Considerable efforts have been made in recent years to improve the safety of human subjects who participate in research. However, there are no data to demonstrate that we have made human research safer. There is a critical need to determine whether we have achieved our goal of better protecting research subjects. We have developed 16 quality indicators for assessing the quality of human research protection programs at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Our experience implementing these quality indicators at the VA (...) may help other institutions to develop appropriate quality indicators for assessing their own human research protection programs. (shrink)

This narrative review of the literature assessed whether regular physical exercise and sleep patterns, fasting and autophagy, altogether can be an adequate strategy for achieving healthy longevity and well-being within different stage of life. There are a large number of studies dealing with well-being and healthy longevity; however, few of them have given us a specific formula for how to live long and healthy. Despite all the advances that have been made to create adequate physical exercise programs, sleep patterns or (...) nutritional protocols, the relation between different types of fasting, nutritional supplementation as well as regular physical exercise and sleep patterns have not yet been satisfactorily resolved to cause the best effects of autophagy and, therefore, well-being and healthy longevity. In this way, future studies should clarify more efficiently the relationship between these variables to understand the association between regular physical exercise, sleep patterns, fasting and autophagy for healthy longevity and well-being. (shrink)

Using a cross‐modal semantic priming paradigm, both experiments of the present study investigated the link between the mental representations of iconic gestures and words. Two groups of the participants performed a primed lexical decision task where they had to discriminate between visually presented words and nonwords (e.g., flirp). Word targets (e.g., bird) were preceded by video clips depicting either semantically related (e.g., pair of hands flapping) or semantically unrelated (e.g., drawing a square with both hands) gestures. The duration of gestures (...) was on average 3,500 ms in Experiment 1 but only 1,000 ms in Experiment 2. Significant priming effects were observed in both experiments, with faster response latencies for related gesture–word pairs than unrelated pairs. These results are consistent with the idea of interactions between the gestural and lexical representational systems, such that mere exposure to iconic gestures facilitates the recognition of semantically related words. (shrink)

Using a cross-modal semantic priming paradigm, both experiments of the present study investigated the link between the mental representations of iconic gestures and words. Two groups of the participants performed a primed lexical decision task where they had to discriminate between visually presented words and nonwords (e.g., flirp). Word targets (e.g., bird) were preceded by video clips depicting either semantically related (e.g., pair of hands flapping) or semantically unrelated (e.g., drawing a square with both hands) gestures. The duration of gestures (...) was on average 3,500 ms in Experiment 1 but only 1,000 ms in Experiment 2. Significant priming effects were observed in both experiments, with faster response latencies for related gesture–word pairs than unrelated pairs. These results are consistent with the idea of interactions between the gestural and lexical representational systems, such that mere exposure to iconic gestures facilitates the recognition of semantically related words. (shrink)

The massive social change in urban China today has led to a decline in the adaptive implications of shyness for child adjustment, yet evidence of this trend in young children is limited. Moreover, the underlying mechanisms that help to explain the associations between shyness and maladjustment remains poorly understood. The primary goal of the present study was to explore the moderating role of conflict resolution skills in the links between shyness and socio-emotional and school adjustment among urban Chinese preschoolers. Data (...) were collected from 360 children in kindergartens using parent ratings, teacher ratings, and child interviews. The analyses indicated that the relations between shyness and adjustment were moderated by child conflict resolution skills, which served to buffer shy children from adjustment problems. The results were discussed in terms of the implications of conflict resolution skills for early adjustment of shy preschoolers in the Chinese context. (shrink)

Is the societal-level of analysis sufficient today to understand the values of those in the global workforce? Or are individual-level analyses more appropriate for assessing the influence of values on ethical behaviors across country workforces? Using multi-level analyses for a 48-society sample, we test the utility of both the societal-level and individual-level dimensions of collectivism and individualism values for predicting ethical behaviors of business professionals. Our values-based behavioral analysis indicates that values at the individual-level make a more significant contribution to (...) explaining variance in ethical behaviors than do values at the societal-level. Implicitly, our findings question the soundness of using societal-level values measures. Implications for international business research are discussed. (shrink)

Islamic philosophy; Muslim theology; Islam; doctrines.

في كتابه من نقد العقل إلى هيرمينوطيقا الرموز: بحث في فلسفة الثقافة عند إرنست كاسيرر، الصادر عن المركز العربي للأبحاث ودراسة السياسات، يحاول فؤاد مخوخ التركيز على فلسفة كاسيرر، ساعيًا لإثبات أصالتها وجِدَّتِها في مجال نقد الثقافة. فـ "قراءة كاسيرر فلسفة كانط"، كما يقول مخوخ، "متميزة وأصيلة، ويتجلى ذلك في مشروع تطوير نقد العقل وتمديده إلى نقد الثقافة الذي تجسد في فلسفة الأشكال الرمزية باعتبارها فلسفةً للثقافة، وتقعيدًا نظريًا لإبيستمولوجيا علوم الثقافة، وهيرمينوطيقا لتأويل عالَم الإنسان وفهمه".

