This article is related to the issue of fixed-time synchronization of different dimensional complex network systems with unknown parameters. Two suitable adaptive controllers and dynamic parameter estimations are proposed such that the complex network driving and response systems can be synchronized in the settling time. Based on fixed-time control theory and Lyapunov functional method, novel sufficient conditions are provided to guarantee the synchronization within the fixed times, and the settling times are explicitly evaluated, which are independent of the initial synchronization (...) errors. Finally, a numerical example is given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed control algorithms. (shrink)

Escasos trabajos han examinado las conductas específicas de ciberagresión por género y el papel de la adicción a Internet y el déficit en inteligencia emocional en la ciberagresión. Ser adicto a Internet y ciertos déficits emocionales explican la ciberagresión por género. Se subraya la importancia de programas sobre ciberagresión que incluyan el control parental y el fomento de habilidades emocionales.

The study of voice behavior examines the inclination of staff and team members to speak up and contribute ideas to the team. In this article, we investigate how factors such as leader-member exchange (LMX), psychological safety and psychological empowerment influence such behavior. Our findings, which are based on a sample of 308 employees working for a state-owned telecommunications company on the Chinese mainland, indicate that ethical leadership promotes employees’ voice behavior through enhanced leader-member exchange, which also leads to greater feelings (...) of psychological safety and psychological empowerment. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed. (shrink)

This research examines how and why reactions to other consumers’ unethical behavior differ among consumers and vary in different situations. Drawing on construal level theory, the authors propose that the relationship between other consumers’ unethical behavior and focal consumers’ unethical behavior is moderated by focal consumers’ construal level, and self-expressiveness mediates this moderating effect. Specifically, consumers at higher construal levels tend to view their behavior as more self-expressive and are thus less likely to imitate other consumers’ unethical behavior. Study 1 (...) indicates that focal consumers who have a chronic tendency to construe information at high levels are less likely to replicate other consumers’ unethical behavior than those who have a chronic tendency to construe information at low levels. Studies 2, 3a and 3b show that when primed with higher-level construals, consumers are less likely to follow other consumers’ unethical behavior than when primed with lower-level construals. The mediating effect of self-expressiveness was tested and supported in Study 1 and Study 3b. These findings help to better understand consumers’ reactions to other consumers’ unethical behavior. (shrink)

ObjectiveThe large-scale epidemic of Coronavirus Disease 2019 has triggered unprecedented physical and psychological stress on health professionals. This study aimed to investigate the prevalence and risk factors of burnout syndrome, and the relationship between burnout and depressive symptoms among frontline medical staff during the COVID-19 epidemic in China.MethodsA total of 606 frontline medical staff were recruited from 133 cities in China using a cross-sectional survey. The Maslach Burnout Inventory was used to assess the level of burnout. Depressive symptoms were assessed (...) by the Patient Health Questionnaire Depression.ResultsDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, 36.5% of the medical staff experienced burnout. Personal and work-related factors were independently associated with burnout, including age, family income, having physical diseases, daily working hours, and profession of nurse. The correlation coefficients between the scores of each burnout subscale and the scores of depressive symptoms were 0.57 for emotional exhaustion, 0.37 for cynicism, and −0.41 for professional efficacy.ConclusionsOur findings suggest that the prevalence rate of burnout is extremely high among medical staff during the COVID-19 pandemic, which is associated with other psychological disorders, such as depression. Psychological intervention for medical staff is urgently needed. Young and less experienced medical staff, especially nurses, should receive more attention when providing psychological assistance. (shrink)

Companies’ earnings are arguably their most important financial disclosure, and corporate tactics to manage earnings can be directly constrained by audit procedures. In this article, we examine whether there is a link between companies’ earnings performance and changes in the accounting firm they choose to audit their financial statements. We find that when companies’ reported earnings just miss analysts’ expectations, they are more likely to change their auditor. Consistent with an opportunistic auditor switch, we also find that these companies have (...) lower levels of earnings quality after the change. Our results concentrate on companies with more incentive or ability to act opportunistically, including those with negative market reactions to earnings, higher levels of accruals flexibility, and weaker corporate governance. Our study advances research into the public’s interest by providing evidence of suspect auditor changes that increase auditors’ ethical conflict to maintain independence and objectivity. (shrink)

