We find that agency problems are embedded in firm's excess and abnormal equity investments that are mainly dictated by controlling shareholder's motives and ethical choices manifested in ownership and board structure. The excess equity investment is gauged with respect to industry average. The abnormal equity investment is specifically referred to the number of nominal investment companies that are fully controlled by the controlling owners while subject to little governance. Our empirical evidences of 345 Taiwanese non-financial listed firms show that firm's (...) excess and abnormal equity investments are negatively correlated with controlling shareholder's cash flow rights while are positively correlated with the control-cash flow deviation, and board affiliation. The results are supportive of the positive incentive hypothesis and the negative entrenchment hypothesis put forth by La Porta et al. and Claessen et al.. The negative relation between equity investment and firm's value further supports the agency postulation that corporate excess and abnormal equity investments represent a leeway for controlling shareholder to exploit wealth of minority shareholders. This study potentially contributes to the literature of business ethics by portraying an empirically testable linkage from controlling owner's ethical choices to his actions and therefore firm's value. (shrink)

We find that agency problems are embedded in firm's excess and abnormal equity investments that are mainly dictated by controlling shareholder's motives and ethical choices manifested in ownership and board structure. The excess equity investment is gauged with respect to industry average. The abnormal equity investment is specifically referred to the number of nominal investment companies that are fully controlled by the controlling owners while subject to little governance. Our empirical evidences of 345 Taiwanese non-financial listed firms show that firm's (...) excess and abnormal equity investments are negatively correlated with controlling shareholder's cash flow rights while are positively correlated with the control-cash flow deviation, and board affiliation. The results are supportive of the positive incentive hypothesis and the negative entrenchment hypothesis put forth by La Porta et al. (2002, Journal of Finance 57, 1147-1171) and Claessen et al. (2002, Journal of Finance 57, 2741-2742). The negative relation between equity investment and firm's value further supports the agency postulation that corporate excess and abnormal equity investments represent a leeway for controlling shareholder to exploit wealth of minority shareholders. This study potentially contributes to the literature of business ethics by portraying an empirically testable linkage from controlling owner's ethical choices to his actions and therefore firm's value. (shrink)

Myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein antibody-associated disease is an immune-mediated demyelinating disease of the central nervous system that is present in both adults and children. The most common clinical manifestations are optic neuritis, myelitis, acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, and brainstem syndrome. Cerebral cortical encephalitis is a rare clinical phenotype of myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein antibody-associated disease, which usually begins with seizures, headaches, and fever, and may be misdiagnosed as viral encephalitis in the early stages. Herein, we report two typical MOG antibody -positive patients presenting (...) with CCE, both of whom presented with headache, fever, seizures, and who recovered completely after immunotherapy. In addition, we performed a systematic review of the present literature from the perspectives of population characteristics, clinical symptoms, MRI abnormalities, treatments, and prognosis. Among the patients reported in 25 articles, 33 met our inclusion criteria, with the age of onset ranging from 4 to 52 years. Most of the patients had seizures, headache, fever, and unilateral cortical lesions on brain MRI. For acute CCE, 30 patients were treated with high-dose intravenous methylprednisolone, and the symptoms of most patients were completely relieved after immunotherapy. This study reported our experience and lessons learned in the diagnosis and treatment of MOG-Ab-positive CCE and provides a systematic review of the literature to analyse this rare clinical phenotype. (shrink)

The emergence of new biological traits is landmarks of evolutionary progress. However, when, how, and why do they appear? We propose a universal mechanism, a Buffering Mechanism of Evolution to understand these questions. We speculate that all organisms possess this potential buffer capacity. This capacity would be triggered by the pressures, natural or artificial, to express the intrinsic potential variants. The potential buffer capacity of the organism increases for further selections as evolutionary progress occurs. The higher the evolutionary level of (...) the organism, the greater the potential buffer capacity, and importantly, the buffer capacity versus the pressures of selections will result. However, when the pressures are far more than the potential capacity of the targets, the natural or artificial pressures then compromise the genetic buffering system resulting in possible species extinction if the emergence of new traits fails. (shrink)

