This essay indicates that Confucian family-based ethics is by no means a stumbling block to organ donation in China. We contend that China should not change to an opt-out consent system in order to enhance donation because a “hard” opt-out system is unethical, and a “soft” opt-out system is unhelpful. We argue that the recently-introduced familist model of motivation for organ donation in mainland China can provide a proper incentive for donation. This model, and the family priority right that this (...) model supports, is ethically justifiable in terms of Confucian family-based ethics. (shrink)

Some of our beliefs are institutional; that is, beliefs whose content is to a large extent shaped by institutions, such as beliefs about intellectual property, trade policy, or traffic rules. In this chapter, we propose a novel account of institutional beliefs, as we call them. In particular, we argue that institutional beliefs are primarily attributable to social entities, such as groups or collectives, and only secondarily to individual agents. This is because institutional beliefs respond to specific problems that, in principle, (...) only collectives face. However, existing methodology in behavioural science primarily relies on eliciting beliefs through individual choice data, which presents challenges for empirically modelling our proposed concept of institutional beliefs. To address this challenge, we propose to speak of institutional beliefs attributable to individual agents as ‘qua beliefs’. That is, institutional beliefs attributable to individual agents acting qua members of certain institutionally shaped groups. Within this framework, individuals’ qua actions occur in a shared realm of problems that can only be addressed through collective efforts. The relationship between individuals and their groups can be rendered tractable under formalised conditions. Under these conditions, choice data collected from individuals need not obstruct the elicitation of institutional beliefs for empirical study at both the collective and the individual level. We refer to these conditions as “IS conditions”, which are developed based on the synthesis between an interpretationist understanding of mental states and standard models of revealed preference theory as used in experimental economics. For an illustration of how this approach can be operationalised experimentally, we direct our readers to chapter 10 of this volume, where an experimental study applied our account of institutional beliefs. (shrink)

Student employability is a key aspect of any university degree. The relationship between high student learning outcomes and high employability is a problem that needs to be addressed and improved by colleges and universities. Students with high employability can find good jobs after graduation and perform well in the workplace. Employability is associated with the success of university education, thus giving the university a good reputation. This study explores the development of employability, alongside teaching and student learning abilities to examine (...) how these variables affect student employability. The study collected 442 responses to a questionnaire to investigate the relationship between pedagogy for employability, problem-based learning, absorptive capacity, and student employability based on a structural model. The SEM results show that pedagogy for employability and problem-based learning positively correlate to absorptive capacity; pedagogy for employability and absorptive capacity positively correlate to student employability. We then analyzed a case study teaching intervention strategy with 221 students from the school of management and discuss the differential results of all variables. Results showed that the test group was superior to the control group in each variable performance, indicating that the intervention strategy proved effective. Based on these findings, this study proposes suggestions for future research. (shrink)

In his doctor's thesis [1], Henkin has shown that if a formal logic is consistent, and sufficiently complex, then it must admit a non-standard model. In particular, he showed that there must be a model in which that portion of the model which is supposed to represent the positive integers of the formal logic is not in fact isomorphic to the positive integers; indeed it is not even well ordered by what is supposed to be the relation of ≦.For the (...) purposes of the present paper, we do not need a precise definition of what is meant by a standard model of a formal logic. The non-standard models which we shall discuss will be flagrantly non-standard, as for instance a model of the sort whose existence is proved by Henkin. It will suffice if we and our readers are in agreement that a model of a formal logic is not a standard model if either: The relation in the model which represents the equality relation in the formal logic is not the equality relation for objects of the model. That portion of the model which is supposed to represent the positive integers of the formal logic is not well ordered by the relation ≦. That portion of the model which is supposed to represent the ordinal numbers of the formal logic is not well ordered by the relation ≦. (shrink)

This study aimed at exploring the impact of post-epidemic era on teachers’ behavioral intention of distance education. In this study, purposive sampling method was used to enroll 390 teachers in colleges and universities, high schools and vocational schools, and junior high and elementary schools to be the research subjects for the questionnaire survey. A total of 360 questionnaires were collected for statistics, and AMOS 23.0 statistical software was used to analyze the correlation between variables. Meanwhile, a structural equation model was (...) used to analyze and verify the impact of the technology acceptance model, information system success model, and diffusion of innovations theory. According to the results, the system quality of distance teaching platforms certainly affected perceived usefulness, and perceived usefulness affected teachers’ attitudes toward using distance teaching systems. In addition, perceived ease of use had an impact on perceived usefulness, and trialability had an impact on teachers’ attitudes toward using distance teaching systems. Finally, teachers’ attitude toward using a distance teaching system also affected their behavioral intention. According to the results, suggestions were made in this study to teachers and students for distance teaching. Additionally, the main contribution of this study lies in providing specific strategies for further distance teaching through empirical results in combination with on-site teaching. (shrink)

