Based on the quarterly data of mutual funds in China from the fourth quarter of 2004 to the fourth quarter of 2019, this paper constructs a series of complex bipartite networks based on the overlapped portfolios of mutual funds and then explores the influences of fund network position on mutual fund’s investment behavior and performance. This paper finds that a mutual fund with shorter information transmission path to other entities in the fund network or with stronger ties with (...) those entities in important information positions will achieve better investment performance. However, a stronger mediating role over the potential information flow of the fund network cannot help a mutual fund increase performance. The empirical results also indicate that a mutual fund holding stock portfolios with high valuation difficulties caused by the market or fundamental information uncertainty will achieve better investment performance, while holding hard-to-value portfolios caused by limited public information will reduce the performance of the fund. Furthermore, high closeness centrality or eigenvector centrality can help mutual funds deal with the disclose problems of public information, thus reducing the likelihood of a mutual fund holding hard-to-value portfolios caused by limited public information to achieve worse performance. Eigenvector centrality brings information advantages about company fundamentals, so it is easier for a mutual fund with high eigenvector centrality to profit from holding hard-to-value portfolios caused by the fundamental information uncertainty. The conclusions of this paper can enhance our understanding of the fund network and its information mechanism and shed new light on mutual fund’s information advantages and related asset allocation strategies. (shrink)

What critical characteristics do firms have that determine the scale and scope of corporate social responsibility activities they undertake? This paper examines two disparate predictors of corporate social performance. First, using the lens of the resource-based view, we examine the role of alliance network centrality on corporate social performance. We find that centrality enhances corporate social performance. Second, we investigate how board composition affects corporate social performance. Specifically, drawing on stakeholder theory, we find that the percentage of (...) female directors predicts greater corporate social performance. In addition, we look at the influence of outside directors on this relationship. Our findings show that the presence of more outside directors positively moderates the relationship between female directors and corporate social performance. (shrink)

This study examined the role of individuals’ cognitive flexibility and self-monitoring in shaping their workplace advice network centrality. Drawing on advice network generation theory, we hypothesized a positive relationship between cognitive flexibility and advice network centrality, and a moderation effect of self-monitoring on this relationship. Then, we collected two time-points data from insurance salesmen to test the hypotheses. As predicted, cognitive flexibility was positively associated with advice network centrality. Furthermore, this positive relationship was (...) only significant for low self-monitoring individuals, but not for high self-monitoring individuals. These findings indicated that individuals with high cognitive flexibility were more likely to have central positions in the advice network; however, this effect was attenuated as their self-monitoring increased. (shrink)

It is often maintained that participants in inter-religious dialogue will benefit from increased access to other perspectives that deepens understanding of their own tradition and the traditions of others, but this is rarely examined empirically and with attention to bringing the human sciences into conversation with theological thinking about dialogue. Drawing on theory and methods from social network analysis, this research conceptualized inter-religious dialogue as a communication network and investigated the impact of differences in access to communication flows (...) on dialogue participants. Interviews with those most connected and those least connected showed differences in the characterization of dialogue experiences, relationships to the home community, and the ability to recognize similarities and differences and to engage in perspective-taking. Hubs were more freely able to migrate into the experiences and practices of the dialogue partners tradition, while being rooted in their home tradition. This research highlights the importance of the network perspective for studying dialogue as a relational and community practice and offers a description of the unique experiences and capacities of network hubs situated in the middle. It also underscores the way in which theological and human scientific analyses can interact in a complementary and enriching way. (shrink)