Ben shu gong liu pian, Nei rong bao kuo:zhong guo ren de pin de, Wo men xu yao shen me yang de she hui he zheng fu, Min zhu yu zi you, Shi ye yu ren sheng, Wo men xu yao shen me yang de wen xue, Wo men xu yao shen me yang de jiao yu deng.

Various walking speeds may induce different responses on the plantar pressure patterns. Current methods used to analyze plantar pressure patterns are linear and ignore nonlinear features. The purpose of this study was to analyze the complexity of plantar pressure images after walking at various speeds using nonlinear bidimensional multiscale entropy. Twelve participants were recruited for walking at three speeds for 20 minutes. A plantar pressure measurement system was used to measure plantar pressure patterns. Complexity index, a summation of MSE2D from (...) all time scales, was used to quantify the changes of complexity of plantar pressure images. The analysis of variance with repeated measures and Fisher’s least significant difference correction were used to examine the results of this study. The results showed that CI of plantar pressure images of 1.8 mph was significantly lower compared with 3.6 and 5.4 mph. The results also showed that CI significantly increased from the 1st min to the 10th min and 20th min with slow walking. Our results indicate that slow walking at 1.8 mph may not be good for postural control compared with moderate walking and fast walking. This study demonstrates that bidimensional multiscale entropy is able to quantify complexity changes of plantar pressure images after different walking speeds. (shrink)

1. Xin yi shu chuang zuo lun, Xin yi shu lun ji -- 2. Mian xiang sheng huo, Lun yi shu de ji qiao -- 3. Yi yi dang shi -- 4. Xi wen le jian -- 5. Ge er bu ge -- 6. Lun Feng jie -- 7. Kai xin yue shi -- 8. Bu dao ding dian, Shen mei de min gan -- 9. Zai zai tan suo -- 10. Liao ran yu xin -- 11. Shen mei tan (...) -- 12. Si zeng xiang shi, Yi shen er ren -- 13. Shen mei xin tai -- 14. Hui jian zi ji -- 15. Diao su diao su -- 16. "Fu huo" de fu huo -- 17. Dong fang ji bai -- 18. Shen yu wu you -- 19. Tu na ying hua -- 20. Qu yu wu xie -- 21. Shu xin, ti ci xuan -- 22. Duan jian can pian. (shrink)

Deliberative democracy is an embattled political project. It is accused of political naiveté for it only talks about power without taking power. Others, meanwhile, take issue with deliberative democracy’s dominance in the field of democratic theory and practice. An industry of consultants, facilitators, and experts of deliberative forums has grown over the past decades, suggesting that the field has benefited from a broken political system. This book is inspired by these accusations. It argues that deliberative democracy’s tense relationship with power (...) is not a pathology but constitutive of deliberative practice. Deliberative democracy gains relevance when it navigates complex relations of power in modern societies, learns from its mistakes, remains epistemically humble but not politically meek. These arguments are situated in three facets of deliberative democracy—norms, forums, and systems—and concludes by applying these ideas to three of the most pressing issues in contemporary times—post-truth politics, populism, and illiberalism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Title Index to Daoist CollectionsPoul AndersenTitle Index to Daoist Collections. By Louis Komjathy. Cambridge, MA: Three Pines Press, 2002. Pp. ii + 216.Title Index to Daoist Collections by Louis Komjathy provides a combined index to the titles of the works contained in seven of the most important collections of Daoist texts. In addition to the Ming dynasty Daoist Canon of the Zhengtong reign period, Zhengtong daozang—first printed in (...) 1444-1445, with a supplement printed in 1607—the collections include the Daoist manuscripts found in Dunhuang (published by Ōfuchi Ninji in 1979), Daozang jiyao (1906), Daozang jinghua lu (1922), Daozang jinghua (1963) (volume titles only), Zangwai daoshu (1992-1995), and Qigong yangsheng congshu (1990).Part 1 of the book consists of separate Chinese-character indexes to the book titles in each of these collections, arranged in the order of their appearance in the respective collections and with reference to their sequential numbering, volume number, and starting-page number in one edition of the collection (pp. 29-107). Part 2 is a combined pinyin index to all of these titles (as well as to abbreviated versions of some titles), arranged alphabetically and cross-referenced with the character indexes (pp. 109-211). In addition, the book contains two appendixes: (1) a Chinese-character index to the titles of the texts included in the sixteen volumes of the above-mentioned Daozang jinghua that happened to be available to the author, [End Page 407] according to whom the complete collection (of 107 volumes) is not to be found in any major North American library, and (2) a Chinese-character index to the book titles in the Daozang xubian, a collection of twenty-three internal alchemy works published by Min Yide in 1834 (pp. 213-216). The titles contained in these appendixes are not included in the pinyin index.The book is beautifully produced and conveniently organized, and it will no doubt prove to be a useful reference tool for students involved in the study of Daoism based on primary sources. Apart from the Zhengtong daozang, none of the collections have been indexed with a proper numbering system before, and the fact that they are provided here with a combined index has the advantage of allowing the researcher to get an immediate overview of the available versions of any text that is included in these collections. It should be noticed, however, that the usefulness of the combined index is somewhat reduced by the lack of a consistent analysis of the individual titles of texts in terms of their most significant parts, and the absence of systematically sound choices concerning what abbreviated versions of the titles to include in the index. In this respect, the present book remains infinitely inferior to the existing standard concordance to the titles of the Zhengtong daozang, published by Kristofer Schipper in 1975 and included as a supplement volume in the most widely used sixty-volume reprint of the Canon (issued in Taiwan in 1977). As noted by the author of the present book, this concordance has the advantage over the earlier Harvard-Yenching Index from 1935 in that it lists the titles of the Daozang under every possible character. The inclusion of abbreviated versions of titles in the present index clearly is intended to make up for the absence of this kind of systematic indexing. It is equally clear, however, that this measure does not completely resolve the problem, and that consequently the present book in no way supersedes the earlier index as far as the basic Ming dynasty Canon (representing some 40 percent of the totality of Chinese-character indexes in the book) is concerned. A couple of random spot checks using abbreviated titles brought this out to this reviewer.The book is a reference tool—that is, not for systematic reading—so in order to put it to a test I chose to look up a couple of titles with which I have recently been concerned in the course of my research on Daoism. The first was the Wucheng fu (shang)jing, one of the key texts of the early Lingbao tradition (promulgated around 400 C.E.). The result was disappointing, as the combined... (shrink)

