Search Results (277)

Rhetorical questions are used in a variety of ways in the Hebrew Bible. These questions, as found in Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, and Judges, show a strong emotional component, often of anger, and are part of the linguistic structure of accusation and defense. Rhetorical questions are also used as part of diplomatic negotiations between individuals and groups. Such questions function within the narrative to provide momentum for the story and move the action forward. By carrying the emotional component of the text, rhetorical questions draw the reader into scripture and enhance the connection between the reader and the text. One particular format of the accusing rhetorical question is a variant of “what have you done?” This phrase serves to accuse and to imply the need for justification or restitution for the perceived wrong. “What have you done?” is not seeking information in these contexts, as the wrongdoing in question has already come to light for the speaker. This question is accompanied by additional rhetorical questions to form a linguistic cluster. This article proposes that rhetorical questions, and particularly the “What have you done?” format, were long-standing and common linguistic tools of Hebrew writers and speakers in the ancient world. Such questions served as cues for responsive interaction from the party addressed and signaled the opening for apology, negotiation, or further conflict. Full article

As ad-supported subscription models proliferate across over-the-top (OTT) media platforms, understanding the psychological mechanisms and perceptual factors that underlie consumers’ transition decisions becomes increasingly consequential. This study integrates the Uses and Gratifications framework with a contemporary motivation-based perspective to examine how users’ media consumption motivations and advertising attitudes predict intentions to adopt ad-supported OTT plans. Data were collected via a nationally representative online survey in South Korea (N = 813). The sample included both premium subscribers (n = 708) and non-subscribers (n = 105). The findings reveal distinct segmentation in decision-making patterns. Among premium subscribers, switching intentions were predominantly driven by intrinsic motivations—particularly identity alignment with content—and by the perceived informational value of advertisements. These individuals are more likely to consider ad-supported plans when ad content is personally relevant and cognitively enriching. Conversely, non-subscribers exhibited greater sensitivity to extrinsic cues such as the entertainment value of ads and the presence of tangible incentives (e.g., discounts), suggesting a hedonic-reward orientation. By advancing a dual-pathway explanatory model, this study contributes to the theoretical discourse on digital subscription behavior and offers actionable insights for OTT service providers. The results underscore the necessity of segment-specific advertising strategies: premium subscribers may be engaged through informative and identity-consistent advertising, while non-subscribers respond more favorably to enjoyable and benefit-laden ad experiences. These insights inform platform monetization efforts amid the evolving dynamics of consumer attention and subscription fatigue. Full article

Background/Objectives: Chickenpox is an ongoing health threat for young children. This study aimed to investigate varicella vaccination uptake among children and its determinants at both the individual and interpersonal levels. Methods: A cross-sectional survey of parents of children aged 0–15 years and with administrative health records was conducted between September and October 2024 in Shenzhen, China. Participants were recruited through multistage random sampling. This analysis was based on a subsample of 996 parents whose children were 1–10 years old and without a prior history of chickenpox. Multivariate logistic regression models were fitted. Results: Among the participants, 47.0% reported that their children had received a varicella vaccination. Parents who believed that chickenpox was highly contagious (adjusted odds ratios [AOR]: 1.62, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.23, 2.13), perceived more benefits (AOR: 1.22, 95% CI: 1.05, 1.41) and cues to action (AOR: 1.33, 95% CI: 1.04, 1.69), and exhibited greater self-efficacy (AOR: 1.40, 95% CI: 1.09, 1.80) related to children’s varicella vaccination reported higher varicella vaccination uptake for their children. Greater perceived barriers related to vaccination (AOR: 0.89, 95% CI: 0.83, 0.95) and dysfunctional interactions with children (AOR: 0.97, 95% CI: 0.94, 0.99) were associated with lower varicella vaccination uptake for children. In addition, higher exposure to information encouraging parents to vaccinate their children against chickenpox (AOR: 1.24, 95%CI: 1.08, 1.41) and thoughtful consideration of the veracity of the information were associated with higher varicella vaccination uptake among children (AOR: 1.19, 95% CI: 1.05, 1.36). Conclusions: There is a strong need to promote varicella vaccination for children in China. Full article

