Yuanfang Dai argues that, despite the many forms of gender oppression in different societies and cultures, it is still possible to speak generally of women’s oppression. This notion of shared oppression can inform a transcultural feminist solidarity that challenges structural gender oppression across social and cultural differences.

The social, ethical and legal implications of discoveries in the neurosciences.

The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) and the Soochow Gambling Task (SGT) are two experience-based risky decision-making tasks for examining decision-making deficits in clinical populations. Several cognitive models, including the expectancy-valence learning model (EVL) and the prospect valence learning model (PVL), have been developed to disentangle the motivational, cognitive, and response processes underlying the explicit choices in these tasks. The purpose of the current study was to develop an improved model that can fit empirical data better than the EVL and PVL (...) models and, in addition, produce more consistent parameter estimates across the IGT and SGT. Twenty-six opiate users (mean age 34.23; SD 8.79) and 27 control participants (mean age 35; SD 10.44) completed both tasks. Eighteen cognitive models varying in evaluation, updating, and choice rules were fit to individual data and their performances were compared to that of a statistical baseline model to find a best fitting model. The results showed that the model combining the prospect utility function treating gains and losses separately, the decay-reinforcement updating rule, and the trial-independent choice rule performed the best in both tasks. Furthermore, the winning model produced more consistent individual parameter estimates across the two tasks than any of the other models. (shrink)

The present study aims at explaining how the Relevance Theory could be a viable approach to weigh up the main functions of some concessive Pragmatic Operators in Jordanian Arabic at the production and interpretation levels. A sample of twenty-two speeches delivered by members of the Jordanian Parliament the 16th was randomly selected for scrutiny. Three POs detected in their speeches were analyzed at the token level in light of three elementary RT assumptions about discourse connectives in general, namely connectivity, the (...) conceptual-procedural distinction, and monosemy. The major finding of this study was that concessive POs, as a subset of contrastives, are used to optimize relevance: highlight certain dimensions and/or suppress others of the scenario to the background. However, the point of departure from possibly all previous treatments is that the speakers, as politicians, still used them more strategically because total ambiguity resolution should not be a viable alternative in social settings laden with politics. (shrink)

The term "public lover" has been a staple term in the Chinese language. Yet another term—"public concern" —has only lately become part of our language. This is largely because China lacks any sense of pluralism and any sense of limitations imposed on rulers by the common people. At present, if we consider both magnitude and timeliness, the "public concern" of both the Chinese people and foreigners is as follows: Will Jiang Zemin, whom Deng Xiaoping appointed, come to the same end (...) as Hua Guofeng, whom Mao Zedong appointed? (shrink)

Short-term motor practice leads to plasticity in the primary motor cortex. The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors that determine the increase in corticospinal tract excitability after motor practice, with special focus on two factors; “the level of muscle activity” and “the presence/absence of a goal of keeping the activity level constant.” Fifteen healthy subjects performed four types of rapid thumb adduction in separate sessions. In the “comfortable task” and “forceful task”, the subjects adducted their thumb using (...) comfortable and strong forces. In the “comfortable with a goal task” and “forceful with a goal task”, subjects controlled the muscle activity at the same level as in the C and F, respectively, by adjusting the peak electromyographic amplitude within the target ranges. Paired associative stimulation, which combines peripheral nerve stimulation and transcranial magnetic stimulation, with an inter-stimulus interval of 25 ms was also done. Before and after the motor tasks and PAS25, TMS was applied to the M1. None of the four tasks showed any temporary changes in behavior, meaning no learning occurred. Motor-evoked potential amplitude increased only after the FG and it exhibited a positive correlation with the MEP increase after PAS25, suggesting that FG and PAS25 share at least similar plasticity mechanisms in the M1. Resting motor threshold decreased only after FG, suggesting that FG would also be associated with the membrane depolarization of M1 neurons. These results suggest task-dependent plasticity from the synergistic effect of forceful muscle activity and of setting a goal of keeping the activity level constant. (shrink)

Kant rejects the ontological argument on the grounds that the ontological argument inescapably must assume that existence is a “determination” or “real predicate,” which it is not. Most understand Kant’s argument for this claim to be premised upon his distinctive proto-Fregean theory of existence. But this leaves Kant dialectically vulnerable: the defender of the ontological argument can easily reject this as question-begging. I show that Kant relies upon two distinct arguments, both of which contend that the claim that existence is (...) a determination is inconsistent with bedrock ontological set pieces assumed by rationalist defenders of the ontological argument. (shrink)

