When individuals interact with others, perceived information is transmitted among their brains. The EEG-based hyperscanning technique, which provides an approach to explore dynamic brain activities between two or more interactive individuals and their underlying neural mechanisms, has been applied to study different aspects of social interactions since 2010. Recently there has been an increase in research on EEG-based hyperscanning of social interactions. This paper summarizes the application of EEG-based hyperscanning on the dynamic brain activities during social interactions according to the (...) experimental designs and contents, discusses the possibility of applying inter-brain synchrony to social communication systems and analyzes the contributions and the limitations of these investigations. Furthermore, this paper sheds light on some new challenges to future EEG-based hyperscanning studies and the emerging field of EEG-based hyperscanning for pursuing the broader research field of social interactions. (shrink)

This study examines the varying roles of power, status, and national culture in unethical decision-making. Most research on unethical behavior in organizations is grounded in Western societies; empirical comparative studies of the antecedents of unethical behavior across nations are rare. The authors conduct this comparative study using scenario studies with four conditions in both China and Canada. The results demonstrate that power is positively related to unethical decision-making in both countries. Status has a positive effect on unethical decision-making and facilitates (...) the unethical decisions of Canadian participants who have high power but not Chinese participants who have high power. To explicate participants’ unethical decision-making rationales, the authors ask participants to justify their unethical decisions; the results reveal that Chinese participants are more likely to cite position differences, whereas Canadian participants are more likely to cite work effort and personal abilities. These findings expand theoretical research on the relationship between social hierarchy and unethical decision-making and provide practical insights on unethical behavior in organizations. (shrink)

This paper addresses the issue of finite versus countable additivity in Bayesian probability and decision theory -- in particular, Savage's theory of subjective expected utility and personal probability. I show that Savage's reason for not requiring countable additivity in his theory is inconclusive. The assessment leads to an analysis of various highly idealised assumptions commonly adopted in Bayesian theory, where I argue that a healthy dose of, what I call, conceptual realism is often helpful in understanding the interpretational value of (...) sophisticated mathematical structures employed in applied sciences like decision theory. In the last part, I introduce countable additivity into Savage's theory and explore some technical properties in relation to other axioms of the system. (shrink)

Counterfeiting is common in many industries. For the authenticity of online channel products and to combat counterfeiting, many companies have begun to use blockchain technology to trace product information. This paper investigates a dual-channel supply chain consisting of one manufacturer and one retailer, in which the manufacturer sells its standard products through the retailer and adopts blockchain technology to launch the online channel to sell the traceable products. A Stackelberg game is developed to depict the pricing decision and channel strategy (...) choice for the manufacturer. It shows that both the manufacturer and the retailer can benefit from blockchain adoption. And the longer it takes for product traceability, the lower the price of online traceable products. It is beneficial for the manufacturer when consumers in the market are less concerned about information transparency. For consumer sensitivity, as consumers’ acceptance of direct sales channels increases, the selling prices of online traceable products have risen. Furthermore, as the traceability time-sensitivity coefficient increases, the sales price of the traceable products decreases, and the retail price of offline standard products rises. The conclusion of this paper has a certain guiding role for the dominant manufacturers in choosing whether to apply blockchain technology to improve the demand for traceable products. (shrink)

In previous research comparing the Context-driven Model with the Default Model of meaning processing, the former was preferred. It predicts that contexts play an exclusively decisive role in meaning processing, whereas the latter holds that the inference of literal meaning generally goes through, unless it is subsequently defaulted or cancelled by the context it is associated with. The Standardization Model, which we added to our experiments, highlights that implicatures are figured out from standardized forms typically based on the mutual background (...) belief and speaker’s intention. We tested whether Chinese people’s processing of the gradable adjective scale conformed more to the Context-driven Model, the Default Model, or the Standardization Model. The results demonstrated that the Standardization Model is the most acceptable among the three. The findings of this study, which is the first study using the experimental paradigm on Chinese gradable adjectives, highlighted a need for further studies to investigate the same questions with different languages and cultures. (shrink)

In this article, we study a minimal change approach to preference dynamics. We treat a set of preferences as a special kind of theory, and define minimal change preference contraction and revision operations in the spirit of the Alchourrón, Gärdenfors, and Makinson theory of belief revision. We characterise minimal contraction of preference sets by a set of postulates and prove a representation theorem. We also give a linear time algorithm which implements minimal contraction by a single preference. We then define (...) minimal contraction by a set of preferences, and show that the problem of a minimal contraction by a set of preferences is NP-hard. (shrink)