Background: Cucurbitacin E (CuE), a natural tetracyclic triterpenoid compound extracted from the melon stems of Cucurbitaceae plants, has been reported to exhibit anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer properties, along with the ability to enhance cellular immunity. However, its role and molecular mechanism in regulating lipid metabolism and adipogenesis remain unclear. This study aims to investigate the potential anti-adipogenic and anti-obesity effects of CuE in 3T3-L1 adipocytes. Materials and Methods: 3T3-L1 preadipocytes were cultured and induced to differentiate using a standard adipogenic cocktail containing dexamethasone, 3-isobutyl-1-methylxanthine (IBMX), and insulin (DMI). CuE was administered during the differentiation process at various concentrations. Lipid accumulation was assessed using Oil Red O staining, and cell viability was evaluated via the MTT assay. To determine whether CuE induced apoptosis or necrosis, flow cytometry was performed using annexin V/PI staining. Additional molecular analyses, such as Western blotting and RT-PCR, were used to examine the expression of key adipogenic markers. Results: Treatment with CuE significantly reduced lipid droplet formation in DMI-induced 3T3-L1 adipocytes in a dose-dependent manner, as shown by decreased Oil Red O staining. Importantly, CuE did not induce apoptosis or necrosis in 3T3-L1 cells at effective concentrations, indicating its safety toward normal adipocytes. Moreover, CuE treatment downregulated the expression of adipogenic markers such as PPARγ and C/EBPα at both mRNA and protein levels. Discussion: Our findings suggest that CuE exerts a non-cytotoxic inhibitory effect on adipocyte differentiation and lipid accumulation. This anti-adipogenic effect is likely mediated through the suppression of key transcription factors involved in adipogenesis. The absence of cytotoxicity supports the potential application of CuE as a safe bioactive compound for obesity management. Further investigation is warranted to elucidate the upstream signaling pathways and in vivo efficacy of CuE. Conclusions: Cucurbitacin E effectively inhibits adipogenesis in 3T3-L1 adipocytes without inducing cytotoxic effects, making it a promising candidate for the development of functional foods or therapeutic agents aimed at preventing or treating obesity. This study provides new insights into the molecular basis of CuE’s anti-obesity action and highlights its potential as a natural lipogenesis inhibitor. Full article

We present a lightweight autonomous driving method that uses a low-cost camera, a simple end-to-end convolutional neural network architecture, and smoother driving techniques to achieve energy-efficient vehicle control. Instead of directly constructing a mapping from raw sensory input to the action, our network takes the frame-to-frame visual difference as one of the crucial inputs to produce control commands, including the steering angle and the speed value at each time step. This choice of input allows highlighting the most relevant parts on raw image pairs to decrease the unnecessary visual complexity caused by different road and weather conditions. Additionally, our network achieves the prediction of the vehicle’s upcoming control commands by incorporating a view synthesis component into the model. The view synthesis, as an auxiliary task, aims to infer a novel view for the future from the historical environment transformation cue. By combining both the current and upcoming control commands, our framework achieves driving smoothness, which is highly associated with energy efficiency. We perform experiments on benchmarks to evaluate the reliability under different driving conditions in terms of control accuracy. We deploy a mobile robot outdoors to evaluate the power consumption of different control policies. The quantitative results demonstrate that our method can achieve energy efficiency in the real world. Full article

Workplace contextual emotions are structured ways of emotionally thinking about specific cues in the context that employees share within their organization. These dynamics reflect how employees emotionally interpret and respond to organizational environments. Contextual emotions may shape working relationships into different types of toxic emotional dynamics (e.g., claiming, controlling, distrusting, provoking) or, conversely, positive emotional dynamics (i.e., exchanging), thus setting the emotional tone that affects employees’ actions and their level of comfort/discomfort. The present study uses latent profile analysis (LPA) to identify subpopulations of employees who may experience differing levels of both positive and negative emotional dynamics (i.e., different configurations of emotional patterns of workplace behavior). Moreover, it examines whether the emergent profiles predict work-related (i.e., job satisfaction, burnout) and health-related outcomes (i.e., sleep disturbances, physical and mental health). Using data from 801 Italian employees, we identified four latent profiles: “functional dynamics” (low toxic emotions and high exchange), “dialectical dynamics” (co-existence of medium toxic emotions and medium exchange), “mild dysfunctional dynamics” (moderately high toxic emotions and low exchange), and “highly dysfunctional dynamics” (extremely high toxic emotions and extremely low exchange). Moreover, employees in the dialectical, mild dysfunctional, and highly dysfunctional groups reported progressively higher levels of poor health outcomes and progressively lower levels of satisfaction, whereas the functional group was at low risk of stress and was the most satisfied group. The theoretical and practical implications of the LPA-classified emotional patterns of workplace behavior are discussed in light of the relevance of identifying vulnerable subpopulations of employees diversely exposed to toxic configurations of emotional/relational ambience. Full article

