This paper takes the book named “ Thinking About Technology: the Foundations of the Philosophy of Technology” as the starting point of analysis. This book was published in 2000. we will summarize the primary idea of Joseph Pitt about Philosophy of Technology, and the debate about this book, analyze the “Phenomenon of Pitt”, that is the echo to the thought of Joseph Pitt on Philosophy of Technology. We point out at last, we should pay attention to the study on the (...) foundation of Philosophy of Technology and the institutional development of philosophy of technology. (shrink)

This essay explores a proper Confucian vision on genetic enhancement. It argues that while Confucians can accept a formal starting point that Michael Sandel proposes in his ethics of giftedness, namely, that children should be taken as gifts, Confucians cannot adopt his generalist strategy. The essay provides a Confucian full ethics of giftedness by addressing a series of relevant questions, such as what kind of gifts children are, where the gifts are from, in which way they are given, and for (...) what purpose they are given. It indicates that Confucians should sort out different types of enhancement and bring them to the test of the Confucian values in terms of both Confucian virtue principles and specific ritual rules. It concludes that Confucians can accept some types of enhancement but must reject others. (shrink)

Tradition wireless sensor networks transmit data by single or multiple hops. However, some sensor nodes close to a static base station forward data more frequently than others, which results in the problem of energy holes and makes networks fragile. One promising solution is to use a mobile node as a mobile sink, which is especially useful in energy-constrained networks. In these applications, the tour planning of MS is a key to guarantee the network performance. In this paper, a novel strategy (...) is proposed to reduce the latency of mobile data gathering in a WSN while the routing strategies and tour planning of MS are jointly optimized. First, the issue of network coverage is discussed before the appropriate number of clusters being calculated. A dynamic clustering scheme is then developed where a virtual cluster center is defined as the MS sojourn for data collection. Afterwards, a tour planning of MS based on prediction is proposed subject to minimizing the traveling distance to collect data. The proposed method is simulated in a MATLAB platform to show the overall performance of the developed system. Furthermore, the physical tests on a test rig are also carried out where a small WSN based on an unmanned aerial vehicle is developed in our laboratory. The test results validate the feasibility and effectiveness of the method proposed. (shrink)

The _Xing Zi Ming Chu_ 性自命出 (_Nature Derives from Decree_) is one of the eighteen pieces that were recorded in Guodian 郭店 bamboo slips, which were excavated in 1993 and thought to be buried around 300 BCE. We can observe from this text detailed discussions surrounding terms such as _xing_ 性 (nature), _qing_ 情 (emotion), _xin_ 心 (heart-mind), and _yue_ 樂 (music), which played crucial roles in producing early Chinese philosophical discourses, particularly in the area of moral psychology. Since its (...) publication in 1998, this text has gained huge interest from Chinese scholars. This article illustrates how Chinese scholars, through their concrete studies, reveal the complicated textual nature of the _Xing Zi Ming Chu_ and its intricate relations to different philosophical streams which followed. This article also points out a problematic assumption that lies in the majority of Chinese scholarship and proposes a more sensible approach to examine this text. (shrink)

PurposeAs a new human resource management practice, idiosyncratic deals are personalized employment arrangements negotiated between employees and employers and intended to benefit them both. It plays an important role in attracting, retaining and motivating employees to promote breakthrough innovation. Based on the input-process-output model, this paper examines the relationship between team idiosyncratic deals and team breakthrough innovation, the mediating role of team exploratory-exploitative knowledge sharing, and the moderating roles of team transactive memory systems and team cognitive flexibility.Participants and methodsIn order (...) to reduce the effects of common method biases and causal lag effect, this study is divided into three stages for data collection, with a time interval of 1 month. Eighty teams from six enterprises in Shanghai and Hangzhou were selected as samples, and the hypothesis test was carried out by hierarchical regression analysis, bootstrap, and Johnson-Neyman method.ResultsThe results show that higher team idiosyncratic deals are associated with higher team breakthrough innovation through higher team exploratory-exploitative knowledge sharing, and that team transactive memory systems and team cognitive flexibility positively moderate the mediating effect of team exploratory-exploitative knowledge sharing in the relationship between team idiosyncratic deals and team breakthrough innovation in the first stage and the second stage, respectively. Under the joint effect of high team transactive memory systems and high team cognitive flexibility, the mediating effect of team exploratory-exploitative knowledge sharing is stronger.ConclusionThe research results break through the previous research framework of social exchange theory, and I-P-O model to explore the influence mechanism of team idiosyncratic deals, in order to promote the sustainable growth of team breakthrough innovation through this non-standard work arrangement. It is hoped that this research can inspire modern enterprises to create team idiosyncratic deals for valuable teams engaged in breakthrough innovation, which are more conducive to give full play to their heterogeneous talents, and finally help enterprises break through the industry bottleneck and win the market competition. (shrink)

Richard Rorty’s muscular liberalism and pragmatic intolerance draw sustenance from Nietzsche as well as from the earlier American pragmatists. We set out the ways in which Rorty adopts and adapts their ideas. We go on to suggest that the cultural ethnocentrism that he advocates carries certain risks, and can be divorced all too easily from his own qualifications, particularly in the post-9-11 scenario. It is our contention that Isaiah Berlin’s case for a pluralist liberalism warrants serious consideration as an alternative.