Firms worldwide are increasingly required to disclose their carbon emissions due to the environmental damage associated with climate change. Because there has been no previous literature focusing on the determinants of corporate carbon disclosure integrating environmental legitimacy and green innovation, the present study attempted to develop an original framework to fill the research gap. This study explored the influence of environmental legitimacy on corporate carbon disclosure, and investigated the role of green innovation as a mediator. With the samples of Carbon (...) Disclosure Project in China from 2008 to 2012, the results demonstrate that environmental legitimacy significantly negatively influences the likelihood of corporate carbon disclosure, and that green process innovation mediates the relationship, while green product innovation has no significant mediating effect. It means that environmental legitimacy not only directly affects the likelihood of corporate carbon disclosure, but also indirectly affects it via green process innovation. Hence, companies must increase both informal and formal mechanisms, i.e., external environmental legitimacy and internal green process innovation, to engage in carbon information disclosure and ensure sustainability. (shrink)

The issues of organizational wrongdoing damage organizational performance and limit the development of organizations. Although organizational members may know the wrongdoing and have the opportunity to blow the whistle, they would keep silent because of the interpersonal risks. However, leaders can play an important role in shaping employee whistleblowing. This study focuses on discovering the mechanisms of how authentic leaders influence employee whistleblowing with a sample from China. Results demonstrate that authentic leadership is positively related to internal whistleblowing. Team psychological (...) safety partly mediates the relationship between authentic leadership and internal whistleblowing. Personal identification partly mediates the relationship between authentic leadership and internal whistleblowing. The study contributes to the extant theory by filling the gap between leadership and whistleblowing. (shrink)

Cross-sector social partnership case-based theory and research have long argued that nonprofits that engage in more integrative and enduring cross-sector partnerships should increase their organizational capacity. By increasing their capacity, nonprofits increase their ability to contribute to systemic change. The current research investigates this claim in a large-scale empirical research study. In particular, this study examines whether nonprofits that have a greater number of integrated cross-sector partnerships have greater capacities for financial management, strategic planning, external communication, board leadership, mission orientation, (...) and staff management than nonprofits that have other types of interorganizational relationships. Moreover, it examines whether the length of these partnerships is associated with better capacity. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis drawn from surveys of 452 nonprofit organizations suggests that cross-sector collaboration is not systematically related to increased capacity. However, the results suggest that more enduring relationships between government and nonprofit organizations that extend beyond funder–recipient relationships are related to greater strategic planning capacity. Implications for CSSP research are drawn from the results, especially those concerned with the outcomes of CSSPs. (shrink)

Environmental governance has emerged as a recent perspective to explain the link between corporate governance mechanisms and environmental performance such as pollution reduction. We extend current models by incorporating the crucial role of the underlying institutional logics in terms of an a priori focus on either shareholder rights or stakeholder inclusion, which, in turn, can be traced back to the legal origin of a specific country. Using data on a sample of common and civil law countries, we find support for (...) our predictions that a shareholder-focused common law legal origin is associated with significantly higher emissions of CO2, and also that international environmental agreements like the Kyoto protocol seem to have a more pronounced effect in shareholder-centric economies than thus far assumed. (shrink)