As a common organizational phenomenon, employee silence behavior has various negative implications for organizations, making it critical to understand what factors can reduce employee silence. Drawing upon self-verification theory, this study explores the inhibiting effect of moral identity on silence via felt obligation towards organization. Meanwhile, we also examine the moderating effect of corporate social responsibility perception. We collected three waves of data with a two-month interval from 402 Chinese employees. Results indicated that moral identity positively predicted felt obligation towards (...) organization, which in turn negatively predicted silence behavior. The negative indirect effect of moral identity on silence behavior via felt obligation towards organization was moderated by corporate social responsibility perception. Specifically, this indirect effect was stronger when employees perceived a higher level of corporate social responsibility. By integrating self-verification theory with silence behavior research, our findings provide important insights into the prevention of employee silence behavior in organizations. (shrink)

Objective: To investigate the relationship between psychological empowerment, psychological capital, job involvement, and the retention intention of kindergarten teachers in mainland China and the internal mechanism of action.Methods: A total of 554 kindergarten teachers were investigated by scales for psychological empowerment, psychological capital, job involvement, and retention intention.Results: Psychological empowerment was positively correlated with psychological capital and job involvement. Psychological capital was positively correlated with job involvement. Psychological empowerment, psychological capital, and job involvement were significantly and positively correlated with retention (...) intention. Psychological empowerment influences kindergarten teachers' retention intention mainly through three indirect effects: the single intermediary effects of psychological capital and job involvement and the chain intermediary effect of psychological capital → job involvement.Conclusion: Psychological empowerment can not only indirectly predict the retention intention of kindergarten teachers through the single intermediary effects of psychological capital and job involvement, but also indirectly predict the retention intention of kindergarten teachers through the chain intermediary effect of psychological capital and job involvement. (shrink)

In the last 20 years, amid extensive social and economic reforms, China’s social structure and community life have changed considerably. A large number of social workers are needed to provide many more social services to community residents. The central government has issued many policies to rapidly develop human service organizations and increase the number of social workers. Thus, by the end of 2019, the number of social workers has reached more than 1.5 million in China. At the same time, local (...) governments have issued many policies to promote an increase in the number of social workers. According to statistics from the Chengdu Civil Affairs Bureau, from 2010 to 2021, the number of social workers in Chengdu City increased, remarkably, from 553 to 17,622. Although the number of social workers has increased rapidly, some problems still exist. According to a survey by the Chengdu Social Workers Association, the turnover rate of social workers has reached approximately 20% in Chengdu City in 2018. Therefore, we aim to determine what influences social workers’ job burnout. Through regression analysis and mediation effect tests, we found the following: First, when controlling for gender, age, education, and workday, social support of social workers had a significant negative impact on job burnout. Second, the mindfulness of social workers had a significant negative impact on job burnout. Third, the mindfulness of social workers played a mediating role between social support and job burnout. The mediating effect was −0.116. Fourth, among the three dimensions of social support, mindfulness played a partially mediating role in family support and other support. The mediating effect between other support, which is the support from leaders and colleagues, and job burnout was the strongest, with a mediating effect of −0.109. In other words, the support provided by agency leaders and colleagues can maximize the level of mindfulness of social workers, thereby reducing social workers’ job burnout most effectively. We can thus reduce social workers’ job burnout by improving their level of mindfulness and the social support for them in China. (shrink)

This paper studies the problems of tip position regulation and vibration suppression of flexible manipulators without using the model. Because of the two-timescale characteristics of flexible manipulators, applying the existing model-free control methods may lead to ill-conditioned numerical problems. In this paper, the dynamics of a flexible manipulator is decomposed into two subsystems which are linear and controllable at different timescales by singular perturbation theory and a model-free composite controller is designed to alleviate the ill-conditioned numerical problems. To do this, (...) a model-free composite control strategy is constructed which facilitates in designing the controller in slow and fast timescales. In the slow timescale, the slow subsystem controller is designed by adaptive dynamic programming based on the measurements of the slow inputs and the position, while the vibration in the slow timescale is estimated by the least square method. In the fast timescale, the vibration is reconstructed based on the measurements of vibration and its estimate in the slow timescale, by which the fast controller is designed using ADP. Stability of the closed-loop system is proved by SP theory. Finally, simulations are given to show the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed methods. (shrink)