BackgroundIn the pandemic time, many low- and middle-income countries are experiencing restricted access to COVID-19 vaccines. Access to imported vaccines or ways to produce them locally became the principal source of hope for these countries. But developing a strategy for success in obtaining and allocating vaccines was not easy task. The governments in those countries have faced the difficult decision whether to accept or reject offers of vaccine diplomacy, weighing the price and availability of COVID-19 vaccines against the concerns over (...) their efficacy and safety. We aimed to analyze public opinion regarding the governmental strategies to obtain COVID-19 vaccines in three Central Asian countries, focusing particularly on possible ethical issues.MethodsWe searched for opinions expressed either in Russian or in the respective national languages. We provided data on the debate within three countries, drawn from social media postings and other sources. The opinion data was not restricted by source and time. This allowed collecting a wide range of possible opinions that could be expressed regarding COVID-19 vaccine supply and human participation in the vaccine trial. We recognized ethical issues and possible questions concerning different ethical frameworks. We also considered scientific data and other information, in the process of reasoning.ResultsAs a result, public views on their respective government policies on COVID-19 vaccine supply ranged from strongly negative to slightly positive. We extracted the most important issues from public debates, for our analysis. The first issue involved trade-offs between quantity, speed, price, freedom, efficacy, and safety in the vaccines. The second set of issues arose in connection with the request to site a randomized trial in one of the countries (Uzbekistan). After considering additional evidence, we weighed individual and public risks against the benefits to make specific judgements concerning every issue.ConclusionsWe believe that our analysis would be a helpful example of solving ethical issues that can arise concerning COVID-19 vaccine supply around the world. The public view can be highly critical, helping to spot such issues. An ignoring this view can lead to major problems, which in turn, can become a serious obstacle for the vaccine coverage and epidemics’ control in the countries and regions. (shrink)

In recent years, while extensive researches on various networks properties have been proposed and accomplished, little has been proposed and done on network robustness and node vulnerability assessment under cascades in directed large-scale online community networks. In essential, an online directed social network is a group-centered and information spread-dominated online platform which is very different from the traditional undirected social network. Some further research studies have indicated that the online social network has high robustness to random (...) removals of nodes but fails to the intentional attacks, particularly to those attacks based on node betweenness or node directed coefficient. To explore on the robustness of directed social network, in this article, we have proposed two novel node centralities of ITG and I M p v. These two new centrality models are designed to capture this cascading effect in directed online social networks. Furthermore, we also propose a new and highly efficient computing method based on iterations for I M p v. Then, with the abundant experiments on the synthetic signed network and real-life networks derived from directed online social media and directed human mobile phone calling network, it has been proved that our ITG and I M p v based on directed social network robustness and node vulnerability assessment method is more accurate, efficient, and faster than several traditional centrality methods such as degree and betweenness. And we also have proposed the solid reasoning and proof process of iteration times k in computation of I M p v. To the best knowledge of us, our research has drawn some new light on the leading edge of robustness on the directed social network. (shrink)

The Pāñcarātra cult is one of the oldest surviving sects of Vaiṣṇavism in India today, and its scope of influence covered northern, western, and central India during the early medieval period. The paper in its two sections attempts to trace the developments in the Pāñcarātra iconography up to the Kashmir form that becomes popular during the early medieval period. Further, as per the title, the paper focuses on the mystery of the Harṣatmātā Temple and studies the possibilities that emerge from (...) a study of the iconography present at the temple along with the patrons of the site. The temple is further contextualized with the other examples of the Pāñcarātra iconography in the western and central India during the early medieval period in order to celebrate the shared networks of influences that work in this time and region. (shrink)

Changes in the abundance of protein and RNA molecules can impair the formation of complexes in the cell leading to toxicity and death. Here we exploit the information contained in protein, RNA and DNA interaction networks to provide a comprehensive view of the regulation layers controlling the concentration‐dependent formation of assemblies in the cell. We present the emerging concept that RNAs can act as scaffolds to promote the formation ribonucleoprotein complexes and coordinate the post‐transcriptional layer of gene regulation. We describe (...) the structural and interaction network properties that characterize the ability of protein and RNA molecules to interact and phase separate in liquid‐like compartments. Finally, we show that presence of structurally disordered regions in proteins correlate with the propensity to undergo liquid‐to‐solid phase transitions and cause human diseases. Also see the video abstract here https://youtu.be/kfpqibsNfS0. (shrink)

Conceptual features differ in how mentally tranformable they are. A robin that does not eat is harder to imagine than a robin that does not chirp. We argue that features are immutable to the extent that they are central in a network of dependency relations. The immutability of a feature reflects how much the internal structure of a concept depends on that feature; i.e., how much the feature contributes to the concept's coherence. Complementarily, mutability reflects the aspects in which (...) a concept is flexible. We show that features can be reliably ordered according to their mutability using tasks that require people to conceive of objects missing a feature, and that mutability (conceptual centrality) can be distinguished from category centrality and from diagnosticity and salience. We test a model of mutability based on asymmetric, unlabeled, pairwise dependency relations. With no free parameters, the model provides reasonable fits to data. Qualitative tests of the model show that mutability judgments are unaffected by the type of dependency relation and that dependency structure influences judgments of variability. (shrink)