In the first Critique, Kant famously holds a novel practical notion of Belief (Glauben) as assent justified not by evidence but by practical considerations. This paper examines the early development of Kant’s practical notion of Belief prior to the first Critique. It aims to make clear what prompted Kant to develop this notion in the first place, and how this notion came to assume its crucial role in Kant’s critical system. This development, I argue, has two main steps. The first (...) is his introduction of a practical notion of Belief in mid-to-late 1760s. I argue that he did so because he regards this notion as a useful tool to get ordinary people to justifiably commit to the existence of God and an after-life. The second step is Kant’s abandonment of the objective validity of his logical proof of God around 1772. This step elevated Belief from a merely useful means to the only justified way to commit to the existence of God and an after-life. This second step, I argue, is closely connected to Kant’s pivot to the view that the objective validity of concepts requires sensibly given objects, and it is motivated by Kant’s concern with subject-cancelling real repugnance. (shrink)

ObjectiveThis study aimed to analyze the hearing improvement and prognosis factors of idiopathic sudden sensorineural hearing loss in different ages with initial total hearing loss.MethodsWe reviewed the medical records of 5,711 hospitalized patients with ISSNHL from 2016 to 2021 in our center. All of the patients had been treated with uniform combination drug therapy. After excluding the patients with initial partial hearing loss and those diagnosed with clear etiology, 188 patients were enrolled in this study and divided into six age (...) groups. In all groups, decreases in pure-tone average 1 month posttreatment, effective rate, and clinical characteristics were analyzed.ResultsAmong the 188 enrolled patients, 86% had vertigo. Complete recovery was seen in 0.5% of patients, and marked recovery was seen in 43% of patients. The mean 1 month posttreatment PTAs were as follows: 18–30 years: 80 ± 7.5 dB; 31–40 years: 100 ± 9.0 dB; 41–50 years: 99 ± 8.3 dB; 51–60 years: 101 ± 8.6 dB; 61–70 years: 96 ± 9.6 dB; and ≥ 71 years: 88 ± 13.0 dB. Compared with the other groups, the 18–30- years group showed better recovery of hearing threshold in five frequencies, and the recovery of hearing threshold at 0.25 and 0.5 Hz was better than the recovery at 1, 2, and 4 kHz. According to the results of the chi-square test statistical analysis, vertigo and comorbidities were associated with a poor prognosis of ISSNHL.ConclusionIn summary, the treatment outcomes of patients with ISSNHL with initial total hearing loss were poor. There was a significant age-related difference with respect to marked recovery 1 month posttreatment, and the 18–30- years group showed better recovery than the other age groups. (shrink)

In 2016 the Chinese government initiated a nationwide campaign aiming to eliminate poverty in China by 2020. Over 20% of listed firms in China have made significant contributions to the campaign. Using hand-collected data on listed firms’ contributions to the campaign and multivariate analyses, we examine whether managers’ and politicians’ personal incentives play an important role in firms’ contributions to the campaign. The results show that firms are more likely to contribute if they are state-owned and managers are appointed by (...) governments, if managers have a higher risk of being targeted in a concurrent anti-corruption campaign, if the political leaders in their province are new or intend to seek promotion, and if managers or directors have experienced poverty in their early life. The results suggest that it is important to consider managers’ and politicians’ personal incentives in CSR activities that could have a grand social impact. (shrink)

The eco-environmental problems have become a hot topic of global concern today. Many scholars seek intellectual resources from traditional cultures to solve these problems. This article tries to extract the rich ecological thoughts from the text of Laozi. According to Laozi, Tao is ‘the mother of all beneath Heaven’, that is, the whole universe, including man and nature, evolve from Tao. This indicates the primary harmony of man and nature. However, man mistakenly regards himself as the lord of nature, and (...) uses his force and methods of science and technology to enslave nature, causing the current ecological crisis. The way to resolve the crisis is pointed out in the following statement: ‘Man should imitate Earth, Earth should imitate Heaven, Heaven should imitate Tao, and Tao is being what it is’. Laozi advocates man to imitate nature, leading a life of ‘having no self’, ‘wu wei’ or ‘desiring no-desire’. This is the Tao-centred way of living, which brings about a transformation in human existence. Contribution: This article argues that the current ecological crisis is caused by mankind’s mistaken belief that they are the masters of nature. The philosophical ideas of Laozi provide a way to resolve the crisis, advocating that humans should imitate nature and adopt a Tao-centred way of living. This way of living brings about a transformation in human existence. The article provides a philosophical perspective on how to solve contemporary environmental problems. (shrink)

on how to justify the rationality of sciences.