Anxious major depressive disorder is a common subtype of major depressive disorder; however, its unique neural mechanism is not well-understood currently. Using multimodal MRI data, this study examined common and specific alterations of amygdala subregions between patients with and without anxiety. No alterations were observed in the gray matter volume or intra-region functional integration in either patient group. Compared with the controls, both patient groups showed decreased functional connectivity between the left superficial amygdala and the left putamen, and between the (...) right superficial amygdala and the bilateral anterior cingulate cortex and medial orbitofrontal cortex, while only patients with anxiety exhibited decreased activity in the bilateral laterobasal and superficial amygdala. Moreover, the decreased activity correlated negatively with the Hamilton depression scale scores in the patients with anxiety. These findings provided insights into the pathophysiologic processes of anxious major depressive disorder and may help to develop new and effective treatment programs. (shrink)

More and more studies showed that strabismus is not simply an ocular disease, but a neuro-ophthalmology disease. To analyze potential changes in brain activity and their relationship to behavioral performance in comitant strabismus patients and healthy controls. Our study recruited 28 patients with comitant strabismus and 28 people with matched weight, age range, and sex ratio as healthy controls. Using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging, we evaluated fALFF to compare spontaneous brain activity between comitant strabismus and healthy controls. We did (...) hospital anxiety and depression scale questionnaires for these patients. We found significantly lower fALFF value in comitant strabismus patients compared with controls in the left frontal superior medial gyrus and the right middle cingulum. In the latter region, fALFF was significantly negatively correlated with the hospital anxiety and depression scale, as well as the duration of disease. Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis indicated that the fALFF method has clear potential for the diagnosis of comitant strabismus patients. These results revealed abnormal spontaneous activity in two brain regions of comitant strabismus patients, which may indicate underlying pathologic mechanisms and may help to advance clinical treatment. (shrink)

The diversification of the world has given us the opportunity to live with different people. This kind of diversification brings not only adventure and excitements but also interaction with people and their habits that we do not agree with. In response, toleration has become the common sense of people in modern society. However, what is the meaning of the word toleration? What moral emotions underlie the practice of toleration? This article puts forward a morally defensible concept of toleration inspired by (...) ancient Chinese thinking. I first discuss the etymology of the word toleration from Anglophone and Chinese perspectives, and then analyse three problematical emotional attitudes towards others and critique the spirit of exclusion in the dominant Anglophone understanding of toleration. Finally, I analyse a morally defensible concept of toleration based on the ‘the dao of zhong and shu’ that also served as the ideal underpinning political unity and a... (shrink)

本书分上、下两编,上编对各种语言形式语词、句子、篇章与各种思维形式概念、判断、推理、论证作系统地对比研究;下编并对几门语言逻辑分支问题逻辑、模态逻辑、时态逻辑进行比较系统的介绍。.

This article examines the complexity of feminized domestic labor in the context of global migration. I view unpaid household labor and paid domestic work not as dichotomous categories but as structural continuities across the public and private spheres. Based on a qualitative study of Filipina migrant domestic workers in Taiwan, I demonstrate how women travel through the maid/madam boundary—housewives in home countries become breadwinners by doing domestic work overseas, and foreign maids turn into foreign brides. While migrant women sell their (...) domestic labor in the market, they remain burdened with gendered responsibilities in their own families. Their simultaneous occupancy of paid and unpaid domestic labor is segmented into distinct spatial settings. I underscore women’s agency by presenting how they articulate their paid and unpaid domestic labor and bargain with the monetary and emotional value of their labor. (shrink)

Almost all existing genetic programming systems deal with fitness evaluation solely by testing. In this paper, by contrast, we present an original approach that combines genetic programming with Hoare logic with the aid of model checking and finite state automata, henceby proposing a brand new verification-focused formal genetic programming system that makes it possible to evolve reliable programs with mathematicallyverified properties.

Biomedical moral enhancement, or BME for short, aims to improve people’s moral behaviors through augmenting, via biomedical means, their virtuous dispositions such as sympathy, honesty, courage, or generosity. Recently, it has been challenged, on particularist grounds, however, that the manifestations of the virtuous dispositions can be morally wrong. For instance, being generous in terrorist financing is one such case. If so, biomedical moral enhancement, by enhancing people’s virtues, might turn out to be counterproductive in terms of people’s moral behaviors. In (...) this paper, we argue, via a comparison with moral education, that the case for the practice of biomedical moral enhancement is not weakened by the particularists’ stress on the variable moral statuses of the manifestations of our virtues. The real challenge from the particularists, we argue, lies elsewhere. It is that practical wisdom, being essentially context-sensitive, cannot be enhanced via biomedical means. On the basis of this, we further argue that BME ought to be used with great caution, for it may wrongly enhance, for instance, a terrorist financier’s generosity, a robber’s courage, or an undercover detective’s honesty. Finally, we sketch how boundaries can be set on the use of BME, and address some potential objections to our position. (shrink)

