The way of our living and working has changed intensely throughout the past half-century. The era we live in is interlinked with rapid technological changes, paving the way for digitalization. The students are considered digital natives and are expected to have e-learning abilities to improve their academic effectiveness. However, digital readiness is an important factor that can play a valuable role in boosting students’ e-learning abilities and satisfaction. The previous studies of students’ e-learning abilities revealed the lack of students’ digital (...) readiness for academic achievements. Therefore, the present study aims to examine the role of digital readiness in the e-learning satisfaction of students. Based on the theory of motivation, the present study attempts to check the association of digital readiness with e-learning satisfaction. The current study also determines the relationship of digital readiness with entrepreneur psychological capital. Further, this study examines the correlation of entrepreneur psychological capital with e-learning satisfaction. The present study also assumes the mediating role entrepreneur of psychological capital and moderating role of mindfulness. For empirical analyses, this study gathered data from 376 music learning students of entrepreneur training institutes in China through a structured questionnaire method using a convenient sampling technique. This study applied partial least square structural equation modeling for empirical analyses using Smart PLS software. The present study confirmed that digital readiness positively correlates with e-learning satisfaction and psychological capital. The findings also acknowledged that psychological capital positively enhances e-learning satisfaction. The results also confirmed that psychological capital mediates the association between digital readiness and e-learning satisfaction. However, the outcomes revealed that mindfulness does not moderate the association between digital readiness and e-learning satisfaction. On the other hand, the findings acknowledged that mindfulness moderates the relationship between psychological capital and e-learning satisfaction. In addition, this study’s findings also serve the literature by providing important theoretical and practical implications. This study points out that digital readiness is an important antecedent to increasing students’ learning satisfaction and performance. The findings also suggest that students’ mindfulness could play a bridging role in enhancing their performance. (shrink)

This paper studies a special scheduling problem under hierarchical management in nurse staff. This is a more complex rostering problem than traditional nurse scheduling. The first is that the rostering requirements of charge nurses and general nurses are different under hierarchical management. The second is that nurses are preferable for relative fair rather than absolute fair under hierarchical management. The model aims at allocating the required workload to meet the operational requirements, weekend rostering preferences, and relative fairness preferences. Two hybrid (...) heuristic algorithms based on multiobjective grey wolf optimizer and three corresponding single heuristic algorithms are employed to solve this problem. The experimental results based on real cases from the Third People’s Hospital, Panzhihua, China, show that MOGWO does not as good as it does on other engineering optimization. However, the hybrid algorithms based on MOGWO are better than corresponding single algorithms on generational distance and spacing of Pareto solutions. Furthermore, for relative fair rostering objective, NSGAII-MOGWO has more power to find the optimal solution in the dimension of relative fairness. (shrink)

The whale optimization algorithm is a powerful swarm intelligence method which has been widely used in various fields such as parameter identification of solar cells and PV modules. In order to better balance the exploration and exploitation of WOA, we propose a novel modified WOA in which both the mutation strategy based on Levy flight and a local search mechanism of pattern search are introduced. On the one hand, Levy flight can make the algorithm get rid of the local optimum (...) and avoid stagnation; thus, it is able to prevent the algorithm from losing diversity and to increase the global search capability. On the other hand, pattern search, a direct search method, has not only high convergence rate but also good stability, which can boost the local optimization ability of the WOA. Therefore, the combination of these two mechanisms can greatly improve the capability of WOA to obtain the best solution. In addition, MWOA may be employed to estimate parameters in single diode model, double diode model, and PV modules and to identify unknown parameters of two different types of PV modules under diverse light irradiance and temperature conditions. The analytical results demonstrate the validity and the practicality of MWOA for estimating parameters of solar cells and PV modules. (shrink)

