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)

This paper claims that palliative care is a suitable approach for offering comprehensive support to patients with life-threatening illness and unavoidable asthenia, to enhance their quality of life in aging and chronic illness. There are however some conceptual barriers to accessing that care on the Chinese Mainland: Death-denying culture and society; Misguidance and malpractice derived from the biomedical model; Prejudice against PC and certain deviant understandings of filial piety culture. To counter these obstacles, the study introduces the philosophy of Chinese (...) Taoist Chuang-tze to enlighten the public from ignorance and remove some illusions about death and dying; inspire people to face and accept illness and death calmly, and keep harmony and inner peace of mind to alleviate suffering, with the aim of providing wisdom and a shift of attitude toward life and death. Chuang-tze’s thoughts are consistent with the provision of palliative care, and to a certain degree, can promote its acceptability and delivery, and the conception of good death in practice. (shrink)

With the rise of the “humanitarian drone” in recent years, drones have become one of the most controversial public interest technologies that have gained increasing media attention. It is worth noting that, although there is a perception in the aid sector that drones hold the promise to reinvent the health supply logistics, to date, routine drone delivery is still relatively new and largely unproven. This paper presents a recent field study conducted in 2019, where drones were deployed in Malawi to (...) help address the last mile challenge in medical supply delivery, and where a noticeable mentality of “killing two birds with one stone” around the attempt of using drones in resource-poor settings is observed. The objective of the paper is to shed light, through a real-world case study and from the ethical perspective, on the impacts of implementing such a systemic change in the existing health supply chain systems. As conclusion, a call for more reflexive approaches for the critical examination, as well as more structured guidance for the responsible evaluation, of medical cargo drones is raised. (shrink)

本书系作者一系列关于后现代理论衰落后新出现的批评流派的论文集。其内容和体例分为五编。第一编的两章分别对九十年代以来国际学术界关于后现代主义问题的讨论作出总结性的评述;第二编“后殖民主义”应当说是本书的 重点,在首先对后殖民理论的源起以及后殖民地文学的概况作一“鸟瞰式”的评价。.

Increasingly, humanitarian organizations across the globe have been implementing innovative technologies in their practice as they respond to the needs of communities affected by conflicts, disasters, and public health emergencies. However, technological innovation may intersect with moral values, norms, and commitments, and may challenge humanitarian imperatives. Through the examination of an empirical case study on drone mapping, this paper aims to explore three questions: (1) What are the dynamics between aid delivery and technological innovation in the humanitarian enterprise? (2) How (...) are structural problems addressed in an environment in which technology is being portrayed as a force for change? (3) What moral responsibilities towards vulnerable populations should humanitarian stakeholders bear when introducing innovative technologies in humanitarian action. Discussion revolves around the ideology of “technological utopia”, and the normative role of technology in the aid sector - to make substantive impacts, or to produce “success stories”. In conclusion, a call for rigorous ethical analysis to help foster value sensitive humanitarian innovation (VSHI) is made. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2017 Heft: 216 Seiten: 451-477.

In Philosophical Investigations §244, Wittgenstein suggests that we understand avowals (first-person psychological utterances) as manifestations or expressions of the speaker's mental states. An interesting philosophical theory, called expressivism, then develops from this Wittgensteinian idea. However, neo-expressivists disagree with simple expressivists on whether avowals are at the same time assertions, which are truth-evaluable. In this paper, I pursue the expressivist debate about whether avowals must also be viewed as assertions. I consider and reject three neo-expressivist objections against simple expressivism. Then, I (...) offer my own account of why we should understand avowals as assertions. (shrink)

本书从回忆母亲中医治病开始,一路写来,有中医的神奇、有中医的道理、有中医与西医的区别、有人生的智慧、有豁达的胸襟、有现代人常常忽略的东西、有不少值得深思的问题.

Friedrich Nietzsche has emerged as one of the most important and influential modern philosophers. For several decades, the book series Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung (MTNF) has set the agenda in a rapidly growing and changing field of Nietzsche scholarship. The scope of the series is interdisciplinary and international in orientation reflects the entire spectrum of research on Nietzsche, from philosophy to literary studies and political theory. The series publishes monographs and edited volumes that undergo a strict peer-review process. The (...) book series is led by an international team of editors, whose work represents the full range of current Nietzsche scholarship. (shrink)

Epicurus famously argued that death cannot be bad for a person because only painful experiences or something that brings about them can be bad for people, but when a person dies, she cannot experience anything at all, let alone pain. If, as Epicurus argued, death is not something bad for us, then presumably, we have no reason to fear it. In contrast with Epicurus, however, contemporary philosophers of death generally subscribe to the deprivation account of the badness of death, which (...) allows that death can be comparatively bad for the one who dies. Still, many deprivation theorists believe that death, as merely comparatively bad, is not a fitting object of fear. Some of them argue that our attitudes would be unfitting if they respond to comparative value; while others contend that fear is not the kind of attitude that tracks comparative value. In this paper, I critically assess these arguments by deprivation theorists, and argue that, contrary to what these theorists claim, their arguments do not entail that death does not merit fear. (shrink)

This book introduces the notions and methods of formal logic from a computer science standpoint, covering propositional logic, predicate logic, and foundations ...

