Case-cohort design is a biased sampling method. Due to its cost-effective and theoretical significance, this design has extensive application value in many large cohort studies. The case-cohort data includes a subcohort sampled randomly from the entire cohort and all the failed subjects outside the subcohort. In this paper, the adjustment for the distorted covariates is considered to case-cohort data in Cox’s model. According to the existing adjustable methods of distorted covariates for linear and nonlinear models, we propose estimating the distorting (...) functions by nonparametrically regressing the distorted covariates on the distorting factors; then, the estimators for the parameters are obtained using the estimated covariates. The proof of consistency and being asymptotically normal is completed. For calculating the maximum likelihood estimates of the regression coefficients subject in Cox’s model, a minorization-maximization algorithm is developed. Simulation studies are performed to compare the estimations with the covariates undistorted, distorted, and adjusted to illustrate the proposed methods. (shrink)

本书着重研究惩罚的社会必要性和心理基础,并分析惩罚的客体、根据、内容和主体,进而构建惩罚的公正、人道和功利原则,并提醒人们注意正义的局限所在以及宽恕的意义。.

Taking divine omniscience as including temporal omniscience, which means God exists at all times and knows everything, I point out the fallacies in an incompatibilist argument. Syntactically, due to misapplication of the principle of substitutivity, this incompatibilist argument isn’t valid. Semantically, due to cancelation of a supposition on which God’s earlier belief depends, an agent’s alternative action won’t result in falsification of divine belief. Finally, by appealing to an eternalist conception of truth of proposition about the future, I argue that (...) what divine belief entails isn’t the necessity of an agent’s action but the action itself, and put forward a notion of conditional fatalism, which allows for human free will. (shrink)

This article presents two studies that examine cause-related marketing promotions that require consumers’ active participation. Requiring a follow-up behavior has very valuable implications for maximizing marketing expenditures and customer relationship management. Theories related to ethical behavior, like motivated reasoning and defensive denial, are used to explain when and why consumers respond negatively to these effort demands. The first study finds that consumers rationalize not participating in CRM by devaluing the sponsored cause. The second study identifies a tactic marketers can utilize (...) to neutralize consumers’ use of defensive denial. Allowing the consumer to choose the sponsored cause seems to effectively refocus their attention and increases consumers’ threshold for campaign requirements. Implications for nonprofits and marketing managers include a tendency for consumers to be more likely to perceive a firm as ethical and socially responsible when they are allowed to choose the specific cause that is supported. (shrink)

The “masses” discourse in modern China was influenced by two western intellectual traditions, i.e., mass psychology and historical materialism. The former regards the masses as a blind, impulsive, and irrational crowd, while the latter thinks that only the people are the real dynamic forces of historical development. As a result, the “masses” discourse in modern China bifurcated into a negative one of “mass psychology” and a positive one of “mass movement”, both of which were employed as effective tools of political (...) mobilization by different political parties and social elites. The concept of the “masses” was either the crystallization of the abstract “people” or the actualization of the ideal “citizenry”. What is embodied in the concepts of the people, the citizenry, and the masses in modern China was actually an ambiguous image of a political subject. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article is a response to 'Fear of death and the symmetry argument', in this issue. In that article, the author discusses the above Lucretian symmetry argument, and proposes a view that justifies the existing asymmetry in our attitudes towards birth and death. I begin by distinguishing this symmetry argument from a different one, also loosely inspired by Lucretius, which also plays a role in the article. I then describe what I take to be the author's solution to the (...) original symmetry argument and explain why I am unpersuaded by it. (shrink)

This essay argues that individual-oriented informed consent is inadequate to protect human research subjects in mainland China. The practice of family-oriented decision-making is better suited to guide moral research conduct. The family’s role in medical decision-making originates from the mutual benevolence that exists among family members, and is in accordance with family harmony, which is the aim of Confucian society. I argue that the practice of informed consent for medical research on human subjects ought to remain family-oriented in mainland China. (...) This essay explores the main features of this model of informed consent and demonstrates the proper authority of the family. The family’s participation in decision-making as a whole does not negate or deny the importance of the individual who is the subject of the choice, but rather acts more fully to protect research subjects. (shrink)