Based on social cognitive theory, we theorize that collective efficacy plays a mediating role in the relationship between paternalistic leadership and organizational commitment and that this mediating role depends on team cohesion. The empirical results from a study of 238 employees from 52 teams at manufacturing companies show that benevolent leadership and moral leadership, both components of paternalistic leadership, are positively related to organizational commitment and further that collective efficacy mediates the moral leadership–organizational commitment relationship. We did not find a (...) relationship between authoritarian leadership and organizational commitment. Besides, it was found that team cohesion negatively moderates the relationship between moral leadership and collective efficacy and positively moderates the relationship between collective efficacy and organizational commitment. Explanations and directions for future research are discussed. (shrink)

Employee safety behavior is critical for occupational health in work environments threatened by the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, the widespread and increasingly serious job burnout of employees is a complex and difficult problem for enterprises to handle during any epidemic. Therefore, it is helpful to identify and discuss job burnout and other main psychological factors that affect safety behavior to find appropriate solutions. Using the PLS-SEM method, the study explored the relationship between job burnout and safety behavior against the epidemic, as (...) well as the mediating role of psychological contract. According to the local guidelines for controlling COVID-19, this study revised the safety behavior scale. Data were collected by structured questionnaires in May to July 2020 from Chinese employees who resumed their work after the outbreak of the pandemic. The findings confirmed that job burnout has a negative impact on safety behavior, and psychological contract play a partial mediating role in mitigating the negative impact. Specifically, the transaction dimension and relationship dimension of psychological contract negatively affected safety behavior while the development dimension of the psychological contract was not directly related to safety behavior. It is suggested that enterprises should take effective measures to reduce employees’ job burnout and implement flexible psychological contract management and intervention, so as to effectively improve the performance of work safety behavior. Based on the multidimensional model, the findings of this study shed light on promoting safety behavior to prevent the spread of epidemics. (shrink)

In previous experiments on unconscious thought, information was presented to participants in one continuous session; however, in daily life, information is delivered in a temporally partitioned way. We examined whether unconscious thought could equally integrate temporally scattered information when making overall evaluations. When presenting participants with information in two temporally partitioned sessions, participants’ overall evaluation was based on neither the information in the first session nor that in the second session ; instead, information in both sessions were equally integrated to (...) reach a final judgment. Conscious thought, however, overemphasized information in the second session. Experiments 3 and 4 further ruled out possible influencing factors including differences in the distributions of positive/negative attributes in the first and second sessions and on-line judgment. These findings suggested that unconscious thought can integrate information from a wider range of periods during an evaluation, while conscious thought cannot. (shrink)

Named entity recognition is a subtask in natural language processing, and its accuracy greatly affects the effectiveness of downstream tasks. Aiming at the problem of insufficient expression of potential Chinese features in named entity recognition tasks, this paper proposes a multifeature adaptive fusion Chinese named entity recognition model. The model uses bidirectional long short-term memory neural network to extract stroke and radical features and adopts a weighted concatenation method to fuse two sets of features adaptively. This method can better integrate (...) the two sets of features, thereby improving the model entity recognition ability. In order to fully test the entity recognition performance of this model, we compared the basic model and other mainstream models on Microsoft Research Asia and “China People’s Daily” dataset from January to June 1998. Experimental results show that this model is better than other models, with F1 values of 97.01% and 96.78%, respectively. (shrink)

Isthmin‐1 (Ism1) was first described to be syn‐expressed with Fgf8 in Xenopus. However, its biological role has not been elucidated until recent years. Despite of accumulated evidence that Ism1 participates in angiogenesis, tumor invasion, macrophage apoptosis, and glucose metabolism, the cognate receptors for Ism1 remain largely unknown.Ism1deficiency in mice results in renal agenesis (RA) with a transient loss ofGdnftranscription and impaired mesenchyme condensation at E11.5. Ism1 binds to and activates Integrin α8β1 to positively regulate Gdnf/Ret signaling, thus promoting mesenchyme condensation (...) and ureteric epithelium branching morphogenesis. Here, we propose the hypothesis underlying the mechanism by which Ism1 regulates branching morphogenesis during early kidney development. (shrink)

