The effectiveness of a quality management program of medical care has to meet not just the quality management standards, but also has to be flexible, taking into account the features of a medical organization and the existing problems in the medical care support. The effectiveness of a quality management program is based on feedback, so the quality control of medical care is so important. The study of problems in medical care gives us the ability to improve both, the quality management (...) program of medical care and the quality and scope of medical services constantly. (shrink)

Atmospheric pollution is deteriorating, which has affected the evolution of respiratory disease for the exposed human worldwide. Thus, exploring the influence of air pollution on the evolution of disease transmission dynamics is a significant issue. In this article, a stochastic susceptible-infective epidemic model in a polluted atmospheric environment is investigated. The existence and uniqueness of the global positive solution are established. In virtue of the aggregation methods and Lyapunov function, the sufficient conditions of disease extinction, persistence, and existence of the (...) stationary distribution are established, respectively. TakingPM2.5concentration as the air pollutant index, numerical simulations are carried out to support these results. Our results indicated that the disease transmission dynamics are significantly associated with the environmental atmospheric pollution and fluctuation. (shrink)

This article examines the relationship between the precautionary principle and the well-known Hill criteria of causation. Some have charged that the Hill criteria are anti-precautionary because the...

Partner selection is the primary aspect of the formation of knowledge collaboration teams. We propose a method of partner selection for KCTs based on a weighted social network analysis method in which the individual knowledge competence and the collaboration performance of candidates are both considered. To select the desired partners, a biobjective 0-1 model is built, integrating the knowledge competence and collaboration performance, which is an NP-hard problem. Then, a multiobjective genetic algorithm is developed to solve the proposed model. Finally, (...) a real-world example is provided to illustrate the applicability of the model, and the MOGA is implemented to search for Pareto solutions of partner selection for KCT in this case. Moreover, some simulation examples are used to test the efficiency of the algorithm. The results suggest that the proposed method can support effective and practical partner selection. (shrink)

In this paper we investigate conditions for Lp-computability which are in accordance with the classical Grzegorczyk notion of computability for a continuous function. For a given computable real number p ≥ 1 and a compact computable rectangle I ⊂ ℝq, we show that an Lp function f ∈ Lp is LP-computable if and only if f is sequentially computable as a linear functional and the Lp-modulus function of f is effectively continuous at the origin of ℝq.

The purpose of this study was to explore whether the performance of the green innovation brought positive effect to the competitive advantage. This study found that the performances of the green product innovation and green process innovation were positively correlated to the corporate competitive advantage. Therefore, the result meant that the investment in the green product innovation and green process innovation was helpful to the businesses. This study argued that the businesses should cognize the correct value and positioning of the (...) green innovation. (shrink)

This study examines the social impacts of labor-related corporate social responsibility policies or corporate codes of conduct on upholding labor standards through a case study of CSR discourses and codes implementation of Reebok - a leading branded company enjoying a high-profiled image for its human rights achievement - in a large Taiwanese-invested athletic footwear factory located in South China. I find although implementation of Reebok labor-related codes has resulted in a "race to ethical and legal minimum" labor standards when notoriously (...) inhumane and seriously illegal labor rights abuses were curbed, Chinese workers were forced to work harder and faster but, earned less payment and the employee-elected trade union installed through codes implementation operated more like a "company union" rather than an autonomous workers' organization representing worker' interests. In order to explain the paradoxical effects of Reebok labor-related codes on labor standards, I argue the result is determined by both structural forces and agency-related factors embedded in industrial, national and local contexts. To put it shortly, I find the effectiveness of Reebok labor-related codes is constrained not only by unsolved tension between Reebok's impetus for profit maximization and commitment to workers' human rights, but also by hard-nosed competition realities at marketplace, and Chinese government's insufficient protection of labor rights. Despite drawing merely from a single case study, these findings illuminate key determinants inhibiting the effectiveness of labor-related CSR policies or codes in upholding labor standards, and hence two possible way-outs of the deadlock: sharing cost for improving labor standards among key players in global supply chain; and combining regulatory power of voluntary codes and compulsory state legislations. (shrink)