Audio-driven emotional talking face generation aims to generate talking face videos with rich facial expressions and temporal coherence. Current diffusion model-based approaches predominantly depend on either single-label emotion annotations or external video references, which often struggle to capture the complex relationships between modalities, resulting in less natural emotional expressions. To address these issues, we propose MF-ETalk, a multimodal feature-guided method for emotional talking face generation. Specifically, we design an emotion-aware multimodal feature disentanglement and fusion framework that leverages Action Units (AUs) to disentangle facial expressions and models the nonlinear relationships among AU features using a residual encoder. Furthermore, we introduce a hierarchical multimodal feature fusion module that enables dynamic interactions among audio, visual cues, AUs, and motion dynamics. This module is optimized through global motion modeling, lip synchronization, and expression subspace learning, enabling full-face dynamic generation. Finally, an emotion-consistency constraint module is employed to refine the generated results and ensure the naturalness of expressions. Extensive experiments on the MEAD and HDTF datasets demonstrate that MF-ETalk outperforms state-of-the-art methods in both expression naturalness and lip-sync accuracy. For example, it achieves an FID of 43.052 and E-FID of 2.403 on MEAD, along with strong synchronization performance (LSE-C of 6.781, LSE-D of 7.962), confirming the effectiveness of our approach in producing realistic and emotionally expressive talking face videos. Full article

This study examines how Chinese tourists perceive the value of sustainable practices implemented in five-star hotels in Phuket, Thailand, through the lens of the perceived value theory and the service experience framework. While luxury hotels increasingly adopt green initiatives, research exploring how tourists evaluate these efforts across the full guest journey is limited. Addressing this gap, this study aimed to examine how attitudinally distinct tourist segments perceive sustainable practices across three service stages: pre-consumption, consumption, and post-consumption. A cross-sectional survey of 400 Chinese tourists was conducted, applying k-means clustering to segment respondents by sustainability attitudes, followed by multi-group structural equation modeling. Two segments emerged: environmentally engaged travelers and conventional comfort travelers. The results indicate that the emotional value dominates during the stay, the functional value drives pre-stay decisions, and the ethical/social value shapes post-stay reflections. Environmentally engaged tourists were more responsive to ethical and social cues. The findings highlight sustainability as a multidimensional, stage-specific construct moderated by guest attitudes. Theoretically, this research extends perceived value frameworks by mapping sustainability perceptions across the guest journey. Practically, it offers actionable insights for hotel managers seeking to design value-aligned green strategies and segmented communication. Tailoring sustainability initiatives to tourist profiles can enhance satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy in the luxury hospitality sector. Full article

Sign Language Recognition (SLR) has made substantial progress through advances in deep learning and video-based action recognition. Conventional SLR systems typically segment input videos into a fixed number of clips (e.g., five clips per video), regardless of the video’s actual length, to meet the fixed-length input requirements of deep learning models. While this approach simplifies model design and training, it fails to account for temporal variations inherent in sign language videos. Specifically, applying a fixed number of clips to videos of varying lengths can lead to significant information loss: longer videos suffer from excessive frame skipping, causing the model to miss critical gestural cues, whereas shorter videos require frame duplication, introducing temporal redundancy that distorts motion dynamics. To address these limitations, we propose a dynamic clip generation method that adaptively adjusts the number of clips during inference based on a novel coverage metric. This metric quantifies how effectively a clip selection captures the temporal information in a given video, enabling the system to maintain both temporal fidelity and computational efficiency. Experimental results on benchmark SLR datasets using multiple models-including 3D CNNs, R(2+1)D, Video Swin Transformer, and Multiscale Vision Transformers demonstrate that our method consistently outperforms fixed clip generation methods. Notably, our approach achieves 98.67% accuracy with the Video Swin Transformer while reducing inference time by 28.57%. These findings highlight the effectiveness of coverage-based dynamic clip generation in improving both accuracy and efficiency, particularly for videos with high temporal variability. Full article