Consumers often feel embarrassed when buying products like condoms, hemorrhoid cream, and beriberi cream in crowded pharmacies. There is an interesting phenomenon in life: Some beriberi creams use the images of a “real foot”, while others use the images of a “cartoon foot.” Imagine if a young woman needed to go to a retail store for beriberi cream that would embarrass her, she would choose a “real foot image” or a “cartoon foot image” beriberi cream? It has been shown that (...) the embarrassment of these products has a strong negative impact on consumer buying behavior. Previous researches have explored how changing packaging elements of embarrassing products can effectively reduce consumer embarrassment. However, few have examined the impact of different image types of embarrassing product packaging with embarrassment. Therefore, this research explores the effect of image types on consumers’ willingness to purchase embarrassing products and reveals the mechanisms of the underlying effects. The results show that natural images can lead to lower purchase intention of embarrassing products when the advertisement uses first-person pronouns due to the mediating role played by negative body imagery. However, there is no significant difference in purchase intention between different image types in the third-person pronouns. Finally, this paper discusses its contributions and limitations. (shrink)

Background: High ethical sensitivity positively affects the quality of nursing care; nevertheless, Chinese nurses’ ethical sensitivity and the factors influencing it have not been described. Research objectives: The purpose of this study was to describe ethical sensitivity and to explore factors influencing it among Chinese-registered nurses, to help nursing administrators improve nurses’ ethical sensitivity, build harmony between nurses and patients, and promote the patients’ health. Research design: This was a descriptive, cross-sectional study. Participants and research context: We recruited 500 nurses (...) from several departments in three tertiary hospitals. The Chinese Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire–Revised version and the Jefferson Scale of Empathy-Health Professionals were used to assess the nurses’ ethical sensitivity and empathy ability, respectively. Fifteen sociodemographic variables were included in the questionnaires. Ethical considerations: Informed consent was obtained from the participants regarding participation and data storage and handling. This program has been examined and supported by the research center of medical ethics and professional ethics of Guilin Medical University. The Approval No. was 2016RWYB04. The whole research process is conducted strictly according to ethical requirements. Results: The valid response rate was 84.40% ( n = 422). The total score of Chinese Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire–Revised was 35.82 ± 8.17. The subscale scores of moral responsibility and strength and sense of moral burden were 21.50 ± 4.91 and 14.33 ± 3.98, respectively. Significant differences were found among age groups, gender, years of working, category of profession, and quality of family communication regarding nurses’ ethical sensitivity ( p < 0.05). Regression analysis showed that the main factors influencing nurses’ ethical sensitivity were gender, years of working, quality of family communication, career satisfaction, and empathic ability. Discussion: Our findings suggest that Chinese nurses’ ethical sensitivity in tertiary hospitals in Guilin is at a medium level. Conclusion: The director of nursing schools and hospitals in China should pay attention to nurses’ ethical sensitivity and should intensify education and training to improve nurses’ ethical sensitivity. Further studies should focus on interventions aimed at improving Chinese nurses’ ethical sensitivity. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to investigate the current state of post-traumatic growth and identify its influencing factors in discharged COVID-19 patients. PTG refers to individual experiences of significant positive change arising from the struggle with a major life crisis. This descriptive cross-sectional study used the convenient sampling method to recruit 140 discharged COVID-19 patients in Hunan, China. The results show that the PTG of the discharged COVID-19 patients was positively correlated with self-esteem, post-traumatic stress disorder, coping style tendency, (...) and social support, but negatively correlated with the time from onset to diagnosis. Our findings could provide guidance on improving the psychological state and well-being of discharged COVID-19 patients. (shrink)

Since the “The Belt and Road” initiative was put forward in 2013, China's foreign investment growth rate has been greatly accelerated. In The Belt and Road context, many scholars used models to analyze the relationship between foreign direct investment, trade flows, and import and export trade. From literature reviews, it is found that previous scholars do not conform to reality and cannot be studied dynamically. Therefore, this study used the panel data of China's foreign direct investment and import and export (...) trade in 40 countries along “The Belt and Road” from 2010 to 2019 to focuses on the impact of foreign direct investment on trade flows, import trade and export trade. Regression analysis was carried out with the trade gravity model and Tinbergen's trade gravity model. In addition to model variables and arguments, the following control variables were adopted: exchange rate, natural resource rents, labor force population, differences in consumer ability, trade openness, and trade agreement signing. The results found that: Foreign direct investment has a positive correlation with trade flow and import and export trade. The labor force population has a negative correlation with trade flow, and import and export trade. The expansion of China's economic scale can increase the scale of China's import and export trade, at the same time, the gap in consumption levels between the two countries will restrict the degree of import and export trade. The possession of natural resources can also promote the development of trade. (shrink)

