There is ample discussion of MBA self-serving values in the corporate social responsibility literature, and yet empirical studies regarding the corporate manifestations and consequences of those values are scant. In a comprehensive study of major US public corporations, we find that MBA CEOs are more apt than their non-MBA counterparts to engage in short-term strategic expedients such as positive earnings management and suppression of R&D, which in turn are followed by compromised firm market valuations.

The literature on the interplay between geographic communities and organizations has largely ignored the role of individual residents. In adopting a meso-perspective, we examine a potentially vital relationship between corporate conduct and pro-social behavior demanding sacrifice from individuals. Drawing on Weber ), we theorize that organizations in a community legitimize personal social conduct in three ways—by serving as role models, imparting norms and values, and routinizing forms of interaction. We study the relationship between corporate social responsibility behavior by local firms (...) and the social distancing of citizens in US counties during the Covid-19 pandemic, a core ethical outcome. We argue and find that the residents of communities in which firms exhibit higher levels of CSR engaged in more SD during the Covid-19 pandemic. This was true when firms were long-established, isomorphic in their CSR, and major employers and vendors. Moreover, CSR relating to the treatment of employees as well as positive and negative extremes in CSR bore especially strong relationships with SD. Implications are drawn for the study of business ethics, as modeled by CSR, as a force for ethical personal behavior and public health in communities. (shrink)

Previous studies suggest that morphological awareness and word detection skills have facilitating roles in reading fluency; however, it is unknown whether they can interplay with each other in such roles. The present study explored the relationships of MA, word detection, and passage reading fluency across ages. In total, 180 Chinese primary and secondary school students, aged from 8.52 to 15.67 years, completed tasks for these aforementioned capacities. After controlling gender, non-verbal intelligence, and reading ability at the word level, the results (...) showed that the participants with higher scores for MA or word detection performed better in passage reading fluency. However, the predictive effect of word detection on reading fluency became weaker as the children became older. The interaction between MA and word detection was positive in younger children, whereas this interaction tended to be negative for older children. The results demonstrated a dynamic interplay between MA and word detection in contributing to passage reading fluency in Chinese children. While it has a positive interaction with word detection on reading fluency in younger children, MA may become a compensator in older children whose word detection skills are less effective in facilitating fluent reading. (shrink)

We propose a theory of events and causes against the background of branching time. Notions discussed include possibility based on reality, transitions, events, determinacy, contingency, causes and effects. The main idea in defining causal relations is to introduce a certain preconditioning circumstance under which one event follows another. We also briefly compare this theory with some other theories.

The temporal structure of behavior contains a rich source of information about its dynamic organization, origins, and development. Today, advances in sensing and data storage allow researchers to collect multiple dimensions of behavioral data at a fine temporal scale both in and out of the laboratory, leading to the curation of massive multimodal corpora of behavior. However, along with these new opportunities come new challenges. Theories are often underspecified as to the exact nature of these unfolding interactions, and psychologists have (...) limited ready-to-use methods and training for quantifying structures and patterns in behavioral time series. In this paper, we will introduce four techniques to interpret and analyze high-density multi-modal behavior data, namely, to: (1) visualize the raw time series, (2) describe the overall distributional structure of temporal events (Burstiness calculation), (3) characterize the nonlinear dynamics over multiple timescales with Chromatic and Anisotropic Cross-Recurrence Quantification Analysis (CRQA), (4) and quantify the directional relations among a set of interdependent multimodal behavioral variables with Granger Causality. Each technique is introduced in a module with conceptual background, sample data drawn from empirical studies and ready-to-use Matlab scripts. The code modules showcase each technique’s application with detailed documentation to allow more advanced users to adapt them to their own datasets. Additionally, to make our modules more accessible to beginner programmers, we provide a “Programming Basics” module that introduces common functions for working with behavioral timeseries data in Matlab. Together, the materials provide a practical introduction to a range of analyses that psychologists can use to discover temporal structure in high-density behavioral data. (shrink)