Social media users have increased rapidly in recent years; however, most are “silent users” who rarely share information online. To maintain social media companies’ stable operation and development, this research explored the effects of flow experience and identity formation on users’ intrinsic motivation to facilitate aggressive, spontaneous, and habitual participation in virtual communities. A total of 487 valid questionnaires were collected and underwent regression analysis. The results revealed that all three intrinsic motivations had a significant impact on social media participation, (...) with social interaction exerting the strongest influence. Flow experience and identification had significant, partial mediating effects on the relationship between motivation and participation. Several suggestions were provided based on the results to help social media enterprises increase user participation. It is hoped that this research could facilitate in transforming users into habitual participants to keep the operations of the virtual community stable and enduring. (shrink)

Resumo: A música tradicional chinesa tem uma longa história, repleta de conceitos estéticos ricos e extensos. A integração da música tradicional e das ideias estéticas tem um impacto significativo na formação do sistema musical tradicional da China. Este artigo explora a influência interativa da música tradicional e das ideias estéticas, analisando as ideias musicais da estética tradicional chinesa, buscando promover a integração e o desenvolvimento da música tradicional e das ideias estéticas. Discute o conteúdo das ideias estéticas musicais do confucionismo, (...) taoísmo e moísmo, bem como a posição das ideias estéticas na música tradicional chinesa. Ao combinar e analisar a literatura relevante, livros antigos e materiais históricos, é possível compreender a evolução histórica e a influência mútua da música tradicional e do pensamento estético. Os conceitos estéticos tradicionais não só desempenharam um papel importante no desenvolvimento da música chinesa, mas também na promoção do desenvolvimento da música chinesa, ao longo de milhares de anos de história. Na avaliação da interação entre a música tradicional e o pensamento estético, pode ocorrer uma situação em que o conceito seja demasiado simplificado. A relação entre a música tradicional e o pensamento estético é muito complicada, envolvendo muitas escolas, períodos históricos e regiões. Pode não ser capaz de cobrir totalmente todos os fatores de influência, se for resumido apenas pelo confucionismo, taoísmo e budismo. Sugere-se que a educação e a herança da música tradicional e das ideias estéticas sejam fortalecidas, na educação musical. Artistas musicais mais tradicionais e os teóricos da estética devem ser cultivados, a fim de poder transmitir a música tradicional e as ideias estéticas às gerações futuras e continuar a desenvolver-se e a inovar, na sociedade contemporânea. (shrink)

The paper explores the influence of greenwash on green trust and discusses the mediation roles of green consumer confusion and green perceived risk. The research object of this study focuses on Taiwanese consumers who have the purchase experience of information and electronics products in Taiwan. This research employs an empirical study by means of the structural equation modeling. The results show that greenwash is negatively related to green trust. Therefore, this study suggests that companies must reduce their greenwash behaviors to (...) enhance their consumers’ green trust. In addition, this study finds out that green consumer confusion and green perceived risk mediate the negative relationship between greenwash and green trust. The results also demonstrate that greenwash is positively associated with green consumer confusion and green perceived risk which would negatively affect green trust. It means that greenwash does not only negatively affect green trust directly but also negatively influence it via green consumer confusion and green perceived risk indirectly. Hence, if companies would like to reduce the negative relationship between greenwash and green trust, they need to decrease their consumers’ green consumer confusion and green perceived risk. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe Moving Time metaphor and the Moving Ego metaphor are common in English speakers’ conceptualization of time. Previous research has suggested a broad range of factors influencing people’s...

© The Author, 2017. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. In this article, we introduce a lightweight dynamic epistemic logical framework for automated planning under initial uncertainty. We generalize the standard conformant planning problem in AI in two crucial aspects: first, the planning goal can be any formula expressed in an epistemic propositional dynamic logic ; second, procedural constraints of the desired plan specified by regular expressions can be imposed. We then reduce the problem of generalized conformant planning (...) to the model checking problem of our logic. Although our conformant planning problem is much more general than the standard one with Boolean goals and no procedural constraints, the complexity is still PSPACE-complete which is equally hard as standard conformant planning over explicit transition systems. (shrink)

