Conflicts in land exploration are incisive social problems which have been the subject in many studies. Risk assessment of land conflicts is effective to resolve such problems. Specifically, fuzzy mathematics and the analytic hierarchy process were combined together to evaluate risk in land conflicts in our work, which is proved useful to solve uncertainty and imprecision problems. Based on the analysis of the principles for the risk assessment of a land conflicts index system, a set of risk assessment indexes using (...) the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process was presented. The results show that the overall risk is at medium level, and the risk of the feasibility index and controllability index need to be paid more attention to. The contribution of this article is reflected in two aspects: the application of FAHP in risk assessments of land conflicts is effective and valid; it is helpful for governments to establish a stricter management system of work safety for conflicts in land exploration based on the risk assessment results. (shrink)

Based on Network Agenda Setting Model, this study collected 42,516 media reports from Party Media, commercial media, and We Media of China during the COVID-19 pandemic. We trained LDA models for topic clustering through unsupervised machine learning. Questionnaires and social network analysis methods were then applied to examine the correlation between media network agendas and public network agendas in terms of explicit and implicit topics. The study found that the media reports could be classified into 14 topics by the LDA (...) topic modeling, and the three types of media presented homogeneity in the topics of their reports, yet had their own characteristics; there was a significant correlation between the media network agenda and the public network agenda, and the We Media reports had the most prominent effect on the public network agenda; the correlation between the media agenda and the implicit public agenda was higher than that of the explicit public agenda. Overall, findings showed a significant correlation between network agendas among different media. (shrink)

Social information processing theory suggests that the chief executive officer’s entrepreneurial orientation is an organisational signal that influences the members’ innovativeness. Middle management teams are expected to be more innovative as they connect senior managers with frontline managers in the dynamic competitive environment of the digital economy. How CEOs guide MMT innovations through EO becomes critical in the process of capturing opportunities and creating value. However, previous research has failed to adequately identify distinct CEO EO manifestations with organisational contexts configurations (...) that influence MMTs innovation. Thus, based on differences in organisational contexts and MMTs’ cognition, this study thoroughly investigates how the vertical manifestation of CEO EO impacts the innovativeness of MMTs. We used fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis on a sample of 117 organisations to determine which configurations of CEO EO vertical penetration within an organisation can stimulate MMT innovativeness. The study discovered four first-level configurations that support stimulating MMT innovativeness respectively when the CEO EO is fully or partially manifested, and without the CEO EO. Moreover, we found the internal reasons for MMTs’ information interpretation heterogeneity, which is critical for realising the coordination and unity of entrepreneurial cognition and behaviours. Finally, these findings’ theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

BackgroundMild cognitive impairment is a common neurological disorder. Moxibustion has been shown to be effective in treating MCI, but its therapeutic mechanisms still remain unclear. This study mainly aimed to investigate the modulation effect of moxibustion treatment for patients with MCI by functional magnetic resonance imaging.MethodsA total of 47 patients with MCI and 30 healthy controls participated in resting-state fMRI imaging scans. Patients with MCI were randomly divided into true moxibustion group and sham moxibustion group. The degree centrality approach was (...) applied to distinguish altered brain functions. Correlation analysis was then performed to examine the relationships between the neuroimaging findings and clinical symptoms.ResultsCompared with HCs, patients with MCI mainly showed decreased DC in the left middle frontal cortex and bilateral middle cingulate cortex. After moxibustion treatment, the SHAM group had no significant DC findings, while TRUE group mainly showed significant increased DC in the bilateral MFC and MCC, as well as decreased DC in the left middle occipital cortex. Repeated measures analysis of variance showed significant interactions between the two groups of patients with MCI. In addition, the higher Mini-Mental State Examination score was significantly positively correlated with increased DC in the right MFC and left MCC after moxibustion treatment.ConclusionOur findings demonstrate that the potential value of moxibustion treatment on MCI, which adds new insights into the popular view that moxibustion treatment may slow cognitive decline in patients with MCI. (shrink)

Although substantial evidence demonstrates that directing attention to specific items is important for improving the performance of visual working memory, it is still not clear whether the attended items were better protected. The present study, thus, adopted a pre-cueing paradigm to examine the effect of attention direction and perceptual distractor on VWM. The results showed that a valid visual cue improved the individuals’ VWM performances and reduced their reaction time compared to the invalid and neutral cues. However, the VWM performances (...) in the valid and neutral cue conditions were more disrupted by a post-stimuli distractor compared to the invalid cue condition. The findings suggest that although directing attention can improve the VWM performance, it is not efficient in protecting information from being distracted. (shrink)

Recent research in psycholinguistics suggests that language processing frequently involves mental imagery. This paper focuses on visual imagery and discusses two issues regarding the processing of polysemous words (i.e. words with multiple related meanings or senses) – co-predication and sense-relatedness. It aims to show how mental imagery can illuminate these two issues.

