The detection of moving targets is to detect the change area in a sequence of images and extract the moving targets from the background image. It is the basis. Whether the moving targets can be correctly detected and segmented has a huge impact on the subsequent work. Aiming at the problem of high failure rate in the detection of sports targets under complex backgrounds, this paper proposes a research on the design of an intelligent background differential model for training target (...) monitoring. This paper proposes a background difference method based on RGB colour separation. The colour image is separated into independent RGB three-channel images, and the corresponding channels are subjected to the background difference operation to obtain the foreground image of each channel. In order to retain the difference of each channel, the information of the foreground images of the three channels is fused to obtain a complete foreground image. The feature of the edge detection is not affected by light; the foreground image is corrected. From the experimental results, the ordinary background difference method uses grey value processing, and some parts of the target with different colours but similar grey levels to the background cannot be extracted. However, the method in this paper can better solve the defect of misdetection. At the same time, compared with traditional methods, it also has a higher detection efficiency. (shrink)

Much recent work in applied legal and political theory has been preoccupied with the problem of the moral status of business organizations and corporations, and of the nature of their agency and personality. On the one hand, moral rights, such as rights to freedom and autonomy, are paradigmatically ascribed to natural, human persons; moral responsibility analogously seems therefore paradigmatically applicable to individuals. Organizations seemingly have no will or mind, no human feelings such as pleasure, pain, shame, and remorse. How can (...) the language of rights and responsibility be applicable to them? On the other hand, it seems to be a fact that business organizations often do things that we human beings do—make deals, sign contracts, cause harm, and issue apologies. In ordinary and in legal discourse all the time we hear such things as, “Miller's Pulp Mill is responsible for its corrupt environmental practice”; “Philip Cosmetics Ltd. has the right to advertise its products”; and “Sunligt Co. is accountable for its irresponsible behavior.” How then are we to understand the attributions of organizational agency, personality, and responsibility that these statements presuppose? Are the predicates in these statements to be taken as having the same intension, or the same force, as similar ones predicated on natural persons? Or are the predications to be seen as extensions of meaning, justified or not? Or as exotic metaphors with no factual implications? (shrink)

This study examines the impact of chief executive officer ability on firms’ corporate social responsibility performance. We find that firms’ CSR performance increases with CEO ability. Specifically, firms with more able CEOs are associated with more socially responsible activities and fewer socially irresponsible activities, and are associated with more stakeholder CSR rather than third-party CSR. We further find that the positive relation between CEO ability and CSR is weakened for CEO who is also the chair of the board and for (...) CEO who is close to retirement; and is weakened when the CSR emphasis exerted by a firm’s external environment is high. Our results are robust after controlling for firm fixed effects and to the use of multiple measures of CSR performance and CEO ability. Overall, our evidence is consistent with our conjecture that more able CEOs have less career concerns so that these CEOs are more willing to undertake long-term investments in socially beneficial activities, leading to better CSR performance. (shrink)

Heritability estimates obtained from genome-wide association studies are much lower than those of traditional quantitative methods. This phenomenon has been called the “missing heritability problem.” By analyzing and comparing GWAS and traditional quantitative methods, we first show that the estimates obtained from the latter involve some terms other than additive genetic variance, while the estimates from the former do not. Second, GWAS, when used to estimate heritability, do not take into account additive epigenetic factors transmitted across generations, while traditional quantitative (...) methods do. Given these two points we show that the missing heritability problem can largely be dissolved. (shrink)

Firms are central to wealth creation and distribution, but their role in economic inequality in a society remains poorly studied. In this essay, we define and distinguish value distribution from value creation and value appropriation. We identify four value distribution mechanisms that firms engage in and argue that shareholder wealth maximization approach skews the value distribution toward shareholders and top executives, which in turn contributes to rising economic inequalities around the world. We call on organizational scholars to study the value (...) distribution role of firms and its consequences for society, and introduce the articles in this volume of the special issue on economic inequality, business, and society. (shrink)

This study examines the effects of corporate governance mechanisms on CSR performance in an emerging economy, China. Because of the need of gaining legitimacy in the new institutional context, Chinese firms have to adopt global CSR practices in order to remain competitive. Using the corporate governance framework, this study examines how board composition, ownership, and TMT composition influence corporate social performance. The propositions are tested using data gathered from 471 firms in China. By and large, empirical findings supported the hypothesized (...) relationships. (shrink)

Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, Volume 31, Issue 2, Page 577-588, April 2022.