The concept of self-efficacy has been widely studied and shown to contribute to individuals’ job satisfaction. For counselors, the concept measures their belief in their ability to conduct counseling sessions. However, it is an understudied area. As Bandura states, self-efficacy and its sources should be investigated and measured within its domain, which in this case is school counseling. This study examined the impact on school counselors’ self-efficacy and job satisfaction of the personal and environmental factors: mastery experience, social persuasion, vicarious (...) learning, physiological and affective state, the access to training, and perceived supervisor support of training. The cross-sectional study involved 541 Malaysian secondary school counselors nationwide via a random sampling-distributed questionnaire. Results which were analyzed using PLS-SEM, with importance-performance functionality embedded in it, indicated that mastery experience, access to training, and perceived supervisor support of training explained 45.6% variance in counseling self-efficacy and together with counseling self-efficacy, contributed 13.2% variance in job satisfaction among the school counselors. The importance-performance map analysis revealed supervisor support of training as of greatest importance in shaping counseling self-efficacy. Counseling self-efficacy partially mediated the relationship between mastery experience, access to training, supervisor support toward training, and job satisfaction Arising from this finding is a proposed theoretical framework in which efficacy information, environmental determinants and cognitive determinant corresponded together congruently and lead to higher job satisfaction. Suggestions are also made for training providers, content developers, and policymakers to include these factors in professional development training and continuous education, to sustain the wellbeing of school counselors. (shrink)

In order to improve our understanding of whether and how spiritual leadership promotes positive work-family outcomes from a resource perspective, this study proposed and tested for the first time a conceptual model incorporating job resources and psychological capital as the mediating factors between spiritual leadership and facilitation. We tested a theoretical model with date obtained from 529 Chinese workers who completed questionnaires in a four-wave survey. The results showed that the relationship between spiritual leadership and work-to-family facilitation was mediated by (...) job resources alone, as well as job resources and psychological capital in sequence. Thus, this research may also pave the way for future spiritual leadership research on follower outcomes in other domains by shifting the present spiritual leadership research focus from work outcomes to personal life. Implications for theory, managerial practices, limitation, and future research were discussed. (shrink)

Chenu, M.-D. Foi, certitude et recherche.--Gilson, É. Réponse à Louis-Marie Régis, On some difficulties of interpretation.--Dubarle, D. Logique et épistémologie du signe chez Aristote et chez les Stoïciens.--Geiger, L.-B. Ce qui est, se dit en plusiers sens.--Owens, J. "Diversificata in diversis."--Cauchy, V. Être et connaître, l'irréductibilité de l'aristotélisme au platonisme.--Joós, E. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, de l'intentio intellectus, à l'intentio rei.--Murin, C. Pour une démystification de la "mort-de-Dieu" nietzschéenne.--Joós, E. Post-scriptum, la nouvelle scolastique de Louis-Marie Régis.--Landry, A.-M. Louis-Marie Régis, O.P., quelques dates (...) et faits marquants de sa vie.--Lettre d'Henri-Irénée Marrou à Louis-Marie Régis. (shrink)

Publication date: 24 January 2019 Source: Author: Pei Hua Fu, Tchamy Jonathan, Najma Bano Progress in globalization has made many nations to see China as a fast-growing country in terms of technology, infrastructure, manufacturing and production of goods and services. In spite of these developments, there is still a room of research for resolving the uneven distribution of income which has caused political and socio-economic problems in the country. The purpose of this paper is to determine the role of Human (...) Resources Management and Talent Management in bringing improvement in enterprise capabilities to stand in the market. The method adopted in this paper is the systemic literature reviewer focused on the qualitative analysis of studies focused on strategic and human resource management. This research review finds that these human-related managements are crucial requirement to build company capabilities. However, as the the company keeps growing, performance and development of employee need to keep up to cover up the global market. Giving some guidance, training, and practice may be one of the proper investments in developing the capabilities. Customer loyalty is an influential factor in the performance of the company. (shrink)