Background/Objectives: Verbs are considered to be more abstract than nouns, as they represent actions, states, and events, which are less tangible, more flexible in their meaning and thus less univocally specified. It has been suggested that children acquire abstract concepts based on their linguistic contexts of use, making use of semantic and syntactic cues. By contrast, according to theories of embodied cognition, conceptual knowledge is based on physical and perceptual interaction with the world. The present study investigates whether the verbal and the visual modality produce similar or different results in the processes of construction and reactivation of novel verbs, corresponding to new compositional abstract concepts, in children of different ages. In Experiment 1, the acquisition of the concept was determined based on the quality of verbal explanation; in Experiment 2, participants were asked to decide whether a visual representation fitted the concept or not. Thus, response modality could be either explicit or implicit, and either congruent or incongruent with respect to learning modality. Methods: In Experiment 1, 100 children from grade 1 to 5 were asked to explain the meaning of verbs introduced via verbal or visual instances. In Experiment 2, 15 children aged 8 to 10 had to judge pictures as (not) being examples of previously verbally or visually presented novel verbs. Results: The results of Experiment 1 show more accurate explanations after verbal presentation across all grades. In Experiment 2, verbal presentation was no longer associated with more accurate matching responses, but rather with slower decision times. Conclusions: Modality congruence, explicitness and linguistic (semantic and syntactic) factors were all shown to play a role, which is discussed in a developmental perspective. Full article

Extended-reality (XR) tools are increasingly used to revitalise museum experiences, but typical head-mounted or smartphone solutions tend to fragment audiences and suppress the social dialogue that makes cultural heritage memorable. This article addresses that gap on two fronts. First, it proposes a four-phase design methodology—spanning artifact selection, narrative framing, tangible-interface fabrication, spatial installation, software integration, validation, and deployment—that helps curators, designers, and technologists to co-create XR exhibitions in which co-presence, embodied action, and multisensory cues are treated as primary design goals rather than afterthoughts. Second, the paper reports LanternXR, a proof-of-concept built with the methodology: visitors share a 3D-printed replica of the fourteenth-century Virgin of Boixadors while wielding a tracked “camera” and a candle-like lantern that lets them illuminate, photograph, and annotate the sculpture inside a life-sized Gothic nave rendered on large 4K displays with spatial audio and responsive lighting. To validate the approach, the article presents an analytical synthesis of feedback from curators, museologists, and XR technologists, underscoring the system’s capacity to foster collaboration, deepen engagement, and broaden accessibility. The findings show how XR can move museum audiences from isolated immersion to collective, multisensory exploration. Full article

The multistep phosphorelay (MSP) is a conserved signaling system that allows plants to sense and respond to a variety of cues under rapidly changing environmental conditions. The MSP system comprises three main protein types: sensor histidine kinases, phosphotransmitters, and response regulators. There are numerous signaling pathways that use, in whole or in part, this set of proteins to transduce diverse signals. Among them, the cytokinin signal transduction system is the best-studied pathway, which utilizes the entire MSP cascade. Focusing on this system, we review here protein–protein interaction of MSP components that are not directly related to cytokinin signaling. These interactions are likely to play an essential role in hormonal crosstalk and may be promising targets for fine-tuning plant development. In addition, in light of recent advances in the study of cytokinin signaling, we discuss new insights into the putative molecular mechanisms that mediate the pleiotropic action of cytokinins and provide specificity for distinct MSP signals. A detailed network of known non-canonical protein–protein interactions related to cytokinin signaling was demonstrated. Full article