The coronavirus disease 2019 continues to spread globally. This infectious disease affects people not only physically but also psychologically. Therefore, an effective psychological intervention program needs to be developed to improve the psychological condition of patients screened for fever during this period. This study aimed to investigate the effect of a brief mindfulness intervention on patients with suspected fever in a screening isolation ward awaiting results of the COVID-19 test. The Faces Scale and the Emotional Thermometer Tool were used to (...) investigate 51 patients who were randomly divided into an intervention group and a control group. All patients completed self-rating questionnaires online at the time they entered the isolation ward and before they were informed of the results. The intervention group listened to the mindfulness audios through hospital broadcasts in the isolation ward before their lunch break and while they slept. Compared with the control group, the intervention group’s life satisfaction score increased and the emotional thermometer score decreased. The anxiety scores and the needing help scores decreased significantly. Distress, depression, and anger also decreased, but did not reach significance. Brief mindfulness interventions can alleviate negative emotions and improve the life satisfaction of patients in the isolation ward who were screened for COVID-19 during the waiting period. (shrink)

The current COVID-19 pandemic and the previous SARS/MERS outbreaks of 2003 and 2012 have resulted in a series of major global public health crises. We argue that in the interest of developing effective and safe vaccines and drugs and to better understand coronaviruses and associated disease mechenisms it is necessary to integrate the large and exponentially growing body of heterogeneous coronavirus data. Ontologies play an important role in standard-based knowledge and data representation, integration, sharing, and analysis. Accordingly, we initiated the (...) development of the community-based Coronavirus Infectious Disease Ontology in early 2020. -/- As an Open Biomedical Ontology (OBO) library ontology, CIDO is open source and interoperable with other existing OBO ontologies. CIDO is aligned with the Basic Formal Ontology and Viral Infectious Disease Ontology. CIDO has imported terms from over 30 OBO ontologies. For example, CIDO imports all SARS-CoV-2 protein terms from the Protein Ontology, COVID-19-related phenotype terms from the Human Phenotype Ontology, and over 100 COVID-19 terms for vaccines (both authorized and in clinical trial) from the Vaccine Ontology. CIDO systematically represents variants of SARS-CoV-2 viruses and over 300 amino acid substitutions therein, along with over 300 diagnostic kits and methods. CIDO also describes hundreds of host-coronavirus protein-protein interactions (PPIs) and the drugs that target proteins in these PPIs. CIDO has been used to model COVID-19 related phenomena in areas such as epidemiology. The scope of CIDO was evaluated by visual analysis supported by a summarization network method. CIDO has been used in various applications such as term standardization, inference, natural language processing (NLP) and clinical data integration. We have applied the amino acid variant knowledge present in CIDO to analyze differences between SARS-CoV-2 Delta and Omicron variants. CIDO's integrative host-coronavirus PPIs and drug-target knowledge has also been used to support drug repurposing for COVID-19 treatment. -/- CIDO represents entities and relations in the domain of coronavirus diseases with a special focus on COVID-19. It supports shared knowledge representation, data and metadata standardization and integration, and has been used in a range of applications. (shrink)

