With the contradiction between supply and demand being intensified, the unreasonable crude oil trade structure has become increasingly prominent. Therefore, optimizing the supply and demand structure of the global crude oil trade is an urgent problem, which has become one of the crucial factors affecting the energy strategy and economic development of each country. This paper builds an optimization model that aims at minimizing crude oil trade costs based on the complex network theory. Meanwhile, an optimal solution generation approach is (...) proposed and developed in this paper. Compared with the preoptimized trade network, the proposed model can effectively reduce the trade cost. By topological analysis of the trade network and its optimal configuration, we obtain that both the preoptimized and optimized crude oil trade networks follow power-law distribution. By using the minimum spanning tree, we find that the major crude oil net exporting countries have the most significant influence and are at the core in the optimized trade structure. This work focuses on the sustainable development of the global crude oil trade and provides a fresh perspective for the optimal crude oil trade system. Moreover, the methodology and model may be applied in the investigation of optimization for other energy system structures. (shrink)

Based on an integrated theoretical framework, this study analyzes user acceptance behavior toward socially interactive robots focusing on the variables that influence the users’ attitudes and intentions to adopt robots. Individuals’ responses to questions about attitude and intention to use robots were collected and analyzed according to different factors modified from a variety of theories. The results of the proposed model explain that social presence is key to the behavioral intention to accept social robots. The proposed model shows the significant (...) roles of perceived adaptivity and sociability, both of which affect attitude as well as influence perceived usefulness and perceived enjoyment, respectively. These factors can be key features of users’ expectations of social robots, which can give practical implications for designing and developing meaningful social interaction between robots and humans. The new set of variables is specific to social robots, acting as factors that enhance attitudes and behavioral intentions in human–robot interactions. Keywords: Robot acceptance model; Socially interactive robots; Social robots; Social presence. (shrink)

Background: Truth-telling toward terminally ill patients is a challenging ethical issue in healthcare practice. However, there are no existing ethical guidelines or frameworks provided for Chinese nurses in relation to decision-making on truth-telling of terminal illness and the role of nurses thus is not explicit when encountering this issue. Objectives: The intention of this paper is to provide ethical guidelines or strategies with regards to decision-making on truth-telling of terminal illness for Chinese nurses. Methods: This paper initially present a case (...) scenario and then critically discuss the ethical issue in association with ethical principles and philosophical theories. Instead of focusing on attitudes toward truth disclosure, it aims to provide strategies regarding this issue for nurses. It highlights and discusses some of the relevant ethical assumptions around the perceived role of nurses in healthcare settings by focusing on nursing ethical virtues, nursing codes of ethics, and philosophical perspectives. And Confucian culture is discussed to explicate that deontology does not consider family-oriented care in China. Conclusion: Treating each family individually to explore the family’s beliefs and values on this issue is essential in healthcare practice and nurses should tailor their own approach to individual needs regarding truth-telling in different situations. Moreover, the Chinese Code of Ethics should be modified to be more specific and applicable. Finally, a narrative ethics approach should be applied and teamwork between nurses, physicians and families should be established to support cancer patients and to ensure their autonomy and hope. Ethical considerations: This paper was approved by the Ethics Committee of The Second Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University. The authors have obtained consent to use the case study and it has been anonymised to preserve the patient's confidentiality. (shrink)

In this paper, we employ Weibo Index as the proxy for investor attention and analyze the relationships between investor attention and stock market performance, i.e., trading volume, return, and volatility. The empirical results firstly show that Weibo attention is positively related to trading volume, intraday volatility, and return. Secondly, there exist bidirectional causal relationships between Weibo attention and stock market performance. Thirdly, we generally find that higher Weibo attention indicates higher correlation coefficients with the quantile regression analysis.