An accumulating amount of research has documented the harmful effects of abusive supervision on either its victims or third parties (peer abusive supervision). The abusive supervision literature, however, neglects to investigate the spillover effects of abusive supervision through third-party employees’ (i.e., peers’) mistreatment actions toward victims. Drawing on social learning theory, we argue that third parties learn mistreatment behaviors from abusive leaders and then themselves impose peer harassment and peer ostracism on victims, thereby negatively affecting victims’ performance. Further, we posit (...) that, if a victim has a proactive personality, this will weaken these indirect, negative effects. We conducted two studies, both with three-wave longitudinal data, to verify the hypotheses. The results of Study 1 evidence the significant indirect effects of abusive supervision on employee creative performance via both peer harassment and peer ostracism. Contrary to our moderation hypothesis, the analysis shows that victims’ proactive personality strengthens rather than weakens the negative indirect effects of peer harassment. Study 2 generally replicated the results of Study 1 with employee’s objective job performance as outcome. Our research contributes to the abusive supervision literature by highlighting a social learning process of third-party peer mistreatment, suggesting a spillover channel of abusive supervision on the victim’s performance. (shrink)

According to Shelly Kagan, the moral status of an individual is determined by the extent to which the individual has (has now, might/will have, or could have had) certain psychological capacities. Roughly speaking, the greater one's relevant psychological capacities, the higher their moral status. In this paper, I offer a twofold critique of Kagan's hierarchicalism. On the one hand, I argue against the primary argument in favor of Kagan's view (the argument from distribution) by challenging the key intuition on which (...) the argument relies, thereby reducing the appeal of Kagan's position. On the other hand, using Kagan's general methodology, I argue that a good reason to reject Kagan's account of moral status is that he fails to explain away the counterintuitive result of his theory in the case of normal variation. (shrink)

In this paper, I shall argue that philosophy proper is a Western cultural practice and cannot refer to traditional Chinese thinking unless in an analogical or metaphorical sense. Likewise, the Chinese idiom ‘Zhongguo zhexue’ has evolved its independent cultural meaning and has no need to be considered as philosophy in the Western academic sense. For the purpose of elucidating the culturally autonomous status of Zhongguo zhexue, as well as the possible counterparts of Western philosophy in other cultures, I contend that (...) Davidsonian anomalous monism may provide a proper explanatory framework for the intercultural relationships between different ‘sophias’ from various traditions. As for the equivocal English term ‘Chinese philosophy’, I suggest replacing it with a more precise new word: ‘sinosophy’. (shrink)

This study examines the conditions under which local social environments are likely to influence corporate tax behavior. Using a social capital index at the county level, we find that on average, social capital reduces firms’ aggressive tax avoidance behavior. The impact of social capital on corporate tax avoidance is weaker when managers are under excessive pressure to meet earnings targets, during the periods of financial constraints, and when managers are incentivized to undertake risk. We further find that corporate tax avoidance (...) activities engaged by firms headquartered in high-social-capital counties tend to be less value-increasing, indicating that potential social sanctions in these areas may reduce the benefits of tax avoidance activities accrue to firms. However, the negative impact of tax avoidance on firm value in high-social-capital counties tends to be lower for firms with strong corporate governance, which suggests that managers in well-governed firms can better exploit tax avoidance opportunities. Overall, our evidence is consistent with our conjecture that although the local social environments have a significant influence on corporate tax behavior, this influence is fragile in the presence of excessive earnings pressure, financial constraints, and equity risk incentives. (shrink)