In order to establish his "school of principle" system of thought, which was founded on objective idealism, Zhu Xi proposed a theory of "investigating things and exhausting principles" [gewu qiongli]. This became the epistemological foundation for his system of thought. This epistemology formed an organic whole with his world view. On the one hand, his "theory-of-investigating-things" epistemology opened up pathways for his system of objective idealism; on the other hand, his "school-of-principle" system formed the theoretical foundation for his epistemology of (...) "investigating things" and gave this epistemology its obviously metaphysical characteristics. (shrink)

With a previous paper (Niu & Wang, 1995), a general, hypothetical outline of the mechanism of carcinogenesis was proposed. With reference to the fact of starvation-induced hypermutation in micro-organisms, we propose that the hypoxia commonly seen in the cells at the centre of solid tumours might also result in hypermutation, and then p53-dependent programmed cell death. Like the apparently adaptive mutations in micro-organisms, only those genes (e.g. p53) that enable the cells to escape from apoptosis may be selected.

Division of labour is a marked feature of multicellular organisms. Margulis proposed that the ancestors of metazoans had only one microtubule organizing center (MTOC), so they could not move and divide simultaneously. Selection for simultaneous movement and cell division had driven the division of labour between cells. However, no evidence or explanation for this assumption was provided. Why could the unicellular ancetors not have multiple MTOCs? The gain and loss of three possible strategies are discussed. It was found that the (...) advantage of one or two MTOC per cell is environment-dependent. Unicellular organisms with only one MTOC per cell are favored only in resource-limited environments without strong predatory pressure. If division of labour occurring in a bicellular organism just makes simultaneous movement and cell division possible, the possibility of its fixation by natural selection is very low because a somatic cell performing the function of an MTOC is obviously wasting resources. Evolutionary biologists should search for other selective forces for division of labour in cells. (shrink)

To cope with the water deficit resulting from saline environment, plant cells accumulate three kinds of osmotica: salts, small organic solutes and hydrophillic, glycine-rich proteins. Salts such as NaCl are cheap and available but has ion toxicity in high concentrations. Small organic solutes are assistant osmotica, their main function is to protect cytoplasmic enzymes from ionic toxicity and maintain the integrity of cellular membranes. Hydrophillic, glycine-rich proteins are the most effective osmotica, they have some characteristics to avoid crystallization even in (...) high concentration, but because they are expensive they are not as commonly used as salts or organic solutes. In addition there is the question of whether the genetic information for growth in saline environment is present in all kinds of plants, both halophytes and nonhalophytes. (shrink)

From the viewpoint of an evolutionary biologist, carcinogenesis should be looked upon as a protective mechanism against destruction of DNA. Because genes expressed in embryonic cells are covered and protected by heterochromatinization, they are the most appropriate ‘alternate genes’ compared to genes that are expressed already in somatic cells. When DNA-damage occurs, the embryonic genes can be activated. Some somatic cells exhibit some features of embryonic cells.

Writing, or calligraphy, in China is strongly influenced by ancient techniques of making art. Chinese characters have evolved from the patterns of bronze drawings, and China’s earliest hieroglyphs usually retain the traces of their origin in paintings. These paintings usually recorded daily life, and the related Chinese characters have evolved from these with general, simplified and abstract features. The composition that makes Chinese characters is a manifestation of ancient Chinese philosophy, of which Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism are the three key (...) strands. They have affected Chinese culture and aesthetics in all dynasties. Chinese philosophy emphasizes the integration of individuals in their surrounding environment. The art of ancient China consequently combines skills that relate to the artificial, or constructed, and to natural patterns. Chinese characters make a perfect example of this. The article/presentation will outline the research that I have so far undertaken on the relation between Chinese calligraphy and architectural space, between writing and constructing environments. It will also present some experimental design research that aims at developing from the above-mentioned basic research new architectural typologies that are contemporary, resonant and sensitive to the Chinese context. (shrink)

We offer a new answer to the paradox of tragedy. We explain part of the appeal of tragic art in terms of its acknowledgement of sad aspects of life and offer a tentative explanation of why acknowledgement is a source of pleasure.