Faced with the choice between saving one person and saving two others, what should we do? It seems intuitively plausible that we ought to save the two, and many forms of consequentialists offer a straightforward rationale for the intuition by appealing to interpersonal aggregation. But still many other philosophers attempt to provide a justification for the duty to save the greater number without combining utilities or claims of separate individuals. I argue against one such attempt proposed by Iwao Hirose. Despite (...) being consequentialist, his argument is aggregation-free since it relies on a non-aggregative value judgement method, instead of interpersonal aggregation, to establish that (other things being equal) a state of affairs is better when more people survive therein. I do not take issue with its consequentialist element; rather, I claim that there is no good reason to adopt the method in question, and thus no good reason to be moved by his argument overall. What we are in search of is not merely a logically possible method that can produce the conclusion that we already want, but one that we have good reason to adopt. Hirose's argument elegantly demonstrates how it could possibly be true that it is right to save the greater number; but it fails to show that we have reason to believe so - even when we do not combine the interests of different individuals. (shrink)

Supply networks as complex systems are significant challenges for decision-makers in predicting the evolution of cooperation among firms. The impact of environmental heterogeneity on firms is critical. Environment-based preference selection plays a pivotal role in clarifying the existence and maintenance of cooperation in supply networks. This paper explores the implication of the heterogeneity of environment and environment-based preference on the evolution of cooperation in supply networks. Cellular automata are considered to examine the synchronized evolution of cooperation and defection across supply (...) networks. The Prisoner’s Dilemma Game and Snowdrift Game reward schemes have been formed, and the heterogeneous environment and environmental preference have been applied. The results show that the heterogeneous environment’s degree leads to higher cooperation for both Prisoner’s Dilemma Game and Snowdrift Game. We also probe into the impact of the environmental preference on the evolution of cooperation, and the results of which confirm the usefulness of preference of environment. This work offers a valuable perspective to improve the level of cooperation among firms and understand the evolution of cooperation in supply networks. (shrink)

The gist of this paper is to closely examine the actual demands of the students under the education of philosophy, and execute such a philosophy education as to meet the demands, so that any plan of securing the proper status of philosophy education in the university society might be made. While it says that the philosophy education should be newly programmed, such a new programming cannot be talked about without considering the new trends or framework in the university education on (...) the whole, which is called the “convergence education.” In case the convergence education is highlighted more intensively, the significance of the philosophy education becomes prominent more and more, and this is very encouraging thereto. (shrink)

21世紀人類新科學、新文明的基礎——思維科學理論體系的建立 1687年英國科學家牛頓發表的《自然哲學的數學原理》一書，是近代自然科學完全確立的標誌，從而引領人類的科學邁入宏觀科學的時代，為現代文明奠定了理論和思想上的基礎；1905年德國科學家愛因斯坦發表的《相 對論》，更使得人類的科學邁入微觀科學的時代，讓人們對周圍世界有了一個更加深入和全面的了解。 雖然上述二者都有力地推動了人類科學和文明的巨大進步，卻都未能跳脫出現代科學的物質觀對人們思維上的限制，不能應用於高度複雜的人體和生命科學，更不能解決當前擺在人們面前諸於癌症、愛滋病、各種慢性病、遺傳病 、傳染病等形形色色的問題。 毫無疑問，21世紀將是人體和生命科學的世紀。然而，在人體和生命科學領域，尚未出現像牛頓的《自然哲學的數學原理》和愛因斯坦的《相對論》那樣具有劃時代意義，且與生命科學高度複雜的基本特點互相呼應的全新理論 體系；這就導致人體和生命科學在21世紀的發展將缺乏理論上的立足點，人體和生命科學新的大發展正在呼喚全新理論的出現。 2012年，《生命科學的哲學原理》一書的完成和發表，正是適應這一時代的需要而建立起來的全新科學理論體系，採用了與牛頓和愛因斯坦完全不同，更加高級、全新的思維方式，並突破了現代科學的物質觀對人們思維上的 限制，從而引領人類的科學從當前具體的物質科學邁入抽象的思維科學的新時代，進而有效地解決人體和生命科學領域中各種高度複雜的問題，整個人類的文明也將因此而再次發生翻天覆地的偉大轉變，為新的歷史時期之人類社 會的和平、穩定與快速發展提供理論和思想上的依據。.