This paper is expected to introduce a novel memductor-based chaotic system. The local dynamical entities, such as the basic dynamical behavior, the divergence, the stability of equilibrium set, and the Lyapunov exponent, are all investigated analytically and numerically to reveal the dynamic characteristics of the new memductor-based chaotic system as the system parameters and the initial state of memristor change. Subsequently, an active control method is derived to study the synchronous stability of the novel memductor-based chaotic system through making the (...) synchronization error system asymptotically stable at the origin. Further to these, a memductor-based chaotic circuit is designed, realized, and applied to construct a new memductor-based secure communication circuit by employing the basic electronic components and memristor. Furthermore, the design principle of the memductor-based chaotic circuit is thoroughly analyzed and the concept of “the memductor-based chaotic circuit defect quantification index” is proposed for the first time to verify whether the chaotic output is consistent with the mathematical model. A good qualitative agreement is shown between the simulations and the experimental validation results. (shrink)

Ralph Weber’s recent criticism sheds light on the methodological predicament of comparative philosophy. I examine Weber’s analytical tool and argue that its general applicability and potential unbridled use can lead to a conflict between its own legitimacy and the legitimacy of comparative philosophy as an established sui generis sub-discipline of philosophy which largely functions as “intercultural” or “trans-cultural philosophy”. I defend the cultural approach, and argue that comparative philosophy should be viewed as philosophical data analysis from different spatiotemporal origins, in (...) order to achieve better explanatory power for philosophical study. I point out that philosophy in China has its own peculiar methodological predicament. The comparative study of philosophy is a joint project of inter-cultural dialogue that rests on the collective effort of global participants. (shrink)

Purpose: Discuss the relationship among college students’ media internalized pressure, social physique anxiety, weight control self-efficacy, and sports participation in providing a reference for promoting college students to develop healthy and confident living habits.Methods: Take Southwest University in China as the object, select the subjects by stratified random sampling, and process the data with SPSS19.0 and AMOS21.0 statistical software.Results: Media internalized pressure is positively correlated with social physique anxiety, weight control self-efficacy, and sports participation; social physique anxiety is significantly positively (...) correlated with weight control self-efficacy and sports participation, and weight control self-efficacy is significantly positively correlated with sports participation; media internalized pressure has a direct effect on sports participation, and social physique anxiety and weight control self-efficacy play significant mediating roles in the relationship between media internalized pressure and sports participation, respectively; the chained mediating force of social physique anxiety and weight control self-efficacy also reaches a significant level.Conclusion: Media internalized pressure can influence college students’ sports participation through the direct path as well as indirect paths such as social physique anxiety, the intermediary effect of weight control self-efficacy, and chained intermediary effect of social physique anxiety–weight control self-efficacy, and social physique anxiety is another key factor affecting college students’ sports participation except media internalized pressure. (shrink)

Computational models have shown that purely statistical knowledge about words’ linguistic contexts is sufficient to learn many properties of words, including syntactic and semantic category. For example, models can infer that “postman” and “mailman” are semantically similar because they have quantitatively similar patterns of association with other words. In contrast to these computational results, artificial language learning experiments suggest that distributional statistics alone do not facilitate learning of linguistic categories. However, experiments in this paradigm expose participants to entirely novel words, (...) whereas real language learners encounter input that contains some known words that are semantically organized. In three experiments, we show that the presence of familiar semantic reference points facilitates distributional learning and this effect crucially depends both on the presence of known words and the adherence of these known words to some semantic organization. (shrink)

This study attempts to investigate the relationships among the ethical beliefs of Chinese consumers and orientations based on attitudinal attributes: materialism and moral philosophies (idealism and relativism). In addition, this study examines Chinese consumers' ethical beliefs in relation to five selected demographic characteristics (gender, age, religion, family income and education). Based on this exploratory study of 284 Chinese consumers, the following statistically significant findings were discovered. First, Chinese consumers regard that a passively benefiting activity is more ethical, but actively benefiting (...) from an illegal or a questionable activity is unacceptable. Second, the two dimensions of passively benefiting and no harm/no foul can be used to distinguish the consumers who endorse higher levels of idealism or relativism. Third, Chinese consumers with a high level of materialism are more likely to actively benefit from illegal and questionable activities, and the passively benefiting actions. Finally, the more ethical Chinese consumers seem to be younger, be religious, and have a lower family income. (shrink)