The purpose of this research is to examine the influence of servant leadership on teachers of moral education degree programs in Pakistan. By utilizing social learning, we propose that servant leadership and perceived coworker support can reduce the knowledge hiding by enhancing the sense of organization-based psychological ownership. The findings of time-lagged and multi-source data indicate that servant leadership has a negative relationship with knowledge hiding. Our results also indicate that psychological ownership mediates the effects of servant leadership on knowledge (...) hiding. Moreover, a higher level of perceived coworker support enhances the sense of psychological ownership which helps to reduce knowledge hiding. This research extends strong support for the proposition that servant leaders who adopt an employee-centered management approach, stressing personal integrity and care for employees significantly affect employee attitudes and behaviors. Moreover, this study suggests that managers should demonstrate care toward their subordinates which helps them to reduce negative behaviors. (shrink)

Smart grids are rolling out internationally, with the United States nearing completion of a significant USD4-plus-billion federal program funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The emergence of smart grids is widespread across developed countries. Multiple approaches to analyzing the benefits of smart grids have emerged. The goals of this white paper are to review these approaches and analyze examples of each to highlight their differences, advantages, and disadvantages. This work was conducted under the auspices of a joint U.S.-China (...) research effort, the Climate Change Working Group Implementation Plan, Smart Grid. We present comparative benefits assessments of smart grid demonstrations in the U.S. and China along with a BA of a pilot project in Europe. In the U.S., we assess projects at two sites: the University of California, Irvine campus, which consists of two distinct demonstrations: Southern California Edison’s Irvine Smart Grid Demonstration Project and the UCI campus itself; and the Navy Yard area in Philadelphia, which has been repurposed as a mixed commercial-industrial, and possibly residential, development. In China, we cover several smart-grid aspects of the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city and the Shenzhen Bay Technology and Ecology City. In Europe, we look at a BA of a pilot smart grid project in the Malagrotta area west of Rome, Italy, contributed by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission. The Irvine sub-project BAs use the U.S. Department of Energy Smart Grid Computational Tool, which is built on methods developed by the Electric Power Research Institute. The TEC sub-project BAs apply Smart Grid Multi-Criteria Analysis developed by the State Grid Corporation of China based on the analytic hierarchy process with fuzzy logic. The B-TEC and TNY sub-project BAs are evaluated using new approaches developed by those project teams. JRC has adopted an approach similar to EPRI’s but tailored to the Malagrotta distribution grid. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to improve the practical argument for beliefs in God. Some theists, most famously Kant and William James, called our attention to a particular set of beliefs, the Jamesian-type beliefs, which are justified by virtue of their practical significance, and these theists tried to justify theistic beliefs on the exact same ground. I argue, contra the Jamesian tradition, that theistic beliefs are different from the Jamesian-type beliefs and thus cannot be justified on the same ground. I (...) also argue that the practical argument, as it stands, faces a problem of self-defeat. I then construct a new practical argument that avoids both problems. According to this new argument, theistic beliefs are rational to accept because such beliefs best supply us with motivation strong enough to carry out demanding moral tasks. (shrink)

At present, with the continuous rise in public consumption level, the pressure on college students’ entrepreneurship or employment is increasingly severe. Under the concept of positive psychological intervention, the present work aims to alleviate the entrepreneurial pressure of college students and improve college students’ entrepreneurial education through the analysis of enterprise management elements. A 3-month intervention experiment, including the pre-test, preventive curriculum intervention, post-test, and delayed test, is conducted on a control group and an experimental group, to investigate entrepreneurial intention, (...) emotional management ability, and ability to deal with entrepreneurial pressure of college students. In addition, based on a complex adaptive system, the enterprise management elements are analyzed, and a three-layer network model is constructed. Meanwhile, new diversified elements of enterprise management are defined to discuss the effectiveness and psychological impact of diversified management, proving that psychological security plays an intermediary role in the cross-layer relationship chain in the three-layer CAS network. The experimental results indicate that on the whole, the positive psychological intervention reduces the pressure of students in the experimental group, significantly ameliorates depression and anxiety, and promotes the positive personality in all directions. Besides, in the delayed test after 3 months, the experimental group can maintain a relatively better state than the control group. By exploring the role effectiveness and characteristics of diversified management, this experiment confirms that the improvement of psychological security under positive psychological intervention has a positive impact on the effectiveness of diversified management. The present work discusses the hierarchical construction in enterprise management and puts forward reasonable suggestions and theoretical development for the influence of the entrepreneurial practice of college students. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the problem of target tracking using k fittest robots in a group of n mobile robots with n>k. We present centralized and distributed coordination models with all-to-all and limited communications, respectively. For the case of all-to-all communication between robots, theoretical analysis is presented to prove the exponential stability of the whole system. In real applications of robotic networks, a robot may only be allowed to exchange information with a limited number of neighbors. In such a limited (...) communication case where centralized quantity is not available, a consensus filter is used to estimate the centralized quantities in a distributed way, and a distributed competitive target tracking is thus achieved. The stability of the distributed control is also proved in theory. Finally, illustrative examples are provided and analyzed to substantiate the efficacy of the proposed models for tracking moving target in a competition manner with all-to-all communications and limited communications. (shrink)