The logical calculus for SAT are not valid for MaxSAT and MinSAT because they preserve satisfiability but not the number of unsatisfied clauses. To overcome this drawback, a MaxSAT resolution rule preserving the number of unsatisfied clauses was defined in the literature. This rule is complete for MaxSAT when it is applied following a certain strategy. In this paper we first prove that the MaxSAT resolution rule also provides a complete calculus for MinSAT if it is applied following the strategy (...) proposed here. We then describe an exact variable elimination algorithm for MinSAT based on that rule. Finally, we show how the results for Boolean MinSAT can be extended to solve the MinSAT problem of the multiple-valued clausal forms known as signed conjunctive normal form formulas. (shrink)

Choi and Murphy seek to analyze the key facets of the debate over PC. Until now, PC has tended to be treated in news stories, magazines articles, and reports where the examination of PC has been short and under developed--rarely have the writers looked beyond single issues. Choi and Murphy provide a comprehensive examination of PC, from its philosophical underpinnings and historical background, through the significance of post-structural philosophy and postmodern literary criticism.

A toy is a valuable medium for promoting parent-child interaction. This study selected six light-emitting or reflective materials to produce composite toy balls, and conducted tests on 15 families with preschool-aged high-functioning autistic children. Quantification method I analysis was employed in the study, and the experimental results indicated that (a) the metal ball (reflective and dynamic light) was the representative sample that elicited many smiles or laughs and much finger pointing as well as high levels of pleasure and activeness.; (b) (...) the mitball (static light) was the representative sample that provoked much eye contact, produced satisfactory reactions to activities,; (c) the quality of fluorescence enhanced the levels of pleasure and the reactions to the activity. We propose that dynamic and reflective materials can be adopted to divert the attention of children, and fluorescent toys can then employed to sustain parent-child interaction. (shrink)

Obviously, “To know” is different to “be informed”. For “to know”, we have a motivation to reach certain proposition we thought is meaningful to us; however, for “be informed”, we just passively receive propositions or we gain certain propositions without much deliberation in which these propositions may be useful to us. The proposition “Wang collected 19 wins in both MLB 2006 and 2007” seems information but not knowledge to us, in the sense that we just be given this proposition and (...) we exploited it to entertain our friends around us. However, in the case of I am a sport agent; “Wang collected 19 wins in both MLB 2006 and 2007” is surely knowledge but not just information for me, in the sense that I have a motivation to reach this proposition to do my work best. I “know” thatWang collected 19 and “inform” the team to consider his contribution to the New York Yankee. The Yankee of course “knows” Wang’s performance, I the sport agent “inform” the Yankee the fact of 19 just push the Yankee to reconsider this information seriously or tell them the significance of this information. What I want to tell them or remind them is what we said knowledge, not just information. Knowledge then has more elements than information does in our daily usage. It is less direct that there exists a distinction between the proposition of knowledge and that of information. The content of the two may be totally the same, the difference of the two may be vague; but the distinction of the two is necessary, at least they have different meanings in our daily usage. I think the epistemic reliabilism or externalism is not capable to bring out that point. The result leads to reliabilism any proposition that is just the information be qualified as the knowledge. But we think intuitively that the value of knowledge is more than the value of information, therefore, we need a better account of the knowledge which we are favorable. (shrink)

ObjectiveTo explore the mediating effect of self-efficacy on the relationship between the proactive personality and academic performance of college students in different sports groups.MethodsA questionnaire survey is used to study 552 college students. The research tools include the proactive personality scale, the self-efficacy scale table, and the academic performance self-report scale table. This research employs SPSS 11.0 statistical software to carry out correlation analysis, regression analysis, and t-tests on the data collected, while the test of mediating effect is carried out (...) by AMOS 22.0.Results The degree of self-efficacy and academic performance of college students participating in physical activities is significantly greater than that of the non-sports group; the proactive personality level of the sports group is significantly higher than the non-sports group in the dimension of “conscientiousness”; a confirmatory factor analysis of the mediating effect hypothesis model, using the structural equation model, found that self-efficacy plays a full mediating role in the relationship between proactive personality and academic performance; the direct effect of self-efficacy on the proactive personality and academic performance of college students in different sports groups is not significant.ConclusionCollege students involved in sports exercise have higher scores on some items about proactive personality than non-sports groups; girls’ self-efficacy level is higher than that of boys; self-efficacy plays a full mediating role in the relationship between proactive personality and academic performance; self-efficacy had no significant effect on proactive personality and gender in different sports groups. (shrink)