How are biases encoded in our representations of social categories? Philosophical and empirical discussions of implicit bias overwhelmingly focus on salient or statistical associations between target features and representations of social categories. These are the sorts of associations probed by the Implicit Association Test and various priming tasks. In this paper, we argue that these discussions systematically overlook an alternative way in which biases are encoded, that is, in the dependency networks that are part of our representations of social categories. (...) Dependency networks encode information about how features in a conceptual representation depend on each other. This information determines the degree of centrality of a feature for a conceptual representation. Importantly, centrally encoded biases systematically disassociate from those encoded in salient-statistical associations. Furthermore, the degree of centrality of a feature determines its cross-contextual stability: in general, the more central a feature is for a concept, the more likely it is to survive into a wide array of cognitive tasks involving that concept. Accordingly, implicit biases that are encoded in the central features of concepts are predicted to be more resilient across different tasks and contexts. As a result, the distinction between centrally encoded and salient-statistical biases has important theoretical and practical implications. (shrink)

Discussions in social psychology overlook an important way in which biases can be encoded in conceptual representations. Most accounts of implicit bias focus on ‘mere associations’ between features and representations of social groups. While some have argued that some implicit biases must have a richer conceptual structure, they have said little about what this richer structure might be. To address this lacuna, we build on research in philosophy and cognitive science demonstrating that concepts represent dependency relations between features. These relations, (...) in turn, determine the centrality of a feature f for a concept C: roughly, the more features of C depend on f, the more central f is for C. In this paper, we argue that the dependency networks that link features can encode significant biases. To support this claim, we present a series of studies that show how a particular brilliance-gender bias is encoded in the dependency networks which are part of the concepts of female and male academics. We also argue that biases which are encoded in dependency networks have unique implications for social cognition. (shrink)

Little is known about how farms and markets are connected. Identifying critical gaps and central hubs in food systems is of importance in addressing a variety of concerns, such as navigating rapid shifts in marketing practices as seen during the COVID-19 pandemic and related food shortages. The constellation of growers and markets can also reinforce opportunities to shift growing and eating policies and practices with attention to addressing racial and income inequities in food system ownership and access. With this research, (...) we compare network methods for measuring centrality and sociospatial orientations in food systems using two of America’s most high-producing agricultural counties. Though the counties are adjacent, we demonstrate that their community food systems have little overlap in contributing farms and markets. Our findings show that the community food system for Yolo County is tightly interwoven with Bay Area restaurants and farmers’ markets. The adjacent county, Sacramento, branded itself as America’s Farm-to-Fork capital in 2012 and possesses network hubs focused more on grocery stores and restaurants. In both counties, the most central actors differ and have been involved with the community food system for decades. Such findings have implications beyond the case studies, and we conclude with considerations for how our methods could be standardized in the national agricultural census. (shrink)

Efficient identification of influential nodes is one of the essential aspects in the field of complex networks, which has excellent theoretical and practical significance in the real world. A valuable number of approaches have been developed and deployed in these areas where just a few have used centrality measures along with their concerning deficiencies and limitations in their studies. Therefore, to resolve these challenging issues, we propose a novel effective distance-based centrality algorithm for the identification of influential nodes (...) in concerning networks. EDBC algorithm comprises factors such as the power of K-shell, degree nodes, effective distance, and numerous levels of neighbor’s influence or neighborhood potential. The performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated on nine real-world networks, where a susceptible infected recovered epidemic model is employed to examine the spreading dynamics of each node. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm outperforms the existing techniques such as eigenvector, betweenness, closeness centralities, hyperlink-induced topic search, H-index, K-shell, page rank, profit leader, and gravity over a valuable margin. (shrink)

