Effect Of Disparity Research Articles

The effects of physician’s brand positioning on diagnostic dispensing continuity and cross-provincial healthcare flow: Evidence from an online traditional Chinese medicine community

Given the dilemma of inheriting and protecting Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), online personal branding can be an effective solution for TCM physicians to promote themselves and provide patients with better choices. However, there is a lack of understanding of the antecedents and consequences of TCM physicians’ brand value on online traditional Chinese medicine community (OTCMC). This paper empirically investigates the influences of physician brand positioning on brand value and added value, and examines the moderating effects of service quality and TCM regional disparity. Our results show that physicians on OTCMC could increase their brand value and added value by improving professional level, service price, and integration degree of four diagnostic methods. Moreover, service quality and TCM regional disparity positively moderate these effects. Our research contributes to the OTCMC literature and provides practical implications for TCM physicians to create brand value in online environment.

Small Strain Stiffness of Sand‐Rubber Mixtures With Particle Size Disparity Effect

ABSTRACTThis study systematically investigates the small‐strain stiffness of sand‐rubber mixtures, focusing on combined particle disparity—both larger sand with smaller rubber and smaller sand with larger rubber—using the discrete element method. The effectiveness of various state variables in capturing stiffness behavior across different rubber contents and size disparities (SDs) is evaluated. Conventional state variables developed for natural sands, such as void ratio and mechanical void ratio were found to be less effective in describing the small‐strain stiffness characteristics of sand‐rubber mixtures due to distinct properties of rubber. This study then demonstrates that the stiffness contribution of rubber materials could be negligible, emphasizing that particle property disparity is more significant than SD between sand and rubber materials. Therefore, an adapted state variable, considering only active sand particles, shows improved performance for capturing the correlation between small‐strain stiffness with increasing rubber contents, suggesting its potential utility over conventional variables. Additionally, a refined void ratio, including inactive sand particles but excluding rubber, offers a practical alternative for capturing small‐strain stiffness in experimental and engineering practices, aligning with previous experimental observations. These findings underscore the need for developing more effective state variables that accurately reflect the interactions within heterogeneous materials like sand‐rubber mixtures.

The geography of healthcare: Mapping patient flow and medical resource allocation in China

The misallocation of medical resources leads to interregional patient flow in search of better healthcare. Using out-of-pocket medical expenditure data and a delineating method, this paper identifies spatial clusters of medical services in China based on patient flow across cities. Our findings indicate that healthcare resources are more concentrated in northern China, while southern China is divided into several large healthcare clusters at the same threshold. The provincial capital and economically significant cities are more likely to serve as medical cluster centers. We further apply the gravity model to examine the effects of healthcare disparity on cross-city medical expenditure. The results reveal that geographic disparities in high-quality medical resources encourage remote healthcare-seeking behavior, and the shorter the distance between locations, the higher the level of medical consumption. Patients are inclined to seek medical services within their own province and within specific medical clusters identified through delineation methods. This effect is more pronounced among patients from non-central cities. This study highlights healthcare inequality by examining cross-regional medical expenditure, providing valuable insights for future healthcare policy.

220.1: Effect of donor-recipient height and gender disparity on kidney transplant outcome: Analysis of the Thai transplant registry.

220.1: Effect of donor-recipient height and gender disparity on kidney transplant outcome: Analysis of the Thai transplant registry.

Multi‐scale mechanics of polydisperse granular materials: From micro‐scale and wave propagation experiments to DEM analysis