This paper examines the effects of moral philosophy and ethnocentrism on quality of life orientation in international marketing. It also provides a cross-cultural comparison of ethical values between Koreans and Americans. International quality-of-life (IQOL) orientation refers to marketers' disposition to make decisions to enhance the well-being of consumers in foreign markets while preserving the well-being of other stakeholders. It is hypothesized that marketers' moral philosophy and ethnocentrism influence the development of marketers' IQOL. Specifically, the higher the IQOL orientation of international (...) managers, the higher their moral idealism, the higher their moral relativism, and the lower their ethnocentrism. Also, it is hypothesized that American managers are likely to score higher on moral relativism but lower on moral idealism compared to their Korean counterparts. Also, Korean managers are expected to be more ethnocentric than American managers. Data were collected from business professionals who enrolled in professional MBA courses both from the U.S. and Korea. The results provided support for the hypothesized relationships. Managerial implications of these relationships are discussed. (shrink)

[English abstract] In his last metaethical statement, Parfit revisits his earlier arguments for non-metaphysical normative non-naturalism , and points to the possibility of convergence between his view and Railton's non-analytical normative naturalism. I examine the basis of this convergence claim and find it unpersuasive, mainly because if their views converge on the same position, Parfit's non-natural norms exist only as predicates. In order to avoid this consequence, he needs to present a reason for believing in the existence of normative properties (...) . There is an indispensability argument implicit in his text, with concepts of sui generis normative ground and necessity at its centre. I discuss their main features and present problems besetting these concepts. (shrink)

Previous studies have demonstrated positive correlations between children’s interpersonal trust and social adjustment. However, the psychological mechanism underlying this effect is still unclear. The current study tested the indirect roles of teacher–student relationships from both students’ and teachers’ perspectives in a Chinese context. In total, 709 pupils from grade three to grade five, and their 17 head teachers from a Chinese public primary school participated in this study. The Children’s Generalized Trust Beliefs Scale, Social Adjustment Scale for Children and Adolescents, (...) and Teacher–Student Relationship Questionnaire were used in this study. All these variables were correlated with each other. Structural equation models showed that the interpersonal trust indirectly influenced social adjustment through the teacher–student relationship from students’ perspectives, while the teacher–student relationship from teachers’ perspectives did not play an indirect role. These findings suggest that the teacher–student relationship perceived by students is more important for children’s social adjustment than that perceived by teachers. Both parents and teachers should pay more attention to developing children’s interpersonal trust, build better teacher–student relationships, and focus more on how children feel about the relationship. (shrink)

A long-standing problem in biology, economics, and social sciences is to understand the conditions required for the emergence and maintenance of cooperation in evolving populations. This paper investigates how to promote the evolution of cooperation in the Prisoner’s Dilemma game. Differing from previous approaches, we not only propose a tag-based control mechanism but also look at how the evolution of cooperation by TBC can be successfully promoted. The effect of TBC on the evolutionary process of cooperation shows that it can (...) both reduce the payoff of defectors and inhibit defection; although when the cooperation rate is high, TBC will also reduce the payoff of cooperators unless the identified rate of the TBC is large enough. An optimal timing control of switched replicator dynamics is designed to consider the control costs, the cooperation rate at terminal time, and the cooperator’s payoff. The results show that the switching control between an optimal identified rate control of the TBC and no TBC can properly not only maintain a high cooperation rate but also greatly enhance the payoff of the cooperators. Our results provide valuable insights for some clusters, for example, logistics parks and government, to regard the decision to promote cooperation. (shrink)

The study compares the changes in the theory of Marxism that took place in Europe (in the form of neo-Marxism and its movements, in particular the Frankfurt School) and the Sinicized version of Marxism. The study also examines how Sinicized Marxism was reflected in the political discourse and political philosophy of modern China (People’s Republic of China) and is reflected in social policy in the country. Studying the influence of socio-economic changes and the history of the people on ideological changes (...) allows us to identify several principles of Sinicized Marxism, which on an ongoing basis determine social policy and foreign relations. This is, first, etatism and the dominance of state interests over private ones, which limits human rights and national self-determination, but preserves the integrity and stability of the state, which protects the interests of the people. (shrink)

In Toward a Good Society, the authors theorize a mutually empowering and growth-fostering society. They begin this journey in relational psychology, then depart along nine paths reconstructed from nine classic social science theories. This leads them to propose a new Golden Rule as simple as it is profound.

In this article, I argue that Merleau-Ponty underpins an idea of differentiation without ultimate unification through intertwining. I trace this idea of intertwining to Phenomenology of Perception. I argue that what perception marks is already differentiation prior to any identification. For this purpose, firstly, I will introduce Merleau-Ponty’s depiction of intertwining; secondly, I will elaborate perception in Phenomenology of Perception; finally, I will discuss flesh as intertwining in The Visible and The Invisible.