A trenchant defense of hierarchy in different spheres of our lives, from the personal to the political All complex and large-scale societies are organized along certain hierarchies, but the concept of hierarchy has become almost taboo in the modern world. Just Hierarchy contends that this stigma is a mistake. In fact, as Daniel Bell and Wang Pei show, it is neither possible nor advisable to do away with social hierarchies. Drawing their arguments from Chinese thought and culture as well as (...) other philosophies and traditions, Bell and Wang ask which forms of hierarchy are justified and how these can serve morally desirable goals. They look at ways of promoting just forms of hierarchy while minimizing the influence of unjust ones, such as those based on race, sex, or caste. Which hierarchical relations are morally justified and why? Bell and Wang argue that it depends on the nature of the social relation and context. Different hierarchical principles ought to govern different kinds of social relations: what justifies hierarchy among intimates is different from what justifies hierarchy among citizens, countries, humans and animals, and humans and intelligent machines. Morally justified hierarchies can and should govern different spheres of our social lives, though these will be very different from the unjust hierarchies that have governed us in the past. A vigorous, systematic defense of hierarchy in the modern world, Just Hierarchy examines how hierarchical social relations can have a useful purpose, not only in personal domains but also in larger political realms. (shrink)

Pei Wang, Ben Goertzel. [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [ 18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] Bach, J. (2009). Principles ofSynthetic Intelligence PSI: An Architecture ofMotivated Cognition (Oxford University Press,  ...

We propose a three-way interaction model based on substitutes for leadership theory to explore the relationship among ethical leadership, moral personality, and moral ideology on two types of employee voluntary behaviors. Results from a sample of 218 supervisor–subordinate dyads indicate that moral personality attenuates the relationship between ethical leadership and employee voluntary behaviors. Idealism serves as the boundary condition for the moderating effect of moral personality. However, relativism only serves as the boundary condition for the moderating effect of moral personality (...) when predicting workplace deviant behavior. (shrink)

We examine the influence of social capital in the municipal bond market. Defined as the norms and networks that encourage cooperation, social capital is a social construct which captures a region’s level of altruism, trustworthiness, and propensity to honor obligations. We expect that municipalities with high social capital are more trustworthy and likely to honor their debt obligations, which will result in lower bond yields. Our findings confirm that the bonds issued by municipalities located in high social capital counties exhibit (...) lower yields compared to the municipalities located in low social capital counties. Our findings are also supported by bond prices in the secondary market, which shows that bonds from the municipalities located in high social capital regions have higher prices. Additional tests reveal that the influence of social capital is stronger for general obligation bonds, suggesting that social capital matters more for bonds where the willingness of municipalities to pay taxes is an important factor. Lastly, we document that the bonds of municipalities in high social capital areas are less likely to have insurance, suggesting that social capital may act as a substitute for bond insurance. (shrink)

This paper theorizes and historicizes the ideas of modern language and translation and challenges the imperialist and nationalistic mode of worlding with the notion of ‘untranslatability’ that is embedded in the linguistic and cultural practices of colonial Taiwan and Korea. I redefine the notion of translation as a bordering system – the knowledge-production of boundaries, discrimination, and classification – that simultaneously creates the translatable and the untranslatable in asymmetrical power relations. With this, I discuss how this ambivalence is embodied in (...) the experiences of colonial writers Wu Yung-fu and Pak T’aewŏn and their novellas ‘Head and Body’ and ‘A Day in the life of Kubo the Novelist’. I illustrate two characteristics of the ambivalent untranslatability embedded in their novellas: the linguistic untranslatability and the experience of ‘unhomeness’. The linguistic untranslatability and unhomeness, I argue, result in the colonized’s dislocation in homogeneous time-space relationships, resulting to the incompletion of the modernization project through colonialism. At the same time untranslatability offers a site to explore the transnational space that crosses linguistic boundaries, and to caution against the legacy of colonialism. (shrink)