With the development of geoscience, users are eager to obtain preferred service from geospatial information intelligently and automatically. However, the information grows rapidly while the service gets more complicated, which makes it difficult to find out the targeted information for an exact service in geospatial issues. In this paper, a novel method is proposed to promote the geospatial service from information to knowledge with spatiotemporal semantics. Both prompted and professional knowledge are further refined to be published as a service. In (...) terms of an exact task, numerous related services are recombined to a service chain under user requirement. Finally, the proposed method is applied to monitor the environment on the Air Quality Index and soil moisture in the Sensor Web service platform, the results of which indicate geospatial knowledge service is more efficient to support spatial decision-making. (shrink)

This paper examines the association between corporate philanthropy and tunneling by controlling shareholders. Using a unique dataset from China, the paper finds evidence that firms donating more are less likely to tunnel. The negative association between philanthropy and tunneling is stronger when firms are faced with more severe agency conflicts, as indicated by lower largest shareholding, fewer growth opportunities, lower state ownership, and weaker product market competition. The results suggest that companies engaging in philanthropy have incentives to enhance their reputations (...) and improve their relationships with stakeholders. (shrink)

Recent research has begun to explore individual differences in statistical learning, and how those differences may be related to other cognitive abilities, particularly their effects on language learning. In this research, we explored a different type of relationship between language learning and statistical learning: the possibility that learning a new language may also influence statistical learning by changing the regularities to which learners are sensitive. We tested two groups of participants, Mandarin Learners and Naïve Controls, at two time points, 6 (...) months apart. At each time point, participants performed two different statistical learning tasks: an artificial tonal language statistical learning task and a visual statistical learning task. Only the Mandarin-learning group showed significant improvement on the linguistic task, whereas both groups improved equally on the visual task. These results support the view that there are multiple influences on statistical learning. Domain-relevant experiences may affect the regularities that learners can discover when presented with novel stimuli. (shrink)

Low parental awareness and knowledge about newborn screening have been identified as a public issue. This study explored Chinese parents’ self-evaluation of awareness, knowledge, and methods of receiving information about newborn screening. Using convenience sampling, we included 614 respondents who were expectant parents or parents of children aged 0-3 years. Our self-made questionnaire comprised four sections: sociodemographic characteristics, self-evaluation of awareness, detailed knowledge about newborn screening, and practical and expected methods of receiving newborn screening information. We found that 72.9% of (...) participants were classified as aware of newborn screening. However, only 14.2% of the participants received a passing score on the newborn screening detailed knowledge questions. Knowledge level about newborn screening was significantly associated with gender (P <.001), age (P <.05), education level (P <.05), residence (P <.05), family income (P <.05), and number of children (P <.05). The knowledge acquisition about newborn screening mainly came from hospital-related training (62.1%). Additionally, nearly half of the respondents (48.0%) expressed a preference for learning more about newborn screening through social media platforms, such as WeChat. While the majority of expectant or new parents were aware of newborn screening, only a minority had a thorough understanding of it. Various sociodemographic factors were associated with the level of parental knowledge about newborn screening. It is recommended to use hospital lectures or social media initiatives to educate parents in China. (shrink)

Public and experts’ perceptions of benefits and risks of nanotechnology constitute an important element of nanoethics studies. On the one hand, compared with traditional ethics, nanoethics is a future-oriented ethics. The construction of ethical norms requires public participation. On the other hand, nanotechnology is characterized by uncertainty. Our previous research showed the Chinese public’s support for nanotechnology was associated more with beliefs, including views of technology and the weighing of benefits and risks of nanotechnology, and less with knowledge about nanotechnology; (...) the support was high but might change over time. Meanwhile, Chinese researchers have been actively conducting studies on nanotechnology while being highly aware of nanosafety issues. In this context, we further examined in the present study Chinese nanoresearchers’ perceptions of specific benefits and risks of nanotechnology, compared them with those of the Chinese public, and examined the Chinese nanoresearchers’ perceptions of risks of specific nanoapplications. Initial cross-regional comparisons were made with results from equivalent US and European surveys. Results showed Chinese nanoresearchers perceived a higher level of overall nanobenefits than the public and an almost equal level of overall nanorisks with the public. Four nanorisks were perceived by a higher proportion of experts than public; the experts likely relied on technical expertise while the public, possessing little knowledge about nanotechnology, might have exercised caution based on experiences and observations of other technologies. Of 23 nanoapplications, Chinese nanoresearchers regarded food using nanomaterials as the most risky and displays using nanomaterials as the least risky. Similarities and differences were observed in comparisons of Chinese with US and European survey results. In our age of technology and economic globalization, this research is of significance both for China’s formulation of nanotechnology development strategies and for the further study on nanoethics and good governance of emerging technologies such as nanotechnology worldwide. (shrink)