BackgroundNurses working in the intensive care unit clung tenaciously to their job during the COVID-19 pandemic in spite of enduring stressed psychological and physical effects as a result of providing nursing care for the infected patients, which indicates that they possessed a high degree of professionalism and career calling. The aim of this study was to explain the associations between resilience, thriving at work, and ethical leadership influencing the calling of ICU nurses.MethodsFrom December 2020 to January 2021 during the COVID-19 (...) pandemic, a cross-sectional survey of 15 provinces in China was conducted using an online questionnaire. A total of 340 ICU nurses completed sufficient responses to be used in the study. Sociodemographic factors, job demographic factors, resilience, calling, thriving at work, and ethical leadership were assessed using the questionnaire. General linear modeling, hierarchical linear regression analysis, and generalized additive model were performed to examine all the considered research hypotheses.ResultsResilience was positively and significantly associated with calling. Moreover, thriving at work partially mediated the relationship between resilience and calling. The indirect effect of resilience on calling was 0.204, and the direct effect of resilience on calling through thriving at work was 0.215. The total effect of resilience on calling was 0.419. In addition, ethical leadership played a moderating role in the relationship between resilience and calling.ConclusionGreater resilience can positively predict increased calling among Chinese ICU nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, thriving at work is a mechanism that partly transmits the positive effects of resilience on calling. Overall, nurses possessing greater resilience tend to maintain thriving at work in the face of such adversity, further resulting in subsequently increased calling. Besides, findings suggest that there is stronger influence of resilience on calling among nurses working in an organization managed by an ethical leader. The current findings may offer two insights for nursing practitioners and policymakers in the postpandemic world. First, resilience training and intervention are necessary to foster nurses' sense of thriving at work in the nursing industry, further promoting career calling. Second, better training and effort on the development of ethical leadership for leaders in nursing practice are essential to encourage followers to engage in social learning of ethical behaviors and abiding by normatively appropriate conduct, further enacting prosocial values and expressing moral emotions. (shrink)

Emotion recognition plays an important role in intelligent human–computer interaction, but the related research still faces the problems of low accuracy and subject dependence. In this paper, an open-source software toolbox called MindLink-Eumpy is developed to recognize emotions by integrating electroencephalogram and facial expression information. MindLink-Eumpy first applies a series of tools to automatically obtain physiological data from subjects and then analyzes the obtained facial expression data and EEG data, respectively, and finally fuses the two different signals at a decision (...) level. In the detection of facial expressions, the algorithm used by MindLink-Eumpy is a multitask convolutional neural network based on transfer learning technique. In the detection of EEG, MindLink-Eumpy provides two algorithms, including a subject-dependent model based on support vector machine and a subject-independent model based on long short-term memory network. In the decision-level fusion, weight enumerator and AdaBoost technique are applied to combine the predictions of SVM and CNN. We conducted two offline experiments on the Database for Emotion Analysis Using Physiological Signals dataset and the Multimodal Database for Affect Recognition and Implicit Tagging dataset, respectively, and conducted an online experiment on 15 healthy subjects. The results show that multimodal methods outperform single-modal methods in both offline and online experiments. In the subject-dependent condition, the multimodal method achieved an accuracy of 71.00% in the valence dimension and an accuracy of 72.14% in the arousal dimension. In the subject-independent condition, the LSTM-based method achieved an accuracy of 78.56% in the valence dimension and an accuracy of 77.22% in the arousal dimension. The feasibility and efficiency of MindLink-Eumpy for emotion recognition is thus demonstrated. (shrink)

Background: Cognitive impairment is one of the core symptoms of schizophrenia, which is considered to be significantly correlated to prognosis. In recent years, many studies have suggested that metabolic disorders could be related to a higher risk of cognitive defects in a general setting. However, there has been limited evidence on the association between metabolism and cognitive function in patients with early-stage schizophrenia.Methods: In this study, we recruited 172 patients with early-stage schizophrenia. Relevant metabolic parameters were examined and cognitive function (...) was evaluated by using the MATRICS Consensus Cognitive Battery (MCCB) to investigate the relationship between metabolic disorder and cognitive impairment.Results: Generally, the prevalence of cognitive impairment among patients in our study was 84.7% (144/170), which was much higher than that in the general population. Compared with the general Chinese setting, the study population presented a higher proportion of metabolic disturbance. Patients who had metabolic disturbance showed no significant differences on cognitive function compared with the other patients. Correlation analysis showed that metabolic status was significantly correlated with cognitive function as assessed by the cognitive domain scores (p < 0.05), while such association was not found in further multiple regression analysis.Conclusions: Therefore, there may be no association between metabolic disorder and cognitive impairment in patients with early-stage schizophrenia.Trial Registration: Clinicaltrials.gov, NCT02880462. Registered August 26, 2016. (shrink)

本书是作者近年来部份研究成果共十三篇论文集结而成,主要分析近三百年来具有代表性的日本儒者对中国儒家经典的诠释,探讨极具东方文化特色的中国思维传统。.