This paper examines Hume’s formulations and uses of the conceivability principle and the inconceivability principle. In Hume’s works, we identify different versions of CP and ICP, including proper CP, proper ICP, the weak versions of CP and ICP, the epistemic versions of CP and ICP, and show that Hume not only expresses ICP, but also really maintains it. Assuming an axiomatic characterization of modalities, we argue that if there is a sharp distinction between levels of modalities, then Hume’s conceivability arguments (...) do not hold. But, in a rather different way, we also argue that if Hume’s conceivability arguments hold, then there should be no distinction between levels of modalities. Finally, we argue that after Hume, there are lots of endeavors in logic and philosophy to distinguish different levels of modalities, and to accept new concepts of necessity other than logical necessity. (shrink)

The unprecedented 2019/20 Australian bushfires prompted this paper to conduct a transitivity analysis on the top three processes (material, relational, and verbal) in selected BBC news reports. Guided by the ecological philosophical view of “harmony with diversity, interaction, and coexistence,” the research aims to interpret ecological meanings in the text and enhance people’s awareness of environment conservation. The findings reveal that these news reports predominantly utilized material and relational processes to depict the devastating impact of the Australian bushfires on wildlife, (...) the efforts of firefighters, volunteer rescue missions for wildlife, and the roles of individuals involved. These reports also conveyed extensive ecological information, highlighting the ecological crisis arising from the fires, the threat to species diversity, and the active social responsibility of various stakeholders. This research contributes to a deeper understanding of the ecological implications of the Australian bushfires and encourages proactive ecological protection measures. (shrink)

The purposes of this study are to extract the essence from the in-depth study of entrepreneurial spirit and the exploration of China’s sports culture construction, find out the beneficial parts in line with China’s sports culture construction, and put forward operational suggestions and countermeasures for dealing with the relationship between entrepreneurial spirit and sports culture to help China’s sports culture construction move toward a new level. This exploration discusses the influence of entrepreneurial spirit on sports culture from the perspective of (...) cognitive regulation, and explores the importance of entrepreneurial spirit from the aspects of social psychology, system, economy, and ethics. The structure of sports culture is analyzed, and the role of entrepreneurial spirit in promoting the construction of sports culture is expounded. Moreover, a questionnaire survey is conducted to investigate the impact of entrepreneurial spirit on the construction of sports culture from the cognitive regulation perspective. The results show that most people agree with the development of the entrepreneurial spirit and positively impact the promotion of entrepreneurial spirit. Most people are not satisfied with the attention and level of sports culture construction. In China’s sports culture, the proportion of the entrepreneurial spirit is still tiny. Thereby, entrepreneurial spirit education must be vigorously promoted to enhance the integration of entrepreneurial spirit and sports culture. The entrepreneurial spirit needs to be introduced in the construction of sports culture. It is essential to do a good job in promoting entrepreneurial spirit, improving the supporting facilities related to sports culture and strengthening the correlation between sports culture and the entrepreneurial spirit. By discussing the influence of entrepreneurial spirit on sports culture, this exploration puts forward relevant opinions for developing sports culture. It is expected that they can have some reference values. This exploration provides new ideas for promoting the combination of sports culture construction and the dissemination of entrepreneurial spirit, which has crucial theoretical and practical significance. (shrink)

