Chinese nurses' perceptions on toxic leadership behaviours of nurse managers: A qualitative study.

AIM: The aim of this study is to explore the perceptions of Chinese registered nurses on toxic leadership behaviours of nurse managers and to determine its type, cause and response measures. BACKGROUND: The nurse manager is the front-line leader of the nurses who provide services directly to patients. Previous evidence suggests that toxic leadership behaviours of nurse managers do exist and it is necessary to understand the specifics of it. METHODS: We used phenomenological research methods to conduct semi-structured in-depth interviews among 12 nurses at a tertiary hospital in Wuhan over the period from January to March 2022. And the data were analysed using Colaizzi seven-step analysis method. RESULTS: Four themes were discovered: (a) nurses' perceptions of toxic leadership behaviours; (b) toxic leadership behaviours of nurse managers; (c) reasons for toxic leadership behaviours of nurse managers and (d) measures for toxic leadership behaviours of nurse managers. CONCLUSION: Chinese nurses are exposed to the toxic leadership of nurse managers for multiple reasons and respond differently. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT: This study helps nursing managers identify which behaviours are harmful to the nurse that require special attention in developing strategies to buffer against nurse managers' toxic leadership.

Using AI chatbots to provide self-help depression interventions for university students: A randomized trial of effectiveness.

BACKGROUND: Depression impacts the lives of a large number of university students. Mobile-based therapy chatbots are increasingly being used to help young adults who suffer from depression. However, previous trials have short follow-up periods. Evidence of effectiveness in pragmatic conditions are still in lack. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to compare chatbot therapy to bibliotherapy, which is a widely accepted and proven-useful self-help psychological intervention. The main objective of this study is to add to the evidence of effectiveness for chatbot therapy as a convenient, affordable, interactive self-help intervention for depression. METHODS: An unblinded randomized controlled trial with 83 university students was conducted. The participants were randomly assigned to either a chatbot test group (n = 41) to receive a newly developed chatbot-delivered intervention, or a bibliotherapy control group (n = 42) to receive a minimal level of bibliotherapy. A set of questionnaires was implemented as measurements of clinical variables at baseline and every 4 weeks for a period of 16 weeks, which included the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), the Generalized Anxiety Disorder scale (GAD-7), the Positive and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS). The Client Satisfaction Questionnaire-8 (CSQ-8) and the Working Alliance Inventory-Short Revised (WAI-SR) were used to measure satisfaction and therapeutic alliance after the intervention. Participants' self-reported adherence and feedback on the therapy chatbot were also collected. RESULTS: Participants were all university students (undergraduate students (n = 31), postgraduate students (n = 52)). They were between 19 and 28 years old (mean = 23.08, standard deviation (SD) = 1.76) and 55.42% (46/83) female. 24.07% (20/83) participants were lost to follow-up. No significant group difference was found at baseline. In the intention-to-treat analysis, individuals in the chatbot test group showed a significant reduction in the PHQ-9 scores (F = 22.89; P < 0.01) and the GAD-7 scores (F = 5.37; P = 0.02). Follow-up analysis of completers suggested that the reduction of anxiety was significant only in the first 4 weeks. The WAI-SR scores in the chatbot group were higher compared to the bibliotherapy group (t = 7.29; P < 0.01). User feedback showed that process factors were more influential than the content factors. CONCLUSIONS: The chatbot-delivered self-help depression intervention was proven to be superior to the minimal level of bibliotherapy in terms of reduction on depression, anxiety, and therapeutic alliance achieved with participants.

Mismatch negativity (MMN) as an index of asymmetric processing of consonant duration in fake Mandarin geminates.

Unlike languages where consonant duration is used contrastively to distinguish word meanings, long consonants in Mandarin Chinese only occur across morpheme boundaries as a result of concatenation and are referred to as fake geminates. To investigate whether Mandarin speakers employ duration contrast to differentiate fake Mandarin geminates and corresponding singletons as well as the underlying pattern of the processing, two auditory oddball tasks were carried out to measure the component of MMN, an index of the automatic detection of deviant stimulus. Mandarin pseudoword pairs which differ only in the duration of the medial consonant ([an1 an1] âˆ¼ [an1 nan1] vs. [an2 an2] âˆ¼ [an2 nan2]) were used as stimuli. An asymmetric pattern of brain activation was observed where the singleton deviant in the context of geminate words elicited higher MMNs than in the reversed condition. These findings are in line with earlier research suggesting that the singleton is unspecified for a moraic representation, while the geminate is specified. Mandarin speakers can employ duration contrast to distinguish fake geminates and corresponding singletons; furthermore, the processing of fake concatenated geminates in contrast to singletons is similar to that of real geminates and corresponding singletons.