This study sheds new insight on how historically oppressed and marginalized actors are able to pursue environmental sustainability based on alternative worldviews (e.g., Indigenous worldviews) rather than succumbing to those dominant in the Western society, based on a study of the Syilx (“Okanagan”) people in British Columbia, Canada. We found that the Syilx people enacted the ethical practice of nʕawqnwixʷ (“the reciprocal gentle dropping of thoughts, like water, into everyone’s minds to address the issue at the centre of discussion and (...) to reach collective consensus for action”), anchored in the Syilx worldview, to reconstruct the relationships between humans and nature. Two overlapping processes are involved: developing foundational principles for human–nature relations and carrying out reconstruction work. Ongoing enactment of nʕawqnwixʷ practice provided community-based agency, enabling the Syilx people to shift the conversation around environmental sustainability. From this, we discuss the theoretical potential of community-based agency for the study of environmental sustainability, and the role of Indigenous worldviews for (re)imagining human-nature ethics (and reorienting the theoretical lens of human-animal or human-plant ethics form a firm-centric focus to a community-oriented lens), and important implications for practitioners and policymakers in the field of environmental sustainability. (shrink)

Drawing upon self-determination theory, this study aimed to explore the mechanisms underlying the impact of perceived organizational support on proactive innovation behavior and reveal the serial mediation effects of basic psychological needs. We collected time-lagged data of 481 employees from research institutions in China, and structural equation modeling analyses were carried out to test the hypotheses. The results indicate that perceived organizational support is significantly and positively related to proactive innovation behavior, and this relationship was mediated by the need for (...) autonomy, competence, and relatedness. These findings contribute new knowledge to proactive innovation behavior by providing a new perspective of the satisfaction of psychological needs. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

This rejoinder focuses on a few points of disagreement that I have with Li Chenyang, Ronnie Littlejohn, and Lauren Pfister regarding their critical comments on my book Reconstructionist Confucianism. In response to Pfister’s concerns, I point out that my book attempts to base on classical, rather than other, Confucian sources in order to reconstruct the Confucian virtue-based, ritual-guided, and family-oriented view of life for contemporary society. In appreciating Littlejohn’s suggestion on Confucian environmentalism, I contend that a kind of Grand View (...) Garden as we find in the Dream of Red Mansion would be a typical Confucian garden, manifesting the Confucian ideal of a family-oriented way of life that holds in harmonious relations with the rest of nature under the direction of the cosmic principles. Finally, I offer detailed replies to Li’s series of challenges to my view on li 禮, arguing for the essential constitutive nature of the Confucian rituals. (shrink)

Marxism was indeed vulgarized due to scientism in the 20th century, which even limits the development of Chinese social theories nowadays. This paper put forward the idea that it was serious misunderstanding to interpret Marx as prophet or inventor like empiricists who regard finding out eternal laws as the goal of science. In fact, Marx did not propose any so-called “natural laws of historical development”. He articulated that the only thing worth to do was to take note of what happened (...) before his eyes and to become its mouthpiece. Thus, to understand science in the face of social practice, to analyze everything historically and never to thrust “eternal” laws in any era should be taken as the core of Marx’s new science, which is very important to China today. (shrink)

Taiwan is an island country situated in the northwest Pacific, close to the southeast of China. The land area is about 36,000 square kilometers. The population of Taiwan is about 23 million, and it consists of the majority Han ethnic groups and dozens of minority groups who are collectively called “Formosan,” an appellation for indigenous peoples in Taiwan. Formosans can be divided into Pingpu and Gaoshan by their living area. In recent years, marriages between Taiwanese, Mainland Chinese, and Southeast Asians (...) have increased significantly. Because of the genetic background of the Taiwanese people, it was thought to be highly beneficial for Taiwan to establish a biobank specifically designed for the Taiwanese population, as it would enable large-scale cohort studies to be carried out for common diseases occurring in Taiwan. (shrink)

For decades, a review of environmental education initiatives in and beyond schools indicates that many of them were implemented from an anthropocentric perspective. The rationale behind them is often that we must not destroy the environment because doing so is harmful for ourselves, human beings. One striking feature of the various forms of environmental education is the use of fear as a motivator, as people are warned about the frightening consequences of environmental destruction on their life. While this type of (...) fear-based environmental education may be effective to some extent, intimidation cannot be a fundamental solution to environmental issues. We need to form a loving relationship with nature, through love-based environmental education. From intimidation to love, love-based environmental education focuses on enhancing public environmental awareness through inculcating love, respect, and gratitude toward nature, thereby helping to solve present and future environmental problems and construct an eco-friendly world.Love-based environmental education is richly embedded in Eastern philosophies such as Taoism and contemporary Western eco-ethics. In this article, we synthesize the tenets of love-based environmental education mainly through the lens of Taoist philosophy, discuss implementation approaches, and explore contemplative methods to cultivate connection with nature. Finally, we point out fear-based and love-based environmental education are not mutually exclusive. We need a combination of, or a diversity of approaches to ensure that we effectively change attitudes and behaviors of people. (shrink)

This essay indicates that Confucian family-based ethics is by no means a stumbling block to organ donation in China. We contend that China should not change to an opt-out consent system in order to enhance donation because a “hard” opt-out system is unethical, and a “soft” opt-out system is unhelpful. We argue that the recently-introduced familist model of motivation for organ donation in mainland China can provide a proper incentive for donation. This model, and the family priority right that this (...) model supports, is ethically justifiable in terms of Confucian family-based ethics. (shrink)