No research explored intellectual capital about green innovation or environmental management. This study wanted to fill this research gap, and proposed a novel construct - green intellectual capital - to explore the positive relationship between green intellectual capital and competitive advantages of firms. The empirical results of this study showed that the three types of green intellectual capital - green human capital, green structural capital, and green relational capital - had positive effects on competitive advantages of firms. Moreover, this study (...) found that green relational capital was the most common among these three types of green intellectual capital, and the three types of green intellectual capital of Medium & Small Enterprises were all significantly less than those of large enterprises in the information and electronics industry in Taiwan. In sum, companies investing many resources and efforts in green intellectual capital could not only meet the trends of strict international environmental regulations and popular environmental consciousness of consumers, but also eventually obtain corporate competitive advantages. (shrink)

At present, people mainly focus on health education for adolescents. The health education of adolescents is related to future of adolescents. In youth, their emotions are easily influenced. Therefore, this manuscript constructs an interactive health education model for adolescents through affective computing. Researchers in various countries have done a lot of research on human–computer interaction, and affective computing is one of the research hotspots. This manuscript aims to study the use of affective computing to construct an interactive health education model (...) for adolescents. It proposed an interactive emotional algorithm based on emotional computing and focuses on the ICABoost algorithm. The experimental results of this paper show that the surveyed junior high school students are divided into three grades: the first, second, and third grades. Among them, 11, 11, and 13 were mentally healthy, with a total percentage of only 18.5%; 16, 14, and 16 were moderately severe in health education, accounting for 24.3%. The percentage of severe cases was 29.6%. It can be seen that, through the investigation of this manuscript, it can be seen that today’s youth health education should be paid attention to. Only by constructing a corresponding interactive health education model for young people can we promote the comprehensive and healthy development of young people. (shrink)

The most ancient monuments of ancient Christian art were found in catacombs located outside the cities. The Christian catacombs were a complex plexus of underground narrow galleries with numerous niches where the coffins of martyrs and bishops were placed. These niches formed a kind of rectangular chambers, the walls and surfaces of which were decorated with images. Thus, early Christian art begins with catacomb paintings.

Religious experience differs from the empirical experience of the subject by psychologicality, the transcendental vitality of understanding objective phenomena. The main criterion of a person's religious experience is his belief in the truth of the existing a priori and the interrelations of things and phenomena of the objective and subjective world revealed to him in personal experience. Faith is a sense of the interconnection between the subject and the object, which has an experienced transcendental character. Human experience in this respect (...) acts as a factor in the disclosure of depth and effectiveness: a subject-object relationship accepted on faith: the disclosure of the meaning and directions of its development relative to the object of faith; as a set of acts of self-knowledge in the context of the existence of the object and, only thanks to the object of faith, brought into a whole, meaningful existence. Thus, the self-knowledge of a person depends, first of all, on the choice of an object of faith for him, as the meaning of his development. (shrink)

This chapter places the exodus of Russian scholars in the context of the country's turbulent twentieth-century experience of ‘three revolutions, two world wars, civil strife, and several changes of political regime’. It presents an account of the plight of Russian academics in German occupied territories who were caught ‘in the dead space between two tyrannies’. For some the price of survival in the 1940s involved temporary collaboration with the Nazi invaders, which is illustrated in the morally ambiguous wartime experiences of (...) Nikolas Poppe, Professor of Oriental Studies in Leningrad University, a leading expert of the languages and literatures of northern inner Asia; and of Ivan Malinin, professor and head of the department of pathology in the Krasnodar Medical Institute. Both found a way of resisting the communist state through temporary ‘collaboration’, and thus, reaffirmed ‘the right of the individual to make choices’. The chapter concludes by noting the change in Soviet policy towards the emigration of scientists after perestroika and its double-edged effect: ‘On the one hand, emigration impoverishes home institutions, but, on the other, the free migration of scientists has become one of the most effective mechanisms for integrating the country into the global scientific community’. (shrink)

Kripke distinguishes necessity and priority as two different categories: priority is a notion of epistemology, while necessity is a notion of metaphysics. Based on this fundamental argument, Kripke objects to Descriptivism, which takes certain properties as the criteria of identity across all possible worlds, and he argues for the legitimacy of a posteriori necessary truths. Kripke also criticizes Russell’s methods for dealing with empty descriptions, and he puts forward a modal world to explain the rigidity of proper names. However, the (...) concept of rigid designation faces some challenges, including Kripke admitting to weak essentialism when he rejects transworld identification, and the fact that the truth value of a sentence containing a rigid designator may change. (shrink)

