semi-structured qualitative interviews.
This chapter sums up the key research findings, and concludes with recommendations for further research. The key findings concern three inter-related respects that shape the governance structure for charitable trusts – legal, administrative, and contractual. Next, based on the problems and deficiencies identified in the current legislative framework, this chapter highlights three areas where future research may be required. The first relates to the reform of governance rules concerning Chinese charitable trusts. The second area lies in the broad implications that reforms for charitable trusts may have for other institutional bodies (e.g., foundations and social associations) pursuing charitable causes in China. The third area concerns the assessment of the charitable trust model’s potential in fulfilling the state’s goal of promoting charitable undertakings.
This chapter explores the use of contractual tools by trust parties. Trust parties have perceived three types of risk in the creation and ongoing management of charitable trusts: the vagueness of the law, public scrutiny, and regulatory scrutiny. These risks motivate trust parties to use contract clauses to re-adjust the legislative framework of charitable trusts, and two levels of relationship are accordingly regulated in this practice. The chapter first analyses the horizontal relationship between settlors and trustees. Based on a review of the charitable trust contracts collected, insights are offered into the common contractual arrangements and how trust parties use these arrangements to reallocate their powers and duties. The chapter then examines the hierarchical relationship between regulators and trust parties. It is found that regulators are disposed to guide the use of contract tools between trust parties. This approach entitles regulators to tightly control the use of charitable trusts so as to advance the state’s public welfare goals to the largest extent.
This chapter analyses the legal nature of the charitable trust model and the implications that such analysis has for the governance of charitable trusts. It is found that, in Chinese charitable trusts, private law norms are always subordinated and subject to public law norms, and that charitable trusts are always operated in alignment with the public welfare policy of the state. Aside from governance in law, the chapter also identifies the connection between governance and practice, based on the fact that trust parties and regulators tend to adopt strategies to protect their interests from being adversely affected in the implementation of the law. In light of the ways in which trust parties and regulators engage with the law and the hybrid nature of charitable trusts, this chapter finally proposes three perspectives that are relevant to the understanding of charitable trust governance: legal, administrative, and contractual. These perspectives are then expanded upon in Chapters 3–5.
This chapter discusses the relationship between trust parties in law. The discussion centres on the new legal framework that legislators have created for the governance of Chinese charitable trusts. It focuses on two main aspects: (a) the assignment of powers and duties to settlors and trustees; and (b) the undetermined legal nature of beneficiaries. This chapter delves into these two important aspects of governance by examining the relevant legislative provisions. Such an examination helps, first, to identify the ways in which the new charity law has helped shape the governance structure of Chinese charitable trusts; and second, to identify areas where the legal governance framework provides clear guidelines and where it is vague, has gaps, or creates risks for parties in terms of the lawful performance of their roles.