ObjectivesTo comprehensively determine the effect of dance activities on the cognitive functions and its sub-domains of older adults with mild cognitive impairment.MethodsWe obtained data from PubMed, Web of Science, EBSCO, China national knowledge infrastructure, Wanfang data, and VIP databases from 2017/01/01 to 2022/03/01. We included trials of older adults with MCI that underwent dance activity intervention and fulfilled the inclusion criteria. Two researchers independently assessed the quality of the study using the Cochrane risk of the bias assessment tool. Meta-analysis was (...) performed when data were available, with further subgroup analysis, using Review Manager 5.4, and sensitivity analysis was performed using Stata software 15.1.ResultsSearch terms yielded 183 articles, of which 12 fulfilled the inclusion criteria. This included 7 high-quality studies and 5 medium-quality studies. A total of 820 older adults were analyzed. Results showed that dance activity had beneficial effects for global cognition [SMDMMSE = 0.65, 95% CIMMSE, pMMSE = 0.004; SMDMoCA = 0.87, 95% CIMoCA, pMoCA < 0.0001], memory [SMD = 0.61, 95% CI, p < 0.00001], visuospatial function [SMD = −0.39, 95% CI, p = 0.0002], cognitive flexibility [SMD = −0.31, 95% CI, p = 0.003], attention [SMD = 0.34, 95% CI, p = 0.01], and balance [SMD = 1.25, 95% CI, p = 0.04]. Further subgroup analysis showed that open-skill dance activity was more effective in promoting global cognition in older adults with MCI than closed-skill dance activity because of the different stimulation provided by the two types of dance activities in the brain regions of the older adults. It could be speculated that dance activity improved cognitive function mainly by affecting the microstructure and function of the cingulate tract, hippocampus, cardiovascular function, and other brain areas of older adults with MCI.ConclusionDance activities can significantly improve global cognition, memory, visuospatial function, cognitive flexibility, attention, and balance in older adults with MCI. However, more trials with rigorous study designs are necessary to provide more concrete evidence in the future. (shrink)

Dynamic multiobjective optimization problems bring more challenges for multiobjective evolutionary algorithm due to its time-varying characteristic. To handle this kind of DMOPs, this paper presents a dynamic MOEA with multiple response strategies based on linear environment detection, called DMOEA-LEM. In this approach, different types of environmental changes are estimated and then the corresponding response strategies are activated to generate an efficient initial population for the new environment. DMOEA-LEM not only detects whether the environmental changes but also estimates the types of (...) linear changes so that different prediction models can be selected to initialize the population when the environmental changes. To study the performance of DMOEA-LEM, a large number of test DMOPs are adopted and the experiments validate the advantages of our algorithm when compared to three state-of-the-art dynamic MOEAs. (shrink)

This paper will introduce “lexical silencing” as a new linguistic phenomenon, i.e., positive statements about something are made more difficult to express when the only (or the predominant) word for it in a language is a negative word. A good example is the term “political correctness,” which carries negative connotations in English but has no easy alternative to replace it. Suppose a supporter attempts to explicitly endorse it by saying something like “Political correctness should be a fundamental value of the (...) society.” Positive statements like this sound somewhat weird and even self-defeating to the hearers, and are therefore difficult to be expressed in the public discourse. Moreover, I will identify at least two linguistic mechanisms of lexical silencing: First, slurs can make it difficult to say something positive about a group because slurs provide the illocutionary force of derogation, which conflicts with forces like praising. Second, what I call “loaded words” (e.g., “political correctness”) are not explicitly derogatory like slurs, but they can achieve similar effects by producing perlocutionary effects on the psycho-linguistic process of hearers. This paper will also discuss the various sources of lexical silencing and possible strategies for mitigating them. (shrink)

Toxic gas leakage has diffusion characteristics and thus dynamically affects surrounding zones. Most of current evacuation traffic management models set the road risk level as a static value, which is related to the distance to the hazard source, or a dynamic value, which is determined by the toxic gas concentration. However, the toxic gas propagation direction is not considered, and this may lead some evacuees driving from less dangerous regions to higher dangerous regions. To address the shortcomings of traditional evacuation (...) traffic management models, this paper proposes an improved road risk level assessment method based on the difference of the risk levels of upstream and downstream zones of road and develops a safer evacuation traffic management model under the diffusion of toxic gas. The Cell Transmission Model is used to depict the evacuation traffic loading process. A numerical test is carried out on Nguyen and Dupuis Network. The test results show that the improved road risk level assessment method can avoid the evacuees driving into higher risk level regions from less dangerous regions. (shrink)