Slurs are both derogatory and offensive, and they are said to exhibit “derogatory force” and “offensiveness.” Almost all theories of slurs, except the truth-conditional content theory and the invocational content theory, conflate these two features and use “derogatory force” and “offensiveness” interchangeably. This paper defends and explains the distinction between slurs’ derogatory force and offensiveness by fulfilling three goals. First, it distinguishes between slurs’ being derogatory and their being offensive with four arguments. For instance, ‘Monday’, a slur in the Bostonian (...) argot, is used to secretly derogate African Americans without causing offense. Second, this paper points out that many theories of slurs run into problems because they conflate derogatory force with offensiveness. For example, the prohibition theory’s account of offensiveness in terms of prohibitions struggles to explain why ‘Monday’ is derogatory when it is not a prohibited word in English. Third, this paper offers a new explanation of this distinction from the perspective of a speech act theory of slurs; derogatory force is different from offensiveness because they arise from two different kinds of speech acts that slurs are used to perform, i.e., the illocutionary act of derogation and the perlocutionary act of offending. This new explanation avoids the problems faced by other theories. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

The purpose of the study is to promote college students to actively respond to the national “Public Entrepreneurship and Mass Innovation” policies and calls, improve college students’ entrepreneurial enthusiasm and their entrepreneurial ability, and cultivate their good entrepreneurial psychological states. First, the relevant content of entrepreneurship psychology and causal attribution theory is displayed. Second, the questionnaire of college students’ entrepreneurship education is formulated and a questionnaire survey is conducted on University N based on the relevant content of entrepreneurship psychology. Subsequently, (...) the management system of new venture A is taken as the research object to construct the management strategy of new ventures and simulate the implementation process. Finally, the questionnaire survey results of college students’ entrepreneurship education are analyzed and the corresponding entrepreneurship education path is formulated. Meanwhile, the implementation effect of the management strategy of new ventures is evaluated. After the questionnaire is sorted out, it is found that there are some problems in college students’ entrepreneurship education, such as weak awareness of entrepreneurship, insufficient publicity, outdated curriculum, and unqualified teachers. The reasons for these problems are the constraints of traditional concepts, insufficient attention, and incomplete system construction. Therefore, a plan is made for overall entrepreneurship education, the publicity of the concept of entrepreneurship education is strengthened, and the setting of entrepreneurship education curriculum and the ability of the teachers for entrepreneurship education are improved. Through the evaluation of the simulation implementation of a new enterprise management strategy, it is found that the new management strategy can achieve the expected effect. Therefore, this study provides some references for the development of college students’ entrepreneurship education and the management strategy of new ventures. (shrink)

Severe tour guide stigma is a significant problem hindering tourism development. Based on self-identity threat and moral disengagement theory, this study analyzed the relationship between tour guide stigmatization and tour guides’ interpersonal deviance behavior. Survey data collected from 241 tour guides at three different points in time showed that tour guide stigmatization was positively related to tour guides’ interpersonal deviance behavior and that self-identity threat mediated this effect. The results also show that moral disengagement moderated the effect of tour guides’ (...) self-identity threat on interpersonal deviance behavior, as well as the indirect effect of tour guide stigmatization on tour guides’ interpersonal deviance behavior via self-identity threat. This study enriches theoretical research on tour guide stigmatization and offers practical suggestions for solving stigmatization problems for tour guides and organizations. (shrink)