Live stream platforms have transformed the production and consumption of music, allowing KPop music to expand globally. Successful KPop idols are contrasted with large numbers of retired KPop performers, some of whom live in undesirable conditions. Drawing on the attachment theory, loyalty theory, and parasocial interaction theory, this study focuses on a unique group, comeback KPop performers, to examine how they acquire empathetic attachment and sustained loyalty from audiences through live stream shows, and the antecedents of these two variables. Answering (...) these questions seems important because comeback KPop performers have to interact with audiences without the financial and marketing support from entertainment agencies. The structural equation modeling of 288 responses from 176 Chinese and 112 Korean KPop audiences confirmed that empathetic attachment and sustained loyalty are positively associated with audience purchase intentions; sustained attractiveness and parasocial interactions function as antecedents of these two factors. The findings shed light on the comeback KPop performers who co-create value with audiences through live stream platforms, with theoretical contributions to the three theories mentioned above and managerial suggestions to KPop entertainment agencies, comeback KPop performers, and managers of live stream platforms. (shrink)

Double 11 shopping carnival, celebrated by the most successful electronic-commerce Chinese company, Alibaba, has always been the online shopping festival with the highest turnover and involves the largest number of consumers and enterprises in China. This study integrates the elaboration likelihood model and stimulus-organism-response theory to study the dual-processing path of information, which drives customers’ behavioral intention on Double 11. There are 454 valid samples of data are collected, and the research model is tested using the partial least squares method. (...) Results show that in the Double 11 context, two different processing mechanisms affect consumers’ behavioral intention. Thereinto, consumers’ behavioral intention is more affected by the peripheral path than the central path. The affective experience affected by the information stimulus has a greater impact on the behavioral intention than cognitive experience. Furthermore, we find situational involvement have different moderating effects on the relationship between two experiences and behavioral intention. (shrink)

A positive attitude toward later life is crucial for wellbeing among older adults. Maintaining a healthy relationship with adult children can help reduce older parents’ sense of loneliness and nurture a positive life attitude. This study aimed to investigate the associations between multidimensional intergenerational relationship quality and attitudes toward later life among aging Chinese adults in Hong Kong and examine the mediating effects of a sense of loneliness. Representative survey data were collected from 801 participants with at least one adult (...) child. Multiple linear regression was employed to investigate the associations between overall intergenerational relationship quality with a sense of loneliness as well as the attitude toward later life. To examine the mediating effects of a sense of loneliness, causal mediational analyses were performed. Results demonstrated that overall intergenerational relationship quality was positively associated with aging parents’ attitude toward later life, and this relationship could be partially mediated by a sense of loneliness. Among the four subdomains of intergenerational relationship quality, the influences of structural-associational solidarity and intergenerational conflict on attitude toward later life were almost fully mediated by a sense of loneliness, whereas the influences of consensual-normative solidarity and affectual closeness were partially mediated. These findings contributed to an improved understanding of the relationship between intergenerational relationship quality, sense of loneliness, and attitude toward later life, and could inform future policies and service programs that promote aging adults’ social integration and positive aging. (shrink)

