Harmony is a concept essential to Confucianism and to the way of life of past and present people in East Asia. Integrating methods of textual exegesis, historical investigation, comparative analysis, and philosophical argumentation, this book presents a comprehensive treatment of the Confucian philosophy of harmony. The book traces the roots of the concept to antiquity, examines its subsequent development, and explicates its theoretical and practical significance for the contemporary world. It argues that, contrary to a common view in the West, (...) Confucian harmony is not mere agreement but has to be achieved and maintained with creative tension. Under the influence of a Weberian reading of Confucianism as "adjustment" to a world with an underlying fixed cosmic order, Confucian harmony has been systematically misinterpreted in the West as presupposing an invariable grand scheme of things that pre-exists in the world to which humanity has to conform. The book shows that Confucian harmony is a dynamic, generative process, which seeks to balance and reconcile differences and conflicts through creativity. Illuminating one of the most important concepts in Chinese philosophy and intellectual history, this book is of interest to students of Chinese studies, history and philosophy in general and eastern philosophy in particular. (shrink)

This study investigated the role of entrepreneurial passion in recognition of opportunity, developing entrepreneurial self-efficacy, and entrepreneurial intention, in the shaping of entrepreneurial actions in the presence of proactive personality. This study applied partial least squares structural equation modeling to test the hypotheses on a sample of 346 university students from Jiangsu province, China. The output of the study showed that entrepreneurial passion positively and significantly influenced entrepreneurial alertness, entrepreneurial self-efficacy to entrepreneurial intention, and entrepreneurial behavior. The findings also showed (...) that a proactive personality positively and significantly moderated the relationship between entrepreneurial intention and entrepreneurial behavior. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that the current literature on political hope overlooks its non-instrumental value. By proposing a Kant-inspired account of treating reasonable hopes as fundamental hopes, I argue that it is rational for people to hold certain political hopes not only because such hopes promote particular ends but also because they are constitutive of a person’s practical identity as a responsible political agent with limited power to make changes. This view reveals that victims of injustice face an affective (...) injustice because the unjust social system forces them to face a double bind in upholding their fundamental political hopes. (shrink)

Firms worldwide are increasingly required to disclose their carbon emissions due to the environmental damage associated with climate change. Because there has been no previous literature focusing on the determinants of corporate carbon disclosure integrating environmental legitimacy and green innovation, the present study attempted to develop an original framework to fill the research gap. This study explored the influence of environmental legitimacy on corporate carbon disclosure, and investigated the role of green innovation as a mediator. With the samples of Carbon (...) Disclosure Project in China from 2008 to 2012, the results demonstrate that environmental legitimacy significantly negatively influences the likelihood of corporate carbon disclosure, and that green process innovation mediates the relationship, while green product innovation has no significant mediating effect. It means that environmental legitimacy not only directly affects the likelihood of corporate carbon disclosure, but also indirectly affects it via green process innovation. Hence, companies must increase both informal and formal mechanisms, i.e., external environmental legitimacy and internal green process innovation, to engage in carbon information disclosure and ensure sustainability. (shrink)

Rationality is intrapersonally permissive just in case there are multiple doxastic states that one agent may be rational in holding at a given time, given some body of evidence. One way for intrapersonal permissivism to be true is if there are epistemic supererogatory beliefs—beliefs that go beyond the call of epistemic duty. Despite this, there has been almost no discussion of epistemic supererogation in the permissivism literature. This paper shows that this is a mistake. It does this by arguing that (...) the most popular ways of responding to one of the major obstacles to any intrapersonally permissive all fall prey to the same problem. This problem is most naturally solved by positing a category of epistemically supererogatory belief. So intrapersonal epistemic permissivists should embrace epistemic supererogation. (shrink)