Compiled by scholars at the court of Liu An, king of Huainan, in the second century B.C.E, _The Huainanzi_ is a tightly organized, sophisticated articulation of Western Han philosophy and statecraft. Outlining "all that a modern monarch needs to know," the text emphasizes rigorous self-cultivation and mental discipline, brilliantly synthesizing for readers past and present the full spectrum of early Chinese thought. _The Huainanzi_ locates the key to successful rule in a balance of broad knowledge, diligent application, and the penetrating (...) wisdom of a sage. It is a unique and creative synthesis of Daoist classics, such as the _Laozi_ and the _Zhuangzi_; works associated with the Confucian tradition, such as the _Changes_, the _Odes_, and the _Documents_; and a wide range of other foundational philosophical and literary texts from the _Mozi_ to the _Hanfeizi_. The product of twelve years of scholarship, this remarkable translation preserves _The Huainanzi_'s special rhetorical features, such as parallel prose and verse, and showcases a compositional technique that conveys the work's powerful philosophical appeal. This path-breaking volume will have a transformative impact on the field of early Chinese intellectual history and will be of great interest to scholars and students alike. (shrink)

_An Introduction to Chinese Philosophy_ unlocks the mystery of ancient Chinese philosophy and unravels the complexity of Chinese Buddhism by placing them in the contemporary context of discourse. Elucidates the central issues and debates in Chinese philosophy, its different schools of thought, and its major philosophers. Covers eight major philosophers in the ancient period, among them Confucius, Laozi, and Zhuangzi. Illuminates the links between different schools of philosophy. Opens the door to further study of the relationship between Chinese and Western (...) philosophy. (shrink)

1. Recent findings in neuropsychology are forcing us to revise this notion of the relation between perception and conscious awareness. Brain-damaged people may manifest considerable knowledge of stimuli, or of particular properties of stimuli, of which they deny any conscious perceptual experience.

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)

The present study adopts both empirical and theoretical methods for the analysis of the acquisition of English sentence stress based on Optimality Theory, aiming to overcome mispronunciation of English sentence stress. Optimality Theory has a dramatic impact on most areas in linguistics besides phonology. The acoustic software Praat is chosen to collect and label data as the basis of the empirical method. Then, through analyzing the four major principles of distribution of sentence stress and based on the analysis of Optimality (...) Theory, the software Praat, and SPSS, the researcher can present the following findings: firstly, the constraint hierarchical ranking of nonnative speakers is DEP-IO >> NEW-IP >> ALIGN-IP-LEFT >> ALIGN-IP-RIGHT. Secondly, the native speakers also undergo the demotion of constraint hierarchical ranking: NEW-IP >> DEP-IO >> ALIGN-IP-RIGHT >> ALIGN-IP-LEFT. Thirdly, the constraint in each demotion of constraint hierarchical ranking during different stages is as follows: NEW-IP constraint moves from the undominated position to the dominated position in the hierarchy; ALIGN-IP-RIGHT and ALIGN-IP-LEFT constraints move from the dominated position to the lower position in the hierarchy. Through the specific analysis, the researcher draws a conclusion that the varied reasons affect the nonnative speakers to master the distribution of sentence stress due to their incorrect position in the demotion of constraint hierarchical ranking. (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)

Consider chemical elements as a system, we create an undirected chemical network with 99 elements and 1916 edges from Chemspider, a website that provide search engines to collect compounds. Using this network and the network that we used in our previous work with 97 elements and 2198 edges, we found that RootedPageRank, a link prediction tool in complex network, can be used to predict potential binary compounds, because the changing trend of PageRank probability of each element in these networks all (...) follow the periodic law, despite of the difference of scale of these networks. The accuracy test indicates that at least 7 among top 10 predicted compoundss in one network can be verified using the compoundss in the other network or in other chemical database, proving that this method can be used to provide guidance in finding potential binary compounds, suggesting that we can study chemical properties from the view of complex network. (shrink)

This study examined the ability to comprehend conventional and non-conventional implicatures, and the effect of proficiency and learning context on comprehension of implicature in L2 Chinese. Participants were three groups of college students of Chinese: elementary-level foreign language learners, advanced-level foreign language learners, and advanced-level heritage learners. They completed a 36-item computer-delivered listening test measuring their ability to comprehend three types of implicature: conventional indirect refusals, conventional indirect opinions, and non-conventional indirect opinions. Comprehension was analyzed for accuracy and comprehension speed. (...) There was a significant effect of implicature type on accuracy, but not on comprehension speed. A significant effect of participant group was observed on accuracy, but the effect was mixed on comprehension speed. (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)