Asymmetric Influence of Vocalic Context on Mandarin Sibilants: Evidence From ERP Studies.

In the present study, we examine the interactive effect of vowels on Mandarin fricative sibilants using a passive oddball paradigm to determine whether the HEIGHT features of vowels can spread on the surface and influence preceding consonants with unspecified features. The stimuli are two pairs of Mandarin words ([sa] ∼ [ʂa] and [su] ∼ [ʂu]) contrasting in vowel HEIGHT ([LOW] vs. [HIGH]). Each word in the same pair was presented both as standard and deviant, resulting in four conditions (/standard/[deviant]: /sa/[ʂa] ∼ /ʂa/[sa] and /su/[ʂu] ∼ /ʂu/[su]). In line with the Featurally Underspecified Lexicon (FUL) model, asymmetric patterns of processing were found in the [su] ∼ [ʂu] word pair where both the MMN (mismatch negativity) and LDN (late discriminative negativity) components were more negative in /su/[ʂu] (mismatch) than in /ʂu/[su] (no mismatch), suggesting the spreading of the feature [HIGH] from the vowel [u] to [ʂ] on the surface. In the [sa] ∼ [ʂa] pair, however, symmetric negativities (for both MMN and LDN) were observed as there is no conflict between the surface feature [LOW] from [a] to [ʂ] and the underlying specified feature [LOW] of [s]. These results confirm that not all features are fully specified in the mental lexicon: features of vowels can spread on the surface and influence surrounding unspecified segments.

Potential electron donor for nanoiron supported hydrogenotrophic denitrification: H2 gas, Fe0, ferrous oxides, Fe2+(aq), or Fe2+(ad)?

The mechanism of electron transmission in combined nanoiron-bacteria denitrification cannot be explained by the classic model, in which an Fe0H2-nitrate transferring chain is proposed. In this study, we used characteristic techniques and electrochemical analysis to investigate the necessity of molecular hydrogen for the combined denitrifying system using commercial nanoiron with Alcaligenes eutrophus, and to analyze its potential electron donor. Based on our results, nitrate removal and its by-products (NO2- and NH4+) generation was not significantly affected by residual H2 gas, indicating that H2 was not necessary for hydrogenotrophic denitrification. As to the potential electron donor analysis, nanoscale zero-valent iron did not appear to be the electron donor due to its high level of toxicity (83% mortality using nanoiron versus 36% in the control cells). In addition, when iron oxides (Fe3O4, Fe2O3 and FeOOH on the nanoiron surface) and free ferrous ions [Fe2+(aq)] were present alone, they were not utilized by the bacteria to degrade nitrate. According to the results of electrochemical analysis, adsorbed ferrous iron [Fe2+(ad)] on ferric oxides might be the electron donor in this kind of nitrate removal.

Quadratic discriminant analysis model for assessing the risk of cadmium pollution for paddy fields in a county in China.

In China, the cadmium (Cd) levels in paddy fields have increased, which has led to the excessive uptake of Cd into rice grains. In this study, we determined the physicochemical properties of soil samples, including the pH, soil organic matter (SOM) content, cation exchange capacity (CEC), and total Cd content (Cdsoil) in order to establish a quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA) model for assessing the risk of Cd in rice and to calculate its prior probability. Decision tree and logistic regression models were also established for comparison. The results showed that the accuracy rate was 74% with QDA, which was significantly higher than that obtained using the decision tree (67%) and logistic regression (68%) models. The correlation coefficients between the soil pH and the other three factors (CEC, SOM, and Cdsoil) were higher in the inaccurate set than the accurate set, whereas the correlation coefficients were smaller in the inaccurate set than the accurate set.