Inspired by an interesting quotation from the literature, we propose four modalities, called ‘sane belief’, ‘insane belief’, ‘reliable belief’ and ‘unreliable belief’, and introduce logics with each operator as the modal primitive. We show that the four modalities constitute a square of opposition, which indicates some interesting relationships among them. We compare the relative expressivity of these logics and other related logics, including a logic of false beliefs from the literature. The four main logics are all less expressive than the (...) standard modal logic over various model classes, and the logics of sane and insane beliefs are, respectively, equally expressive as the logics of unreliable and reliable beliefs on any class of models. The logics of reliable and unreliable beliefs are then combined into a bimodal logic, which turns out to be equally expressive as the standard modal logic. Despite this, we cannot obtain a complete axiomatization of the minimal bimodal logic, by simply translating the axioms and rules of the minimal modal logic $\textbf{K}$ into the bimodal language. We then introduce a schematic modality which unifies reliable and unreliable beliefs and axiomatize it over the class of all frames and also the class of serial frames. This line of research is finally extended to unify sane and insane beliefs and some axiomatizations are given. (shrink)

Delay discounting is a common phenomenon in daily life, which refers to the subjective value of a future reward decreasing as a function of time. Previous studies have identified several cortical regions involved in delay discounting, but the neural network constructed by the cortical regions of delay discounting is less clear. In this study, we employed resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (RS-fMRI) to measure the spontaneous neural activity in a large sample of healthy young adults and used the Monetary Choice (...) Questionnaire to directly measure participants’ level of delay discounting. To identify the neural network of delay discounting at rest, we used an individual difference approach to explore brain regions whose spontaneous activities were related to delay discounting across the whole brain. Then, these brain regions served as seeds to identify the neural network of delay discounting. We found that the fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (fALFF) of the left insula were positively correlated to delay discounting. More importantly, its connectivity to the anterior cingulate cortex was read out for participants’ behavioral performance in the task of delay discounting. In short, our study provides empirical evidence that insula-anterior cingulate cortex connectivity may serve as a part of the neural network for delay discounting. (shrink)

In this article, we study logics of unknown truths and false beliefs under neighborhood semantics. We compare the relative expressivity of the two logics. It turns out that they are incomparable over various classes of neighborhood models, and the combination of the two logics are equally expressive as standard modal logic over any class of neighborhood models. We propose morphisms for each logic, which can help us explore the frame definability problem, show a general soundness and completeness result, and generalize (...) some results in the literature. We axiomatize the two logics over various classes of neighborhood frames. Most importantly, by adopting the intersection semantics and the subset semantics in the literature, we extend the results to the case of public announcements, which gives us the desired reduction axioms and has good applications related to Moore sentences, successful formulas and self-refuting formulas. Also, we can say something about the comparative merits of the intersection semantics and the subset semantics. (shrink)

This essay explores a proper Confucian vision on genetic enhancement. It argues that while Confucians can accept a formal starting point that Michael Sandel proposes in his ethics of giftedness, namely, that children should be taken as gifts, Confucians cannot adopt his generalist strategy. The essay provides a Confucian full ethics of giftedness by addressing a series of relevant questions, such as what kind of gifts children are, where the gifts are from, in which way they are given, and for (...) what purpose they are given. It indicates that Confucians should sort out different types of enhancement and bring them to the test of the Confucian values in terms of both Confucian virtue principles and specific ritual rules. It concludes that Confucians can accept some types of enhancement but must reject others. (shrink)

Among the many teaching methods, inquiry-based teaching is considered to be an effective way for students to learn and solve problems on their own. However, most of the research related to inquiry-based teaching and learning has concentrated mainly on K-12 education, while few to no studies have focused on the application of inquiry-based teaching and learning in project design courses at university level. Therefore, in order to expand the understanding of the application effect of inquiry-based teaching at university level, this (...) study adopted the quasi-experimental design method, and through the purposive sampling method, 20 students from the Department of Fashion Design at a University of Science and Technology were invited to participate in this study. During the 9-month period, teaching experiments were carried out using two inquiry models, QC/ADEAC and QD/ODEAC. First, when participants were thinking of a creative topic, they followed the process: Question, Collection/Analysis, Discussion, Explanation, Amendment, and Confirmation in the course. During the production process, the participants were allowed to improve on their work through the process of Question, Doing/Observation, Discussion, Explanation, Amendment, and Confirmation. The teacher became a true guide, so that the participants could explore and work out how to improve their designs through independent inquiry and practice. In this study, questionnaires were administered to participants at five important stages of the design project: “theme development,” “color development,” “first Work,” “second Work,” and “third Work.” The results of the five surveys showed that the participants’ curriculum interest, curriculum value perception, and curriculum confidence in the inquiry program all increased. (shrink)

Can we still have the kind of achievements that a meaningful life requires if it turns out that we lack free will due to determinism? Derk Pereboom, an optimistic free-will skeptic, answers positively. He argues that even if we lack free will due to determinism, we can still have achievements and thereby lead meaningful lives. In this paper, we critically assess this issue. After showing that Pereboom fails to provide good reason to think that achievements do not require free will, (...) we offer a compelling argument that they do. So, if people lack free will due to determinism, then they cannot have achievements and live meaningful lives. (shrink)

It is generally recognized that China, while attempting to develop modern scientific medicine in carrying out its national policy for modernization, has also made significant efforts to integrate traditional Chinese medicine into its health care system. For instance, the World Health Organization's first global strategy on traditional and alternative medicine lists China as one of only four of its member states to have attained an integrative health care system. However, medical integration can take many different forms and involve quite different (...) health care standards. A health care standard is a set of mechanisms by which distinct diagnostic and therapeutic practices and products are validated or accredited for use in health care delivery. Traditional Chinese medicine and modern scientific medicine adopt different sets of such mechanisms and thereby engage different health care standards. Accordingly, in appraising the Chinese integrative health care system, it is important to investigate which health care standard has been appealed to. (shrink)