The article substantiates that science, thanks to the latest media in the dissemination of scientific communication (especially computer word processing, big data accumulation, mega-science installations, the latest international networking platforms and collaborations), has gone beyond all institutional, organizational, regional, national and partly disciplinary borders. Science as a supranational communication system has reached a complexity that is incompatible with the standards for evaluating scientific work and scientific achievements, which are traditionally carried out in the form of scientific committees, individual examinations and (...) other collegial forms of scientific communication. The collegiality of making the most important decisions regarding the examination of the scientific product itself, the thematic agenda, professional competencies and the resulting distribution of remuneration, reputation, ranks, degrees, grants has exhausted its capabilities to a certain extent. As a result, science turns out to be opaque both for the regulator, who is trying to exercise control over scientific institutions, and for science itself, which in the form of scientific self-government and philosophical reflection of science carries out the function of self-observation and self-description. A working hypothesis is proposed, which states that in response to this crisis of collegiality, reflection and control, new media of communicative success and new organizational forms of scientific communication crystallize in science, which can restore the ability of a scientific system to process its internal and external complexity. These media are represented by a new, social-networked form of scientific expertise and partly scientific work, which will be able to compensate for the lack of self-reflection, both at the organizational level of research institutes and at the level of global control over science as a whole. (shrink)

The problem of freedom of conscience is an important component of the subject field of Ukrainian religious studies, both in the historical and contemporary context of its development. In view of the complex, all-encompassing transformation processes that have taken place in our country for eleven years of its independent existence and continue today, it has been and remains relevant and socially demanded in theoretical and practical terms.

In a 1988 study, James T. C. Liu used the phrase "China turning inward" to characterize the shift from Northern Song to Southern Song intellectual traditions, especially the intellectual lineage from Cheng Yi 程頤 to Zhu Xi 朱熹.1 Building upon Professor Liu's characterization, I will explore more specifically how the Way turned toward greater emphasis on inner self-cultivation as daoxue 道學....

High-resolution meteorological satellite image is the basic data for weather forecasting, climate prediction, and early warning of various meteorological disasters. However, the poor image resolution is limited for both subjective and automated analyses. Through our investigation and study, we found that the meteorological satellite image is a kind of complex data with multimodal and multitemporal characteristics. Fortunately, based on zero-shot learning theory, the complexity of the meteorological satellite image can be used to enhance its own image resolution. In this work, (...) we propose a novel framework called MSLp. Specifically, we choose a zero-shot network as a backbone and propose a phase loss function. A mapping from low- to high-resolution meteorological satellite images was trained for improving the resolution by up to a factor of 4×. Our quantitative study demonstrates the superiority of the proposed approach over ZSSR and bicubic interpolation. For qualitative analysis, visual tests were performed by 7 meteorologists to confirm the utility of the proposed algorithm. The mean opinion score is 9.32. These meteorologists think that weather forecasters need higher-resolution meteorological satellite images and the high-resolution images obtained by our method have the potential to be a great help for weather analysis and forecasting. (shrink)

Many perception and processing effects of the lexical status of tone have been found in behavioral, psycholinguistic, and neuroscientific research, often pitting varieties of tonal Chinese against non-tonal Germanic languages. While the linguistic and cognitive evidence for lexical tone is therefore beyond dispute, the word prosodic systems of many languages continue to escape the categorizations of typologists. One controversy concerns the existence of a typological class of “pitch accent languages,” another the underlying phonological nature of surface tone contrasts, which in (...) some cases have been claimed to be metrical rather than tonal. We address the question whether the Sequence Recall Task, which has been shown to discriminate between languages with and without word stress, can distinguish languages with and without lexical tone. Using participants from non-tonal Indonesian, semi-tonal Swedish, and two varieties of tonal Mandarin, we ran SRTs with monosyllabic tonal contrasts to test the hypothesis that high performance in a tonal SRT indicates the lexical status of tone. An additional question concerned the extent to which accuracy scores depended on phonological and phonetic properties of a language’s tone system, like its complexity, the existence of an experimental contrast in a language’s phonology, and the phonetic salience of a contrast. The results suggest that a tonal SRT is not likely to discriminate between tonal and non-tonal languages within a typologically varied group, because of the effects of specific properties of their tone systems. Future research should therefore address the first hypothesis with participants from otherwise similar tonal and non-tonal varieties of the same language, where results from a tonal SRT may make a useful contribution to the typological debate on word prosody. (shrink)