This paper examines the thought of Sayf al-Dīn al-Āmidī (d. 631/1233) regarding takfīr (declaring another a non-believer), a practice which would become popularized in the generation after the death of the Prophet Muhammad by a sect known as the Kharajites. The Kharajites were a religio-political sect that would use takfīr as a kalāmic tool of excommunication, as well as a justification for violence against other Muslims. The group originates in the first century of hijrah following their excommunication of the Caliph (...) ‘Alī for mediating with his political challenger Mu‘āwiya. In the centuries following the emergence of this sect, scholars of kalām such as al-Āmidī would begin to discuss and debate takfīr in the context of the greater Muslim community. In contrast to the Kharajites, a number of other sects al-Āmidī would recognize as deviant would hold contrasting beliefs, including the Murji’ites who vehemently opposed the excommunication of anyone so long as they outwardly maintained belief in God and His prophet. While some of these scholarly debates over takfīr would become so heated as to result in excommunication between kalāmic schools, it would later be accepted that excessive takfīr was not necessarily a characteristic of any single Sunni sect, but rather a mentality that could manifest in any given kalāmic school. Many of these scholars would adopt a kalāmic formula designed to prevent excessive takfīr, the principle that the “those belonging to the qibla” (ahl al-qibla) ought not be excommunicated. In his formulation, Al-Āmidī addresses a number of issues debated as potential reasons for takfīr, including the committing of major sins (murder, adultery, theft, etc.), abandonment of central Islamic obligations, opposing scholarly consensus, belief in the createdness of the Qur’ān, denying the beatific vision (ru’yā), misinterpreting the divine attributes (ṣifāt), and the excommunication of prophetic companions or other Muslims. This principle, as shown in this study, would be considered flexible by many of these scholars, who were willing to excommunicate followers of heretical movements. Al-Āmidī, a prominent scholar living in the context of these debates surrounding excommunication, spent considerable energy on the question of takfīr and proposed a number of original insights. In attempting to minimize the application of takfīr, al-Āmidī analyzed many of the specific issues discussed by previous scholars on the issue, arguing that many acts previously considered excommunicable in fact did not constitute disbelief. These groups include such sects as the Kharajites, Murji’ites, Mu’tazilites, Shi’ites and anthropomorphists, whom al-Āmidī argues must not be excommunicated from the fold of Islam, drawing from both logical (‘aqlī) and scriptural (naqlī) arguments. One of the central scriptural sources al-Āmidī deploys is an oft-quoted prophetic tradition concerning the prediction of the Muslim nation splitting into 73 sects, only one of which will be saved from the hellfire – implying that these groups should still be recognized as Muslims. Conversely, questions regarding which al-Āmidī would affirm the obligation for takfīr include denying prophecy, any aspect of divine revelation, belief in the divinity of objects or beings, denial of God and divine miracles, and insulting God, the prophets, or any aspect of the religion. This study further analyzes Al-Āmidī’s definitions of īmān (belief) and kufr (disbelief), the relationship between them, and his views on specific heretical sects as debated in the Sunni tradition. (shrink)

Background: The concept of digital twins has great potential for transforming the existing health care system by making it more personalized. As a convergence of health care, artificial intelligence, and information and communication technologies, personalized health care services that are developed under the concept of digital twins raise a myriad of ethical issues. Although some of the ethical issues are known to researchers working on digital health and personalized medicine, currently, there is no comprehensive review that maps the major ethical (...) risks of digital twins for personalized health care services. Objective: This study aims to fill the research gap by identifying the major ethical risks of digital twins for personalized health care services. We first propose a working definition for digital twins for personalized health care services to facilitate future discussions on the ethical issues related to these emerging digital health services. We then develop a process-oriented ethical map to identify the major ethical risks in each of the different data processing phases. Methods: We resorted to the literature on eHealth, personalized medicine, precision medicine, and information engineering to identify potential issues and developed a process-oriented ethical map to structure the inquiry in a more systematic way. The ethical map allows us to see how each of the major ethical concerns emerges during the process of transforming raw data into valuable information. Developers of a digital twin for personalized health care service may use this map to identify ethical risks during the development stage in a more systematic way and can proactively address them. Results: This paper provides a working definition of digital twins for personalized health care services by identifying 3 features that distinguish the new application from other eHealth services. On the basis of the working definition, this paper further layouts 10 major operational problems and the corresponding ethical risks. Conclusions: It is challenging to address all the major ethical risks that a digital twin for a personalized health care service might encounter proactively without a conceptual map at hand. The process-oriented ethical map we propose here can assist the developers of digital twins for personalized health care services in analyzing ethical risks in a more systematic manner. (shrink)

This book provides a systematic and comprehensive description of Non-Axiomatic Logic, which is the result of the author's research for about three decades.Non-Axiomatic Logic is designed to provide a uniform logical foundation for Artificial Intelligence, as well as an abstract description of the “laws of thought” followed by the human mind. Different from “mathematical” logic, where the focus is the regularity required when demonstrating mathematical conclusions, Non-Axiomatic Logic is an attempt to return to the original aim of logic, that is, (...) to formulate the regularity in actual human thinking. To achieve this goal, the logic is designed under the assumption that the system has insufficient knowledge and resources with respect to the problems to be solved, so that the “logical conclusions” are only valid with respect to the available knowledge and resources. Reasoning processes according to this logic covers cognitive functions like learning, planning, decision making, problem solving, etc.This book is written for researchers and students in Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science, and can be used as a textbook for courses at graduate level, or upper-level undergraduate, on Non-Axiomatic Logic. (shrink)