In recent years, somatosensory interaction technology, represented by Microsoft’s Kinect hardware platform, has been widely used in various fields, such as entertainment, education, and medicine. Kinect technology can easily capture and record behavioral data, which provides new opportunities for behavioral and psychological correlation analysis research. In this paper, an automatic decision-style recognition method is proposed. Experiments involving 240 subjects were conducted to obtain face data and individual decision-making style score. The face data was obtained using the Kinect camera, and the (...) decision-style score were obtained via a questionnaire. To realize automatic recognition of an individual decision-making style, machine learning was employed to establish the mapping relationship between the face data and a scaled evaluation of the decision-making style score. This study adopts a variety of classical machine learning algorithms, including Linear regression, Support vector machine regression, Ridge regression, and Bayesian ridge regression. The experimental results show that the linear regression model returns the best results. The correlation coefficient between the linear regression model evaluation results and the scale evaluation results was 0.6, which represents a medium and higher correlation. The results verify the feasibility of automatic decision-making style recognition method based on facial analysis. (shrink)

Online discussion forums are an essential and standard setup in online courses to facilitate interactions among learners. However, learners’ inadequate participation in online discussion forums is a long-standing challenge, which necessitates instructor intervention and the design consideration of online learning platforms. This research proposes and studies the role of mandatory participation, i.e., learners’ participation in online course forums by instructors’ requirements, in fostering their voluntary participation and boosting their learning performance. This novel effect link between mandatory participation and voluntary participation (...) has not been assessed in previous research. An empirical study is conducted using a large-scale dataset of 27,767 learners from a leading massive open online course platform in China. The findings indicate that besides its direct effect on learning performance, learners’ mandatory participation has a significant positive effect on their voluntary participation in online course forums, enhancing learning performance. Moreover, the effect of mandatory participation on voluntary participation varies across learner groups, being more prominent for early registrants than late registrants and part-time learners than full-time learners. This research contributes to the online learning literature by introducing mandatory participation as a viable approach to foster voluntary participation and boost learning performance through enhanced voluntary participation. It provides evidence on the effectiveness of the novel design feature of MOOC platforms that enables and facilitates the mandatory participation mechanism in online learning. (shrink)

Entrepreneurs' live streaming is an important tool for marketing, and it can increase consumer engagement, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Previous live streaming literature mainly focused on third-party live streaming, targeted at professional streamers and online celebrities. This study aims to discuss the factors underlying consumer engagement in the ELS. Using a mixed method of a quasi-experiment and an online survey, we analyzed the impact of the ELS on consumer engagement and the factors that drive consumer engagement in the ELS (...) in each of 231 samples. In the enterprises' live streaming, the ELS has a significantly higher influence on consumer engagement compared with the employees' live streaming. In the ELS, based on source credibility theory and signaling theory, this study concludes that factors of ELS's credibility consist of internal factors and external factors. The authors demonstrate that both internal and external factors positively affect trust in activities. Trust in activities positively affects consumer engagement and mediates the effects of reputation, expertise, interactivity, guarantee, and authenticity on consumer engagement. Moreover, reputation and expertise positively improve consumers' admiration toward the entrepreneur streamer and in turn, positively increase consumer engagement. Interactivity and expertise shorten the psychological distance. Psychological distance negatively affects consumer engagement and only helps increase the positive effect of interactivity on consumer engagement. These findings have theoretical and practical implications for live streaming e-commerce. (shrink)

Pessimists about moral deference argue that there is something special about moral beliefs which make it impermissible for agents to defer on moral matters. In this paper, I argue that, even if pessimists are right that there is something special about moral beliefs, that is not enough to render moral deference impermissible. A stronger requirement—the rationality requirement—makes deferring to experts not only permissible but also rationally required. When one does not defer to one’s perceived moral expert, one either violates Belief (...) Consistency or violates Belief Closure. The moral considerations, such as moral understanding or virtue, for not deferring to experts either fail to show that not deferring is a better option than deferring or fail to show that those moral considerations outweigh rationality requirements. (shrink)