Nurses are experiencing new ethical issues as a result of global developments and changes in health care. With health care becoming increasingly sophisticated, and countries facing challenges of graying population, ethical issues involved in health care are bound to expand in quantity and in depth. Blended learning rather as a combination of multiple delivery media designed to promote meaningful learning. Specifically, this study was focused on two questions: (1) the students’ satisfaction and attitudes as members of a scenario-based learning process (...) in a blended learning environment; (2) the relationship between students’ satisfaction ratings of nursing ethics course and their attitudes in the blended learning environment. In total, 99 senior undergraduate nursing students currently studying at a public nursing college in Taiwan were invited to participate in this study. A cross-sectional survey design was adopted in this study. The participants were asked to fill out two Likert-scale questionnaire surveys: CAAS (Case Analysis Attitude Scale), and BLSS (Blended Learning Satisfaction Scale). The results showed what students felt about their blended learning experiences — mostly items ranged from 3.27—3.76 (the highest score is 5). Another self-assessment of scenario analysis instrument revealed the mean scores ranged from 2.87—4.19. Nearly 57.8% of the participants rated the course ‘extremely helpful’ or ‘very helpful.’ This study showed statistically significant correlations (r = 0.43) between students’ satisfaction with blended learning and case analysis attitudes. In addition, results testified to a potential of the blended learning model proposed in this study to bridge the gap between students and instructors and the one between students and their peers, which are typical of blended learning, and to create meaningful learning by employing blended pedagogical consideration in the course design. The use of scenario instruction enables students to develop critical analysis and problem solving skills through active learning and social exchange of ideas. (shrink)

Does morality require the filial obligation of grown children toward their aged parents? First, problems with some accounts of filial morality that have been put forth in recent years in the West are examined (Jane English, Jeffrey Blustein, and others), and then it is shown how Confucianism provides a sensible alternative perspective.

When asked why we are friends with someone, we often point to her good virtues as reasons. If these are the reasons, we have equal reasons to be friends with anyone with such virtues, and we can even replace current friends with anyone with the same or better virtues without substantive loss in friendship. However, it does not seem right that a particular friend is replaceable by just any other person with the same or better virtues. This is the fungibility (...) problem of friendship. This essay outlines a Confucian response to the problem on the basis of the Confucian family-based conception of friendship and the Confucian understanding of particularized virtues. First, in the Confucian understanding, true friends are like family members, toward whom we have special obligations. Family members are nonfungible, and so are friends. Second, even though virtues are general traits that can be shared, the formations and practices of virtues are particularized. Confucian thinkers hold that each person configures virtues and exercises virtues in his or her own way depending on specific circumstances, and that persons with the same virtues may nevertheless possess them in varied fashions and exercise different shades of them in particular ways. Thus, persons of the same generic virtues will still retain their particularities as distinctive individuals. We become friends and remain friends with people in part because of their virtues practiced in ways that we appreciate. This notion of particularly exercised virtues makes it practically impossible for two persons to be identical in virtues. On such an understanding, virtuous friends are nevertheless unique and nonfungible. (shrink)

The last two decades have witnessed the rising prevalence of both co-publishing and retraction. Focusing on research collaboration, this paper utilizes a unique dataset to investigate factors contributing to retraction probability and elapsed time between publication and retraction. Data analysis reveals that the majority of retracted papers are multi-authored and that repeat offenders are collaboration prone. Yet, all things being equal, collaboration, in and of itself, does not increase the likelihood of producing flawed or fraudulent research, at least in the (...) form of retraction. That holds for all retractions and also retractions due to falsification, fabrication, and plagiarism. The research also finds that publications with authors from elite universities are less likely to be retracted, which is particularly true for retractions due to FFP. China stands out with the fastest retracting speed compared to other countries. Possible explanations, limitations, and policy implications are also discussed. (shrink)