Social support networks play a key role in human livelihood security, especially in vulnerable communities. Here we explore how evolutionary ideas of kin selection and intrahousehold resource competition can explain individual variation in daily support network size and composition in a south-central Ethiopian agricultural community. We consider both domestic and agricultural help across two generations with different wealth-transfer norms that yield different contexts for sibling competition. For farmers who inherited land rights from family, firstborns were more likely to report (...) daily support from parents and to have larger nonparental kin networks. Compared with other farmers, firstborns were also more likely to reciprocate their parents’ support, and to help nonparental kin without reciprocity. For farmers who received land rights from the government, middle-born farmers reported more nonparental kin in their support networks compared with other farmers; nonreciprocal interactions were particularly common in both directions. This suggests a diversification of adult support networks to nonparental kin, possibly in response to a long-term parental investment disadvantage of being middle-born sons. In all instances, regardless of inheritance, lastborn farmers were the most disadvantaged in terms of kin support. Overall, we found that nonreciprocal interactions among farmers followed kin selection predictions. Direct reciprocity explained a substantial part of the support received from kin, suggesting the importance of the combined effects of kin selection and reciprocity for investment from kin. (shrink)

This article examines a case study of international Communist propaganda during the Cold War. The Institute of Historical and Socio-Political Research, a historical propaganda organization affiliated to the Romanian Communist Party, succeeded in penetrating the Iron Curtain by distributing its works through a social network provided by the Italian Liberation Movement Institute, and in publishing its works in Italy, with the help of the Gramsci Institute, as well as publishers like Editori Riuniti and Nicola Teti. The ISISP established a (...) mutually beneficial partnership with various Italian actors: ISISP and the regime succeeded in publishing international propaganda; the Italian publishing houses were paid by ISISP to print and distribute their edited volumes, with the double advantage of keeping political ties with the RCP while also protecting their own limited finances. (shrink)

A well-developed perspective in the study of urban systems is that cities are complex systems that manifest as networks of interdependent economic units. These units might be occupations, industries, labor skills, patent technologies, etc. Much research has focused on describing the nature of these networks, quantifying their links, and suggesting applications for policymakers. In this paper, we examine the US skill network, focusing on the relationship between network centrality and economic performance. Here, nodes are represented by individual (...) labor skills, and edge weights are derived from the colocation pattern of skill pairs among 384 US metropolitan statistical areas. The centrality of skills, using three centrality measures, is then aggregated to the occupational and metropolitan level. We find that occupations with higher skill centrality are associated with greater annual salaries, and metropolitan areas with higher skill centrality have higher productivity rates. Overall, these results suggest that the application of traditional network metrics to this view of cities as complex networks can offer new insights into the dynamics of regional economies. (shrink)

Lifelong premature ejaculation (LPE) is a common male sexual dysfunction. Lack of active control for rapid ejaculation brought great distress to sexual harmony, and even fertility. Previous neurophysiology studies revealed an ejaculation-related control mechanism in the brain. However, it remains unclear whether this inhibitory network is altered in LPE patients. The present study investigated the central inhibitory network function of LPE patients by using stop signal task-related functional magnetic resonance imaging and resting-state functional connectivity analysis. The results showed (...) no difference in task-related behavioral performance or neural activation during response inhibition between LPE patients and controls. However, LPE patients showed a significantly different correlation pattern between the stop signal reaction time (SSRT) and left inferior frontal gyrus activation during successful inhibition, in which a typical negative correlation between SSRT and the activation was completely disappeared in patients. In addition, using the left inferior frontal gyrus as a seed, patients showed weaker functional connectivity between the seed and two areas (left dental nucleus and right frontal pole) compared with controls. These data suggest that LPE patients have an abnormal brain control network, which may contribute to the reduced central control of rapid ejaculation. This study provides new insights into the neural mechanism of LPE involving the central inhibitory network, which may offer an underlying intervention target for future treatment. (shrink)