AbstractThis paper presents a multiscale experimental study integrated with numerical simulations examining the mechanics of polydisperse granular mixtures composed of coarse‐grained particles mixed with varying percentages of fines. The study includes macroscale wave propagation tests using bender elements on isotopically compressed granular samples to investigate the stiffness variation with changes in size ratio (SR) and fines content (FC). Empirical equations were developed to predict stiffness based on the experimental data, using the concept of equivalent void ratio to represent the influence of void ratio on stiffness. A newly introduced parameter called size disparity indicator was used to consider the coupled effects of size disparity and fines content on stiffness. Microscale assessment of the individual contacting grains revealed that stiffness (at grain scale) is affected by changes in grain size, even when the SR is less than 6, however, the experimental observations of the shear modulus behavior from the macroscale test results reveal minimal effect of FC. Furthermore, numerical simulations using the discrete element method were conducted on the polydisperse granular mixtures to demonstrate the coupled effect of SR and FC on the structural matrix formation, thereby influencing the force transfer among contacts resulting in varying stiffness behavior. Our findings provide valuable insights into the behavior of polydisperse granular mixtures in engineering applications.

Exploring the causes and consequences of income inequality in India

The unequal income distribution among people or households within a society is called income inequality. It is a crucial socioeconomic problem that has an impact on the foundation of all countries. With its wide diversity and intricate social structure, India is a country where economic inequality poses special difficulties and ramifications. This essay investigates the origins and effects of income disparity in India, looking at its historical development, relevance, and the urgent need for in-depth study in this area. The degree to which income is dispersed unevenly among a population is known as income inequality. Numerous income distribution ratios, the Lorenz curve, and the Gini coefficient are among the statistical methods frequently used to measure this inequality. Greater inequality is indicated by a higher Gini coefficient, and more equitable income distribution is shown by a lower coefficient. Income inequality can take many different forms in India, such as regional differences, urban-rural splits, and socioeconomic stratifications.

How do income inequality, poverty and industry 4.0 affect environmental pollution in South Asia: New insights from quantile regression

While many factors have been studied as potential causes of environmental degradation, the impact of poverty and inequality has been largely overlooked in the research. The Sustainable Development Goals are aligned with the intersection of poverty, inequality, and the environment. In addition, most previous research has used carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions as a surrogate for pollution. These gaps are filled by this study, which uses ecological footprint (a comprehensive measure of pollution) and CO2 emissions to examine the effects of income disparity and poverty on environmental pollution in 13 nations. Dynamic panel Quantile regression methods are used in this study because of their resilience to various econometric problems that can crop up during the estimate process. The empirical results reveal that the whole panel's carbon emissions and ecological footprint rise when income disparity and poverty exist. When the panel is subdivided, however, we see that income inequality reduces carbon emissions and environmental footprint for the wealthy but has the opposite effect on the middle class. While high-income households see no impact from poverty on their carbon emissions, middle-income households see an increase in both. Overall, the results of this study suggest that income disparity and poverty are major factors in ecological degradation. Therefore, initiatives to reduce environmental degradation should pay sufficient attention to poverty and inequality to achieve ecological sustainability.

Partnership Disparity and Audit Quality

This study explores the effects of partnership disparity within Chinese audit firms on audit quality using novel data on their partnership arrangements. The results indicate a U-shaped relationship between the partnership disparity extent and the violations assessed by regulators, including financial misstatements of clients. Audit firms with mid-level unequal partnership structures achieve superior audit quality than their counterparts with either “flat” or “high-skewed” partnership structures. Additional analyses confirm the role of client complexity as the boundary condition and indicate that the geographical remoteness of audit firms asymmetrically moderates partnership disparity. These results are robust to different audit quality proxies and alternative research designs including change analyses and after controlling for the effects of engagement partners. This study contributes to research on diversity and performance in the partnership context. This approach opens the “black box” of power-related culture in audit firms and carries managerial implications for the managing partners and audit regulators of audit firms.

Threshold effects of Government digital development and land resource disparity on Urban carbon efficiency in China

Government digital development has become deeply intertwined with modern governance frameworks in the rapidly advancing digital landscape. It has emerged as a crucial force driving the implementation of public policies and improving administrative efficiency. Understanding how government digital development impacts carbon efficiency and analyzing its underlying mechanisms has become a subject of great interest. This study employs two-way fixed-effects and threshold models to investigate how government digital development influences carbon efficiency using Chinese prefecture-level cities from 2011 to 2022. The findings reveal that government digital development significantly enhances carbon efficiency. It highlights the significant role of land resource mismatches in limiting the positive impact of government digital development on carbon efficiency.Regarding regional differences, the study finds that the positive effect of government digital development on city carbon efficiency is more pronounced in eastern and central regions and non-resource cities. The results of threshold regression analysis indicate that government digital development negatively correlates with carbon efficiency when it falls below a certain threshold. However, this negative effect becomes insignificant when government digital development surpasses the threshold value.