COVID-19 often manifests with different outcomes in different patients, highlighting the complexity of the host-pathogen interactions involved in manifestations of the disease at the molecular and cellular levels. In this paper, we propose a set of postulates and a framework for systematically understanding complex molecular host-pathogen interaction networks. Specifically, we first propose four host-pathogen interaction (HPI) postulates as the basis for understanding molecular and cellular host-pathogen interactions and their relations to disease outcomes. These four postulates cover the evolutionary dispositions involved (...) in HPIs, the dynamic nature of HPI outcomes, roles that HPI components may occupy leading to such outcomes, and HPI checkpoints that are critical for specific disease outcomes. Based on these postulates, an HPI Postulate and Ontology (HPIPO) framework is proposed to apply interoperable ontologies to systematically model and represent various granular details and knowledge within the scope of the HPI postulates, in a way that will support AI-ready data standardization, sharing, integration, and analysis. As a demonstration, the HPI postulates and the HPIPO framework were applied to study COVID-19 with the Coronavirus Infectious Disease Ontology (CIDO), leading to a novel approach to rational design of drug/vaccine cocktails aimed at interrupting processes occurring at critical host-coronavirus interaction checkpoints. Furthermore, the host-coronavirus protein-protein interactions (PPIs) relevant to COVID-19 were predicted and evaluated based on prior knowledge of curated PPIs and domain-domain interactions, and how such studies can be further explored with the HPI postulates and the HPIPO framework is discussed. (shrink)

Ruyu HungNational Chiayi UniversityThis collective writing is intended to portray the contour of philosophy of education in contemporary Taiwan, resounding many beautiful counterparts in EPAT (Bies...

Riben Jiuzhou da xue tu shu guan cang you gu xie Huizhou ben "Zhuzi yu lei" yi bai si shi juan. Huizhou ben shang cheng "Chi lu", xia qi li bian, zai yu lu dao yu lei de xing cheng guo cheng zhong chu yu guan jian de di wei, dui xue jie yan jiu zhu xi si xiang de xing cheng guo cheng, Zhu Xi men ren de qing kuang, jin ben "Zhuzi yu lei" de xing cheng guo cheng (...) yi ji zhong gu shi qi gu Han yu bai hua, ti gong le xin de cai liao he xin de shi ye. (shrink)

本书从证据法视野对测谎结论的证据能力和证明力进行研究,呈现测谎诉讼应用的场景.作者分析测谎的科学性,讨论测谎的伦理和法律风险,阐释测谎结论作为证据的逻辑相关性与法律相关性,论证测谎契约对测谎结论证据地 位的影响,并用数理方式解释测谎结论的证明价值.

Impurism says that practical factors encroach on knowledge. An important version of impurism is called ‘Threshold-Impurism,’ which says that practical factors encroach on the threshold that rational credence must pass in order for one to have knowledge. A prominent kind of argument for Threshold-Impurism is the so-called ‘principle-based argument,’ which relies on a principle of fallibilism and a knowledge-action principle. This paper offers a new challenge against Threshold-Impurism. I attempt to show that the two principles Threshold-Impurists are committed to—KJ and (...) Fallibilism—are jointly in tension with a widely-held principle of credence that’s called ‘Truth-Directedness,’ in the sense that the former two principles cannot both apply to those who know the third. This tension constitutes a serious challenge to Threshold-Impurists, because it leaves them two options, both of which are undesirable: denying Truth-Directedness, or accepting Truth-Directedness and accepting that whether KJ and Fallibilism apply to a person depends on whether she knows Truth-Directedness. (shrink)

The Value of Evidence thesis (VE) tells us to gather evidence before deciding in any decision problem, if the evidence is free. This appar- ently plausible principle faces two problems. First, it fails on evidence externalism or nonclassical decision theories. Second, it’s not general enough: it tells us to prefer gaining free evidence to gaining no evi- dence, but it doesn’t tell us to prefer gaining more informative evidence to gaining less informative evidence when both are free. This paper defends (...) an alternative value-of-evidence principle that solves the above two problems. We call it ‘the Comparative Value of Evidence for the Resolute (CVER).’ CVER not only generalizes VE to the comparative case but is also compatible with evidence externalism and nonclassical decision theories. Our argument, if successful, broadens the scope of the value-of-evidence principle and shows that it’s more robust than previously imagined. (shrink)

Volume 34, Issue 8, December 2020, Page 1646-1663.

