Radical-Enhanced Chinese Character Embedding

We present a method to leverage radical for learning Chinese character embedding. Radical is a semantic and phonetic component of Chinese character. It plays an important role as characters with the same radical usually have similar semantic meaning and grammatical usage. However, existing Chinese processing algorithms typically regard word or character as the basic unit but ignore the crucial radical information. In this paper, we fill this gap by leveraging radical for learning continuous representation of Chinese character. We develop a dedicated neural architecture to effectively learn character embedding and apply it on Chinese character similarity judgement and Chinese word segmentation. Experiment results show that our radical-enhanced method outperforms existing embedding learning algorithms on both tasks.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure

Factors influencing voluntary premarital medical examination in Zhejiang province, China: a culturally-tailored health behavioral model analysis

BACKGROUND: Premarital medical examination (PME) compliance rate has dropped drastically since it became voluntary in China in 2003. This study aimed to establish a prediction model to be a theoretic framework for analyzing factors affecting PME compliance in Zhejiang province, China. METHODS: A culturally-tailored health behavioral model combining the Health Behavioral Model (HBM) and the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) was established to analyze the data from a cross-sectional questionnaire survey (n = 2,572) using the intercept method at the county marriage registration office in 12 counties from Zhejiang in 2010. Participants were grouped by high (n = 1,795) and low (n = 777) social desirability responding tendency (SDRT) by Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale (MCSDS). A structural equation modeling (SEM) was conducted to evaluate behavioral determinants for their influences on PME compliance in both high and low SDRT groups. RESULTS: 69.8% of the participants had high SDRT and tended to overly report benefits and underreport barriers, which may affect prediction accuracy on PME participation. In the low SDRT group, the prediction model showed the most influencing factor on PME compliance was behavioral intention, with standardized structural coefficients (SSCs) being 0.75 (P < 0.01), and the intention was positively determined by individual’s attitude toward PME (SSCs = 0.48, P < 0.01) and subjective norms (SSCs = 0.22, P < 0.01) and negatively determined by perceived threat (SSCs = -0.08, P = 0.028). Attitudes and subjective norms were more crucial predictors for PME compliance than perceived threat (SSCs = 0.36, 0.269, and -0.06, respectively). County environmental factors played a role in PME compliance while less influential than behavioral determinates (16% vs. 84% in across factor variance partition coefficient). CONCLUSIONS: PME compliance might be influenced by demographic, behavioral, and social environmental factors. The verified prediction model was tested to be an effective theoretic framework for the prediction of factors affecting voluntary PME compliance. It also should be noted that internationally available behavioral theories and models need to be culturally tailored to adapt to particular populations. This study has provided new insights for establishing a theoretical model to understand health behaviors in China

What Chinese cruisers want: An analysis of product preferences

Cruise travel has become increasingly popular, and the number of cruisers is growing rapidly. China plays a dominant role in worldwide tourism owing to its large population and fast economic development. It is a potential major market for the cruise industry. The number of inbound and outbound Chinese travelers continues to increase, generating growing interest in cruise travel. Investigating what Chinese cruisers want from cruise travel has great significance; however, little research has been conducted concerning Chinese travelers\u27 preferences in the cruise product domain. The purpose of the present study is to address this gap by investigating Chinese travelers\u27 cruise product preferences. This study also features an exploratory analysis on motivational factors in a Chinese context. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed

The impact of influenza on the health related quality of life in China: an EQ-5D survey.

BACKGROUND: Influenza causes considerable morbidity and mortality in China, but its impact on the health-related quality of life (HRQoL) has not been previously measured. METHODS: We conducted a retrospective telephone survey to assess the impact of influenza on the HRQoL among outpatients and inpatients using the EuroQoL EQ-5D-3 L instrument. Participants were individuals with laboratory-confirmed influenza infection registered by the National Influenza-like-illness Surveillance Network in 2013. RESULTS: We interviewed 839 of 11,098 eligible influenza patients. After excluding those who were unable to complete the HRQoL for the registered influenza episode, 778 patients were included in the analysis. Both outpatients (n = 529) and inpatients (n = 249) most commonly reported problems with pain/discomfort (71.8% of outpatients and 71.9% of inpatients) and anxiety/depression (62.0% of outpatients and 75.1% of inpatients). For individual influenza outpatients, the mean health utility was 0.6142 (SD 0.2006), and the average quality adjusted life days (QALD) loss was 1.62 (SD 1.84) days. The HRQoL of influenza inpatients was worse (mean health utility 0.5851, SD 0.2197; mean QALD loss 3.51 days, SD 4.25) than that of outpatients (p < 0.05). The presence of underlying medical conditions lowered the HRQoL for both outpatients and inpatients (p < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Influenza illness had a substantial impact on HRQoL. QALD loss due to an acute influenza episode in younger children was comparable to that due to enterovirus A71-associated hand, foot and mouth disease. Our findings are key inputs into disease burden estimates and cost-effectiveness evaluations of influenza-related interventions in China