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Stress represents a prominent aspect of modern life and is associated with numerous negative health consequences. International students are a key force in shaping globalization. However, these students often experience acculturative stress, influencing their health and well-being. The growing number of international students in China emerges as a new global health challenge and presents an opportunity to advance our understanding of acculturative stress. This study aims to investigate the acculturative stress of international students in China, and verify the mechanism and influential factors of acculturative stress. We analyzed survey data from 567 international students attending universities in Wuhan, China. We used a network-based analytical approach to assess the structure of the Acculturative Stress Scale for International Students and used regression analysis to assess the relationships between acculturative stress and theoretically related factors. We found that higher levels of acculturative stress were reported by students from Asia and Africa than from other regions (Europe/America/Oceania). Lower acculturative stress was reported by unmarried students than others and by students well prepared than not well prepared. We verified seven acculturative stress subconstructs: rejection, identity threat, opportunity deprivation, self-confidence, value conflict, cultural competence, and homesickness; and discovered a three-dimensional network structure of these subconstructs. Our results suggest that acculturative stress was more common among international students in China than in developed countries. Acculturative stress was also more common among international students who did not well prepared, married, and belonged to an organized religion. African and Asian students' stress was higher than that for students from other regions. Acculturative stress prevention programs should seek to improve preparedness of the international students for studying abroad and pay extra attention to the high risk subgroups.

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Anthropogenic disturbances may cause cosmopolitan species to replace endemic species, which will alter both the within-community diversities and between-community similarities of stream fish assemblages. In this study, we used data collected from headwater streams within the Xin'an basin, China, to evaluate the effects of low-head dams on the alpha diversity and community similarity of fish assemblages. Our aims were to determine whether the changes in fish diversities and similarities related to damassociated disturbance are dependent on the species category (i.e., indigenous vs.native-invasive species) or data type (i.e., occurrence-based vs. abundance-based indices). We found that low-head dams significantly decreased the alpha diversity of the indigenous species in the impoundments but increased that of the native-invasive species. However, the magnitude of this change was weakened if the two categories of fishes were not distinguished. Additionally, low-head dams significantly decreased the occurrence-based similarities of the indigenous fishes but increased those of the native-invasive fishes. Despite the positive correlation between the occurrencebased and abundance-based indices, the former significantly overestimated the community similarities. Although most pairs of communities showed the same direction of changes for the two indices, some cases presented contrasting outcomes, including "perceived homogenization" (i.e., occurrence-based differentiation but abundance-based homogenization) and "perceived differentiation." Our results suggest the importance of distinguishing indigenous and native-invasive species and considering both occurrence-based and abundance-based indices in future research on how anthropogenic activities affect fish diversities and similarities in streams.

River systems are valuable to human beings; meanwhile, they are intensively influenced by human activities, especially urbanization. In this study, based on the data derived from topographic maps and remote sensing images, the temporal and spatial change of river system geomorphology in the Taihu Region over the past 50 years was investigated in conjunction with urbanization. Results demonstrated that the number of river systems decreased drastically, that the morphology of river channels changed into wider and straighter and that the structure of river network tended to simplify in the Taihu Region in recent 50 years. Meanwhile, the changes in river density, the water surface ratio, the river development coefficient, the main river area length ratio and the box dimension in the rapid urbanization period were much greater than those in the slow urbanization period, but the decrease of river sinuosity in the slow urbanization period was more intense. Moreover, the spatial differences of the changes in the river development coefficient were the largest, and the changes in the river indicators in the low-urbanized regions were the most intense. In addition, the changes in the water surface ratio had the closest correlation with urbanization, and the relational degrees between population urbanization and the changes in river systems were the largest. The results can provide a reliable basis to determine reasonable management and conservation strategies of river systems in the Taihu Region. OPEN ACCESSWater 2015, 7 1341