Technological mediation theorists (such as Don Ihde and Verbeek) believe that human beings’ moral actions can be transformed through technological artefacts to constitute a “good life”. This paper, however, critically analyses two understandings of technological mediation, (1) technological mediation is something between humans and the world (prominent in Don Ihde), and (2) technological mediation is a direct constitutive effect (prominent in Verbeek), which will inevitably lead to the problem of “moral suspension” that I define. In the first understanding (following Zygmunt (...) Bauman), the causal relations between moral actions and actual consequences are distanced from each other because of the “interval” effects of technological artefacts. In the second understanding (following Jean Baudrillard), designers are just “simulating” moralities in specific use and design contexts. Thus, moral realities are ultimately replaced by moral “simulacra”. Then, I argue that to overcome the problem of “moral suspension,” rather than distancing actions from their consequences or simulating moralities in specific scenarios, two possible approaches may be needed, the Way of Zhuangzi who declined to use any adroit technology to improve efficiency, thereby clarifying the relationship between moral actions and consequences; and the attitude of Bauman, who motivated our moral consciences and moral sensitivities, thereby reflecting the side effects of technological mediations and systems. In the end, I conclude that both of these two approaches are too difficult to universally apply, and the most viable approach is to use what Confucius called “the Doctrine of the Mean,” i.e., seeking a balance between the two approaches. That is, while we should acknowledge that technologies intervene our lifeworld and constitute our thinking and moralizing ways, we also need to break away from technological trivialities to think about and pursue long-term moral goals. (shrink)

Research investigating listeners’ neural sensitivity to speech sounds has largely focused on segmental features. We examined Australian English listeners’ perception and learning of a supra-segmental feature, pitch direction in a non-native tonal contrast, using a passive oddball paradigm and electroencephalography. The stimuli were two contours generated from naturally produced high-level and high-falling tones in Mandarin Chinese, differing only in pitch direction ( Liu and Kager, 2014 ). While both contours had similar pitch onsets, the pitch offset of the falling contour (...) was lower than that of the level one. The contrast was presented in two orientations (standard and deviant reversed) and tested in two blocks with the order of block presentation counterbalanced. Mismatch negativity (MMN) responses showed that listeners discriminated the non-native tonal contrast only in the second block, reflecting indications of learning through exposure during the first block. In addition, listeners showed a later MMN peak for their second block of test relative to listeners who did the same block first, suggesting linguistic (as opposed to acoustic) processing or a misapplication of perceptual strategies from the first to the second block. The results also showed a perceptual asymmetry for change in pitch direction: listeners who encountered a falling tone deviant in the first block had larger frontal MMN amplitudes than listeners who encountered a level tone deviant in the first block. The implications of our findings for second language speech and the developmental trajectory for tone perception are discussed. (shrink)

Professionals transitioning into a workplace face the challenge of socializing into their new working communities. One important factor in this process is humor. We present a case study of how a newcomer transitioning towards integral status interacts with the use of humor in her new workplace. Using the Communities of Practice framework, we examine workplace discourse collected from a new recruit, Emma, and her colleagues in a Hong Kong firm. The analysis portrays a picture of how humor is a critical (...) element as Emma negotiates relationships with other colleagues and works towards her assigned tasks. Findings suggest that humor can be an indicator to newcomers of appropriate or inappropriate behavior. Humor can be used for newcomers’ integration into the workplace; humor can be used by integral members to mold newcomers into the normative ways of doing things. We argue that humor may be used as a regulating and coping mechanism in workplace socialization. (shrink)

Cet article se propose de montrer que le langage en traduction joue un rôle performatif parce que les termes qu’il emploie retraduisent des normes sociales et des positions institutionnelles construites dans une autre culture, avec d’autres conditions historiques. Dans le cas de la naissance des sciences de la communication en Chine, des concepts américains sur la communication sont venus par leur traduction à la rencontre des normes et positions chinoises sur le journalisme et la propagande, engendrant une reconfiguration mutuelle des (...) actants, qu’ils soient sociaux ou langagiers. Nous étudions comment le système socio-culturel de la Chine a recréé un ordre local propre sous la forme d’une discipline spécifique à ce pays, xinwen chuanboxue .This article sets out to show that language in translation plays a performative role, because the terms it uses effectively retranslate social norms and institutional positions that were built up in a different culture and in different historical circumstances. In the case of the emerging communication sciences in China, American concepts on communication, which arrived in translation, came to encounter Chinese norms and positions on journalism and propaganda, and this caused a mutual reconfiguration of the actants, both social and linguistic. We look here at how the Chinese socio-cultural system re-created its own local order in the form of a discipline which is specific to the country, “xinwen chuanboxue”. (shrink)