It is interesting to explore the effects of second language acquisition on anatomical change in brain at different stages for the neural structural adaptations are dynamic. Short-term Chinese training effects on brain anatomical structures in alphabetic language speakers have been already studied. However, little is known about the adaptations of the gray matter induced by acquiring Chinese language for a relatively long learning period in adult alphabetic language speakers. To explore this issue, we recruited 38 Indian overseas students in China (...) as our subjects. The learned group included 17 participants who had learned Mandarin Chinese for an average of 3.24 years and achieved intermediate Chinese language proficiency. The control group included 21 subjects who had no knowledge about Chinese. None of the participants had any experience in learning logographic and tonal language before Chinese learning. We found that the learned group had significantly greater gray matter volume in the left lingual gyrus compared with the control group; the Chinese characters’ reading accuracy was significantly and positively correlated to the GMV in the left LG and fusiform gyrus across the two groups; and in the learned group, the duration of Chinese learning was significantly and positively correlated with the GMV in the left inferior frontal gyrus after correction for multiple comparisons with small volume corrections. Our structural imaging findings are in line with the functional imaging studies reporting increased brain activation induced by Chinese acquisition in alphabetic language speakers. The regional gray matter changes reflected the additional requirements imposed by the more difficult processing of Chinese characters and tones. The present study also show that the biological bases of the adaptations induced by a relatively long period of Chinese learning were limited in the common areas for first and foreign language processing. (shrink)

Based on a sample of heavily polluting firms listed in China, we examine the impact of environmental taxes on the green M&A behavior of these firms. Our findings underscore that environmental taxes have significantly increased the likelihood of heavily polluting firms engaging in green M&A endeavors. This impact is particularly pronounced in areas with high media attention, low financing constraints, and high environmental investment. However, our examination of the economic consequences shows that green M&A does not improve the green innovation (...) performance and ESG performance of firms. The analysis of M&A motivations shows that the majority of heavy polluters' green M&A targets are located in regions with weak environmental regulation, confirming that green M&A under the environmental tax burden is a tool used by firms to engage in pollution transfer. In addition, green M&A under the environmental tax burden is characterized by financial investment, connected M&A, and nonsignificant M&A, confirming that green M&A under the environmental tax burden may be a tool used by companies seeking only the appearance of “greenwashing.” Therefore, green M&A under the environmental tax burden tends to be underpinned by opportunistic motives of pollution transfer and “greenwashing,” rather than substantive green transformation and upgrading. We provide evidence from emerging markets on the impact of environmental taxes on green M&A, which adds to the literature in this area and has policy implications for government regulation of corporate environmental governance practices. (shrink)

Drawing upon the General Learning Model, the present study developed a moderated mediation model to provide an in-depth understanding of whether and how adolescents’ reading prosocial content in books predicts their prosocial behavior. The target population in this study is Chinese adolescents, and we adopted a paper-based survey to collect data. The age range of the sample was from 12 to 19. Among all participants, 49.3% were female, and 50.7% were male. PROCESS SPSS Macro was used to analyze the proposed (...) moderated mediation model. The results showed that prosocial content reading was positively associated with adolescents’ prosocial behavior. The positive association included a direct relationship and an indirect relationship through the mediation of moral identity. Furthermore, this study revealed the moderation effect of age on the relationships among prosocial content reading, moral identity, and prosocial behavior. Specifically, as age increases, the effects of prosocial content reading on moral identity and prosocial behavior attenuate, and the mediation effect of moral identity also decreases. The study adds to the body of knowledge on the prosocial media effect by extending it to book reading. (shrink)

Recently, scholars have begun to shift their focus toward the idea of the marketization of startups and the relationship with entrepreneurial psychology or other factors; however, the establishment of a unified and clear standard of entrepreneurship educational methods remains unfulfilled. Our study investigates 46 representative startups in four industries, including financial technology, biotechnology, education, and cultural tourism areas in Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and Southeast Asia to observe factors from different backgrounds but matter in common for building entrepreneurship education (...) systems and methods in different countries. We used the fuzzy qualitative comparison method to survey startup entrepreneurs and executives through questionnaires, selecting startup key factors including entrepreneurial psychology, product advantage, market and cultural environment, entrepreneurial policy, and geographical advantage. The survey was conducted on six key variables, namely, geographical advantage, to observe the conditional grouping and paths of factors influencing the establishment of Startups from an overall perspective. This study explores the path combination that plays a key role in the establishment of new enterprises, and further uses specific industry cases to verify the rationality and credibility of the path combination. The main conclusions are as follows: There are five combination paths affecting the establishment of new enterprises, which are “psychology and market,” “psychology, product, and region,” “psychology, culture and policy,” “psychology, market, and culture,” and “market, policy, and region” combination paths; Entrepreneur psychology, market environment, and entrepreneurship policy are the core conditions to improve the effectiveness of the establishment of new enterprises, while the other three variables are non-core variables in different paths; There are different paths of entrepreneurial paths and factor combinations in different regions or industries. (shrink)