Childhood adversity is associated with altered or dysregulated stress reactivity; these altered patterns of physiological functioning persist into adulthood. Evidence from both preclinical animal models and human neuroimaging studies indicates that early life experience differentially influences stressor-evoked activity within central visceral neural circuits proximally involved in the control of stress responses, including the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC), paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus (PVN), bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) and amygdala. However, the relationship between childhood adversity and the (...) resting-state connectivity of this central visceral network remains unclear. To this end, we examined relationships between childhood threat and childhood socioeconomic deprivation, the resting-state connectivity between our regions of interest (ROIs), and affective symptom severity and diagnoses. We recruited a transdiagnostic sample of young adult males and females (n= 100; mean age = 27.28,SD= 3.99; 59 females) with a full distribution of maltreatment history and symptom severity across multiple affective disorders. Resting-state data were acquired using a 7.2-min functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) sequence; noted ROIs were applied as masks to determine ROI-to-ROI connectivity. Threat was determined by measures of childhood traumatic events and abuse. Socioeconomic deprivation (SED) was determined by a measure of childhood socioeconomic status (parental education level). Covarying for age, race and sex, greater childhood threat was significantly associated with lower BNST-PVN, amygdala-sgACC and PVN-sgACC connectivity. No significant relationships were found between SED and resting-state connectivity. BNST-PVN connectivity was associated with the number of lifetime affective diagnoses. Exposure to threat during early development may entrain altered patterns of resting-state connectivity between these stress-related ROIs in ways that contribute to dysregulated neural and physiological responses to stress and subsequent affective psychopathology. (shrink)

This paper concerns work I have done on the China-Burma border between 2001 and 2007, with background of work with Shan both in Burma and in North Western Thailand. It will be about the place of the Shan and their Buddhism in the network of ethnic and trade relations on this border. It will raise questions about Shan Monastic traditions. On the one hand I have worked on the nature of Wa (Pirok) Theravada Buddhism and the history of the (...) Wa ‘kingdom’ of Ban Hong, and the Shan have played a central role as source of knowledge about Buddhism and of kingship, providing models of both for these Wa. A number of interesting questions arise about the Shan sources of models of Buddhist monastic organisation here; and it is quite clear that Wa ‘kingship’ was based upon the Shan notion of a Caofa or Cao Mang. The second focus (during most of 2003, mostly at Ruili/Meng Mao) has been the cross-border, inter-ethnic trade system chiefly in gemstones and jade. In this context the Shan have played a central role as what anthropologists have called ‘cultural brokers’. The Shan uniquely have been in a position to mediate between conflicting Burmese, Chinese and Thai conceptions about precious stones, making this trade network work smoothly. Since the Shan on these borders know how to ‘be Chinese’ (as Tai Noe), to ‘be Burmese’ (as Tai Mao and/or Tai Tay), and even to ‘be within the Thai cultural ambience’. (shrink)

James Pickett’s much-anticipated book derives from his 2015 Princeton Ph.D. dissertation, and the comparatively slim end product only hints at the wealth of res.

The involvement of developing countries in international clinical trials is necessary for the development of appropriate medicines for local populations. However, the absence of appropriate structures for ethical review represents a barrier for certain countries. Currently there is very little information available on existing structures dedicated to ethics in western and central Africa. This article briefly describes historical milestones in the development of networks dedicated to capacity building in ethical review in these regions and outlines the major conclusions of two (...) workshops on this issue, which were held in September and October 2002 in Libreville, Gabon, and Paris, France. The workshops were the culmination of collaboration between the African Malaria Network Trust (AMANET) and the Pan African Bioethics Initiative (PABIN). They produced an update on ethics organizations with regard to mission, function, activities, members, and contact people, in eight countries within the regions discussed. As a result of the commitment of mandated delegates, a further prominent outcome followed these workshops: the creation of national structures, where none existed before, dedicated to the ethical review of clinical trials. (shrink)

This paper is a commentary on the target article by Michael Arbib, “Levels of modeling of mechanisms of visually guided behavior”, in the same issue of the journal, pp. 407–465. -/- I focus on the importance of the inclusion of an ability of a system to entertain, at a given time, multiple instantiations of a given schema (situation template, frame, script, action plan, etc.), and complications introduced into neural/connectionist network systems by such inclusion.