Consensus of fractional-order multiagent systems with single integral has been wildly studied. However, the dynamics with multiple integral also exist in FOMASs, and they are rarely studied at present. In this paper, consensus problems for multi-integral fractional-order multiagent systems with nonuniform time-delays are addressed. The consensus conditions for MIFOMASs are obtained by a novel frequency-domain method which properly eliminates consensus problems of the systems associated with nonuniform time-delays. Besides, the method revealed in this paper is applicable to classical high-order multiagent (...) systems which is a special case of MIFOMASs. Finally, several numerical simulations with different parameters are performed to validate the correctness of the results. (shrink)

Mobile ad hoc network is a network composed of mobile terminals without infrastructure. Due to its fast-networking ability, it is widely used in smart cities, car networking, military, agriculture, medicine, and other fields. Routing technology is a key technology in the field of MANET. The energy consumption is optimized through the technical network simulator NS-3, and the nodes in the MANET routing protocol can accurately simulate the problem, thereby optimizing the MAC layer of important research tools. This article combines the (...) advantages of the lithium-ion battery model. Compared with the KiBaM battery model, the effective charge in the KiBaM model simulates the output voltage well, which can reflect the battery capacity effect rate and the recovery effect of the lithium-ion-KiBaM battery model. The model can respond to the characteristics of the output voltage as the society gets lower and lower. In order to solve the problem that the analytic solution of differential equations cannot be obtained in the model, a numerical solution of the optimization algorithm is proposed based on the implicit Runge–Kutta method. The MAC layer energy consumption and routing protocol optimization algorithm proposed in this paper can be applied well in various fields. (shrink)

This paper investigates how communication influences people’s judgment quality in simple estimation tasks. Except for an exchange of estimates, our design also allows the exchange of supportive evidence underlying the estimates in a controlled manner. Compared with the control treatment, the exchange of estimates and supportive evidence together improves judgment quality at both the individual level and the crowd level. On the other hand, the exchange of estimates or supportive evidence separately has no impact.

Using Shanghai Tennis Masters as an example, this study seeks to explore the psychic income associated with major sports events hosting and whether the psychic income would predict the attitudes of local residents toward events hosting. In addition, the moderating effect of sport involvement on the relationship between psychic income and attitude is also tested. In this study, a questionnaire survey is adopted. The structured questionnaire was developed based on 4 parts, including the demographics of the residents, involvement in the (...) sport event, psychic income from the sport event, and their attitudes toward the sports event, there were 47 items in total. Data were collected from the local residents of Shanghai, as a result, 1,302 valid questionnaires were collected. A series of statistical analyses were conducted by using SPSS25.0 and AMOS 24.0 to examine the reliability and validity of the scales and to test the hypotheses. The results showed that the event has brought a significant level of psychic income to the local community, and the perceived psychic income would predict the attitudes of the residents toward the event hosting. The moderating effect of sports involvement on the relationship between psychic income and attitude is also confirmed. (shrink)

Through the overall situation of athletes’ competition pressure, the pressure level of participating athletes can be understood and revealed. Analyzing the sources of stress and influencing factors of athletes can find measures to relieve and reduce stress and provide theoretical reference for the regulation of athletes’ competition pressure. Based on genetic algorithm and neural network theory, this paper proposes a method of tracing the sports competition pressure based on genetic algorithm backpropagation neural network to solve the problem that traditional neural (...) network learning algorithm is slow and easy to fall into local minimum. There is no significant difference between male and female athletes in the level of competition pressure. Athletes have the same training methods and the same goals, and the competition pressure tends to be the same, with no obvious difference; athletes with different educational backgrounds have no significant differences in training, academics, sports injuries, interpersonal relationships, social expectations, and evaluations. Due to the particularity of the stage, the competition pressure of fourth-year undergraduate and third-year masters is significantly higher than that of other grades. The number of athletes participating in college table tennis tournaments has very significant differences in competition dimensions. There is significant difference in training and self-expectation dimension difference. The competition pressure of athletes who participated in the college table tennis championship for the first time was significantly higher than that of athletes who participated repeatedly. There were significant differences between athletes before and after adapting to the venue. Before adapting to the venue, the competition pressure of athletes is generally greater. After adapting to the venue, the competition pressure of athletes has been relieved. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to develop and evaluate two diagnostic classification models (DCMs) for scoring ordinal item data. We first applied the proposed models to an operational dataset and compared their performance to an epitome of current polytomous DCMs in which the ordered data structure is ignored. Findings suggest that the much more parsimonious models that we proposed performed similarly to the current polytomous DCMs and offered useful item-level information in addition to option-level information. We then performed a (...) small simulation study using the applied study condition and demonstrated that the proposed models can provide unbiased parameter estimates and correctly classify individuals. In practice, the proposed models can accommodate much smaller sample sizes than current polytomous DCMs and thus prove useful in many small-scale testing scenarios. (shrink)