The new Taiwanese religious movement Tzu Chi raises interesting issues for the study of religions. First, as a Chinese form of Buddhism, it embodies an attempt to reconcile or even merge the cultures and mindsets of two utterly different civilizations, the Indian and the Chinese. Secondly, it casts doubt on the presupposition that a sect, as against a church, demands of its members exclusive allegiance. Thirdly, it shows that an emphasis on orthopraxy rather than orthodoxy may be modern as well (...) as archaic. Fourthly, it also suggests that the view that secularization is tantamount to a narrowing of the domain of religion cannot be taken for granted. In the case of Tzu Chi there is probably some overlap between the last three issues, in that they show that generalizations about sects formulated by western sociologists have taken Christian sects as their model and may not be universally applicable. (shrink)

Previous research on emotion-induced blindness (EIB) argues emotional distractors capture attention in a bottom-up manner due to their physical and emotional salience. However, recent research has shown it is controversial whether EIB will be modulated by top-down factors. The present study further investigated whether the magnitude of EIB would be modulated by top-down factors, specifically the emotional relevance between tasks and distractors. Participants were divided into two groups having the same targets except for different task instructions. The orientation judgment group (...) was asked to judge the orientation of the target (an emotionally irrelevant task), and the emotion judgment group was required to judge the emotional valence of the target (an emotionally relevant task). It was found the emotional relevance between tasks and distractors has no modulation on the magnitudes of EIB in two groups when targets and distractors are from different categories (Experiment 1), but a modulation when they are from the same category (Experiment 2). Consequently, we contend top-down task relevance modulates the EIB effect and distractors’ priority is regulated by the emotional relevance between tasks and distractors. The current study holds attentional capture by stimulus-driven is unconditional in EIB, while attentional capture by goal-driven requires certain conditions. (shrink)

This paper uses agent-based modelling to study the frequent booms and busts in Chinese agricultural markets. First, an artificial agricultural commodity market consisting of heterogeneous agents, such as producers, consumers, and speculators, is built. A numerical simulation suggests that speculation can cause large price fluctuations via nonlinear price dynamics. Then, parameters are estimated by the simulated method of moments using garlic and ginger price data in China from 2006Q2 to 2018Q3. The estimation yields a statistically significant speculative behavior parameter, supporting (...) speculators’ existence. Based on the well-estimated model, a low-cost policy experiment aiming at market stabilization is carried out. The essence of this policy is to release the theoretical steady state of the estimated model as the government-guided price to producers. The guided price, even partially followed by producers, can reduce simulated price variances and weaken speculators’ negative impact on market stability. Robustness tests show that the effect of policy experiment is robust under a 20% change in any parameter value or a 5% change in the guided price. (shrink)

STS scholarship has produced important insights about relationships between the roles of peer review and the social construction of knowledge. Yet, barriers related to access have been a continual challenge for such work. This article overcomes some past access challenges and explores peer review normativities operating in the new discipline of Engineering Education. In doing so, it contributes new insights about disciplinary development, interdisciplinarity, and peer review as a site of knowledge construction. In particular, it draws attention to an aspect (...) of peer review not previously discussed – how peer review normativities are shaped by disciplinary origins. A content analysis of peer review documentation revealed that a hyperfocus on methods, which can be traced back to disciplinary origins, continues to be a guiding normativity. However, interviews with editors revealed that they do not acknowledge that normativity. Implications of those findings and their misalignment are discussed, as are contrasts with the history of other disciplines. (shrink)

Computably Lipschitz reducibility , was suggested as a measure of relative randomness. We say α≤clβ if α is Turing reducible to β with oracle use on x bounded by x+c. In this paper, we prove that for any non-computable real, there exists a c.e. real so that no c.e. real can cl-compute both of them. So every non-computable c.e. real is the half of a cl-maximal pair of c.e. reals.