Abusive supervision, defined as subordinates’ perception of the extent to which supervisors engage in the sustained display of hostile verbal and non-verbal behaviors, excluding physical contact, is associated with various negative outcomes. This has made it easy for researchers to overlook the possibility that some supervisors regret their bad behavior and express remorse for their actions. Hence, we know little about how subordinates react to the perception that their supervisor is remorseful and how this perception affects the outcomes of supervisors’ (...) undesired behavior. Specifically, drawing on the social exchange theory and displace revenge literature, this study explains how abusive supervision leads to victims’ service sabotage behavior. In addition, this study also investigates how perceived supervisors’ remorse mitigates the adverse effects of abusive supervision. Based on time-lagged, dyadic data from Chinese individuals, this study found support for all the proposed relationships, i.e., abusive supervision leads to service sabotage through the mediating effect of revenge desire. The findings also conclude that PSR lessens the detrimental effects of abusive supervision on victims’ behavior with their customers. Finally, this research contributes to service sabotage literature by highlighting the possibility where abusive supervisors cause service sabotage behavior among victims. This study also shows the importance of PSR’s role in decreasing service sabotage behavior exhibited by victims of abusive supervisors in the service sector. (shrink)

Capitalist reforms usually drive outmigration of peasants to cities, while elders, children, and women responsible for their care are “left behind” in the countryside. The plight of these “left behind” populations is a major focus of recent agrarian studies in China. However, rural women are not merely passive victims of these transformations. Building on ethnographic research in Guangxi and Henan provinces from 2013 to 2017, and drawing on critical gender studies and feminist political ecology, I show how the food safety (...) crisis in China creates conditions for peasant women to increase control and income from organic food production, often establishing alternative food networks with the support of female scholars and NGO organizers. Thus, I shift focus of scholarship on rural women from “left behind” to leaders in struggles for justice and food sovereignty. (shrink)

Background Nurses often face ethical issues in their daily work that can have an impact on their level of job embeddedness. And positive job embeddedness is essential to reduce burnout among nurses and improve professional retention in the medical industry. However, few studies have focused on the relationship between moral distress, moral resilience, and job embeddedness. Objectives To investigate the relationship between moral distress, moral resilience, and job embeddedness, and explore the mediating role of moral resilience between moral distress and (...) job embeddedness among nurses. Design A quantitative, cross-sectional study. Methods Nurses from a number of tertiary general hospitals in central China were surveyed and assessed using the Moral Distress Scale, the Nurse Moral Resilience Scale, and the nurse job embeddedness Scale from February to March 2023. The study was conducted in line with the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki. Ethical consideration All study procedures were approved by the Ethics Committee of Hunan Normal University (No. 2023-313). Findings Moral distress was positively correlated with moral resilience ( β = 0.525, p < 0.01) and negatively correlated job embeddedness ( β = −0.470, p < 0.01). Moral resilience partially mediated the relationship between moral distress with job embeddedness ( β = −0.087, p < 0.01). Discussion The findings reveal a relationship between moral distress, job embeddedness, and moral resilience among nurses. Conclusion Moral distress and moral resilience are important correlates of job embeddedness in nurses. Interventions to reduce moral distress and increase moral resilience may have potential benefits for improving nurses’ job embeddedness. It is recommended that clinical nursing administrators create a favorable ethical atmosphere, educate nurses about ethics, and increase nurses' moral resilience. (shrink)

This study discusses the impact of different economic indicators on economic stability, including honest leadership, improved infrastructure, revenue generation, and CPEC taking into account the double mediating role of environmental sustainability and sustainable development, while considering the latest COVID-19 situation. This study adopted primary data collection methods and obtained data from the employees of CPEC by using questionnaires and smart-PLS for analysis purposes. The results revealed that honest leadership, improved infrastructure, revenue generation, and CPEC have a positive nexus with economic (...) stability. Despite the severe impact of COVID-19 on the country’s economy, the economic corridor plays a vital role in stabilizing the state’s economy and supports all those related to this phenomenal project either directly or indirectly. (shrink)

This study aims to critically and systematically investigate the contemporary discourse within scholarship on world-class universities in different higher education context. It applies critical discourse analysis to review articles from some top higher education academic journals and books published between 2000 and 2019. Exploring the notion of world-class university involves international-level identities and models, national-level policies and strategies, and institutional-level responses and practices. Findings highlight the absence of a clear definition of the concept of world-class university, an obvious Western-dominated value-laden (...) paradigm, hegemony of global rankings discourse, priority of policies and strategies and inexplicit suggestions for practical application of research findings. Applying the critical discourse analysis, we examine the mission of higher education research towards global competitiveness and global rankings and the attitudes towards the challenges in pursuing world-class universities and its dissemination through the international academic publications as value neutral. This study focuses on recognizing, articulating, and critiquing biases in research production and dissemination. Different researchers might provide multiple critical scopes to investigate international inclusive scholarship on world-class universities. This study also contributes to the approaches in which discourse both shapes and is shaped by globalization and internationalization trends in the higher education contexts, and future orientations in this study. (shrink)