Recently, infrared human action recognition has attracted increasing attention for it has many advantages over visible light, that is, being robust to illumination change and shadows. However, the infrared action data is limited until now, which degrades the performance of infrared action recognition. Motivated by the idea of transfer learning, an infrared human action recognition framework using auxiliary data from visible light is proposed to solve the problem of limited infrared action data. In the proposed framework, we first construct a (...) novel Cross-Dataset Feature Alignment and Generalization framework to map the infrared data and visible light data into a common feature space, where Kernel Manifold Alignment and a dual aligned-to-generalized encoders model are employed to represent the feature. Then, a support vector machine is trained, using both the infrared data and visible light data, and can classify the features derived from infrared data. The proposed method is evaluated on InfAR, which is a publicly available infrared human action dataset. To build up auxiliary data, we set up a novel visible light action dataset XD145. Experimental results show that the proposed method can achieve state-of-the-art performance compared with several transfer learning and domain adaptation methods. (shrink)

Kant’s coining of «reflective judgment» in the third Critique by a conceptual clarification of the third higher cognitive faculty has long been criticized as redundant for his philosophical system and deemed a typical Kantian architectonic failure. Zhu Xi’s vital development of the doctrine «gewu» in his commentary on The Great Learning has been attacked for centuries for committing a hermeneutic fallacy. I argue that a comparative study shows that both conceptions steered a metaphysical transition towards «the supersensible» in each philosophy, (...) leading to a similar construction of moral teleology. Zhu Xi’s «li» is comparable to Kant’s «purpose» as a moral teleological property. The Neo-Confucian li-qi dichotomy provides a counterpart of the Kantian double causality. Nevertheless, Neo-Confucian moral teleology does not rely on a Kantian-type rationalistic deduction concerning the idea of highest good (as final purpose) nor on the so-called intellectual intuition. Gewu looks outwards for the moral coherence between humans and things, while Kant ultimately rejects the natural world for the sake of moral certainty in terms of freedom and identifies what is unique within us. (shrink)

Music not only regulates mood but also promotes the development and maintenance of empathy and social understanding. Since empathy is crucial for well-being and indispensable in social life, it is necessary to develop strategies to improve empathy and prosocial behaviors. To fulfill this aim, researchers have extensively investigated the effect of intensive musical training on the development of empathy. Here, we first summarize evidence showing the powerful influence of musical training on the development of empathy and then discuss psychological mechanisms (...) responsible for those observations. The conclusions drawn from most previous studies were mainly based on behavioral measurements, while the neural basis of musical training in the development of the empathic brain is still unclear. Fortunately, brain imaging research has contributed greatly to our understanding of the neural underpinnings associated with musical training and its possible connection to the development of the empathic brain. One of the most distinctive signatures of musical training is structural and functional changes of multiple brain regions, and such changes might be related to some of the empathic behaviors observed in musically trained children. Therefore, intensive musical training in childhood may increase levels of empathy, and applied research is required to optimize the training strategy before implementing music education in empathy regulation. Moreover, future longitudinal studies are needed to better understand neural mechanisms underlying the causal effect of musical training on empathy development. These findings have important implications for understanding the development of the empathic brain and for improving prosocial behaviors. (shrink)

This issue starts from a conviction that globalization is inevitable, and in this process, we journey together. Globalization for East Asia once meant Westernization, or less geographically specific, universal modernization. However, it became apparent that globalization cannot be simply defined in terms of assimilation and univocality, as insoluble disputes and radical differences in all aspects of life still occur and reoccur. Nonetheless, dialogue and interaction have been happening more frequently on a larger scale, even if sometimes concurrently appearing in the (...) form of miscommunication. Scientists question if the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil can set off a tornado in Texas while poets contemplate whether one falling leaf of a Chinese parasol informs the change of seasons in the whole world. From Turin to Wuhan, when our living conditions have never been more effectively integrated than they are now, it requires us not only to think more correlatively, but also to understand locality in a larger context from a holistic perspective. (shrink)