Recent advances in differential topology single out four-dimensions as being special, allowing for vast varieties of exotic smoothness structures, distinguished by their handlebody decompositions, even as the coarser algebraic topology is fixed. Should the spacetime we reside in takes up one of the more exotic choices, and there is no obvious reason why it shouldn’t, apparent pathologies would inevitably plague calculus-based physical theories assuming the standard vanilla structure, due to the non-existence of a diffeomorphism and the consequent lack of a (...) suitable portal through which to transfer the complete information regarding the exotic physical dynamics into the vanilla theories. An obvious plausible consequence of this deficiency would be the uncertainty permeating our attempted description of the microscopic world. We tentatively argue here, that a re-inspection of the key ingredients of the phenomenological particle models, from the perspective of exotica, could possibly yield interesting insights. Our short and rudimentary discussion is qualitative and speculative, because the necessary mathematical tools have only just began to be developed. (shrink)

This chapter attempts to build a Confucian conception of public reason for Confucian-influenced East Asian societies to adopt and tackle political and bioethical issues. The chapter first indicates that public reason is present at various levels of human collectives, namely, communitarian, national, and international. It concentrates on constructing a proper Confucian notion of public reason at the national level given that only the sovereign states are able to make effective public policy and laws to govern their people, although such a (...) Confucian notion can be shared by the peoples across East Asian countries and regions, such as mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Then I lay out Rawls’ liberal conception of public reason and explicate why it is not suitable for an East Asian country like China to accept. This is followed by two sections addressing the two Confucian conceptions of public reason that have been proposed, respectively, by Joseph Chan and Sungmoon Kim. I indicate how each of them faces a dilemma that cannot be adequately resolved. In Sect. 4, I outline a new Confucian conception of public reason based on the view developed in my book Reconstructionist Confucianism, including a Confucian account of basic liberty, equality, and individual rights consistent with the central requirements of the Confucian virtues that are still vibrant in East Asian societies. The values of political justice under this Confucian conception integrate both Confucian virtues and basic rights. Finally, the chapter appeals to this conception to review the bioethical issue of medically assisted suicide and argues why it should not be legalized in East Asia according to this conception of public reason. (shrink)

It will be settled out for the open problem of designing an r-order finite-time state observer for reaction-diffusion genetic regulatory networks with time-varying delays. By assuming the Dirichlet boundary conditions, aiming to estimate the mRNA and protein concentrations via available network measurements. Firstly, sufficient F-T stability conditions for the filtering error system have been investigated via constructing an appropriate Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional and using several integral inequalities and convex technique simultaneously. These conditions are delay-dependent and reaction-diffusion-dependent and can be checked by (...) MATLAB toolbox. Furthermore, a method is proposed to design an r-order F-T state observer, and the explicit expressions of observer gains are given. Finally, a numerical example is presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. (shrink)

The Dutch East Indies Company was one of the most aggressive and successful trading enterprises in the seventeenth‐century world. In the Indian Ocean it elbowed the Portuguese out of major ports, dominated the lucrative spice trade, and ruthlessly punished the natives if they refused to cooperate. Like the English East India Company, which would soon become a fierce rival, the VOC was a formidable commercial, military, and imperial complex in the expanding maritime world. In recent years historians of science have (...) begun to examine how this growing maritime trade in the early modern period contributed to the development of natural history. Specimens and observations brought back from the tropics and other exotic lands had an enormous impact on the European understanding of the natural world. Scientific voyages and explorations were relatively few before the middle of the eighteenth century. It was the network of maritime trade that supplied most of the scientific data about the rest of the world. More than anyone else, employees of the Dutch and English maritime enterprises collected the specimens and observations that fed the scientific communities in their home countries. Many of these largely forgotten individuals were accomplished naturalists whose experience and knowledge earned them respect among the scientific elite in Europe.The activities of Georgius Rumphius nicely illustrate the conjunction of science and maritime trade. After a peripatetic military career, Rumphius joined the VOC and in 1652 sailed to the Dutch East Indies, where he would spend the rest of his life. He didn't go to the East with the purpose of investigating natural history, but the strange creatures in this exotic land caught his attention, and he began studying natural history, collecting specimens, and writing about them. It was a labor of love. Not even blindness could stop his research; in fact, he produced most of his voluminous writings on the natural history of Ambon, or Amboina, a small island northeast of Java, after he lost his eyesight. But it would be an oversimplification to see Rumphius as a lonesome genius marooned in a remote island struggling to produce brilliant work that only posterity would come to appreciate. In the Dutch East Indies during this period, several employees of the VOC were dedicated naturalists, including the noted Hendrik van Reede, and they exchanged ideas and information with him. Rumphius also maintained an active correspondence with the scientific establishment in Europe and was elected to a prestigious scientific academy.Rumphius's major work was an illustrated herbal that described about 1,200 plants found in Ambon and the nearby areas. The Ambonese Curiosity Cabinet, however, focuses not on plants but on crustaceans, shells, minerals, and other items that are grouped into three categories: “Soft Shellfish,” “Hard Shellfish,” and “Minerals, Stones, and Other Rare Things.” Each of the volume's 170 chapters examines one or more natural objects, often with accompanying illustrations. The descriptions are usually vivid and convey a sense of wonder at exotic natural objects. The text also contains rich ethnographic records of the maritime world of Southeast Asia. Rumphius drew heavily on the indigenous lore of the natural world and frequently cited information collected from Chinese traders and immigrants. Combing through the text, one comes across many telling examples of how a seventeenth‐century naturalist pursued research in the social and cultural environment of a colonial entrepot. The translator, a distinguished scholar of Dutch colonial literature, has added a long introduction detailing Rumphius's life and work. The text itself is amply annotated. (shrink)