In this paper, a generalized -dimensional Calogero–Bogoyavlenskii–Schiff equation is considered. Based on the Hirota bilinear method, three kinds of exact solutions, soliton solution, breather solutions, and lump solutions, are obtained. Breathers can be obtained by choosing suitable parameters on the 2-soliton solution, and lump solutions are constructed via the long wave limit method. Figures are given out to reveal the dynamic characteristics on the presented solutions. Results obtained in this work may be conducive to understanding the propagation of localized waves.

本书汇集了各种报告或讲座中具有代表性的一部分,旨在创设一种民主自由的学术氛围,使各种观点、理论相互切磋、撞击,让读者置身于一个清美高洁,又五彩斑斓的学术百花园。.

Comrade Hu Qili, on behalf of the Central Secretariat, has delivered a speech of congratulations at the Fourth Congress of the National Writers' Association. This speech is very important. In it, Comrade Hu Qili stated: "As regards the freedom of [artistic] creation, the Party and state should provide the necessary conditions [for it] and create the necessary environment and atmosphere. At the same time, the writers' own thoughts and feelings and their creative activities as a whole should be in step (...) with the environment of freedom provided by the Party and state." Demands are made on both sides. On the one hand, the Party and state should create the requisite conditions, environment, and atmosphere for literary creation. The civil liberties stipulated in the Constitution include the freedom of creation. For writers who are Party members, the rights of Party members, stipulated by the Party constitution and by the Party's criteria for political life, also include the right of freedom of creation. Many problems still exist in this respect; situations still exist wherein no active measures are being taken to create the conditions, environment, and atmosphere for writers to fully enjoy the freedom of creation due to them. [The authorities] in some localities even obstruct or willfully interfere with the realization of this freedom, or they suppress democracy, resort to persecution and retaliation, or employ crude and simplistic means to deal with writers and with artistic creation—a meticulous form of mental labor that has its own special regularities. The thorough solution of problems of this sort still requires great efforts on our part. On the other hand, Comrade Hu Qili also said in his congratulatory speech that the writers' own thoughts and feelings and their creative activities as a whole should be in step with the environment of freedom provided the Party and state. That is to say, they must remain in step with the Constitution, and where Party-member writers are concerned, they should remain in step with the Party constitution, and they should ensure the implementation of relevant stipulations in the Constitution and Party constitution. Many efforts must be made, whether by Party committees and governments at various levels or by the writers, to promote the healthy development and continued flourishing of socialist literature and art. Hence, the two sentences in Comrade Qili's congratulatory speech address the matter very comprehensively. (shrink)

In its three decades of development, many constructs of cause-related marketing have been tested from different perspectives and in varied contexts. However, there has not yet been an integrated empirical study. Reviewing 162 studies from 117 articles, we constructed a framework of meta-analysis and identified 20 constructs. Among these, 13 are antecedents that can be grouped into three components: consumer-related traits, execution-related factors, and product-related traits, while three mediators and four consequences are used to measure the effectiveness of cause-related marketing. (...) Moreover, we examined 857 relationships among the constructs. The results showed that consumer-related traits, execution-related factors, and product-related traits all influence the effectiveness of cause-related marketing to varying degrees. Furthermore, we analyzed the effects of six moderators and found that cause-related marketing would be more effective when the brand is familiar, the product is utilitarian, the donation magnitude is large, and the cause is less familiar. However, neither cultural orientation nor cause type significantly influences the effectiveness of cause-related marketing. Finally, the interactions between these moderators and execution-related antecedents provide contributions and implications for cause-related marketing. (shrink)

Light mediates plant development partly by orchestrating changes in gene expression, a process which involves a complex combination of positive and negative signaling cascades. Genetic investigations using the small crucifer Arabidopsis thaliana have demonstrated a fundamental role for the down‐regulation of light‐inducible genes in response to darkness, thus offering a suitable model system for investigating how plants repress gene expression in a developmental context. Rapid progress in eukaryotic gene repression mechanisms in general, and light control of plant gene expression in (...) particular, sheds new light on how a class of ten pleiotropic COP/DET/FUS genes might function to down‐regulate light‐inducible genes in plants. (shrink)