This study focuses on user experience from the perspective of big data to complete the aggregation, clustering, and visual presentation of knowledge. Using a combination of sample literature review, visualization technologies, knowledge map analysis, Carrot2 clustering, and other methodologies, this study intends to examine user experience from three perspectives: research state, hotspots, and trends. First, based on the double-map overlay, core institutions, core countries, core authors, core journals, and core references distribution research, the knowledge flow, research power, and research subjects (...) of user experience are analyzed. Secondly, through keyword clustering analysis, this research intuitively presents the research topics of user experience and reveals the research hotspots and the evolution path of research methods. Finally, with the help of the subject clustering algorithm, the emerging trends of user experience research are predicted: the immersive experience upgrade of multi-scenario integration, the innovative design of multi-role collaboration, and the cross-disciplinary interactive exploration of multi-discipline. Following this, the user experience knowledge map is constructed, providing a global view and macro-cognition for subsequent research. (shrink)

Mencius, who often spoke of ming in different senses among which only one can be taken as fate, upheld two doctrines of fate--moral determinism and blind, unalterable fate--but he was prone to apply the former to collective entities, and the latter to individual persons. This bi-level distinction, which is at variance with the non-distinction in both Moism and Taoism, exercised a profound influence upon the minds of later Confucians.

In Authority and Estrangement, Richard Moran provides a fascinating account of how we know what we believe that he calls the “transparency account.” This account relies on the transparency relation between the question of whether we believe that p and the question of whether p is true. That is, we can consider the former by considering the grounds for the latter. But Moran’s account has been criticized by David Finkelstein, who argues that it fails to explain how we know our (...) attitudes and emotions more generally. The aim of this paper is to show how Moran’s transparency account can be extended to meet this criticism by modifying it, using insights from Davidson’s view on attitudes and emotions. (shrink)

Since 2016, drones have been deployed in various development projects in sub-Saharan Africa, where trials, tests, and studies have been rolled out in countries, including Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Malawi, Ghana, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The use cases of drones vary, ranging from imagery collection to transportation of vaccines, lab samples, blood products, and other medical supplies. A wide range of stakeholders is involved, including governments, international organizations, educational institutions, as well as industry. Based on a field study (...) conducted in 2019, this article investigates how drones are used for medical supply delivery in Malawi-a country where the community is underserved for healthcare and related infrastructure underdeveloped, while airspace is largely open and regulations generally relaxed. The objective of presenting this case study is to contribute to the evidence regarding the rapid deployment of medical cargo drones across the African continent, and to spark critical reflections over the utility, suitability, and impacts of incorporating drones in the existing health supply chain systems in resource-poor settings. The discussion revolves around two aspects: 1) the emergent “African Drone Rise”-is it ok “as it is Africa”? and 2) the normative role of technology in the aid sector-is it “a solution looking for a problem”? In conclusion, a call for more structured guidance for the systematic examination and evaluation of the medical cargo drone case is raised. (shrink)

The existing scholarship has developed six main explanations to account for the success of the Chinese Revolution, which has been anomalous for major paradigms derived from cross-national comparisons. Methodologically, we use a social geographical approach to test these existing explanations systematically by constructing and analyzing a unique dataset of Communist growth in 93 counties in the three most contested provinces during its most pivotal period of ascendence. Theoretically, we advance and test an alternative perspective, based on the groundwork of Tocqueville (...) and Fei Xiaotong, that integrates the state-centric theory, elite theory, and cultural analysis. Our perspective emphasizes the interplay between state centralization and local elite structure, which leads to intensified state extraction and local elite fracturing, thus creating favorable conditions for revolution. The quantitative analysis strongly supports the importance of the Japanese invasion but provides limited support for many other conventional explanations. The analysis largely confirms the Tocqueville-Fei perspective on state centralization, elite fracturing, cultural change, and revolution. The findings are buttressed by a detailed case study of Lianshui County. The study unveils a common structural challenge that a modernizing state faces in an agrarian status society, to recreate its political legitimacy while disrupting local elite structure. It also sheds historical light on the evolution of state-society relationship through the Chinese Revolution. (shrink)