Much of the debates in this book revolves around Milan Kundera and his 1984 essay "The Tragedy of Central Europe." Kundera wrote his polemical text when the world was pregnant with imminent social and political change, yet that world was still far from realizing that we would enter the last decade of the twentieth century with the Soviet empire and its network of satellite states missing from the political map. Kundera was challenged by Joseph Brodsky and György Konrád for (...) allegedly excluding Russia from the symbolic space of Europe, something the great author deeply believes he never did. To what extent was Kundera right in assuming that, if to exist means to be present in the eyes of those we love, then Central Europe does not exist anymore, just as Western Europe as we knew it has stopped existing? What were the mental, cultural, and intellectual realities that lay beneath or behind his beautiful and graceful metaphors? Are we justified in rehabilitating political optimism at the beginning of the twenty-first century? Are we able to reconcile the divided memories of Eastern or Central Europe and Western Europe regarding what happened to the world in 1968? And where is Central Europe now? (shrink)

The standard representation of the Central Dogma (CD) of Molecular Biology conspicuously ignores metabolism. However, both the metabolites and the biochemical fluxes behind any biological phenomenon are encrypted in the DNA sequence. Metabolism constrains and even changes the information flow when the DNA‐encoded instructions conflict with the homeostasis of the biochemical network. Inspection of adaptive virulence programs and emergence of xenobiotic‐biodegradation pathways in environmental bacteria suggest that their main evolutionary drive is the expansion of their metabolic networks towards new (...) chemical landscapes rather than perpetuation and spreading of their DNA sequences. Faulty enzymatic reactions on suboptimal substrates often produce reactive oxygen species (ROS), a process that fosters DNA diversification and ultimately couples catabolism of the new chemicals to growth. All this calls for a revision of the CD in which metabolism (rather than DNA) has the leading role. (shrink)

Congenital nystagmus in infants and young children can lead to early blindness. Previous neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that EB is accompanied by alterations in brain structure and function. However, the effects of visual impairment and critical developmental periods on brain functional connectivity at rest have been unclear. Here, we used the voxel-wise degree centrality method to explore the underlying functional network brain activity in adolescents with EB. Twenty-one patients with EBs and 21 sighted controls underwent magnetic resonance imaging. (...) Differences between the two groups were assessed using the DC method. Moreover, the support vector machine method was used to differentiate patients with EB patients from the SCs according to DC values. Compared with the SCs, the patients with EB had increased DC values in the bilateral cerebellum_6, cerebellum vermis_4_5, bilateral supplementary motor areas, and left fusiform gyrus; the patients with EB had decreased DC values in the bilateral rectal gyrus and left medial orbital frontal gyrus. The SVM classification of the DC values achieved an overall accuracy of 70.45% and an area under the curve of 0.86 in distinguishing between the patients with EB and the SCs. Our study may reveal the neuromechanism of neuroplasticity in EB; the findings provide an imaging basis for future development of restorative visual therapies and sensory substitution devices, and future assessments of visual rehabilitation efficacy. (shrink)

In this article, network science is discussed from a methodological perspective, and two central theses are defended. The first is that network science exploits the very properties that make a system complex. Rather than using idealization techniques to strip those properties away, as is standard practice in other areas of science, network science brings them to the fore, and uses them to furnish new forms of explanation. The second thesis is that network representations are particularly helpful (...) in explaining the properties of non-decomposable systems. Where part-whole decomposition is not possible, network science provides a much-needed alternative method of compressing information about the behavior of complex systems, and does so without succumbing to problems associated with combinatorial explosion. The article concludes with a comparison between the uses of network representation analyzed in the main discussion, and an entirely distinct use of network representation that has recently been discussed in connection with mechanistic modeling. (shrink)

Results from three field network studies show that depending on individuals’ network positions (central or peripheral), experts and novices have varying ethical predispositions (EP). In particular, central experts (vs. peripheral experts) have higher EP, while novices in the same positions (vs. peripheral novices) have lower EP. Results demonstrate individuals’ relational-interdependent self-construal mediates these relationships. Importantly, this research suggests that the interaction between network and individual difference variables uniquely affect individuals’ ethical predisposition. Given the lack of research focus (...) on the impact of structural positions on EP, this article demonstrates the importance of combining network and individual variables to investigate individuals’ EP. (shrink)