Kant’s published arguments for the non-spatiotemporality of things in themselves have not been well received. I argue that Kant has available to himself an argument for the non-spatiotemporality of things in themselves that is premised upon a disparity between the compositional structure of the intelligible world and the structure of space and time. I argue that Kant was unwaveringly committed to the premises of this argument throughout his career and that he was aware of their idealistic implications. I also argue (...) that this argument is consistent with Kant’s restrictive mature epistemology. If my argument is successful, then even if Kant’s published arguments for transcendental idealism fail, we need not regard his ambitious metaphysical project as a failure. (shrink)

Transnational articulation programmes are one way China is attempting to advance its higher education system. We report a study of twelve Chinese students’ experiences in two China-Australia 2...

The explosion of multiomics data poses new challenges to existing data mining methods. Joint analysis of multiomics data can make the best of the complementary information that is provided by different types of data. Therefore, they can more accurately explore the biological mechanism of diseases. In this article, two forms of joint nonnegative matrix factorization based on the sparse and graph Laplacian regularization method are proposed. In the method, the graph regularization constraint can preserve the local geometric structure of data. (...) L 2,1 -norm regularization can enhance the sparsity among the rows and remove redundant features in the data. First, SG-jNMF1 projects multiomics data into a common subspace and applies the multiomics fusion characteristic matrix to mine the important information closely related to diseases. Second, multiomics data of the same disease are mapped into the common sample space by SG-jNMF2, and the cluster structures are detected clearly. Experimental results show that SG-jNMF can achieve significant improvement in sample clustering compared with existing joint analysis frameworks. SG-jNMF also effectively integrates multiomics data to identify co-differentially expressed genes. SG-jNMF provides an efficient integrative analysis method for mining the biological information hidden in heterogeneous multiomics data. (shrink)

The imprisonment of journalists accused of revealing state secrets has in the past two years become a newsworthy story both in China and abroad. In order to understand this whole business, one has to understand the nature of "secrets" in China and what it means to be accused of leaking them. One must also ask whether it is really possible for journalists in China to have access to secrets and to reveal any secrets. And if they do, then what is (...) the exact nature of their crime? (shrink)

The title of this article sounds quite pedantic and a bit like an academic paper or even a scholarly book. Composing scholarly dissertations is, to us journalists, considered something of an arduous task. But I decided to write this article anyway because of the events surrounding the case of Han Dongfang and the developments within the evolving overseas democratic movement.

According to the rumor mill in China: "The Central Discipline Inspection Commission is considering internal party disciplinary action against Song Renqiong and others ." I am truly happy for the CCP—by taking this stand there is still hope it can continue with its mission and transform China into a modern society.

Perhaps the most attractive yet also most mysterious feature of Deng Xiaoping's reform is his support for "allowing some people to become rich first.".

Much recent attention has been paid to Kant’s account of the unity of space in the Critique of Pure Reason, not least because of the significant implications of that view for other key critical-period doctrines. But far less attention has been paid to the development of Kant’s account of the unity of space. This paper aims to offer a systematic account of Kant’s pre-critical account of the unity of space. On the view presented herein, Kant’s early account of the unity (...) of space is deeply rooted in his pre-critical cosmological views. In particular, I argue that Kant sees the unity of space as grounded in the cosmological unity of the world of substances, which is itself rooted in the divine conservation of all substances in relations of mutual causal dependence. I contend that the seeds of this view are present in the late 1740s and 1750s, but that this view receives its fullest and most complete expression in the 1770 Inaugural Dissertation. The final section of the paper considers the fate of Kant’s pre-critical account of the unity of space. I contend that the theory is excluded from the Critique of Pure Reason in light of the strict epistemological strictures adopted in that text. But considerable textual evidence shows that Kant continues to aver the theory throughout the 1770s and 1780s in the looser epistemic context of his lectures. I contend, then, that this theory is not abandoned at all. Rather, like Kant’s 1763 proof of the existence of God, it is epistemically demoted: it is Kant’s preferred view, but one that falls short of the demanding epistemic standards of the critical philosophy. (shrink)