We draw from ego depletion and leader–member exchange theories to provide nuanced insight into why abusive supervision is indirectly associated with supervisor-directed destructive voice. A multi-wave, multi-source field study demonstrates evidence that abusive supervision has a positive conditional indirect effect on supervisor-directed destructive voice through subordinates’ relational ego depletion with their supervisors that is stronger for higher LMX differentiation contexts than lower LMX differentiation contexts. We make novel theoretical, empirical, and practical contributions by providing a parsimonious explanation for why relational (...) aspects of supervisory treatment drain subordinates’ capacities for controlling their volitional actions during interactions with their supervisors and how this relationship impacts subordinates’ supervisor-directed destructive voice. Overall, our study extends the application of ego depletion and LMX theories to the examination of abusive supervision and destructive voice in order to meaningfully inform researchers’ attempts to build cohesive streams of research in these areas and practitioners’ attempts to promote ethical workplace environments. (shrink)

To address the prevalence and complexities of sustainable development challenges around the world, organizations in the business, government, and non-profit sectors are increasingly collaborating via multi-stakeholder partnerships. Because complex problems can be neither understood nor addressed by a single organization, it is necessary to bring together the knowledge and resources of many stakeholders. Yet, how these partnerships coordinate their collaborative activities to achieve mutual and organization-specific goals is not well understood. This study takes an organization design perspective of collaborative decision-making (...) processes to explore how they impact the effectiveness of multi-stakeholder partnerships. We compare the decision-making processes of 94 sustainability-focused multi-stakeholder partnerships and find that collaborative decision-making has an indirect and positive impact on partnership capacity through systems that keep partners informed, coordinate partner interactions, and facilitate ongoing learning. The implications of this study for multi-stakeholder partnership research and practice are that partnership capacity is contingent on the design of decision-making processes, as well as internal mechanisms that coordinate and monitor collaborative activities. (shrink)

It’s widely accepted that higher-order defeaters, i.e., evidence that one’s belief is formed in an epistemically defective way, can defeat doxastic justification. However, it’s yet unclear how exactly such kind of defeat happens. Given that many theories of doxastic justification can be understood as fitting the schema of proper basing on propositional justifiers, we might attempt to explain the defeat either by arguing that a higher-order defeater defeats propositional justification or by arguing that it defeats proper basing. It has been (...) argued that the first attempt is unpromising because a variety of prominent theories of propositional justification don’t imply that we lose propositional justification when gaining higher-order defeaters. This leads some scholars to take the second attempt. In this paper, I criticize this second attempt, and I defend the first attempt by arguing that a theory of propositional justification that requires intellectual responsibility can nicely account for higher-order defeat. My proposal is that we lose doxastic justification when we gain higher-order defeaters because there is no intellectually responsible way for us to maintain our original beliefs due to the defeaters. (shrink)

Richard Foley has presented a puzzle purporting to show that all attempts in trying to find a sufficient condition of rationality are doomed. The puzzle rests on two plausible assumptions. The first is a level-connecting principle: if one rationally believes that one's belief that p is irrational, then one's belief that p is irrational. The second is a claim about a structural feature shared by all promising sufficient conditions of rationality: for any such condition, it is possible that one's belief (...) satisfies it and yet one rationally believes that it doesn’t. With the two assumptions, Foley argues that a sufficient condition of rationality is impossible. I explain how exactly the puzzle goes and I try to offer a solution. If my solution works, all theorists of rationality who accept certain level-connecting principles need to add an extra condition to their favourite rationality-making condition. (shrink)