Government subsidies have a direct impact on firms' innovation strategies. The game relationship between the government, the subsidized firm and its competitors under different subsidy strategies affects firms' innovation behavior and thus innovation performance. This paper uses a dynamic evolutionary game theory approach based on cost-benefit differences to analyse the mechanisms by which government subsidy strategies affect firms' innovation strategies. It is found that the marginal benefits of a firm's innovation strategy will directly affect the game outcome, indicating that the (...) choice of innovation strategy depends on the maximization of individual firm's interests. At the same time, a firm's innovation strategy is influenced by the firm's own innovation ability and competitors' innovation strategy, and there are two game equilibria. Government subsidies have a positive contribution to the innovation strategy choice of subsidized firms, but have a crowding-out effect on non-subsidized competing firms. The strength of the penalty, the marginal revenue of the subsidized firms' rational use of government subsidies and the competitors' strategic choices will directly affect the game outcome. (shrink)

Streamer F mutants have been found to be useful tools for studying the pathway of signal transduction leading to chemotactic cell movement. The primary defect in these mutants is in the structural gene for the cyclic GMP specific phosphodiesterase. This defect allows a larger and prolonged peak of cyclic GMP to be formed in response to the chemotactic stimulus, cyclic AMP. This characteristic aberrant pattern of cyclic GMP accumulation in the streamer F mutants has been correlated with similar patterns of (...) changes in the influx of calcium from the medium, myosin II association with the cytoskeleton, myosin phosphorylation and a decrease in speed of movement of the amoebae. From these studies a sequence of events can be deduced that leads from cell surface cyclic AMP stimulation to cell polarization prior to movement of the amoebae in response to the chemotactic stimulus. (shrink)

Food safety and food quality are two closely related aspects of the food management system. The difference between the two is that one keeps consumers safe while the other keeps consumers satisfied. This study examined the differences in how consumers value food safety and food quality with a focus on the influence of loss aversion on one’s psychological level and of income effect on one’s socio-demographic level. Our findings indicate that loss aversion and income effect significantly influence the way consumers (...) value food safety vs. quality labels when considering potential health risks and food price. High risk-averse and low-income consumers with strong loss aversion and a weak income effect show a higher demand for food safety labels as a way to ensure easy access to safety indications. Low risk-averse and high-income consumers with weak loss aversion and a strong income effect show a higher demand for food quality labels because they hope to gain more health benefits from high-quality food at good prices. This study provides insights that will assist public authorities and food industry in balancing food safety control and food quality improvement in order to meet the heterogeneous market demand changing alongside the transition of China’s food consumption and production. (shrink)

To effectively identify network rumors and block their spread, this paper uses fractal theory to analyze a network rumor spreading situation time series, reveal its inner regularity, extract features, and establish a network rumor recognition model. The model is based on an empirical mode decomposition correlation dimension and K-nearest neighbor approach. Firstly, a partition function is used to determine if the time series of the rumor spreading situation is a uniform fractal process. Secondly, the rumor spreading situation is subjected to (...) EMD to obtain a series of intrinsic mode functions, construct the IMF1–IMF6 components containing effective feature information as the principal components, and reconstruct the phase space of the principal components, respectively. Finally, the correlation dimensions of the principal components IMF1–IMF6 as obtained by the Grassberger-Procaccia algorithm are used as feature parameters and are imported into the KNN model for rumor recognition. The experimental results show that the correlation dimension of a spreading situation can better reflect the characteristic information; as combined with the KNN model for identifying rumors, the recognition rate reaches 87.5%. This result verifies the effectiveness of fractal theory in network rumors recognition, expands the thinking for the research of rumors recognition, and provides theoretical support for rumor governance. (shrink)