Resumo: Yang Naimei (杨耐梅) é uma estrela de cinema chinesa da primeira metade do século XX. O estudo discute a prática de vida e o significado de Yang Naimei como uma flapper chinesa. Flapper se refere à garota moderna que cresceu na Europa e na América, na década de 1920, e desafia o estilo de vida tradicional. Yang Naimei é boa em atuar como uma mulher indisciplinada, na tela. Ela teve muitos relacionamentos em sua vida. Ela acumulou riqueza e reputação (...) com sua carreira de atriz, que incorpora totalmente as características da flapper. No entanto, a sociedade da época não oferecia espaço suficiente para o desenvolvimento sustentável da geração de mulheres, como Yang Naimei, na vida econômica, política e pessoal. Com a sua juventude passada, ela foi eliminada pela indústria cinematográfica e sofreu com a pobreza e a doença, na segunda metade de sua vida. Tomando Yang Naimei como uma silhueta dos tempos, pode-se refletir sobre as voltas e reviravoltas do caminho de desenvolvimento das mulheres chinesas. (shrink)

BackgroundThe acceptance of informal payments by doctors is usually viewed as unethical behavior. However, in China, such behavior is a common practice. In this study, we focus on the gender differences in accepting red packets by young doctors in China.MethodsA total of 413 young doctors were selected for the study, all of whom were grouped by gender. The questionnaire was designed to include general demographic characteristics, whether they had ever been offered red packets, whether they had ever accepted red packets, (...) the reasons for accepting red packets and so on. Wilcoxon rank-sum test, Pearson’s chi-squared test, univariable and multi-variable logistic regressions were used for all analyses by Stata 17.0 SE and p-value < 0.05 was considered statistically significant.ResultsCompared to women, men were more likely to be offered red packets, and the odds ratio was statistically significant after adjusting for age, education, position and geographical areas. In terms of the question of whether or not they had accepted red packets, more male doctors answered “yes” compared to female doctors. However, among those who had accepted red packets, we found that only 42.0% [25/60] of male doctors considered that it was normal to accept such red packets, compared to 85.0% [11/13] of women.ConclusionThe study revealed that Chinese patients and their families were more likely to offer red packets to male doctors. Secondly, among doctors who had been offered red packets, male doctors were more likely to accept red packets than female doctors. In addition, among doctors who had accepted red packets, female doctors were more likely to believe that it was not morally wrong to accept such red packets. (shrink)

This paper proposes a new system whose potential function is with three types of asymmetric potential wells, driven by trichotomous noise. Firstly, the three types of asymmetric bistable system are described in detail, and the changes of asymmetric bistable system potential function under different asymmetric factors are analyzed. Secondly, the effect of potential function parameters, asymmetric factorα, noise intensity D, and the probability of particle transition q is discussed, using numerical simulation. The detection effects of traditional symmetric SR and three (...) types of asymmetric SR are observed and compared under the driving of trichotomous noise and periodic signals. The mean of signal-to-noise ratio gain is the indicator of the system's effectiveness on enhancing weak signal. The results indicate that it can make the detection effect of the asymmetric system better than that of the traditional bistable system by adjusting the parameters of the asymmetric stochastic resonance system and trichotomous noise. (shrink)

In this paper, dynamic behavior analysis has been discussed for a class of switched complex-valued neural networks with interval parameter uncertainties and impulse disturbance. Sufficient conditions for guaranteeing the existence, uniqueness, and global robust exponential stability of the equilibrium point have been obtained by using the homomorphism mapping theorem, the scalar Lyapunov function method, the average dwell time method, and M-matrix theory. Since there is no result concerning the stability problem of switched neural networks defined in complex number domain, the (...) stability results we describe in this paper generalize the existing ones. The effectiveness of the proposed results is illustrated by a numerical example. (shrink)

Drawing on insights from contemporary studies on conceptual metaphor and multimodal metaphor, the present study proposes a tentative analysis of multimodal metaphorical argument from the perspective of the extended theory of pragma-dialectics. A case, Liqun Commercial, is presented as an illustration. This commercial proves to use a conceptual metaphor, life is a journey, that underlies a multimodal metaphorical argument. The conceptual metaphor is highly acceptable in the cultural context of the Chinese target audience. Due to the restrictions imposed by the (...) institutional context, the commercial tries to convince the audience by using implicit argumentative means. In this endeavor, multimodal metaphorical argument is used to enhance the commercial’s effectiveness by foregrounding through framing the aspects the protagonist desires to show and by using a strategy to evade sanctions for ignoring institutional constraints. (shrink)