A growing group of Chinese students is returning to China following graduation, especially young returnees. This group is seen as one of the most innovative sectors of Chinese society. Based on the theory of planned behavior and three kinds of capital theories, this study explores entrepreneurial intention and its influencing factors among Newly Returned Chinese International Students. A survey of 211 NRCIS showed a low level of EI and little knowledge of supporting policies about entrepreneurship. Influencing factors included culture harmony (...) as culture capital, overseas social networks as social capital, and foreign entrepreneurship education and foreign language proficiency as human capital. Attitude mediated the effects of foreign language proficiency, culture harmony, and foreign entrepreneurship education on EI. Perceived behavior control mediated the effect of foreign language proficiency, Chinese language proficiency, culture harmony, foreign entrepreneurship education, domestic entrepreneurship education, and overseas social networks on EI, and subjective norms have no significant mediating effect in any mediation path. Based on these findings, policymakers could pay attention to examining whether the current policies are working and accessible for NRCIS, and domestic entrepreneurship education could keep cultivating students' cross-cultural communication and understanding abilities, and society and education sectors could encourage positive cognition of entrepreneurship and guide students to form a positive attitude toward entrepreneurship and enhance their confidence. (shrink)

The complexity of calcium profiles observed in plant cells has led to the realization that specific patterns of calcium propagation (now termed calcium signatures) encode specific information and relay it to downstream elements (effectors) for translation into corresponding cellular responses in higher plants. The concept of calcium signatures is now well established and the tight control of the temporal and spatial characteristics of cytosolic calcium alterations is considered to be responsible for the specificity of various cellular responses, in particular to (...) environment‐induced stresses. To date, three major classes of plant calcium sensors responsible for drought‐stress signal transduction during soil water deficit have been identified. Valuable pieces of the calcium signal‐specificity puzzle are being put together and are illustrated here for the calcium‐mediated signal‐transduction cascades that operate in the responses of higher plants to soil environmental deficits. BioEssays 30:634–641, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

As one of the basic manufacturing industries in China, injection molding industry is faced with the problems of low degree of informatization and intelligence, resulting in low production efficiency and high costs. It is urgent to integrate deeply with new generation of information technology to achieve transformation and upgrade. In this paper, an integrative industrial Internet architecture of “integration of intelligent equipment, intelligent production lines, intelligent workshops, intelligent factories, and intelligent formats” was described. The injection molding intelligent control system, the (...) production management, control platform based on the MES system, and other key technologies were researched. Also, the smart factory architecture based on digital twin was established, and the implementation method of the smart factory digital twin system was elaborated. The feasibility and effectiveness of the method had been verified through the industrial application, which provided the technical supports for the injection molding industrial Internet system. Finally, the intelligent manufacturing industrial Internet cloud platform for injection molding industry was prospected. (shrink)

Clustering plays an important role in data mining, pattern recognition, and machine learning. Single-valued neutrosophic sets are useful means to describe and handle indeterminate and inconsistent information that fuzzy sets and intuitionistic fuzzy sets cannot describe and deal with. To cluster the data represented by single-valued neutrosophic information, this article proposes single-valued neutrosophic clustering methods based on similarity measures between SVNSs. First, we define a generalized distance measure between SVNSs and propose two distance-based similarity measures of SVNSs. Then, we present (...) a clustering algorithm based on the similarity measures of SVNSs to cluster single-valued neutrosophic data. Finally, an illustrative example is given to demonstrate the application and effectiveness of the developed clustering methods. (shrink)

Constructive (productive) thinking in the critical philosophy of Hermann Cohen differs significantly from the seemingly similar speculative thinking in J. G. Fichte’s Science of Knowledge (Wissenschaftslehre) (1794/95). The fundamental characteristics of scientific thinking in Cohen’s teaching include: purity, focus on the “fact of science”, the origin (Ursprung), the infinitesimal method, continuity, movement, production, correlation, intensive magnitude, interrelation of thinking and being. According to Cohen, scientific thinking can only be pure and generated by the origin. The origin is continuous action (movement) (...) of thinking to separate the united and bind the divided content. In this process, thinking and being are correlative. Infinitely small reality contains thinking and being simultaneously as a union and in a divided form. The infinitesimal method is thinking that continuously carries out a) the operations of opposing itself as pure thinking to the results of its own production; b) the coincidence of itself with the products of its own generation. Infinitesimal thinking seeks to eliminate the difference between self and being. Nevertheless, being constantly retains autonomy. Being does not merge with thinking and is not absorbed by it. In Fichte’s Science of Knowledge pure thinking moves in a logical circle, having no access into real being. In an effort to break out of this circle and find its causality, thinking turns not to the being of the world of phenomena, but to the Absolute I. Such a speculative approach to consciousness, thinking and being has little in common with Cohen’s critical position. (shrink)