Post-Transplant Cyclophosphamide Attenuates the Adverse Effect of HLA Disparity and a Major ABO Mismatch on Graft Failure in Non-Myeloablative Allogeneic HCT

Post-Transplant Cyclophosphamide Attenuates the Adverse Effect of HLA Disparity and a Major ABO Mismatch on Graft Failure in Non-Myeloablative Allogeneic HCT

Spatial variations impact the soil fungal communities of Larix gmelinii forests in Northeast China

Soil fungi play a critical role in the biogeochemical cycles of forest ecosystems. Larix gmelinii is a strong and important timber tree species, which forms close associations with a wide range of soil fungi. However, the temporal-spatial disparity effects on the assembly of soil fungal communities in L. gmelinii forests are poorly understood. To address these questions, a total of 120 samples, including 60 bulk soil and 60 root samples, were collected from Aershan and Genhe in July (summer) and October (autumn)2021. We obtained 7,788 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) after merging, filtering, and rarefying using high-throughput sequencing. The dominant phyla are Basidiomycota, Ascomycota, Mortierellomycota, and Mucoromycota. There were 13 dominant families, among which the families with average relative abundance more than 5% included Thelephoraceae, Mortierellaceae, Archaeorhizomycoaceae, and Inocybaceae. In the functional guilds, symbiotrophic fungi had a relative advantage in the identified functions, and the relative abundances of pathotrophic and saprotrophic fungi varied significantly between sites. There were 12 families differentially expressed across compartments, 10 families differentially expressed between seasons, and 69 families were differentially expressed between sites. The variation in alpha diversity in the bulk soil was greater than that in the rhizosphere soil. Among the three parts (compartment, season, and site), the site had a crucial effect on the beta diversity of the fungal community. Deterministic processes dominated fungal community assembly in Genhe, whereas stochastic processes dominated in Aershan. Soil physicochemical properties and climatic factors significantly affected fungal community structure, among which soil total nitrogen and pH had the greatest effect. This study highlights that spatial variations play a vital role in the structure and assembly of soil fungal communities in L. gmelinii forests, which is of great significance for us in maintaining the health of the forests.

Superior medical resources or geographic proximity? The joint effects of regional medical resource disparity, geographic distance, and cultural differences on online medical consultation

Online medical consultation platforms enable patients to seek health advice from physicians across geographic regions. In this study, we analyze patterns of online consultation between patients and physicians. We examine the joint effects of regional medical resource disparity, geographic distance, and cultural differences between patients and physicians on patients' decisions about which physicians they consult online. Using a unique dataset of city-to-city tuples based on 813,684 online consultation records and combining it with region-level data from multiple external sources, we find that while regional medical resource disparity drives patients from medically disadvantaged regions to seek online consultations with physicians from medically advantaged regions, geographic distance and cultural differences tend to constrain these consultations. We also find that cultural differences can amplify the impact of regional medical resource disparity, whereas geographic distance may lessen this effect. Further, we discover that the constraining effect of geographic distance is partly due to the online-to-offline nature of online medical consultations. Moreover, additional analyses suggest that physicians' online reputation and information about physicians’ participation on the platform can help alleviate the negative effects of geographic distance and cultural differences. These findings hold significant implications for the allocation of medical resources and the formulation of healthcare policies.