The oft-undiscernible boundary between imaging and imagining is especially apparent in our cinematic experience. In Buddhist philosophy, imaging and imagining are neither the same nor different, neither not the same nor not different. In this article, I argue that imaging in Buddhism refers not only to the formational process of an image out there, but also the external form's interdependent relationship with the internal forms. Likewise, imagining refers not only to the formational process of an image in here, but also (...) to how these imaginations constitute the body's relationship with the larger milieu out there. In the second half of this article, I analyse how the interdependent relationship between imaging and imagining is configured textually and in the overall cinematic experience in Bi Gan's Diqiu zuihou de yewan/ Long Day's Journey into Night. (shrink)

The term nirvyāpāra, which literally means “non-activity”, can be a key point in understanding Śāntarakṣita’s causal theory. It is a necessary step in his argument for the doctrine of Dependent Origination. This paper presents the views of the orthodox Indian schools that endorses the existence of causal activity and examines how Śāntarakṣita establishes the idea of non-activity mainly by discussing his objection to causal activity. In addition, the paper also briefly investigate the history of the concept of “non-activity” in Buddhist (...) philosophy, trying to show that Śāntarakṣita contributes to this view by explicitly spelling it out and providing a detailed argument for it. (shrink)

ObjectiveA form of pathological social withdrawal which is also called hikikomori has been proved its existence in China. But the prevalence and characteristics of hikikomori in China remain unknown. Past studies had investigated the hikikomori phenomenon in three cities of China. The purpose of this study is to discover the prevalence of hikikomori in a convenient online sample in China as well as the difference in demographic characteristics and other possible traits between hikikomori sufferers and the general population.MethodsA total of (...) 1,066 youths in China completed the online questionnaire, which consisted of questions about demographics, the 25-item Hikikomori Questionnaire, the Internet Addiction Test, the Loneliness Scale, and the General Health Questionnaire. SPSS is used to evaluate the data.ResultsOf the 1,066 youths, 980 were identified as belonging to group A, 46 to group B, and 40 to group C. The hikikomori group accounted for 8.1%. The present data suggest that residence and loneliness are related to the occurrence of hikikomori. HQ-25 score of the hikikomori group was significantly higher than the comparison group. The UCLA score showed that those in the hikikomori group felt lonelier than those in the comparison. The regression model predicted hikikomori risk, the Hosmer-Lemeshow test value is 7.114 and P = 0.524 > 0.05.ConclusionThe grouping criterion in our present study is reasonable and such a grouping criterion can screen out potential populations of hikikomori. When people develop into hikikomori sufferers in the present, their social withdrawal behaviors and feeling of loneliness are both much more severe than in the past. The possible relationships between hikikomori and loneliness reflect the need to give the youths more social support, to help them connect with society. (shrink)

BackgroundThe brain death standard allowing a declaration of death based on neurological criteria is legally endorsed and routinely practiced in the West but not in Asia. In China, attempts to legalize the brain death standard have occurred several times without success. Cultural, religious, and philosophical factors have been proposed to explain this difference, but there is a lack of empirical studies to support this hypothesis.Methods476 medical providers from three academic hospitals in Hunan, China, completed a selfadministered survey including a 12-question (...) brain death clinical knowledge assessment and hypothetical vignettes describing brain dead patients.ResultsThe response rate was 95.2 %. Almost all of the providers had heard of the term “brain death.” More than half have encountered presumed brain dead patients. Two-thirds accepted brain death as an ethical standard to determine human death. The mean knowledge score was 8.50 ± 1.83 out of 12. When given the description of a brain dead patient, 50.7 % considered the patient dead, 51.9 % would withdraw life support, and 40.6 % would allow organ procurement. Both provider and patient characteristics contributed to the providers’ decisions. Ethical acceptance was the most important independent predictor for brain death acknowledgement, followed by high knowledge scores, and the belief that the soul lives in the brain. Religious faith and associated beliefs did not have a significant effect.ConclusionsNotwithstanding scarce official accounts, recognition of the brain death standard is not uncommon in China. Chinese medical providers can adequately define the medical characteristics of brain death and accept it in theory, but hesitate to apply it to practice in the vignettes. Legalization is paramount in providing the protection providers need to comfortably declare brain death. However the medical decision-making surrounding brain death is complex and the provider's past experiences and emotions may also influence the process. (shrink)

Retraction note: García-Alonso Montoya, P., Shan, X. & Fan, X. (2023). Strategic transformation of the business model in the information company. HUMAN REVIEW. International Humanities Revista Internacional De Humanidades, 17(3), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.37467/revhuman.v11.4732 The Editorial Office of Eurasia Academic Publishing Group has retracted this article. An investigation carried out by our Research Integrity Department has found a group of articles, among which this one is found, that are not within the thematic scope of the journal. We believe that the editorial process (...) was manipulated and, furthermore, acceptance decisions were made under possibly inappropriate peer review. (shrink)