The COVID-19 epidemic in the early 2020s is making a big difference for educators around the world. For the past 2 years, the curriculum and working patterns have been overturned in response to this epidemic, which has brought unprecedented challenges and physical and mental stress to preschool teachers. This situation can have a drastic impact on the acquisition of job well-being for preschool teachers. During this special time, the leader’s management style will also influence the psychological feelings of the organization’s (...) staff. For example, empowering leadership is an important management function that empowers subordinates, emphasizes the meaning of work, promotes participation in decision-making, and expresses confidence. Therefore, in the current COVID-19 pandemic context, it is worthwhile to explore the topic of empowering leadership to ensure preschool teachers’ well-being, by balancing work demands and work resources in a way that facilitates a sense of organizational support and reduces job stress, while relatively fewer studies have been conducted on the relationship between preschool teachers’ job well-being in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on this, this study proposed a research model from the theoretical perspective of the Job Demands-Resources Model to explore the influence of empowering leadership, sense of organizational support, and job stress on preschool teachers’ job well-being in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. To achieve the purpose of this study, a convenience sampling method was used to invite 500 preschool teachers in China to complete a questionnaire survey, and after removing invalid samples and data with incomplete answers, reliability and validity analyses and model fit tests were conducted, followed by a structural equation modeling method for path analysis. The results of the study showed that in the kindergarten work context, empowering leadership showed a significant negative effect on job stress, but a significant positive effect on job well-being and a significant positive effect on sense of organizational support. Sense of organizational support had a significant negative effect on job stress but a significant positive effect on preschool teachers’ job well-being. Preschool teachers’ job stress and job well-being showed a significant negative effect. The contribution of this study was to explore the relationship between understanding leadership empowerment and preschool teachers’ job well-being in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic based on the Job Demands-Resources Model, which will facilitate educational organizational contexts to empower preschool teachers to work harder to reduce their job stress as well as enhance their sense of organizational support and promote the acquisition of job well-being. (shrink)

In their article,1 Jecker et al highlight a widespread and hotly debated issue in the current application of artificial intelligence (AI) in medicine: whether we should develop more powerful AI. There are many perspectives on this question. I would like to address it from the perspective of the fundamental purpose of medicine. Since its inception, medicine has been dedicated to alleviating human suffering and ensuring health equity. For thousands of years, we have made great efforts and conducted many investigations to (...) eliminate human suffering and have achieved remarkable results. However, the reality of achieving health equity falls far short of expectations. The WHO considers health equity to be a fundamental human right, meaning that there should be no unjustified, avoidable or remediable differences among the population as a whole, whether those differences result from social, economic, demographic or geographic factors, or from other forms of inequality such as gender, race, disability or sexual orientation.2 Health equity means reducing and ultimately eliminating disparities in health outcomes between vulnerable groups and others, caused by health risk factors and difficulties in accessing quality health services. This means that we must strive to reduce structural social bias. It is well known that the traditional healthcare system is riddled with various health inequities. …. (shrink)

Does a board with greater gender diversity make better investment decisions? Drawing on Austrian economic cycle theory and work groups theory, we argue that such board openness will help male board members to overcome gender biases, discrimination, and conflicts; integrate different perspectives under the economic cycle and crisis; and foster an environment in which better decisions are made. The results of an empirical study of 14,609 firm-quarter observations from 1,555 listed firms in China between 2007 and 2009 strongly support our (...) arguments. We find that a Chinese board is more likely to accept female directorship during an economic crisis than during an economic prosperity stage. Boards with greater gender diversity are more likely to make tough, counter-cyclical investments to improve firm performance during a crisis. Our study enriches the board decision-making literature by exploring the impacts of board gender diversity on firm performance within the context of an economic crisis. The results of our study also carry significant managerial implications for overcoming gender stereotypes, biases, and prejudices on a board. (shrink)