The identification and analysis of the spatiotemporal dynamic traffic patterns in citywide road networks constitute a crucial process for complex traffic management and control. However, city-scale and synchronal traffic data pose challenges for such kind of quantification, especially during peak hours. Traditional studies rely on data from road-based detectors or multiple communication systems, which are limited in not only access but also coverage. To avoid these limitations, we introduce real-time, traffic condition digital maps as our input. The digital maps keep (...) spatiotemporal urban traffic information in nature and are open to access. Their pixel colors represent traffic conditions on corresponding road segments. We propose a stacked convolutional autoencoder-based method to extract a low-dimension feature vector for each input. We compute and analyze the distances between vectors. The statistical results show different traffic patterns during given periods. With the actual data of Chongqing city, we compare the feature extraction performance between our proposed method and histogram. The result shows our proposed method can extract spatiotemporal features better. For the same data set, there is little difference in the number distribution of red pixels found in the statistics result of the histogram, while differences do exist in the results of our proposed method. We find the most fluctuated morning is on Friday; the most fluctuated evening is on Tuesday; and the most stable evening is on Wednesday. The distance captured by our method can represent the evolution of different traffic conditions during the morning and evening peak hours. Our proposed method provides managers with assistance to sense the dynamics of citywide traffic conditions in quantity. (shrink)

This study proposes a novel fractional-order sliding-mode control strategy with robust switching gain to achieve reliable and high quality of wind-powered microgrid systems. Three fractional-order sliding mode controllers are designed to generate continuous control signals and regulate the outer DC-link voltage loop and inner current loop in the grid-side inverters. High robustness and stability of the grid-side inverter can be guaranteed even in the presence of parameter variations and external disturbances. Owing to the fractional-order sliding manifold and fractional-order integral control (...) law, the chattering is attenuated. The fractional-order robust adaptive switching gain is designed to avoid overestimating the upper bound of matched/unmatched uncertainties, save the control energy, and guarantee the rapidity and robustness of the convergence. Simulations validate the proposed method. (shrink)

This paper studies modal logics whose extensions all have the finite model property, those whose extensions are all recursively axiomatizable, and those whose extensions are all finitely axiomatizable. We call such logics FMP-ensuring, RA-ensuring and FA-ensuring respectively, and prove necessary and sufficient conditions of such logics in $$\mathsf {NExtK4.3}$$. Two infinite descending chains $$\{{\textbf{S}}_{k}\}_{k\in \omega }$$ and $$\{{\textbf{S}} _{k}^{*}\}_{k\in \omega }$$ of logics are presented, in terms of which the necessary and sufficient conditions are formulated as follows: A logic in (...) $$\mathsf {NExtK4.3}$$ is FMP-ensuring iff it extends $${\textbf{S}}_{k}$$ for some $$k\in \omega $$, it is RA-ensuring iff it extends $${\textbf{S}}_{k}^{*}$$ for some $$k\in \omega $$, and it is FA-ensuring iff it is finitely axiomatizable and extends $${\textbf{S}}_{k}^{*}$$ for some $$k\in \omega $$. (shrink)

The traditional ideological and political education should keep pace with the times, and the physical and health education should highlight its value, and must combine the two. This study investigated on the integration path of mental health education and college students’ ideological and political education. A stratified random sampling was conducted on 2021 students of a higher vocational college. The subjects were divided into the control group and the experimental group. The experimental group was given the integrated intervention course of (...) mental health education and ideological and political education of college students, and the control group was given routine teaching. The depression score of the experimental group is significantly lower than that of the control group, and the mental health quality score is higher than that of the control group. Contribution: The integration of mental health education and college students’ Ideological and political education can effectively improve the level of college students’ mental health. This course constantly improves the students’ subjective consciousness, subjective ability and subjective personality, and fully reflects the educational effect of the ideological and political education of college students’ mental health course. This research provides data which could be utilised by academics in the field of practical theology, especially youth ministry and religious educational studies. (shrink)