Filling out long questionnaires can be frustrating, unpleasant, and discouraging for respondents to continue. This is why shorter forms of long instruments are preferred, especially when they have comparable reliability and validity. In present study, two short forms of the Cross-cultural Personality Assessment Inventory were developed and validated. The items of the short forms were all selected from the 28 personality scales of the CPAI-2 based on the norm sample. Based on some priori criteria, we obtained the appropriate items and (...) constructed the 56-item Chinese Personality Assessment Inventory and the 28-item CPAI. Then, we examined the factor structure of both short forms with Exploratory SEM and replicated the four-factor structure of the original CPAI-2, reflecting the four personality domains of Chinese people, namely, Social Potency, Dependability, Accommodation, and Interpersonal Relatedness. Further analyses with ESEM models demonstrate full measurement invariance across gender for both short forms. The results show that females score lower than males on Social Potency. In addition, these four factors of both short forms have adequate internal consistency, and the correlation patterns of the four factors, the big five personality traits, and several health-related variables are extremely similar across the two short forms, reflecting adequate and comparable criterion validity, convergent validity, and discriminant validity. Overall, the short versions of CPAI-2 are psychometrically acceptable and have practically implications for measuring Chinese personality and cross-cultural research. (shrink)

ObjectivesAcupuncture therapy has been used for cognitive impairment-related diseases, however, there are still few studies on the overall trend of acupuncture therapy on cognitive impairment based on bibliometric analysis. The purpose of this study was to explore the research trend of the impact of acupuncture on cognitive impairment in the past 15 years, analyze the research trends and hotspots, and provide new ideas and theoretical basis for future research directions.MethodsFrom the Web of Science Core Collection, the relevant literature on the (...) treatment of cognitive impairment with acupuncture from 2007 to 2022 was retrieved. Then, based on the CiteSpace and VOSviewer software of the Java platform, the cooperation between countries and institutions in this field, the co-citation of journals and documents, and the cooperation between authors and authors, etc. were analyzed. In addition, the co-occurrence and burst analysis of keywords are also carried out, and a visual knowledge map is drawn.ResultsAs of August 08, 2022, a total of 394 records related to the treatment of cognitive impairment with acupuncture were identified. The analysis results show: The number and rate of annual publications have steadily increased, with some fluctuations from year to year. The countries that contribute the most to this field are China and the USA. Among them, Beijing University of Chinese Medicine and Capital Medical University are tied for first place in terms of the number of published papers. Tao Jing is the most prolific author and the number one cited author.ConclusionsThe number of publications on acupuncture for cognitive impairment is expected to increase rapidly in future research, suggesting a bright future for the field. Future research hotspots will focus on pain, injury, protocol, diagnosis, guidelines, etc. It is also necessary to strengthen cross-regional and cross-country cooperation among various academic groups. (shrink)

Porter’s five forces model is an authoritative management tool used in analyzing the profitability and attractiveness of industries through an outside-in viewpoint. In the past decade, dramatic and rapid changes have prompted some criticism of the model. The comparison between new and old economy analysis makes the fundamentals of the model seem weak. Moreover, the past decade has shown that strategy and entrepreneurship in China are not completely dependent on the model. This study first aims to verify the sustainability of (...) the five forces model and analyze its integration into China’s entrepreneurial economy. By conducting in-depth interviews among the upper echelons from various industries, it was found that along with the competitive factors emphasized by the model, Chinese entrepreneurs attend to cooperative factors such as Guanxi, the Chinese term for relationship, and the possibilities of technology integration with the five forces. They also tend to enlarge the strategic view to consider factors such as how the market evaluates the forces. To verify these findings, the authors carried out a large-scale survey with a modified questionnaire analyzing the data collected using exploratory factor analysis with SPSS 22. The outcome shows that Porter’s model is still valid to some extent. Companies are still working in a network of buyers, suppliers, substitutes, new entrants, and competitors. However, reinventions are necessary to include the new factors of Guanxi, technology, and marketing and branding, which have changed the structure of the industry. These factors arise from the cooperative nature of Chinese culture and may have equal or even larger significance compared with their competitive counterparts in today’s business world. (shrink)

Europe is witnessing increasing protests against mining. Social movements mobilizing against resource extraction projects, (i.e. anti-extraction movements) are typically heterogeneous actor networks using diverse tactics to stop projects and promote other forms of societal development. I investigate two prominent anti-extraction movements in Sweden and explore how movement actors’ goals and interpretations of contextual opportunities shape their strategies and tactics. I study tactics over eleven years and use frame analysis to explore actors’ goals, interpretations, and strategies. Results show how diverse goals (...) lead to diversification of tactics in movements by prompting movement actors to relate to different policy areas, that is, issue-specific contexts. Furthermore, actors’ experiences of interacting in different issue-specific contexts created differences in actors’ retrospective reasoning, which reinforced variation in tactics by informing interpretations of contextual opportunities. The study contributes to social movement theory by explicating how the content of goals shape interpretations of contextual opportunities and by extension diversify movement actors’ strategies and tactics. This adds to the understanding of how socio-political context influence tactical choices in concert with other explanations such as action traditions, diffusion, and available resources. Understanding diversification of movement tactics is important for handling increasingly complex conflicts over natural resources. (shrink)

This book offers readers a pitch side seat to the ethics of fandom. Its accessible six chapters are aimed both at true sports fans whose conscience may be occasionally piqued by their pastime, and at those who are more certain of the moral hazards involved in following a team or sport. Why It's OK to Be a Sports Fan wrestles with a range of arguments against fandom and counters with its own arguments on why being a fan is very often (...) a good thing. It looks at the ethical issues fans face, from the violent or racist behavior of those in the stands, to players' infamous misdeeds, to owners debasing their own clubs. In response to these moral risks, the book argues that by being critical fans, followers of a team or individual can reap the benefits of fandom while avoiding many of the ethical pitfalls. The authors show the value in deeply loving a team, but also how a condition of this value is recognizing that the love of a fan comes with real limits and responsibilities. Key Features Provides an accessible introduction to a key area of the philosophy of sport Closely looks at some of the salient ethical concerns around sports fandom Proposes that the value of community in partisan fandom should not be underestimated as a key feature of the good life Examines how the same emotions and environments that can lead to violence are identical to those that lead to virtuous loyalty Argues for a fan's responsibility in calling out violence or racist behavior from their fellow fans. (shrink)