Using listed firms in China over the period 2010–2018, we investigate the association between directors’ network and quality of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure from the lens of resource-based view. We find a significantly positive effect of directors’ network centrality on the CSR disclosure quality, and the effect is more pronounced when the firm (1) invests less in advertising; (2) is followed by less analysts; (3) is less financially constrained; and (4) has no assurance of sustainability report. (...) Furthermore, we document that independent directors’ network centrality is positively associated with CSR disclosure quality. Our findings have important implication for practitioners, policy makers, and regulators. (shrink)

This paper investigates the influence of board network centrality on corporate social responsibility decoupling. CSR decoupling refers to the gap between corporate internal and external actions in CSR practices. Specifically, we measure CSR decoupling as the difference between corporate social disclosure and corporate social performance. This paper uses a sample of Chinese A-share listed firms during 2009–2018, takes the technical dimension score and content dimension score of RKS ratings as proxies of CSD and CSP, and obtains CSR decoupling (...) as the difference between CSD and CSP. Our results show that board network centrality is positively related to over-decoupling in the pre-adoption period of the new environmental law but negatively related to over-decoupling in the post-adoption period and centrality is not related to under-decoupling in the pre-adoption period but a significantly positive related in the post-adoption period. Our finding reveals a complex role of the board network in CSR practices in China. (shrink)

In this review, we deal with two central questions of consciousness how and why, and we outline their possible future development. The question how refers to the empirical endeavor to reveal the neural correlates and mechanisms that form consciousness. On the other hand, the question why generally refers to the “hard problem” of consciousness, which claims that empirical science will always fail to provide a satisfactory answer to the question why is there conscious experience at all. Unfortunately, the hard problem (...) of consciousness will probably never completely disappear because it will always have its most committed supporters. However, there is a good chance that its weight and importance will be highly reduced by empirically tackling consciousness in the near future. We expect that future empirical endeavor of consciousness will be based on a unifying brain theory and will answer the question as to what is the function of conscious experience, which will in turn replace the implications of the hard problem. The candidate of such a unifying brain theory is predictive coding, which will have to explain both perceptual consciousness and conscious mind-wandering in order to become the truly unifying theory of brain functioning. (shrink)

Some farmers in the Central Finger Lakes Region of New York balance their production between principles of peasant farming and capitalist farming. They struggle to extend their sphere of autonomy and subsistence production, while extended commodity production is often a response to external forces of the state and capital. This struggle, together with a quantitative increase of small farms, can be described as an instance of repeasantization. Based on inductive, empirical qualitative social research, this case study describes the economy and (...) social organization of six farms in the area under investigation and explores the applicability of the rich theory of peasant farming to agriculture in this community. Besides selling commodities to pay for many farming inputs and consumer goods, the farms produce for their subsistence and that of their community. They exchange products and services with other farms, they build networks of mutual provisioning, support, and mentorship, and try to take good care of the land. This paper shows that subsistence production and peasant culture are not restricted to the past or the Global South, but also exist as pockets of peasantness on six New York farms. The perspective applied in this paper suggests that principles of peasant farming may shape farming on other US farms, too, if we accept that these principles intersect with constrains of the larger capitalist market society in which they are embedded. (shrink)

Knowledge networking in the cross-cultural setting here focuses on promoting a culture of shared communication, values and knowledge, seeking cooperation through valorisation of diversity. The process is seen here in terms of creating new alliances of creators, users, mediators and facilitators of knowledge. At the global level, knowledge networking is seen as a symbiotic relationship between local and global knowledge resources. This focus is informed by the human-centred vision of the information society, which seeks a symbiotic relationship between technology and (...) society. It explores the nature of the knowledge in transition, raising issues of technology and knowledge transfer in the local–global context. The notions of human–machine symbiosis and of diversity and coherence provide a handle to explore the role of technology for sustainable development. The centrality of knowledge in stimulating knowledge networking for cross-cultural collaboration is illustrated through an exemplar of an EU–India Cross-Cultural Innovation Network project, a collaboration between European and Indian universities and institutes. (shrink)

This paper argues that the health-related work of the RockefellerFoundation in Central Europe following the First World War flowed not somuch from geopolitical concerns as from the Foundation's ambition tocreate a global network in scientific medicine. It examines theassumptions and values that underpinned this project, and indicates someof the questions that these pose for today's world.