ABSTRACTTo assess the strength of Lloyd's conception of analogy, in particular, his innovative conceptual apparatus ‘the multidimensionality of reality’ and ‘the semantic stretch’, I propose the notion of hermeneutic mechanism as a rival tool of investigation. Hermeneutic mechanism manifests in the interaction of negative and positive hermeneutic forces, the dynamic interdependence between ideal universality and contextualized individuality, and the organism-like ‘hermeneutic circle’. I argue that hermeneutic mechanism not only offers a meta-methodological perspective for appreciating Lloyd's methodological development of analogy for (...) cross-cultural studies, but also incorporates both Lloyd's quest for diversity and his critique of logical dichotomy, and moreover overcomes the explicatory flaw in his ‘multidimensionality of reality’ and colour metaphor. (shrink)

The ring‐shaped ATPase machine, cohesin, regulates sister chromatid cohesion, transcription, and DNA repair by topologically entrapping DNA. Here, we propose a rigid scaffold model to explain how the cohesin regulators Pds5 and Wapl release cohesin from chromosomes. Recent studies have established the Smc3‐Scc1 interface as the DNA exit gate of cohesin, revealed a requirement for ATP hydrolysis in ring opening, suggested regulation of the cohesin ATPase activity by DNA and Smc3 acetylation, and provided insights into how Pds5 and Wapl open (...) this exit gate. We hypothesize that Pds5, Wapl, and SA1/2 form a rigid scaffold that docks on Scc1 and anchors the N‐terminal domain of Scc1 (Scc1N) to the Smc1 ATPase head. Relative movements between the Smc1‐3 ATPase heads driven by ATP and Wapl disrupt the Smc3‐Scc1 interface. Pds5 binds the dissociated Scc1N and prolongs this open state of cohesin, releasing DNA. We review the evidence supporting this model and suggest experiments that can further test its key principles. (shrink)

Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

ABSTRACTWushu is widely misunderstood and its essentially combative nature is being challenged in public discussion. Understanding and recovering its essential nature has become a core issue. This...

Daniel A. Bell’s searching for the possible alternatives to liberal democracy in light of the political progresses in the Asian countries spans two decades, culminating in his proposal of the so-called Chinese political meritocracy or xianneng zhengzhi. This article indicates the conceptual asymmetry between xianneng zhengzhi and “meritocracy” in three aspects. Firstly, xianeng zhengzhi remains at the brighter end of the spectrum of political ideas while “meritocracy” is bogged down in a highly polarized reception. Secondly, “meritocracy” lacks the quintessence of (...) xianneng zhengzhi, namely, an explicit stress on priority of moral worthiness. Thirdly, “meritocracy” is built upon foundational individualism and focuses on the individual performance and achievement. Although Confucian political tradition and the Western conception of meritocracy share some functional similarities, using the synthesized term “Confucian meritocracy” to introduce the Confucian political tradition may commit a cross-cultural hermeneutic fallacy. (shrink)

This paper aims to further explore the potentiality of integrating key insights from virtue argumentation theory into pragma-dialectics to establish a virtuous pragma-dialectics. Drawing methodological inspiration from Gascón’s work, this paper introduces the “conditions-implications framework.” Firstly, it argues that virtues offer novel perspectives on the second-order conditions of critical discussion. Specifically, it illustrates that excessive emotional attachment and identity prejudice hinder the reasonable engagement of arguers at both individual and socio-cultural levels, and virtues play a pivotal role in overcoming these (...) irrational factors. Furthermore, integrating virtue insights into pragma-dialectics leads to two important theoretical implications: (1) an expanded fallacy theory—revealing the connection between argumentative vices and fallacies, expanding fallacies from a unilateral to a bilateral issue; (2) an expanded strategic maneuvering theory—virtue contributes to maintaining the delicate balance between dialectical reasonableness and rhetorical effectiveness. The virtue approach is anticipated to act as a facilitator rather than an obstruction to the future advancement of pragma-dialectics. (shrink)