Di er ci Qimeng (The second Enlightenment), by Wang Zhihe and Fan Meijun, is a timely book in Chinese about constructing a philosophical and practical way to contend with China's postmodernization. It combines Whitehead's process philosophy with a focus on Chinese modernity in order to map out a desirable postmodern society. It addresses the problem on several dimensions from policy making to basic value systems. The range of themes can be seen from the topics of the book's twelve chapters: (1) (...) Reverence for Land—Toward a Constructive Postmodern Agriculture; (2) Becoming Fully Human—Toward a Postmodern Organic Education; (3) Survival of the Harmonious-Toward a Constructive Postmodern Harmonious Culture; (4) Beauty .. (shrink)

This paper presents an experimental study of common consequence effects in binary choice, willingness-to-pay elicitation, and willingness-to-accept elicitation. We find strong evidence in favor of the fanning out hypothesis for both WTP and WTA. In contrast, the choice data do not show a clear pattern of violations in the absence of certainty effects. Our results underline the relevance of differences between pricing and choice tasks, and their implications for models of decision making under risk.

When is it morally permissible for performers to portray characters from marginalized groups of which they are not a member? Although this question is philosophically underexplored, it has been commanding increasing attention in the public sphere, especially with respect to straight performers portraying queer characters. While the demand for increasing self-representation from marginalized communities is laudable, we argue that demanding performers to disclose their social identity is, in general, morally counterproductive. We make our case by focusing on recent instances where (...) fans demanded that a performer disclose their sexual orientation, putting vulnerable performers in a harmful trilemma. In short, it will force many to either out themselves against their will, subject themselves to intense public backlash by taking the role without outing themselves, or forgo taking a role they want and at which they would excel. Instead, we propose that performers have a general (epistemic) obligation to learn about what their characters’ corresponding real-world experiences would plausibly be like, representing what they learned in their performances. We will argue that meeting this obligation typically entails learning about the values, broadly construed, of the community in question. If we are right, there is not even a general obligation that performers only take roles that correspond to their own social identity. Just as importantly, there is a strong moral reason not to demand that performers disclose aspects of their social identity in order to take on a role. (shrink)

Irreversibility, it is claimed, is a much broader concept than is entropy increase, as is shown by the occurrence of certain processes which are irreversible without seeming to involve any intrinsic entropy change. These processes include the spreading outwards into space of particles, or of radiation, and they also include certain biological and mental phenomena. For instance, the irreversible and treelike branching which is characteristic of natural evolution is not entropic when it is considered in itself—i.e. in abstraction from accompanying (...) biochemical and physiological activity. What appears to be the common feature of all forms of irreversibility is the fanning out of trajectories, new entities or new states, in the temporal direction towards the future. (shrink)

Determinism is established in quantum mechanics by tracing the probabilities in the Born rules back to the absolute (overall) phase constants of the wave functions and recognizing these phase constants as pseudorandom numbers. The reduction process (collapse) is independent of measurement. It occurs when two wavepackets overlap in ordinary space and satisfy a certain criterion, which depends on the phase constants of both wavepackets. Reduction means contraction of the wavepackets to the place of overlap. The measurement apparatus fans out the (...) incoming wavepacket into spatially separated eigenpackets of the chosen observable. When one of these eigenpackets together with a wavepacket located in the apparatus satisfy the criterion, the reduction associates the place of contraction with an eigenvalue of the observable. The theory is nonlocal and contextual. Keywords:. (shrink)

For nonmonotonic logics, Cumulativity is an important logical rule. We show here that Cumulativity fans out into an infinity of different conditions, if the domain is not closed under finite unions.

As a discipline, that is, a department of knowledge and learning, philosophy, inevitably, must have a system of rules or a method, for the maintenance, proper conduct, and transmission of its specific task. But philosophy’s task is not only to be executed in an orderly fashion: it is itself constituted by a set of rules, the rules of orderly or disciplined thinking. As a branch of knowledge and instruction, the discipline ‘philosophy’ thus has its own proper canon. Without the canon (...) of its elected books, the harmonic ordering of its corpus, and the strict rules to be observed not only in learning or teaching it, but in philosophizing as well, philosophy would not be recognizable as a discipline. For these are what give it its identity. Hence, this canonicity, and in particular, the domain of established fundamental rules for thought within it, profoundly affects our understanding of philosophy. Indeed, depending on what these rules are said to be, the discipline of philosophy fans out into the diverse definitions that it has been historically assigned. (shrink)

In this paper we examine optimal bidding without the independence axiom in a unified framework which allows for a clear graphical representation. Thus, we can show very simply the independence axiom to be a necessary and sufficient condition on preferences for strategical equivalence of the two first-price and second-price auctions, respectively, and for the second-price sealed-bid auction to be demand revealing. The analysis reveals that the betweenness property is necessary and sufficient for the ascending-bid auction to be demand revealing while (...) optimal bids exceed (are less than) bidders' valuations, iff preferences are quasiconcave (quasiconvex). Furthermore, it can be shown that fanning out (fanning in) leads to a higher (lower) selling-price in open than in sealed-bid auctions. (shrink)