Integrating affective events theory, work-family compensation, and moral balance theory, the present study proposes a model that examines how and when abusive supervisory behavior is related to employees’ deviant behavior toward their supervisor. Using a diary method that involved two surveys per day over two weeks, we found support for our model based on 707 daily observations from 130 employees. Specifically, anger toward one’s supervisor mediated the relationship between abusive supervisory behavior and deviant behavior toward one’s supervisor. In addition, the (...) degree to which employees engaged in deviant behavior toward their supervisor depended on their prior-day deviant behavior toward their family. When employees engaged in lower prior-day deviant behavior toward their family, anger toward their supervisor was positively related to subsequent deviant behavior toward their supervisor. In contrast, when employees had higher prior-day deviant behavior toward their family, the relationship between anger toward their supervisor and deviant behavior toward their supervisor was weaker. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for research on abusive supervision, work-family interface, and moral balance theory. (shrink)

In Aristotle’s moral psychology, deliberation (βούλευσις) is a very important concept that bridges the agent’s desire and action. However, his theory of what kind of desire is connected to deliberation creates puzzle for the reader: on the one hand, he repeatedly emphasizes that wish (βούλησις) sets the end for the agent, and deliberation finds the means for the agent to achieve the end of the action, and on the other hand, his moral psychology suggests that there are three kinds of (...) desires, namely, wish, spiritedness (θυμός), and appetite (ἐπιθυμία), and that, according to this division, all three kinds of desires can set the end of the action for deliberation. The traditional way of resolving this puzzle is to abandon wish as the only kind of desire that sets the end of deliberation and action, and to argue that at least appetite can also set the end of deliberation and action for the agent. The key rationale is that the akratic fails to achieve the object of her wish, but instead achieves the object of their appetite, and thus appetite sets the ends for their deliberation and actions. In addition, although the intemperate achieves the object of her wish, she also achieves the object of her appetite. This article argues against this traditional interpretation. Instead, I defend the view that, first, the end of all actions is set by the wish of the agent, and, second, the starting point of every act of deliberation is the end of the action set by the wish. On the basis of this interpretation, I also explain why the intemperate and the akratic agents initiate their deliberation with the end set by the wish. (shrink)

This book contributes to both the internal debate in liberalism and the application of political liberalism to the process of democratization in East Asia. Beyond John Rawls’ original intention to limit the scope of political liberalism to only existing and well-ordered liberal democracies, political liberalism has the potential to inspire and contribute to democratic establishment and maintenance in East Asia. Specifically, the book has two main objectives. First, it will demonstrate that political liberalism offers the most promising vision for liberal (...) democracy, and it can be defended against contemporary perfectionist objections. Second, it will show that perfectionist approaches to political Confucianism suffer from practical and theoretical difficulties. Instead, an alternative model of democracy inspired by political liberalism will be explored in order to achieve a multivariate structure for citizens to come to terms with democracy in their own ways, to support a neutral state that ensures the establishment and stability of democracy, and to maintain an active public role for Confucianism to prevent it from being banished to the private sphere. This model represents a more promising future for democracy in East Asia. (shrink)

The processes in construction are more likely than others to breed unsafe behaviors, and the consequences of these actions can be serious. This paper first reviews the research status on unsafe behavior in construction teams. It then analyzes the complex mechanisms that lead to unsafe behavior and constructs a three-layer structural model based on agent-based modeling technology. This modeling deals with complexity and elaborates on key points and potential research ideas in the study of unsafe behavior in construction teams. Using (...) the ABM method, the effects of different incentive strategies on the safe behavior of construction teams under different management scenarios were studied. The results showed that when members have a fair perception of the situation, the effect of the excess performance reward distribution, according to the member’s safety awareness level, is better than the average distribution effect. This is the case whether the member’s safety behavior level is positively or negatively related to the member’s safety awareness level. This study proves the feasibility, validity, and universality of the three-layer structural model. It also reaches certain management conclusions and ideas for further development. The purpose of this paper is to provide a reference for research on the containment and prevention of unsafe behavior in construction teams. (shrink)