In many types of embodied skills instruction, the learnables—that is, the local and jointly negotiated foci of instruction—emerge from a combination between a pre-existing lesson plan and the spontaneous interaction between teacher and student. Through the analytical lens of Conversation Analysis, this paper investigates the interspecies instruction setting of horse-riding lessons and shows how here, it is not only the human teachers and learners that determine the emergence of new learnables but also the horses. Horses’ actions can initiate new courses of action in a lesson, and horses can thus become interactional partners in the instructional project. Horse-led learnables can be initiated in at least three ways: through horses’ displays of mental or physical states that pre-date the instruction sequence; through actions that respond to local contingencies of the instruction sequence; and through actions that respond specifically to the rider’s actions. In the last case, their responses become diagnostic of the rider’s mistakes. In all three cases, the human participants take their cue from the horse and base new learnables on horses’ actions. Human-led learnables can be adjusted, changed, replaced, or abandoned completely in response to horses. The study broadens the emerging field of interspecies pragmatics to include instructional interactions involving the triad of human–human–horse triad. Full article

Background/Objectives: Previous research has shown that listeners may use acoustic cues for speech processing that are perceived during brief segments in the noise when there is an optimal signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). This “glimpsing” effect requires higher cognitive skills than the speech tasks used in typical audiometric evaluations. Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate the use of an online test of speech processing in noise in listeners with typical hearing sensitivity (TH, defined as thresholds ≤ 25 dB HL) who were asked to determine the gender of the subject in sentences that were presented in increasing levels of continuous and interrupted noise. Methods: This was a repeated-measures design with three factors (SNR, noise type, and syntactic complexity). Study Sample: Participants with self-reported TH (N = 153, ages 18–39 years, mean age = 20.7 years) who passed an online hearing screening were invited to complete an online questionnaire. Data Collection and Analysis: Participants completed a sentence recognition task under four SNRs (−6, −9, −12, and −15 dB), two syntactic complexity settings (subjective-relative and objective-relative center-embedded), and two noise types (interrupted and continuous). They were asked to listen to 64 sentences through their own headphones/earphones that were presented in an online format at a user-selected comfortable listening level. Their task was to identify the gender of the person performing the action in each sentence. Results: Significant main effects of all three factors as well as the SNR by noise-type two-way interaction were identified (p < 0.05). This interaction indicated that the effect of SNR on sentence comprehension was more pronounced in the continuous noise compared to the interrupted noise condition. Conclusions: Listeners with self-reported TH benefited from the glimpsing effect in the interrupted noise even under low SNRs (i.e., −15 dB). The evaluation of glimpsing may be a sensitive measure of auditory processing beyond the traditional word recognition used in clinical evaluations in persons who report hearing challenges and may hold promise for the development of auditory training programs. Full article

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a well-known, chronic autoimmune disorder of the central nervous system (CNS) involving demyelination and neurodegeneration. Research previously conducted in the area of the gut microbiome has highlighted it as a critical contributor to MS pathogenesis. Changes in the commensal microbiota, or dysbiosis, have been shown to affect immune homeostasis, leading to elevated levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines and disruption of the gut–brain axis. In this review, we provide a comprehensive overview of interactions between the gut microbiota and MS, especially focusing on the immunomodulatory actions of microbiota, such as influencing T-cell balance and control of metabolites, e.g., short-chain fatty acids. Various microbial taxa (e.g., Prevotella and Faecalibacterium) were suggested to lay protective roles, whereas Akkermansia muciniphila was associated with disease aggravation. Interventions focusing on microbiota, including probiotics, prebiotics, fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT), and dietary therapies to normalize gut microbial homeostasis, suppress inflammation and are proven to improve clinical benefits in MS patients. Alterations in gut microbiota represent opportunities for identifying biomarkers for early diagnosis, disease progression and treatment response monitoring. Further studies need to be conducted to potentially address the interplay between genetic predispositions, environmental cues, and microbiota composition to get the precise mechanisms of the gut–brain axis in MS. In conclusion, the gut microbiota plays a central role in MS pathogenesis and offers potential for novel therapeutic approaches, providing a promising avenue for improving clinical outcomes in MS management. Full article