On 19 October 2013, the Chinese government issued the Opinions on Further Regulation on Party and Political Leaders and Cadres Working Part-Time in Enterprises, also known as the 18th Decree, to regulate government officials’ employment with businesses. The 18th Decree is widely perceived as having had a significant impact on the use of independent directors with political backgrounds by firms, given the prevalence of this business practice. This paper examines the market reaction to the 18th Decree to ascertain the value (...) effect of political connections in China. We note a negative relationship between the political connections of independent directors and market reaction. We also note that the negative relationship between political connections and market reaction is moderated by ownership type and state of regional development. Specifically, we find that the negative relationship holds only for private firms in less developed regions. These results support our prediction that political connections add value to Chinese firms and that the value effect of political connection is contingent on institutional factors. (shrink)

In two experiments, subjects’ task was to decide whether a binocularly viewed target word was evaluatively good (e.g., fame, comedy, rescue) or bad (e.g., stress, detest, malaria) in meaning. Just prior to this target word, a priming word was presented to the nondominant eye, and masked by an immediately following presentation of a letter—fragment pattern to the dominant eye. (Masking effectiveness was demonstrated by subjects’ failure to discriminate the left vs. right position of a test series of words.) In Experiment (...) 1, which used evaluatively positive or negative words as priming stimuli, judgment latency for the evaluative decision task was facilitated by primes that agreed in evaluation with targets, and was retarded by primes that disagreed in evaluation with targets. This result demonstrated that the evaluative meaning of priming stimuli was processed under conditions that prevented subjects from detecting their presence. Primes in Experiment 2 were 2-word strings for which the evaluative meaning of individual words was orthogonal to the evaluative sentence meaning (e.g., the two evaluatively negative words, "enemy fails,“ make up an evaluatively positive sentence). Results of Experiment 2 indicated that masked priming effects were influenced by the evaluative meanings of individual words, but not by their sentence meanings. This result supported the conclusion that the processing of undetected, dichoptically masked words is limited to analyses that are not powerful enough to extract sentence meanings. (shrink)

This study aimed to investigate the common predictive factors between social media addiction and eating disorder symptoms, in a group of Chinese female college students. A total of 216 students completed the behavioral assessments of cognitive flexibility and sustained attention, as well as the questionnaires on anxiety, social media dependence, and eating disorders. The results indicate that SMA is significantly correlated with EDS. Structural equation modeling was used to test the model in which state anxiety, cognitive flexibility, and sustained attention (...) predicted social gain and EDS. Additionally, the results confirmed the mediating role of cognitive flexibility and sustained attention between state anxiety and SMA/EDS in the participants. The findings revealed that in the sample group, state anxiety was related to SMA and EDS through cognitive flexibility and sustained attention. These proposals reflect the significance of improving cognitive flexibility/sustained attention and reducing state anxiety to prevent EDS and SMA in female college students. (shrink)

Every scientific or intellectual movement rests on central premises and assumptions that shape its philosophy. The purpose of this study is to review a brief account of the main philosophical bases of grey systems theory (GST) and the paradigm governing its principles. So, the recent studies on the philosophical foundations of GST have been reviewed and tried to pay attention to some key ambiguities in the previous studies and give more and clearer explanations in this paper. Also, this paper tries (...) to fill the gap among the previous studies and to provide a purposeful connection between them by expressing two key concepts: complete information and imbalance knowledge. Primarily, the study addresses the theoretical foundations of uncertainty and the concept of greyness. Next, it focuses on the notion of “complete information” and challenges to it. Then, it reviews such processes as perception, cognition, and understanding, as well as their dynamic nature. It explains how knowledge is produced through understanding and interpreting information/data and the dynamics governing the whole process. Also, the study describes any dataset, no matter how large it may be, will remain incomplete, imperfect, and grey, so humans only rely on incomplete datasets to interpret the world. As such, information and knowledge are always grey and uncertain because they are basically contingent on subjective understandings and interpretations and imperfect inputs and data. Finally, as a key development, this study also demonstrates that human grey knowledge remains imbalanced across different disciplines and spheres. In the end, a brief overview of the philosophical paradigm of GST is also provided. GST is depicted as an anti-realistic, anti-positivistic, and non-deterministic approach, which is inherently pluralistic and ideographic. According to GST principles, dynamicity and change are essential parts of human narratives of the world and systems, and human knowledge is constantly reproduced through collecting new information. As a result, knowledge, theories, narratives, and scientific laws dynamically change. Given this premise, one could argue that GST is considerably compatible with the postulates of post-modern thinking. (shrink)

