Background Anxiety disorders are among the most common mental health concerns today. While numerous factors are known to affect anxiety disorders, the ways in which environmental factors aggravate or mitigate anxiety are not fully understood. Methods Baidu is the most widely used search engine in China, and a large amount of data on internet behavior indicates that anxiety is a growing concern. We reviewed the annual Baidu Indices of anxiety-related keywords for cities in China from 2013 to 2018 and constructed anxiety indices. We then employed a two-way fixed effect (FE) model to analyze the relationship between PM2.5 exposure and anxiety at the prefectural level. Results The results indicated that there was a significant positive association between PM2.5 and anxiety index. The anxiety index increased by 0.1565258 for every unit increase in the PM2.5 level (P < 0.05), which suggested that current PM2.5 levels in China pose a considerable risk to mental health. Conclusion The enormous impact of PM2.5 exposure indicates that the macroscopic environment can shape individual mentality and social behavior, and that it can be extremely destructive in terms of societal mindset.
It is difficult to accurately estimate the incidence rate of intimate partner violence (IPV) using traditional social survey methods because IPV victims are often reluctant to disclose their experiences, leading to an underestimation of the incidence rate. To address this issue, we applied machine learning algorithms to predict the incidence rate of IPV in China based on data from the Third Wave Survey on the Social Status of Women in China (TWSSSCW 2010). Specifically, we examined five unbalanced sample-processing methods and six machine learning algorithms, choosing the random under-sampling ensemble method and the random forest algorithm to impute the missing data. Analysis of the complete data showed that the incidence rates of physical violence, verbal violence, and cold violence were 7.10%, 13.74%, and 21.35%, respectively, which were higher than the incidence rates in the original dataset (4.05%, 11.21%, and 17.95%, respectively). The robustness of our findings was further confirmed by analysis using different training sets. Overall, this study demonstrates that better tools need to be developed to accurately estimate the incidence rates of IPV. It also serves as a useful guide for future research that imputes missing data using machine learning.
Over the past 70 years, because of their different historical and social contexts, the film industries of China’s three regions, namely mainland China, Taiwan, and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR), have exhibited distinct characteristics that grow out of a single cultural root. Based on data from the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), this study investigates how the image of China has spread overseas through cultural products by applying big data analysis and machine learning methods to compare the content, topics, and attitudes toward the image of China disseminated by films originating in these three regions. The results show that the three areas have sought to express their subjectivity during periods of flux and striven to connect with the world in films. The macroscopic analysis of large-scale content allows the exploration of hidden cultural phenomena and compensates for the lack of objectivity of traditional research methods, while understanding embedded historical and cultural contexts of the three regions helps to clarify the regions’ ethnic, cultural, and emotional connections. Therefore, this study has contributed to cultural sociology both in topic and methodology.
Ideology is an important though not dominant factor driving the US foreign policy. Amid intensifying great-power rivalry, Washington in recent years has increasingly stepped up its ideological offensive against Beijing. Latest US efforts in this regard include exporting core values associated with the American Dream, e.g., individual freedoms, liberal ideals, and democratic institutions. The three consecutive administrations of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump had all incorporated ideological components into their policy toward Beijing despite their differences of policy priority vis-à-vis China. Long vigilant about the West’s ideological offensive, Beijing had been pushing back against Washington’s efforts by promoting a rival narrative, the Chinese Dream. Even though Beijing has roundly rejected Washington’s framing of US–China relations in years to come as democracy versus autocracy rivalry and tried hard to insulate China’s relations with the rest of the world from rising geopolitical tensions with the United States, the great and growing ideological rift between the two major powers and their divergent perspectives on and approaches to the big issues of the day may herald an era in which an increasing number of global challenges as well as bilateral disputes and crises defy easy and quick solutions.
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