In his feature article,1 McCullough LB et al highlights the importance of civility among medical educators and academic leaders in shaping the professional habits of junior doctors. He emphasises the role of medical educators in correcting unprofessional behaviour and emphasises the need for academic leaders to motivate junior doctors to develop virtuous professional habits. The relationship between junior doctors and medical educators can be likened to that between students and teachers. Through active or passive learning from medical educators, junior doctors (...) gain the necessary knowledge, experience and professional virtues. Academic leaders, as prominent experts in their field, play a guiding role in this process. Therefore, their relationship with junior doctors is akin to that between idols and fans. In this regard, academic leaders can serve as exceptional role models for guiding junior doctors to develop the inclination to …. (shrink)

Humans can learn complex functional relationships between variables from small amounts of data. In doing so, they draw on prior expectations about the form of these relationships. In three experiments, we show that people learn to adjust these expectations through experience, learning about the likely forms of the functions they will encounter. Previous work has used Gaussian processes—a statistical framework that extends Bayesian nonparametric approaches to regression—to model human function learning. We build on this work, modeling the process of learning (...) to learn functions as a form of hierarchical Bayesian inference about the Gaussian process hyperparameters. (shrink)

The current study is conducted to examine the following research questions: - Examine how knowledge acquisition and knowledge dissemination are associated with academic staff’s job satisfaction and teaching motivation - Examine whether job satisfaction mediates the relationship between knowledge acquisition, knowledge dissemination and teaching motivation.

Selective accessibility mechanisms indicate that anchoring effects are results of selective retrieval of working memory. Neuroimaging studies have revealed that the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) is closely related to memory retrieval and performance. However, no research has investigated the effect of changing the cortical excitability in right DLPFC on anchoring effects. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) can modulate the excitability of the human cerebral cortex, while anodal and cathodal tDCS are postulated to increase or decrease cortical activity, respectively. In (...) this study, we used tDCS to investigate whether effects of increased or decreased right DLPFC excitability influence anchoring effects in willingness to pay (WTP) experiments. Ninety participants were first randomly assigned to receive either anodal, cathodal, or sham stimulation of 15 minutes, then they performed a valuation task regarding WTP. The results showed that anchoring effects were negatively related to activities of right DLPFC: the anodal stimulation diminished anchoring effects while the cathodal stimulation increased anchoring effects. These outcomes provide one of the first instances of neural evidence for the role of the right DLPFC in anchoring effects and support psychological explanations of the selective accessibility mechanisms and cognitive sets. (shrink)

Although data sharing platforms host diverse data types the features of these platforms are well-suited to facilitating biomarker research. Given the current state of biomarker discovery, an innovative paradigm to accelerate biomarker discovery is to utilize platforms such as Vivli to leverage researchers' abilities to integrate certain classes of biomarkers.

This book explores and elaborates three theories of public reason, drawn from Rawlsian political liberalism, natural law theory, and Confucianism. Drawing together academics from these separate approaches, the volume explores how the three theories critique each other, as well as how each one brings its theoretical arsenal to bear on the urgent contemporary debate of medical assistance in dying. The volume is structured in two parts: an exploration of the three traditions, followed by an in-depth overview of the conceptual and (...) historical background. In Part I, the three comprehensive opening chapters are supplemented by six dynamic chapters in dialogue with each other, each author responding to the other two traditions, and subsequently reflecting on the possible deficiencies of their own theories. The chapters in Part II cover a broad range of subjects, from an overview of the history of bioethics to the nature of autonomy and its status as a moral and political value. In its entirety, the volume provides a vibrant and exemplary collaborative resource to scholars interested in the role of public reason and its relevance in bioethical debate. (shrink)