Does Cultural Communication Strategy in Metaverse affect International Students’ Mental Health? Moderating effects of Cyberchondria and Healthcare Disparity

The present study examined the mental health of international students through cultural communication strategy in the metaverse with the moderating effects of cyberchondria and healthcare disparity. The relevance of this research study can be made evident with the ongoing trends of today’s world. In the present time, the concept of virtual reality in the metaverse has become one of the most important and debatable topics all around the globe. The concept of metaverse has led to the evolution of the Internet as a whole which can create direct impacts on the real world too. The target country of the current research is China. In order to gather information for the study, the researchers employed a questionnaire technique. A total of 335 surveys were sent out to Chinese medical students; 320 were deemed relevant for the study. In order to measure the variables using measurement scales, questionnaires are created using various items from the variables. The results obtained after analyzing the questionnaires indicated a significant relationship between cultural communication in the metaverse and the mental health of internal Chinese students from medical universities. The moderating impact of healthcare disparity was found to be significant and the cyberchondria entails an insignificant impact on the cultural communication in the metaverse and the mental health of students. The present study is found to be beneficial in promoting cultural communication between international students and local students for promoting the better exchange of cultural values. The 3D virtual environment used for conducting the present study has also helped in improving communication as well as interactions. However, from the present research study, it was concluded that cultural communication is essential for promoting the mental health of international students as this could be beneficial in obtaining skillful professionals for various businesses. The current study added novelty by focusing on cultural communication in the metaverse but it has prevented the study to focus on many essential aspects which are experienced by international students in the real world.

Impact of Income Inequality on Poverty Level in Nigeria: Evidence from ARDL Model

This study used the Auto Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model to assess the effect of income disparity on the degree of poverty in Nigeria. Based on the association each income determinant showed with the Gini coefficient of income disparity in the Nigerian economy, the study's findings indicated that there is a long-run positive relationship between the poverty level and the Gini coefficient of income inequality in Nigeria. Therefore, it is advised to improve a more equitable distribution of wealth, which will effectively lessen income inequality and poverty in Nigeria. The government should concentrate its efforts on developing and implementing more realistic employment programs in Nigeria. Since the empirical results of this study have demonstrated that decreasing income disparity in Nigeria by an increase in the employment rate has not been sufficient. A more practical approach to employment would allow people to use their money to build wealth rather than just get by, which would increase the level of income distribution.

Research on the relationship between CEO career variety, digital knowledge base extension, and digital transformation in the context of digital merger and acquisition: The case of China's new generation of information technology firms.

This study examines the relationship between CEO career variety, digital knowledge base extension, and digital transformation in a digital M&A context. An empirical test was conducted using regression analysis with the digital M&A events of the new generation of information technology firms in China as the research sample. The results reveal that CEO career variety has a positive effect on digital transformation in the digital M&A context and that digital knowledge-base extension plays a mediating role. Moreover, the heterogeneity impact analysis indicated that the moderating effects of geographical distance, knowledge disparity, and cultural difference between target and acquirer firms on the above relationships vary greatly: geographical distance has a negative moderating effect, cultural difference has a positive moderating effect, and the moderating effects of both geographical distance and cultural difference are realized through mediating effects, but none of the moderating effects of knowledge disparity are significant.

Mental Healthcare Resources to Prevent Weathering in Low-Income Racial Minority Groups

This paper explores the compounding challenges faced by racial minority communities, particularly Black and Hispanic/Latinx individuals, in accessing mental health resources in the U.S., focusing on those in low-income neighborhoods. The findings underscore the effects of systemic racism, economic disparity, and educational inequalities on these populations, exacerbating mental and physical health outcomes. A critical phenomenon known as "weathering" is highlighted, describing the physical manifestations of chronic stress linked to racism and systemic inequalities, leading to severe health complications and shorter life expectancy. The paper contends that while genetics can play a role in health outcomes, the extent of disparities between racial minorities and their white counterparts is too pronounced to be attributed solely to biological factors. Instead, societal structures, stressors, and limited access to vital mental health resources play pivotal roles. By emphasizing the vital roles of urban planners and policymakers, this research advocates for a cohesive strategy to prioritize mental health infrastructure in low-income areas, promoting overall well-being. By addressing the intricate interplay of systemic racism, poverty, and health, solutions can be forged to ameliorate the adverse impacts of weathering and advance health equity.