A stock divestment campaign is a common strategy used by social activists to pressure corporations to abandon undesirable practices. However, evidence on the effectiveness of the strategy remains mixed. In this paper, we examine the effectiveness of an international stock boycott by studying a large sample of institutional investor transactions in four emerging market stocks targeted by the Sudan divestment campaign from 2001 to 2012. We find evidence of a negative relationship between the intensity of the campaign and the ownership (...) breadth of the stocks, suggesting the effectiveness of the campaign in encouraging investors to divest from targeted companies. Additional analysis indicates that investors in countries that are sympathetic towards CSR activities are more responsive to the divestment campaign. Further, we find evidence consistent with higher campaign intensity being associated with more depressed stock prices. Finally, when performing qualitative content analyses of the annual reports and CSR reports, we find evidence about the effects of the campaign on the targeted companies’ corporate policies and activities in Sudan. In sum, our results support the effectiveness of the stock boycott. (shrink)

With the rapid development of sports science, human motion recognition technology, as a new biometric recognition technology, has many advantages, such as noncontact target, long recognition distance, secret recognition process, and so on. Traditional human motion recognition technology is affected by environmental factors such as motion background, which is prone to rough edges of the recognized objects and loss of motion tracking information, thus further reducing the recognition accuracy. In this paper, the traditional snake model will be improved and optimized (...) to improve the defect of human motion model contour extraction, so as to realize the accurate repair of image contour; in terms of algorithm running time, this paper innovatively improves the construction process of the snake model, further improves the running time of model evaluation, and solves the concave contour problem of corresponding moving objects in the snake model. In order to solve the problem of accurate convergence, this paper improves the snake model of the average moving algorithm and sets the corresponding weight coefficient to distinguish the corresponding moving target background, so as to achieve the convergence of the differential concave contour. In order to verify the superiority of the improved optimized snake model, experiments are carried out in the corresponding database. The experimental results show that the contour of the moving object extracted by the improved snake model algorithm is complete and the segmentation effect is obvious. At the same time, the running speed of the whole algorithm has been significantly improved. (shrink)

ObjectivesIn this study, the effect of WeChat use on the subjective health of older adults was examined.MethodsUsing 2018 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study survey data, we attempted to rule out potential endogeneity bias by employing instrumental variable regression to estimate the effects of WeChat use on the health of older individuals. Mobile phone price was chosen as the instrumental variable, and the health of older adults was measured from two aspects: self-rated health and the Center for Epidemiological Studies of (...) Depression Scale.ResultsWeChat use has a significant positive impact on the subjective health of older adults and can significantly improve their self-rated health and mental health status. WeChat use has significant positive effects on the subjective health of both older men and women, but relatively younger older adults obtain more health benefits from WeChat use.ConclusionThe virtual social participation prompted by WeChat use affects the health of older adults. This finding provides a reference for promoting the active integration of older adults into digital life. (shrink)

A major challenge in global sales research is helping managers understand sales ethics across countries. Addressing this challenge, our research investigates whether a few demographic variables and psychographic variables reduce unethical sales behaviors (USBs) in Canada, Mexico, and the USA. Further, using literatures associated with business ethics, national culture, and customer orientation advocacy, we hypothesize why sales managers should expect similarities and differences in USBs between countries. We tested hypotheses using a sales contest scenario and six USBs, examining survey responses (...) from 948 business-to-business salespeople of a multinational company’s sales force in Canada, Mexico, and the USA. The results reveal that several psychographic variables (such as commitment, relationship to sales manager, and achievement need) affect salespeople’s tendency to engage in USBs differently in each country. In addition, business ethics, individualism, and customer orientation advocacy associated with each country can be used to anticipate similarities and differences in USBs between countries. This research offers important theoretical contributions and implications for more effectively managing sales forces and reducing USBs across countries. (shrink)

ObjectiveWith the improvement in health awareness, humanistic care ability of nurses has become a focus of public attention. The aim of the study was to confirm the relationship between psychological capital and humanistic care ability of nurses, and to provide suggestions on improving the humanistic care ability of nurses.MethodsA cross-section survey was conducted. Three hundred thirty-nine nurses were recruited from a tertiary general hospital in Taizhou, China. Psychological capital and humanistic care ability were measured using a self-reported questionnaire. Correlation analysis (...) and stepwise multiple regression analysis were performed to analyze the correlation between psychological capital and humanistic care ability.ResultsThe psychological capital and humanistic care ability scores were 91.57 ± 13.96 and 189.08 ± 20.37, respectively. Differences in psychological capital scores across professional titles, departments, years of work, and marital status were statistically significant. There were statistical differences for the humanistic care ability scores among nurses based on marital status. The total psychological capital scores and the four sub-dimensions scores were positively correlated with the humanistic care ability scores among nurses. Self-efficacy was the main predictor of nurses’ humanistic care ability.ConclusionPsychological capital positively affected the humanistic care ability of nurses. Self-efficacy was the main predictor of humanistic care ability. Nursing managers can formulate strategies from the perspective of positive psychology to improve humanistic care ability of nurses. (shrink)