Objective:The purpose of this study was to describe the current situation of moral distress and to explore its influencing factors among Chinese nurses.Methods:This is an exploratory, descriptive design study. A total of 465 clinical nurses from different departments in three Grade-III, Level-A hospitals in Jinan, Shandong Province, completed the questionnaires, including demographics questionnaire, Chinese version of Moral Distress Scale–Revised, and Job Diagnostic Survey.Ethical considerations:The study was approved by the university ethics board and the local health service director.Results:The total score of (...) Moral Distress Scale–Revised was 36.01 ± 24.02 points. The mean frequency and intensity scores of moral distress were 1.13 ± 0.49 and 1.09 ± 0.58, respectively. The level of moral distress among Chinese clinical nurses was low, and the frequency and intensity of moral distress were on low to moderate level. The level of moral distress experienced by clinical nurses is associated with demographics features and job characteristics, including age, education degree, department, task significance, autonomy, and dealing with others.Conclusion:Our conclusion suggests that hospital and organizational administrations should attach much importance to the moral distress experienced by clinical nurses in China. Further studies should focus on interventions about how to reduce the levels of the frequency and intensity of moral distress among clinical nurses. (shrink)

I offer an interpretation and a partial defense of Kit Fine's ‘Argument from Passage’, which is situated within his reconstruction of McTaggart's paradox. Fine argues that existing A-theoretic approaches to passage are no more dynamic, i.e. capture passage no better, than the B-theory. I argue that this comparative claim is correct. Our intuitive picture of passage, which inclines us towards A-theories, suggests more than coherent A-theories can deliver. In Finean terms, the picture requires not only Realism about tensed facts, but (...) also Neutrality, i.e. the tensed facts not being ‘oriented towards’ one privileged time. However unlike Fine, and unlike others who advance McTaggartian arguments, I take McTaggart's paradox to indicate neither the need for a more dynamic theory of passage nor that time does not pass. A more dynamic theory is not to be had: Fine's ‘non-standard realism’ amounts to no more than a conceptual gesture. But instead of concluding that time does not pass, we should conclude that theories of passage cannot deliver the dynamicity of our intuitive picture. For this reason, a B-theoretic account of passage that simply identifies passage with the succession of times is a serious contender. (shrink)

Elsewhere I have suggested that the B-theory includes a notion of passage, by virtue of including succession. Here, I provide further support for that claim by showing that uncontroversial elements of the B-theory straightforwardly ground a veridical sense of passage. First, I argue that the B-theory predicts that subjects of experience have a sense of passivity with respect to time that they do not have with respect to space, which they are right to have, even according to the B-theory. I (...) then ask what else might be involved in our experience of time as passing that is not yet vindicated by the B-theoretic conception. I examine a recent B-theoretic explanation of our ‘illusory’ sense of passage, by Robin Le Poidevin, and argue that it explains away too much: our perception of succession poses no more of a problem on the B-theory than it does on other theories of time. Finally, I respond to an objection by Oreste Fiocco that a causal account of our sense of passage cannot succeed, because it leaves out the ‘phenomenological novelty’ of each moment. (shrink)

Does time seem to pass, even though it doesn’t, really? Many philosophers think the answer is ‘Yes’—at least when ‘time’s passing’ is understood in a particular way. They take time’s passing to be a process by which each time in turn acquires a special status, such as the status of being the only time that exists, or being the only time that is present. This chapter suggests that, on the contrary, all we perceive is temporal succession, one thing after another, (...) a notion to which modern physics is not inhospitable. The contents of perception are best described in terms of ‘before’ and ‘after’, rather than ‘past’, ‘present, and ‘future’. (shrink)

Usually, the B-theory of time is taken to involve the claim that time does not, in reality, pass; after all, on the B-theory, nothing really becomes present and then more and more past, times do not come into existence successively, and which facts obtain does not change. For this reason, many B-theorists have recently tried to explain away one or more aspect(s) of experience that they and their opponents take to constitute an experience of time as passing. In this paper, (...) I examine three prominent proposals of this kind and argue that, though intriguing, the proposals undermine, to some extent, the assumption that there is an element of experience that B-theorists need to take to be illusory. (shrink)