Transformational leadership has been becoming increasingly vital to the provision of high-quality health care, particularly during major public health emergencies. The present study aims to investigate the impact of transformational leadership on physicians’ performance and explore the cross-level underlying mechanisms with achievement motivations and coping styles among Chinese physicians. During 2017–2019, 1,527 physicians of 101 departments were recruited from six hospitals in China with a cluster random sampling method. Participants completed several questionnaires regarding their job performance, achievement motivations, coping styles, (...) and transformational leadership. Multilevel mediation effects were tested using cross-level path analysis. The result of this study indicated that transformational leadership was applied well in Chinese medical settings with a score of 101.56 ± 6.42. The hierarchical linear model showed that transformational leadership had a cross-level direct positive effect on physicians’ performance. Furthermore, results of cross-level path analyses revealed that transformational leadership contributed to physicians’ performance by sequentially influencing achievement motivations first and then coping styles. In addition, the path “transformational leadership → positive coping style → physicians’ performance” showed the strongest cross-level indirect effect. In summary, public health leaders should enhance physicians’ performance by promoting individual development, especially achievement motivation and PC style. (shrink)

With the outbreak of the COVID-19 crisis, the public keeps getting epidemic-related information on the media. News reports on the increasing number of fatalities have exposed individuals to death, which causes negative emotional experiences such as tension, anxiety, and fear. This study aimed to investigate whether creativity could serve as an anxiety-buffer when mortality is salient. Based on previous findings, the present study utilized type of creative task and personal search for meaning as moderators. In Study 1, a 2 × (...) 2 between-subject design was utilized, and 168 subjects were randomly assigned to four experimental conditions. In Study 2, 221 subjects were recruited. The experimental procedure was similar to Study 1, except that the priming paradigm of mortality was changed and search for meaning was included as an additional moderating variable. State anxiety was measured as the dependent variable in both studies. Results of Study 1 showed that, while the benevolent creative task could buffer anxiety in the mortality salience condition, the malevolent creative task did not have the same effect. Furthermore, there was a significant interaction between mortality salience, type of creative task, and search for meaning in life on anxiety. In Study 2, the buffering function of benevolent creativity was more intense for participants with a higher level of search for meaning. Together, these findings reveal the influence of different types of creative tasks on individual anxiety levels under death priming conditions and the moderating effect of search for meaning in this relationship. Further, they suggest the need to focus on the role of creativity in terror management. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to explore the influence of different intensities of acute aerobic exercise on brain activation in male methamphetamine -dependent patients during exercise. Twenty MA-dependent patients were divided randomly into two groups participating in 35 min of either moderate- or high-intensity aerobic exercise. Functional near-infrared spectral imaging was used to detect hemodynamic changes in prefrontal cortex during the main 25-min exercise stage. The results revealed that high-intensity acute aerobic exercise aroused more cerebral oxygenation changes in the (...) prefrontal cortex and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during exercise as compared with moderate-intensity exercise. Furthermore, there was a stronger positive connection observed between orbital frontal cortex and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in the high-intensity group than in the moderate-intensity group. Together these results suggest that for submaximal exercise intensities, high-intensity exercise may bring more benefits to male MA-dependent patients than moderate-intensity. (shrink)

Sinologism 汉学主义is a recent cultural theory that focuses on Sinology, China–West studies, and cross-cultural knowledge production. Since its proposition at the turn of the 21st century, it has aroused substantial interest and given rise to discussions and debates both in and outside China. The special issue has selected seven articles in full or excerpted form to offer an initial introduction to the topic.

