Although it has been argued that the structure of executive function (EF) may change developmentally, there is little empirical research to examine this view in middle childhood and adolescence. The main objective of this study was to examine developmental changes in the component structure of EF in a large sample (N = 457) of 7–15 year olds. Participants completed batteries of tasks that measured three components of EF: updating working memory (UWM), inhibition, and shifting. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to test five alternative models in 7–9 year olds, 10–12 year olds, and 13–15 year olds. The results of CFA showed that a single-factor EF model best explained EF performance in 7–9-year-old and 10–12-year-old groups, namely unitary EF, though this single factor explained different amounts of variance at these two ages. In contrast, a three-factor model that included UWM, inhibition, and shifting best accounted for the data from 13–15 year olds, namely diverse EF. In sum, during middle childhood, putative measures of UWM, inhibition, and shifting may rely on similar underlying cognitive processes. Importantly, our findings suggest that developmental dissociations in these three EF components do not emerge until children transition into adolescence. These findings provided empirical evidence for the development of EF structure which progressed from unity to diversity during middle childhood and adolescence.

We propose a scheme for three-level cascade atoms to entangle two optomechanical oscillators as well as two-mode fields. We show that two movable mirrors and two-mode fields can be entangled even for bad cavity limits. We also study entanglement of the output of two-mode fields in the frequency domain. The results show that the frequency of the mirror oscillation and the injected atomic coherence affect the output entanglement of the two-mode fields.

The outbreak of 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has posed a grave threat to the global public health. The COVID-19-induced infection is closely related to coagulation dysfunction in the affected patients. This paper attempts to conduct a meta-analysis and systematically review the blood coagulation indicators in patients with severe COVID-19. A meta-analysis of eligible studies was performed to compare the blood coagulation indicators in patients with severe and nonsevere COVID-19. PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and the Cochrane Library were searched for studies published between 1 December 2019 and 7 May 2020. A total of 13 studies with 1341 adult patients were enrolled in this analysis. Platelet

BackgroundDrug combination therapy is commonly used in clinical practice. Many methods including Bliss independence method have been proposed for drug combination design based on simulations models or experiments. Although Bliss independence method can help to solve the drug combination design problem when there are only a small number of combinations, as the number of combinations increases, it may not be scalable. Exploration of system structure becomes important to reduce the complexity of the design problem.ResultsIn this paper, we deduced a mathematical model which can simplify the serial structure and parallel structure of biological pathway for synergy evaluation of drug combinations. We demonstrated in steady state the sign of the synergism assessment factor derivative of the original system can be predicted by the sign of its simplified system. In addition, we analyzed the influence of feedback structure on survival ratio of the serial structure. We provided a sufficient condition under which the combination effect could be maintained. Furthermore, we applied our method to find three synergistic drug combinations on tumor necrosis factor α-induced NFκB pathway and subsequently verified by the cell experiment.ConclusionsWe identified several structural properties underlying the Bliss independence criterion, and developed a systematic simplification framework for drug combiation desgin by combining simulation and system reaction network topology analysis. We hope that this work can provide insights to tackle the challenging problem of assessment of combinational drug therapy effect in a large scale signaling pathway. And hopefully in the future our method could be expanded to more general criteria.

Water resources management has been of concern for many researchers since the contradiction between increased water demand and decreased water supply has become obvious. In the real world, water resources systems usually have complexities among social, economic, natural resources and environmental aspects, which leads to multi-objective problems with significant uncertainties in system parameters, objectives, and their interactions. In this paper, a multi-objective linear programming model with interval parameters has been developed wherein an interactive compromising algorithm has been introduced. Through interactive compromising conflicts among multi-objectives, a feasible solution vector can be obtained. The developed model is then applied to allocation of multi-source water resources with different water qualities to multiple users with different water quality requirements for the Dalian city for 2010, 2015 and 2020 planning years. The model pursues the maximum synthesis benefits of economy, society and the environment. The results indicate that the proportion of reused water to the total water amount is gradually increasing, and the proportion of agricultural water consumption to the total water consumption is gradually decreasing. The allocation of multi-source water resources to multiple users is improved due to incorporation of uncertain factors into the model that provide useful decision support to water management authorities.

We investigate a cavity optomechanical system filled with a two-level atomic medium. When the system is driven by a coupling laser, the probe laser in output will show an analogue phenomenon of electromagnetically induced transparency. The larger the number of atoms, the wider the window of transparency. Our results again prove that the atomic medium enhances the radiation pressure.

Based on a database of 16 empirical studies, this MASEM study aims to provide an overview of existing antecedents of sustainable food consumption within an integrative framework based on the TPB. Among the antecedents, Personal Norm, Attitude and Subjective Norm displayed strongest effects on Intention, followed by Beliefs, Perceived Behavioral Control and Ethical Concern, which were also within the scope of medium to large. As for the correlations of Behavior, Personal Norm, Attitude and Subjective Norm showed strongest effects, and the effects of Intention, Beliefs and Perceived Behavioral Control were also within the scope of medium to large. Results of the MASEM study indicate that both TPB and extended TPB models have statistically acceptable power in explaining the intention and behavior of sustainable food consumption, while a slight increase was made to the amount of explained variance of intention by adding Personal Norm to TPB. The results of our meta-analyses give readers an understanding of the magnitude and significance of relationships between antecedents and intention in the sustainable food consumption domain.

An optomechanical force sensor for a mechanical oscillator in a non-Markovian environment is presented. By performing homodyne detection, we obtain a general expression for the output signal. It is shown that the weak force detection is sensitive to the non-Markovian environment. The additional noise can be reduced and the mechanical sensitivity can be obviously amplified compared to the Markovian condition even in resolved sideband regimes without using assistant systems or squeezing. Our results provide a promising platform for improving the sensitivity of weak-force ultrasensitive detection.