Stressful life events and subjective well-being are negatively related, but there is little research in the current literature exploring the mediating and moderating mechanisms underlying this association, especially for female adolescents in vocational schools who are subjected to undesirable life events. In the present study, we examined the mediating role of depression in the association between stressful life events and female adolescents’ subjective well-being, as well as the moderating role of perceived social support in the direct and indirect relations involved. (...) The participants were 1,096 vocational school female adolescents, who completed the questionnaires regarding stressful life events, subjective well-being, depression, and perceived social support. The results showed that depression partially mediated the relation between stressful life events and subjective well-being. Importantly, perceived social support moderated the direct link between stressful life events and subjective well-being, and the indirect link between stressful life events and depression, but not the indirect link between depression and subjective well-being. Especially, female adolescents high in perceived social support displayed higher levels of subjective well-being and lower levels of depression in facing with stressful life events than those low in perceived social support. These findings highlight the mechanisms underlying the relationship between stressful life events and subjective well-being in vocational school female adolescents. (shrink)

PurposesThis paper aims to discuss the relationship between college students’ sports participation, school bullying, emotional intelligence and self-esteem. At the same time, it explores the intrinsic mechanisms of school bullying, in order to provide a reference for reducing bullying phenomenon among college students, and pave the way for college students to lead happy, healthy and confident lives.MethodsA total of 1,317 students from four universities in Southwest China were selected as subjects for this survey. They were selected by stratified random sampling, (...) and the data needed was obtained using a structured questionnaire. The data was subsequently processed with statistical software SPSS19.0 and AMOS21.0.Results Sports participation has a significant and positive correlation with emotional intelligence and self-esteem, likewise, it has a significant negative correlation with school bullying. Emotional intelligence has a marked positive correlation with self-esteem, at the same time it has a significant negative correlation with school bullying. In addition, self-esteem is strongly negative correlated with school bullying. Sports participation has a direct effect on school bullying. Emotional intelligence and self-esteem also play a significant mediating role between sports participation and school bullying, and the chain mediating force of emotional intelligence—self-esteem also reaches a significant level.ConclusionSports participation affects school bullying among college students not only directly but also indirectly, such as through emotional intelligence, the mediating role of self-esteem, and the chain mediating role of emotional intelligence to self-esteem. Apart from sports participation, emotional intelligence is another key factor that affects college students’ school bullying. Therefore, while attaching great importance to college students’ sport participation, schools should also provide courses aimed at developing students’ emotional intelligence. (shrink)

In this paper, a normalized robust FOPID controller regulation algorithm is proposed. Only one parameter k is necessary to be tuned in the controller regulation process, so the proposed control algorithm is convenient to be applied on both fractional-order systems and integer-order systems. A robustness evaluation function is constructed based on the small gain theorem. Larger robustness evaluation function value will help the system achieve better robustness performance. Another parameter, β, is also available to serve as a tuning knob when (...) larger robust evaluation function value is needed. Therefore, the controlled systems can be stabilized and can achieve quite satisfactory robust control performance using the proposed algorithm. The corresponding robust analysis results are obtained according to different conditions in the discussion. For a special case of widely used fractional-order systems, the FOPI and FOID controllers are presented based on the same tuning scheme together with their robustness discussion. Some examples are shown to verify the robustness of systems controlled by the proposed algorithm. (shrink)

Social Information Science (or Social Informatics) is a new and interdiscipline branch subject in China. This paper probe the emergence and the research outline of social information science. 1. The proposal of the social information science. We set up the research from an extension from the theoretical informatics to the concrete informatics; a internal bond of integrating various subjects in humane and social sciences; an intersection and mutual permeation between the social science and the natural science; a the intersection and (...) interaction among humane and social sciences, modern information science and information technology; a strengthening to the research into Social Epistemology. Ⅱ. On the concept of social information. Social information directly is different with selfexistent and natural information, and more related to human’s autonomous creative activities, to society’s culture inheritance, to social value, to human’s spiritual interaction and to human’s emotions. Ⅲ.On the theoretical orientation of the social information science. Social Information Science is a concrete branch of informatics, a generation of sub-disciplines of social information, a kind of traversing and comprehensive research on individual social science from the angle of information, a kind of exchange and interaction between social theoretical research and the modern information technology. Ⅳ. The research focus of the social information science. The paper lists 10 main focus in the research of social information science. Ⅴ.The system and frame of the social information science. In general, there should be four levels of researches if the social information science is to be viewed as a relatively independent subject: the philosophical level, the scientific theoretical level, concrete apply level, social information technology and methods. (shrink)