It has limitations to understand “fidelity” of the Analects of Confucius in the thinking pattern of subject-object. The interpretation patterns of self-other and private-public ethics can’t also completely explain the philosophical meaning of “fidelity” in the Analects of Confucius. “Fidelity”, in Confucian theory and practice, has important place, therefore, the paper will try to explore the philosophical meaning of “fidelity” of Confucius from the following suppositions in order to find a new way of philosophical explanation. The suppositions are as the (...) following: First of all, “fidelity” can’t be understood, in Chinese, as a verb which means “faithful to sb”. It is a noun or a gerund. Basing on the distinction of “material world” and “meaning world”, the paper holds that the connotation of “fidelity” has its inner regulation and its meaning is, first of all, regulated not by the material world but by the other contextual logic categories, in this way, it has the characteristic of independence and transcendence. The core meaning of “fidelity” is “center”, the paper calls it as “the centric wisdom” from the epistemological perspective. Wesuppose that Confucius has presupposed that every life has enough wisdom to know what the affirmative value is. For Confucius, his philosophical thinking on “fidelity” has both traditional heritage and personal innovation. We should pay attention to the latter. Basing on the understanding that takes “fidelity ”as “the centric wisdom”, the paper holds that one of the meanings of “fidelity”, as an ethical concept, in the Analects of Confucius, is personal ethics which includes thereorganization of individual values. One part of the individual value is to recognize and practice the value which is independent of social value. Another part of the value is to practice and exhibit the wisdom of “fidelity” in personal speech and behavior including the spiritual activities. The “fidelity” of the Analects of Confucius, as an ethical concept, has another meaning, i.e. the inter-personal relationship which shows the affirmative value under the guidance of wisdom. The inter-personal relationship under the guidance of wisdom can exhibit the affirmative value and can be called as the “ethical” relation. The main requirements are as the following: we have to bring the reflective factor of “wisdom” into inter-personal relation and, under the guidance of wisdom, try to take our social responsibilities required by the social role, or to abide by the public or the professional ethics. We have to maintain positive value direction in the verticalinter-personal relation which means supervision so as to realize the political affirmation. In the horizontal interpersonal relationship, basing on the individual wisdom, we have to keep the keen feeling of morality so as to realize our affirmative values. The understanding of these meanings concerning the word of “fidelity” is naturally resulted from our concern for the inner logic relation in the Analects of Confucius and for the form of idea-expressing of Confucius. (shrink)

Anthropomorphism, the attribution of human-like qualities to non-human entities, can influence comprehension of the surrounding world. Going beyond previous research on the general assessment of anthropomorphism, the current study aimed to explore how anthropomorphising a specific animal species influences public acceptance of livestock keeping practices. Specifically, we focused on welfare-infringing practices that limit animals’ freedom, describe disruptive procedures, social isolation, or other stressful situations. Lacking experience in livestock keeping, it is likely that people project their own preferences to animals when (...) judging livestock keeping practices. Questionnaire data from a sample of the Swiss German public (N = 1232) were analysed regarding their acceptance of livestock keeping practices, as well as anthropomorphism for three animals: cattle, pigs, and poultry. We showed that judgement of livestock keeping was related to an anthropomorphic view of animals. This takes two opposite directions: (1) anthropomorphising was connected to a more critical view of livestock keeping practices and (2) the attribution of more cognitive capabilities to cattle and poultry was associated with a higher acceptance of welfare-infringing livestock keeping practices. The tendency to anthropomorphise was species-dependent, with the two mammals eliciting a higher tendency to anthropomorphise than poultry. The results suggest that the tendency to anthropomorphise plays a significant role in shaping the public’s opinion on livestock keeping. We argue that, when activating the tendency to anthropomorphise in the media, advertisements, or political publicity (e.g. by highlighting human-like features), a certain level of caution should be taken to avoid undesirable outcomes. (shrink)

In modern day technology, the level of knowledge is increasing day by day. This increase is in terms of volume, velocity, and variety. Understanding of such knowledge is a dire need of an individual to extract meaningful insight from it. With the advancement in computer and image-based technologies, visualization becomes one of the most significant platforms to extract, interpret, and communicate information. In data modelling, visualization is the process of extracting knowledge to reveal the detail data structure and process of (...) data. The proposed study aim is to know about the user knowledge, data modelling, and visualization by handling through the fuzzy logic-based approach. The experimental setup is validated through the data user modelling dataset available in the UCI web repository. The results show that the model is effective and efficient in situations where uncertainty and complexity arise. (shrink)