The paper aims to show how Japanese theoretical physics groups emerged between the First and Second World Wars. First, it will be argued that by the early 1930s the Japanese physics community had been predominantly inclined towards experimental physics and that several academic, cultural, and social factors had worked for the maintenance of this status quo. Next, how the situation slowly changed during the early 1930s, and how the young theoretical physicists successfully established a bridgehead during the mid-1930s will be (...) analysed. Four different elements are suggested: the dazzling success of quantum mechanics and its spread in the West; the dominance of experimental physics and its effect on the university system; cultural/social influence; and the emergence of the research network. (shrink)

On the premise that the good knowing is the originary reality, this article provides a synopsis of Wang Yangming’s exposition of the fundamental essence of liangzhi. The self-existent resemblances of the originary reality are outlined and summarized as the eight virtues of liangzhi: voidness, intelligence, luminousness, awareness, constancy, happiness, true I, and purity. These eight virtues are, however, ultimately subsumed by the middle, which governs them in common. The middle is the original state and true form of the fundamental essence (...) of liangzhi, which Wang Yangming describes as a transparent mirror and level balance. (shrink)

Biological pacemakers can be achieved by various gene‐based and cell‐based approaches. Embryonic stem cells (ESCs)‐derived pacemaker cells might be the most promising way to form biological pacemakers, but there are challenges as to how to control the differentiation of ESCs and to overcome the neoplasia, proarrhythmia, or immunogenicity resulting from the use of ESCs. As a potential approach to solve these difficult problems, tissue‐engineering techniques may provide a precise control on the different cell components of multicellular aggregates and the forming (...) of a construct with‐defined architectures and functional properties. The combined interactions between ESC‐derived pacemaker cells, supporting cells, and matrices may completely reproduce pacemaker properties and result in a steady functional unit to induce rhythmic electrical and contractile activities. As ESCs have a high capability for self‐renewal, proliferation, and potential differentiation, we hypothesize that ESCs can be used as a source of pacemaker cells for tissue‐engineering applications and the ambitious goal of biological cardiac pacemakers may ultimately be achieved with ESCs via tissue‐engineering technology. -/- . (shrink)

Justin D’Arms and Daniel Jacobson have argued that to evaluate the funniness of a joke based on the consideration of whether it is morally appropriate to feel amused commits the “moralistic fallacy.” We offer a new and empirically informed reply. We argue that there is a way to take morality into consideration without committing this fallacy, that is, it is legitimate to say that for some people, witty but immoral jokes can fail to be funny because they are immoral. In (...) our account, one has an intramural moral reason not to feel amused if one focuses on the moral feature itself of a joke rather than the moral consequence implied in one’s reaction to the joke. When one judges a joke as not funny because of the intramural moral reason, one is in a negative emotional state with high arousal, for example, moral disgust or anger. This state is psychologically incompatible with amusement. That one has an intramural reason not to feel amused thus implies that one does not have a reason to feel amused. Moral consideration thus plays an indirect and appropriate role in the evaluation of the funniness of a joke. (shrink)

Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, EarlyView.

Aiming at the problem of low pedestrian target detection accuracy, we propose a detection algorithm based on optimized Mask R-CNN which uses the latest research results of deep learning to improve the accuracy and speed of detection results. Due to the influence of illumination, posture, background, and other factors on the human target in the natural scene image, the complexity of target information is high. SKNet is used to replace the part of the convolution module in the depth residual network (...) model in order to extract features better so that the model can adaptively select the best convolution kernel during training. In addition, according to the statistical law, the length-width ratio of the anchor box is modified to make it more accord with the natural characteristics of the pedestrian target. Finally, a pedestrian target dataset is established by selecting suitable pedestrian images in the COCO dataset and expanded by adding noise and median filtering. The optimized algorithm is compared with the original algorithm and several other mainstream target detection algorithms on the dataset; the experimental results show that the detection accuracy and detection speed of the optimized algorithm are improved, and its detection accuracy is better than other mainstream target detection algorithms. (shrink)

Neuro-philosophy and the Healthy Mind (2016) is an intriguing book. The neuroscientist, psychiatrist, and philosopher Georg Northoff offers a careful and alluring investigation of brain-environment...

本书通过对唐代刘进喜、蔡晃、成玄英、李荣、唐玄宗、李约等人老学作品研究,初步建立建由道论、修身论、治国论、诠翻译方法论构成的唐代老学思想总体框架等内容。.