We are familiar with various set-theoretical paradoxes such as Cantor's paradox, Burali-Forti's paradox, Russell's paradox, Russell-Myhill paradox and Kaplan's paradox. In fact, there is another new possible set-theoretical paradox hiding itself in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. From the Tractatus’s Picture theory of language we can strictly infer the two contradictory propositions simultaneously: the world and the language are equinumerous; the world and the language are not equinumerous. I call this antinomy the world-language paradox. Based on a rigorous analysis of the Tractatus, with (...) the help of the technical resources of Cantor’s naive set theory and Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory with the axiom of choice, I outline the world-language paradox and assess the unique possible solution plan, i.e., the mathematical plan utilizing ‘infinity’. I conclude that Wittgenstein cannot solve the hidden set-theoretical paradox of the Tractatus successfully unless he gives up his finitism. (shrink)

Chinese kindergartens’ over 110 years of adaptation of foreign models is a vivid example of how globalization comes into direct contact with Chinese culture and creates cultural hybridities. Learning Stories as a narrative assessment tool to children’s development from New Zealand, has swept China with the endorsement from the professional organizations and local authorities, especially attracting many followers in Beijing. Based on a two-year participatory action research in Beijing, the article examines Learning Stories as policy borrowing, redesigned as an innovative (...) reflection tool for professional learning community which results from processes of mutual influence between the global and the local. The article highlights the importance of culture and context in considering professional development and the ‘fluid’ and dynamic nature of ‘glocalization’ working towards integration of globalization and localization. Furthermore, borrowing or learning foreign policies in preprimary education can be... (shrink)

Research on action memory has been pursued for more than 30 years, but it is still unclear what drives the recollection process of performed actions. In this study, we used the remember/know paradigm and designed two experiments to examine the relation between item-specific processing and retrieval awareness of subject-performed tasks (SPT). The results showed that SPT allows remember responses in remember-know judgments more easily; that is, SPT can enhance the frequency of recalling re-collective experience. Item-specific processing can improve the memory (...) performance and the proportion of remember judgments of verbal tasks (VT), but it does not improve the memory performance and proportion of remember judgments of SPT, indicating that SPT can enhance item-specific processing, which leads to more remember responses in judgment. The relation between item-specific processing and retrieval awareness of SPT is also discussed. (shrink)

Previous studies have shown that individuals in collectivist cultures may be more corrupt than those in individualist cultures when they are interacting with outgroup members. The countries that are least corrupt, according to the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index, tend to have horizontal individualist cultures, with Singapore being a prominent counterexample. Can findings at the cultural level of analysis be replicated at the individual level of analysis? To answer this question the authors examined the relationship between deception and cultural orientation (...) in a Singaporean sample. The results indicate that, despite the fact that Singapore is very low in corruption on the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index, vertical collectivism was still able to account for the variance in deception. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

The purposes of research were to describe the neonatal clinicians' personal views and attitudes on neonatal ethical decision-making, to identify factors that might affect these attitudes and to compare the attitudes between neonatal physicians and neonatal nurses in Taiwan. Research was a cross-sectional design and a questionnaire was used to reach different research purposes. A convenient sample was used to recruit 24 physicians and 80 neonatal nurses from four neonatal intensive care units in Taiwan. Most participants agreed with suggesting a (...) do not resuscitate (DNR) order to parents for dying neonates (86.5%). However, the majority agreed with talking to patients about DNR orders is difficult (76.9%). Most participants agree that review by the clinical ethics committee is needed before the recommendation of ‘DNR’ to parents (94.23%) and nurses were significantly more likely than physicians to agree to this (p=0.043). During the end-of-life care, most clinicians accepted to continue current treatment without adding others (70%) and withholding of emergency treatments (75%); however, active euthanasia, the administration of drug to end-of-life, was not considered acceptable by both physicians and nurses in this research (96%). Based on our research results, providing continuing educational training and a formal consulting service in moral courage for neonatal clinicians are needed. In Taiwan, neonatal physicians and nurses hold similar values and attitudes towards end-of-life decisions for neonates. In order to improve the clinicians' communication skills with parents about DNR options and to change clinicians' attitudes for providing enough pain-relief medicine to dying neonates, providing continuing educational training and a formal consulting service in moral courage are needed. (shrink)