_The rapid progress of AI technology prompts British novelists to speculate what a technologically advanced Britain will be like: a utopia or a dystopia? Or somewhere in between? Ian McEwan shows his concern over these questions in Machines Like Me (2019). It is suggested that this novel mainly reveals people’s technophobia and presents a techno-dystopian world, for which many people are ill-prepared. Technophobia and techno-dystopia represented in the selected novel echo the debates among the Neo-Luddites, especially the thoughts of Stephen (...) L. Talbott. From the theoretical angle of Neo-Luddism, the present study aims to explore people’s multifaceted technophobia and the features of techno-dystopia in Machines Like Me, so as to disclose people’s values behind their attitudes to technological advancements. Technophobia as depicted in this novel basically includes people’s dread of AI replacement of humans. Moreover, the world presented in the novel is characteristic of a techno-dystopia: the technological replacement of humans results in people’s obsolete status and poses security risks to human beings. The objective of the research is to arouse people’s awareness about adverse technological impacts and provide some insights into how to handle the tension between technophobia and technological development in the real world._ _The study concluded that to some degree, such technophobia and techno-dystopia disillusion technophiles who fervently believe that advances in technology will bring about a utopia or at least help to fulfill a utopian ideal. Serving as a warning alarm for the dystopian future, this novel counters cyber-hype in contemporary society and reflects the real world of profit-fueled technology._. (shrink)

Recently, several studies have demonstrated that tetracyclines, the antibiotics most intensively used in livestock and that are also widely applied in biomedical research, interrupt mitochondrial proteostasis and physiology in animals ranging from round worms, fruit flies, and mice to human cell lines. Importantly, plant chloroplasts, like their mitochondria, are also under certain conditions vulnerable to these and other antibiotics that are leached into our environment. Together these endosymbiotic organelles are not only essential for cellular and organismal homeostasis stricto sensu, but (...) also have an important role to play in the sustainability of our ecosystem as they maintain the delicate balance between autotrophs and heterotrophs, which fix and utilize energy, respectively. Therefore, stricter policies on antibiotic usage are absolutely required as their use in research confounds experimental outcomes, and their uncontrolled applications in medicine and agriculture pose a significant threat to a balanced ecosystem and the well‐being of these endosymbionts that are essential to sustain health.Also watch theVideo Abstract. (shrink)

BackgroundUser selection is an important guarantee for the sustainable development of mobile medical businesses. Under the background of increasingly fierce competition, the decision-making behavior of mobile medical businesses will directly affect the choice of the behavior of users.MethodsThe study constructs the decision-making behavior model of mobile medical business based on the user choice and adds the role of people in government. It uses the game method to explore the relationship between the government, mobile medical business, and users. Finally, it makes (...) an example analysis. Empirical research is conducted to demonstrate the influence of different parameter changes on the results.ResultsThe results show that in the absence of government intervention, users’ choice of filtering information will create a bad environment for mobile medical businesses, and further will be reduced, and the expected utility of businesses will not be affected causing a reduction in expected utility of companies. Similarly, government regulations can effectively improve the mobile medical environment and enhance the expected utility of mobile medical companies.ConclusionThe government needs to formulate relevant laws and regulations to ensure the orderly operation of the mobile medical market and strengthen government supervision. It is necessary to conduct publicity and education to protect the fundamental interests of users and businesses. (shrink)

A portrait recognition system can play an important role in emergency evacuation in mass emergencies. This paper designed a portrait recognition system, analyzed the overall structure of the system and the method of image preprocessing, and used the Single Shot MultiBox Detector (SSD) algorithm for portrait detection. It also designed an improved algorithm combining principal component analysis (PCA) with linear discriminant analysis (LDA) for portrait recognition and tested the system by applying it in a shopping mall to collect and monitor (...) the portrait and establish a data set. The results showed that the missing detection rate and false detection rate of the SSD algorithm were 0.78 and 2.89%, respectively, which were lower than those of the AdaBoost algorithm. Comparisons with PCA, LDA, and PCA + LDA algorithms demonstrated that the recognition rate of the improved PCA + LDA algorithm was the highest, which was 95.8%, the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was the largest, and the recognition time was the shortest, which was 465 ms. The experimental results show that the improved PCA + LDA algorithm is reliable in portrait recognition and can be used for emergency evacuation in mass emergencies. (shrink)

Chinese people attach importance to intuition and imagery in ways of thinking that are quite sensible, but the result, i.e. the thoughts that are popularized in virtue of political power, are rather rational. These rational thoughts, which were influenced by Buddhism and continually became introspective, had been growing more irrational factors. Up to the middle and late Ming Dynasty, when the economy was developed, they merged with the growing emphasis on daily needs of food and clothes and the envisagement to (...) the utilitarian circumstances, and finally broke through the threshold of rationalism. Under the attack of Geng Dingxiang, Li Zhi who emphasized these thoughts was forced beyond his previous boundaries and led a whole variation in how he viewed a series of issues including values, humanity, ethics and aesthetics. This indicated a historical change from rationalism to irrationalism in Chinese humanism and aesthetics thoughts. (shrink)