Functionalist accounts of blame have been rising in popularity. Proponents of the approach claim that, by defining blame in terms of its function or functions, their account has the advantage of being able to accommodate a wide range of attitudes and activities as blame; but their opponents question the extensional and explanatory adequacy of such accounts. This paper contributes to this burgeoning literature by presenting new challenges to the existing functionalist accounts. The fundamental problem, I shall argue, lies in the (...) fact that they all focus on using functions to define blame as a type of practice, but this strategy fails to pick out a unique moral-psychological type and does not offer a complete set of extension-determining criteria for the concept of blame. This amounts to a serious theoretical disadvantage. I consider various responses to the challenges throughout the paper, concluding that the best reply available to the functionalist theorist involves using functions to directly define blame tokens. (shrink)

Searching is one of the most fundamental operations in many complex systems. However, the complexity of the search process would increase dramatically in high-dimensional space. K-dimensional tree, as a classical data structure, has been widely used in high-dimensional vital data search. However, at present, common methods proposed for KD tree construction are either unstable or time-consuming. This paper proposed a new algorithm to construct a balanced KD tree based on presorted results. Compared with previous similar method, the new algorithm could (...) reduce the complexity of the construction process from O level to O level, where K is the number of dimensions and N is the number of data. In addition, with the help of presorted results, the performance of the new method is no longer subject to the initial conditions, which expands the application scope of KD tree. (shrink)

Previous studies have demonstrated that orientation-specific deprivation in early life can lead to neural deficits of spatial vision in certain space, and can even result in meridional amblyopia. Individuals with astigmatism are the optimal and natural models for exploring this asymmetric development of spatial vision in the human visual system. This study aims to assess the contrast sensitivity function and EEG signals along two principal meridians in participants with regular astigmatism when being optimal optical corrected. Twelve participants with astigmatism and (...) thirteen participants with were recruited in the current study. CSFs and spatial sweep visual evoked potentials were measured with vertical and horizontal sinewave gratings along two principal meridians monocularly. Area under log CSF, spatial frequency threshold corresponding to 80% contrast gratings, and CSF acuity were calculated from CSF test. In addition, sVEP amplitudes and thresholds were calculated with the recursive least square method. Participants with astigmatism exhibited marked vertical-horizontal resolution disparities even after they were corrected with optimal optical corrections. CSF tests showed that AULCSF along weak meridian was lower than that along strong meridian in both groups. Significant meridional disparity of CSF acuity was also found in both groups. In addition, the MA group showed larger meridional disparity compared to the AST group. Spatial sVEP thresholds also supported the existence of marked meridional disparity. Our results suggest that meridian-specific partial deprivation in early life might lead to monocularly asymmetric development of spatial vision in the human visual system. In terms of application, we tested the feasibility and reliability of adopting psychophysical and EEG scalings to investigate the asymmetric development of spatial vision related to astigmatism. These paradigms are potentially applicable to reduce and even eliminate the meridional disparity in the primary visual cortex by adopting perceptual learning or other vision-related interventions. (shrink)

This study explores how the variability of the work environment shapes the impact of educational level diversity on team creativity. By adopting an integrative framework—“status characteristics–information elaboration” model as a theoretical lens, we propose and examine the moderating roles of task and personnel variability in educational level diversity–team creativity relationship. Utilizing multiple survey data collected from 90 knowledge work teams, the empirical results indicate that educational level diversity is more conducive to team creativity when teams are confronted with more variable (...) tasks and when teams experience less frequent personnel changes. The findings of this study provide valuable insight on the conditions under which team diversity’s information potential is more likely to realize and contribute to a more context-based understanding of the relationship between diversity and creativity. (shrink)

This paper examines the effect of financial shared service centers (FSSCs) on corporate misconduct. Using a sample of Chinese public companies with hand-collected FSSC data, we find that the adoption of FSSCs is negatively associated with the likelihood and frequency of corporate misconduct. The results hold to a battery of robustness tests. Moreover, we show that the negative association between FSSCs and corporate misconduct is more pronounced in firms that have no management equity ownership, disclose internal control weaknesses, and have (...) more subsidiaries. Additional analyses indicate that FSSCs can help mitigate both disclosure-related and nondisclosure-related misconduct. (shrink)