Temporal ontology is the part of ontology involving the rival positions of presentism, eternalism, and the growing block theory. While this much is clear, it’s surprisingly difficult to elucidate the substance of the disagreement between presentists and eternalists. Certain events happened that are not happening now; what is it to disagree about whether these events exist? In spite of widespread suspicion concerning the status and methods of analytic metaphysics, skeptics’ doubts about this debate have not generally been heeded, neither by (...) metaphysicians, nor by philosophers of physics. This paper revisits the question in the light of prominent elucidation attempts from both camps. The upshot is that skeptics were right to be puzzled. The paper then explores a possible re-interpretation of positions in temporal ontology that links it to normative views about how we should live as temporal beings. (shrink)

Short-term traffic flow prediction is an effective means for intelligent transportation system to mitigate traffic congestion. However, traffic flow data with temporal features and periodic characteristics are vulnerable to weather effects, making short-term traffic flow prediction a challenging issue. However, the existing models do not consider the influence of weather changes on traffic flow, leading to poor performance under some extreme conditions. In view of the rich features of traffic data and the characteristic of being vulnerable to external weather conditions, (...) the prediction model based on traffic data has certain limitations, so it is necessary to conduct research studies on traffic flow prediction driven by both the traffic data and weather data. This paper proposes a combined framework of stacked autoencoder and radial basis function neural network to predict traffic flow, which can effectively capture the temporal correlation and periodicity of traffic flow data and disturbance of weather factors. Firstly, SAE is used to process the traffic flow data in multiple time slices to acquire a preliminary prediction. Then, RBF is used to capture the relation between weather disturbance and periodicity of traffic flow so as to gain another prediction. Finally, another RBF is used for the fusion of the above two predictions on decision level, obtaining a reconstructed prediction with higher accuracy. The effectiveness and robustness of the proposed model are verified by experiments. (shrink)

One of the most efficient nondestructive methods for pipeline in-line inspection is magnetic flux leakage inspection. Estimating the size of the defect from MFL signal is one of the key problems of MFL inspection. As the inspection signal is usually contaminated by noise, sizing the defect is an ill-posed inverse problem, especially when sizing the depth as a complex shape. An actor-critic structure-based algorithm is proposed in this paper for sizing complex depth profiles. By learning with more information from the (...) depth profile without knowing the corresponding MFL signal, the algorithm proposed saves computational costs and is robust. A pinning strategy is embedded in the reconstruction process, which highly reduces the dimension of action space. The pinning actor-critic structure helps to make the reward for critic network more efficient when reconstructing the depth profiles with high degrees of freedom. A nonlinear FEM model is used to test the effectiveness of algorithm proposed under 20 dB noise. The results show that the algorithm reconstructs the depth profile of defects with good accuracy and is robust against noise. (shrink)

In this paper, I try to make sense of the growing block view using Kit Fine’s three-fold classification of A-theoretic views of time. I begin by motivating the endeavor of making sense of the growing block view by examining John Earman’s project in ‘Reassessing the prospects for a growing block model of the universe’. Next, I review Fine’s reconstruction of McTaggart’s argument and its accompanying three-fold classification of A-theoretic views. I then consider three interpretations of Earman’s growing block model: the (...) hybrid growing block, the purely tensed growing block, and Michael Tooley’s growing block. I argue for three claims. First, Finean ‘standard’ versions of these views are less congenial to the growing blocker than ‘non-standard’ ones. Second, the hybrid view is problematic on either version. And third, ‘non-standard’ versions are not fully intelligible. I provide further support for the first and third of these claims and explain why I take them to support a minimal account of passage as succession, which undercuts some of the motivation for Earman’s project. Lastly, I answer three objections. (shrink)

In his recent book ‘Experiencing time’, Simon Prosser discusses a wide variety of topics relating to temporal experience, in a way that is accessible both to those steeped in the philosophy of mind, and to those more familiar with the philosophy of time. He forcefully argues for the conclusion that the B-theorist of time can account for the temporal appearances. In this article, I offer a chapter by chapter response.