AimsAlcohol consumption could lead to a series of health problems and social issues. In the current study, we investigated the resting-state functional brain networks of healthy volunteers before and after drinking through graph-theory analysis, aiming to ascertain the effects of acute alcohol intake on topology and information processing mode of the functional brain networks.Materials and methodsThirty-three healthy volunteers were enrolled in this experiment. Each volunteer accepted alcohol breathalyzer tests followed by resting-state magnetic resonance imaging at three time points: before drinking, (...) 0.5 h after drinking, and 1 h after drinking. The data obtained were grouped based on scanning time into control group, 0.5-h group and 1-h group, and post-drinking data were regrouped according to breath alcohol concentration (BrAC) into relative low BrAC group (A group; 0.5-h data, n = 17; 1-h data, n = 16) and relative high BrAC group (B group; 0.5-h data, n = 16; 1-h data, n = 17). The graph-theory approach was adopted to construct whole-brain functional networks and identify the differences of network topological properties among all the groups.ResultsThe network topology of most groups was altered after drinking, with the B group presenting the most alterations. For global network measures, B group exhibited increased global efficiency, Synchronization, and decreased local efficiency, clustering coefficient, normalized clustering coefficient, characteristic path length, normalized characteristic path length, as compared to control group. Regarding nodal network measures, nodal clustering coefficient and nodal local efficiency of some nodes were lower in B group than control group. These changes suggested that the network integration ability and synchrony improved, while the segregation ability diminished.ConclusionThis study revealed the effects of acute alcohol intake on the topology and information processing mode of resting-state functional brain networks, providing new perceptions and insights into the effects of alcohol on the brain. (shrink)

This paper presents a human-computer interaction model with a three layers learning mechanism in a pervasive environment. We begin with a discussion around a number of important issues related to human-computer interaction followed by a description of the architecture for a multi-agent cooperative design system for pervasive computing environment. We present our proposed three- layer HCI model and introduce the group formation algorithm, which is predicated on a dynamic sharing niche technology. Finally, we explore the cooperative reinforcement learning and fusion (...) algorithms; the paper closes with concluding observations and a summary of the principal work and contributions of this paper. (shrink)

China is located in the intersection area of two seismic zones. Due to this special geographical location, earthquake disasters occur frequently in China. Earthquake emergency rescue work is one of the key construction works of disaster prevention and mitigation in China. This paper mainly studies the earthquake disaster rescue model based on the complex adaptive system theory and establishes the earthquake disaster rescue model by analyzing the complex adaptive system theory and combining the earthquake rescue process. In this paper, through (...) the task allocation mechanism task, the disaster rescue task is divided into simple task and complex task, and the executive task subject is divided into single task subject and multitask subject. On the basis of considering the shortest emergency rescue time goal and the goal of maximizing the deployment utility of rescue team, the reasonable deployment of a rescue team is realized through a complex adaptive system, that is, the deployment utility of the rescue team is maximized. In this paper, the simulation experiment and comparison of the earthquake disaster rescue model based on the complex adaptive system theory are carried out. The experimental results show that the model used in this paper is better than the other two models in terms of algorithm convergence, rescue number, and overall score; in different scenarios, the relative survival probability of the model in this paper is 58.92%, 67.85%, and 77.46%, and the proportion of the wounded rescued is 66.31%, 76.45%, and 83.06%, which were higher than those of the other two models. The earthquake disaster rescue model based on the complex adaptive system theory proposed in this paper provides an effective theoretical basis and method system for postdisaster emergency rescue decision making and enhances and improves the emergency response ability to deal with large-scale geological disaster events. (shrink)