У статті, на прикладі дослідження наукової тематики кафедри, висвітлюється можливі механізми оцінки інноваційного потенціалу наукової установ та її складових частин. Підкреслюється необхідність розвитку науки, як життєво необхідного фактору для нормальної роботи всіх сфер держави, а також створення найбільш комфортних соціально-побутових умов для населення, відповідно до європейського рівня розвитку суспільства. Метою дослідження є розробка методичних положень щодо оцінки інноваційного потенціалу наукової діяльності наукових установ, як фактора збільшення інвестиційної вартості науки на ринку наукових послуг України. Завданнями є: узагальнення особливостей інноваційного потенціалу наукових (...) установ ; формулювання теоретичних визначень інноваційного потенціалу, інноваційної діяльності; обґрунтування необхідності моделювання процесів оцінювання інноваційного потенціалу наукової діяльності тощо. Виходячи з актуальності обраної теми ставиться мета, формулюються завдання. Методологічну основу дослідження складає сукупність загальновизнаних принципів та методів наукового пізнання. Для отримання наукових результатів застосовувалися загальнонаукові принципи та підходи, які забезпечили єдність аналізу, історизм, об’єктивність дослідження тощо. Робиться висновок про те, що надійне та ефективне застосування наукових розробок у багатьох сферах є основою поступального розвитку економіки країни та представляє невід’ємну складову забезпечення цивілізованих умов життя всіх її громадян. Пропонується ряд змін до чинного законодавства, а саме до Закону України «Про наукову та науково-технічну експертизу», «Про державне регулювання діяльності у сфері трансферу технологій». Зауважується на тому, що на тлі змін ролі науки і техніки та високих технологій в житті людства питання вивчення інноваційного потенціалу науки набувають особливої актуальності. Та незважаючи на великий інтерес до усебічного вивчення напрямів розвитку науки, до сих пір не врегульовано єдиних загальних підходів до його оцінювання. (shrink)

This study analyzes the influence of behavioral foundation factors and corporate strategic behavior on the formulation of corporate dividend policy. We use the Logit model and the OLS model for estimating the empirical model. The year- and industry-fixed effects are controlled in the model. We consider the behavioral foundations in three dimensions-ambiguity aversions, risk aversion, and loss aversion. The results show firms with high ambiguity or high risk infrequently pay dividends but firms with loss-averse behavior tend to pay dividends. This (...) paper also provides evidence that a firms’ business strategy influences its corporate dividend policy. Aggressive firms inhibit the payout of dividends. In additional tests, we find the results remain unchanged in those firms with high corporate governance or high growth opportunities. (shrink)

Uncertainty can’t be understood without taking into account both properties of the problem situation and agent’s knowledge about it. The correspondence of knowledge and situation of decision-making is crucial for understanding the onto-epistemological nature of uncertainty. At the same time, this correspondence is the key topic in virtue epistemology, especially in its ‘non-classical’, regulatory, branch, related to works of R. Roberts and W.J. Wood. In this article, genetic consultation is chosen as an example of such a problematic situation since a (...) doctor and a patient explicitly deal with the uncertainty of genetic risks. The problems of communication and joint decision-making in the context of medical-genetic consultation are comprehensively described in bioethics. At the same time, its social dimension is limited to the direct interaction of two individual agents, that allows us to use it as a model for constructing the ethics of uncertainty. In this article, four forms of uncertainty are identified: descriptive, normative and radical uncertainties, and translation uncertainty. Referring to the approaches of virtue epistemology, the author brings each of these forms into conformity with the proposed regulatory principle. The regulations assume that generating or disseminating knowledge under conditions of uncertainty require taking into account the incompleteness of the presented model of reality in its four aspects. A modelled fragment of reality could change in a predictable (descriptive uncertainty) or unexpected (radical uncertainty) way. The goals and values of a model’s user can not be hierarchically ordered, and may also change in the future (normative uncertainty). User’s interpretations of the model may be diverse, and can never be strictly defined by the intentions of the model’s author (indeterminancy of translation, or uncertainty whether success of co-reference is achieved). (shrink)