Effects of binocular disparity on binocular luminance combination.

This study aimed to examine the effects of binocular disparity on binocular combination of brightness information coming from luminance increments and decrements. The point of subjective equality was determined by asking the observers to judge which stimulus appeared brighter-a bar stimulus with variable disparity or another stimulus with zero disparity. For the bar stimulus, the interocular luminance ratio was varied to trace an equal brightness curve. Binocular disparity had no effect on luminance increments presented on a gray or black background. In contrast, when luminance decrements were presented on a gray background, non-zero disparities elevated points of subjective equality for stimuli with interocular luminance differences. This means that the binocular brightness combination of the two monocular signals shifted from winner-take-all summation toward linear averaging. It has been argued that this effect may be caused by non-zero binocular disparities attenuating interocular suppression, which is deemed to operate normally with zero disparity.

A fair share: Effects of disparity, allocation strategy and system justification on perceptions of policy support in the education domain

AbstractUtilizing experimental methods across a pilot and two studies, we explore and contrast the relationship between system‐justifying attitudes and fairness perceptions of and support for redistributive policies based on theoretical accounts of distributive justice, highlighting three allocation strategies: equality, equity and need. We began our investigation with a test across multiple policy domains (e.g., health care, education, employment) to examine broad associations between system justification and policy support. Then, we chose one specific domain – education – to narrow our focus on and designed two experimental studies to test more complex models of the interaction between system justification and the type of distributive justice on support and fairness perceptions. Results indicate that as system‐justifying attitudes increase, so does the level of support and perception of fairness of policies based on equality or equity. Conversely, there is no relationship between system justification and support or fairness when considering a need‐based policy in the education domain.

Unmasking academic cheating behavior in the artificial intelligence era: Evidence from Vietnamese undergraduates

The proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) technology has brought both innovative opportunities and unprecedented challenges to the education sector. Although AI makes education more accessible and efficient, the intentional misuse of AI chatbots in facilitating academic cheating has become a growing concern. By using the indirect questioning technique via a list experiment to minimize social desirability bias, this research contributes to the ongoing dialog on academic integrity in the era of AI. Our findings reveal that students conceal AI-powered academic cheating behaviors when directly questioned, as the prevalence of cheaters observed via list experiments is almost threefold the prevalence of cheaters observed via the basic direct questioning approach. Interestingly, our subsample analysis shows that AI-powered academic cheating behaviors differ significantly across genders and grades, as higher-grade female students are more likely to cheat than newly enrolled female students. Conversely, male students consistently engage in academic cheating throughout all grades. Furthermore, we discuss potential reasons for the heterogeneous effects in academic cheating behavior among students such as gender disparity, academic-related pressure, and peer effects. Implications are also suggested for educational institutions to promote innovative approaches that harness the benefits of AI technologies while safeguarding academic integrity.

New ways of working: a comparative empirical analysis appertaining to health and well-being and psychosocial hazards

ABSTRACT The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the fourth industrial revolution have resulted in a major shift in the way organisations conduct their operations, with a significant number of them implementing flexible work practices. As a result, these changes have a significant effect on employee health and well-being. The study aims to examine the impact of psychosocial factors on employee health and well-being. Furthermore, this study investigates the moderating role of the mode of work (offline and online) on the proposed relationships. Based on Selye’s theory of stress and physical environment theory, a research framework has been developed. The data are collected from 399 office workers in the Malaysian Oil and Gas sector through an online questionnaire. The collected data are analysed through the PLS-SEM technique. The study found that work-demand control disparity and work-family conflict negatively impact the health and well-being of online workers more than traditional office workers, but no significant difference was found in the effect of effort-reward disparity on health and well-being between the two groups. The study suggests management should prioritise employee health and well-being and address psychosocial factors in both work settings.