Extreme formalism is a radical and important position in the aesthetics of inorganic nature. Zangwill offers a new formulation of what formal aesthetic properties are, according to which a formal aesthetic property of a thing is an aesthetic property that is determined merely by its appearance properties. An appearance property of a thing is the way it seems if perceived under certain conditions. With the notion of formal aesthetic properties formulated as such, extreme formalism, the claim that all aesthetic properties (...) of inorganic things are formal, says that all aesthetic properties of inorganic things are determined merely by their appearance properties. Recently, Zangwill defends extreme formalism by deflecting the famous counter-example of the cumulonimbus cloud given by Budd, and argues for extreme formalism by arguing against the idea of the existence of non-formal beauty in inorganic nature. In this paper, we argue that both his defense and positive arguments are not successful. If our arguments are right, the burden of proof is still on Zangwill’s side. (shrink)

A hybrid preference framework is proposed for strategic conflict analysis to integrate preference strength and preference uncertainty into the paradigm of the graph model for conflict resolution (GMCR) under multiple decision makers. This structure offers decision makers a more flexible mechanism for preference expression, which can include strong or mild preference of one state or scenario over another, as well as equal preference. In addition, preference between two states can be uncertain. The result is a preference framework that is more (...) general than existing models which consider preference strength and preference uncertainty separately. Within the hybrid preference structure, four kinds of stability are defined as solution concepts and a post-stability analysis, called status quo analysis, which can be used to track the evolution of a given conflict. Algorithms are provided for implementing the key inputs of stability analysis and status quo analysis within the extended preference structure. The new stability concepts under the hybrid preference structure can be used to model complex strategic conflicts arising in practical applications, and can provide new insights for the conflicts. The method is illustrated using the conflict over proposed bulk water exports from Lake Gisborne in Newfoundland, Canada. (shrink)

PurposeWe conducted a driving simulator study to investigate the effects of monitoring intersection cross traffic on gaze behaviors and responses to pedestrians by drivers with hemianopic field loss.MethodsSixteen HFL and sixteen normal vision participants completed two drives in an urban environment. At 30 intersections, a pedestrian ran across the road when the participant entered the intersection, requiring a braking response to avoid a collision. Intersections with these pedestrian events had either no cross traffic, one approaching car from the side opposite (...) the pedestrian location, or two approaching cars, one from each side at the same time.ResultsOverall, HFL drivers made more of cross-traffic on both the blind and seeing sides. They made more numerous and larger gaze scans when they fixated cars on both sides and had lower rates of unsafe responses to blind- but not seeing-side pedestrians. They were more likely to demonstrate compensatory blind-side fixation behaviors when there was no car on the seeing side. Fixation behaviors and unsafe response rates were most similar to those of NV drivers when cars were fixated on both sides.ConclusionFor HFL participants, making more scans, larger scans and safer responses to pedestrians crossing from the blind side were associated with looking at cross traffic from both directions. Thus, cross traffic might serve as a reminder to scan and provide a reference point to guide blind-side scanning of drivers with HFL. Proactively checking for cross-traffic cars from both sides could be an important safety practice for drivers with HFL. (shrink)

Court conciliation conducted by judges in Chinese people’s courts has been playing a vital role in resolving civil disputes. When it heaps praises and compliments, it also faces severe criticisms such as pressing parties to settle due to judges’ over-engagement. To date, except for mere criticisms from the legal literature, few efforts have been made to reveal how judges get engaged linguistically in conciliation and whether their engagement exceeds the limit in each phase of court conciliation. This paper, taking the (...) engagement system of the appraisal framework and the exchange structure model as the theoretical basis, aims to analyze the features of judges’ engagement and the underlying forces that influence their engagement. Data-analysis shows that for court conciliation conducted in court, judges often employ dialogically contractive resources in uni-directional information exchange structures to warrant their engagement. Under the co-influence of the driving and curbing forces, judges are often “dancing with shackles” in court conciliation. (shrink)

书中选录了马、恩、列、斯、毛5位革命导师的哲学名著31篇,介绍了每篇的写作时代背景、内容重点等。.