A novel Protocol Ethics Tool Kit (‘Ethics Tool Kit’) has been developed by a multi-stakeholder group of the Multi-Regional Clinical Trials Center of Brigham and Women9s Hospital and Harvard. The purpose of the Ethics Tool Kit is to facilitate effective recognition, consideration and deliberation of critical ethical issues in clinical trial protocols. The Ethics Tool Kit may be used by investigators and sponsors to develop a dedicated Ethics Section within a protocol to improve the consistency and transparency between clinical trial (...) protocols and research ethics committee reviews. It may also streamline ethics review and may facilitate and expedite the review process by anticipating the concerns of ethics committee reviewers. Specific attention was given to issues arising in multinational settings. With the use of this Tool Kit, researchers have the opportunity to address critical research ethics issues proactively, potentially speeding the time and easing the process to final protocol approval. (shrink)

According to Tom Roberts and Joel Krueger's frustrated pro-attitude account of loneliness, loneliness is primarily characterized as an affective state in which individuals perceive certain social goods as unattainable. The frustration of pro-attitudes, or the desire for social connections, plays a significant role in understanding the nature of loneliness. However, in this article, I argue that the frustrated pro-attitude account falls short in explaining a specific type of loneliness known as clueless loneliness, wherein a person feels lonely without experiencing a (...) salient frustration of pro-attitude. By analyzing five cases of clueless loneliness—the case of desiring the wrong thing, the case of failing to form concrete desires, the case of having an illusion of desire fulfillment, the case of holding self-deceptive beliefs about need fulfillment, and the case of lacking a desire for social goods—I propose a revised account that acknowledges the complexity of loneliness and the potential disconnect between perceived social goods and the actual fulfillment of one's need for connection. My objective in this article is to demonstrate that this revised understanding of loneliness provides a more comprehensive framework for examining the nature of loneliness and its impact on different groups of people within society. (shrink)

In light of the dramatic growth of Chinese learners worldwide and a need for cross-linguistic research on Chinese literacy development, this study drew upon theories of visual complexity effect (Su & Samuels, 2010) and dual-coding processing (Sadoski & Paivio, 2013) and investigated a) the effects of character properties (i.e., visual complexity and radical presence) on character acquisition and b) the relationship between individual learner differences in radical awareness and character acquisition. Participants included adolescent English-speaking beginning learners of Chinese in the (...) U.S. Following Kuo et al. (2014), a novel character acquisition task was used to investigate the process of acquiring the meaning of new characters. Results showed that a) characters with radicals and with less visual complexity were easier to acquire than characters without radicals and with greater visual complexity; and b) individual differences in radical awareness were associated with the acquisition of all types of characters, but the association was more pronounced with the acquisition of characters with radicals. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings were discussed. (shrink)

This paper explores how English language has gradually become a linguistic form of cultural capital in China’s zigzag journey to modernization. It situates English’s status in flux in historical context, with an analysis at both the international and intra-national level. It showcases the necessity to embed cultural capital within Bourdieu’s full framework, and evidences the arbitrary nature of this form of cultural capital for its intimate tie to power and politics. By revealing how English has been officially consecrated as a (...) global lingua franca and then socially recognized for material and symbolic benefits, this paper implicitly problematizes the officially validated cultural hierarchy, argues that the value of a cultural capital is context-dependent, politically and socially constructed, inseparable from the field where it is produced. The present-day English manifests its symbolic power in classification and social stratification, entrenching the already entrenched inequality within and without the national state. (shrink)

The recent Canadian lawsuit on patent infringement, filed by the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, has engendered a significant public debate on whether patenting genes should be legal in Canada. In part, this public debate has involved the use of social networking sites, such as Twitter. This case provides an opportunity to examine how Twitter was used in the context of this gene patent controversy.