Ecological Immunology assumes that immunological defenses must be minimized in terms of cost (energy expenditure). To reach this goal, a complex and still largely unexplored strategy has evolved to assure survival. From invertebrates to vertebrates, an integrated immune–neuroendocrine response appears to be crucial for the hierarchical redistribution of resources within the body according to the specific ecological demands. Thus, on the basis of experimental data on the intimate relationship between stress and immune responses that has been maintained during evolution, we (...) argue that a broader perspective based on the integration of immune and neuroendocrine responses should be adopted to describe the comprehensive strategy that the body utilizes to adapt to dynamic environmental conditions. We discuss the hypothesis that a bow‐tie architecture might be suitable to describe the variety of immune–neuroendocrine inputs that continuously target cells and organs while, at the same time, fulfilling the basic requirement of minimizing the cost of immune–neuroendocrine responses. Bow‐tie architectures are able to convert a variety of stimuli (fan in) into a wide range of fine‐tuned responses (fan out) by passing through the integrating activity of a core (knot) constituted by a limited number of elements. Finally, we argue that the ecologically negotiated immune–neuroendocrine strategies may have deleterious effects in the post‐reproductive period of life when, at least in humans, chronic, low‐grade, systemic inflammation develops, in accordance with the antagonistic pleiotropy theory of aging. BioEssays 30:868–874, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The position that science is a technique establishing the means to achieve any stipulated end has now fanned out and been defended by social scientists as well as by natural scientists. It is the thesis of this paper that the bifurcation of science and morality derives from the social status of both science and scientists today, and involves, wittingly or unwittingly, an uncritical acceptance of dominant social values. Science is thus not non-moral, as is claimed, but rather appropriates conventional morality. (...) Certain conditions have brought about this role for science and scientists. (shrink)

The history of encyclopedism seeks to trace the metamorphoses and various cultural adaptations of three essential components. The first of these is an intellectual endeavor, reflecting the conception, hierarchy, and articulation of knowledge in a given society: How is the map of knowledge organized and defined? How do human thought and memory gather together and master all accessible knowledge? The second component can take the form of a material object, the encyclopedia - whether conceived as a book that unites the (...) knowledge found in all other books, or again as the body of texts that, though not titled as such, belong nevertheless to an encyclopedic genre. The last constituent of the trilogy consists of the group of practices that fan out between these two poles, between the intellectual endeavor and the material object, and contribute to collecting, shaping, and transmitting the knowledge in a given society and time. (shrink)

The pluralistic and interdisciplinary nature of semiotics has never been more pronounced than it is in our assembly of scholars approaching the idea of Law and Aesthetics in their respective fashions. Nevertheless, despite vastly different cultural influences and different referent systems of law, and despite those barriers at the modern university which impede dialogue across disciplines and certainly across colleges, and which seem to regard individual human beings from atomistic perspectives, there are so many cross-references to link our contributors into (...) a community that the problem is in deciding which theses are to be most emphasized. This is a time for a fanning out, for expansion, for a free walking of the ground of a new idea...The idea of a Legal Aesthetics needs to begin to grow and to differentiate itself. As is the case of all semiotic processes, Legal Aesthetics is, also, a self-regulating and self-organizing and self-generating system, or idea. It is a wonder to simply be able to observe the growth of an idea called legal semiotics. It is such a wonder that Peirce would have loved to have lived into our time to see, to share, to investigate. This branching off of legal semiotics into Law and Aesthetics is, in a sense, a new graft and the start of a new hybrid. (shrink)

We welcome network theory as a tool for modelling the multi-directional interactions that characterise disease. However, we feel that Cramer et al. have neglected one important aspect: how diseases change over developmental time. We discuss principles such as fan in, fan out, bottlenecks, and common pathways, and argue that modelling these developmental aspects can be vital, particularly in deriving properly targeted treatments.

While mitochondrial sequences can be used to probe the time and place of the mitochondrial ‘Eve,’ nuclear genes can be used to ask a slightly different question: when did humans (members of the genus Homo) or their hominid precursors (the hominids) first leave Africa and fan out over Asia and Europe? If they did so recently, it seems likely that there was a recent African origin of our species, Homo sapiens, rather than multiple origins in various parts of the Old (...) World. A recent paper(1) uses minisatellite data to make the argument that the departure from Africa happened very recently indeed. An alternative explanation for the data is that there was no single and irreversible departure from Africa, but that some peoples migrated back and forth between Africa and the rest of the Old World over the last few tens of thousands of years. For this and other reasons, putting a single date on the farewell to Africa remains problematical. (shrink)

Plotinus knew that evils “wander about mortal nature and this place forever” and Schäfer begins his analysis of evil in the Enneads with a very helpful survey of the philosophical schools and literary tradition of ancient Greece which influenced Plotinus. These opening pages thus treat χαχόν as understood by Heraclitus, Plato, and Sophocles. Schäfer stresses the quasi-dualism present in these earlier thinkers in order to show how Plotinus’ insistence that all is derived from a single origin, the One, forced him (...) to give a more precise account of evil’s origins. He therefore set out to explain how the individuality caused by material substantiation is that which brings about an Unwissenheit und Harmoniestörung. The human soul becomes enamored by that which is good and an instance of the One-on-a-lower-level; paradoxically, therefore, evil is brought about not by some competing substance of the One but by its own emanated beauty. As the soul freely chooses diversity over unity, it finds itself more and more “fanned out”, forgetful of its true origin. (shrink)