Cognitive and neural processes underlying visual creativity have attracted substantial attention. The current research uses a critical time point analysis to examine how spontaneous activity in the primary visual area is related to visual creativity. We acquired the functional magnetic resonance imaging data of 16 participants at the resting state and during performing a visual creative synthesis task. According to the CTPA, we then classified spontaneous activity in the PVA into critical time points, which reflect the most useful and important (...) functional meaning of the entire resting-state condition, and the remaining time points. We constructed functional brain networks based on the brain activity at two different time points and then subsequently based on the brain activity at the task state in a separate manner. We explore the relationship between resting-state and task-fMRI functional brain networks. Our results found that: the pattern of spontaneous activity in the PVA may associate with mental imagery, which plays an important role in visual creativity; in comparison with the RTPs-based brain network, the CTP-network showed an increase in global efficiency and a decrease in local efficiency; the regional integrated properties of the CTP-network could predict the integrated properties of the creative-network while the RTP-network could not. Thus, our findings indicated that spontaneous activity in the PVA at CTPs was associated with a visual creative task-evoked brain response. Our findings may provide an insight into how the visual cortex is related to visual creativity. (shrink)

The subject of the study is the works of contemporary St. Petersburg artists of different generations and creative trends, as well as the forms and features of their communication with each other and with the general as well as professional public. The trends of artistic communication in the city are determined by the activities of such institutions as art and non-art museums, art galleries and exhibition centers, which are a classic form of presentation of contemporary art; alternative venues such as (...) creative spaces and art clusters. The field of attention also includes the attraction of St. Petersburg authors to the organization of small artistic associations, mainly art groups, for example, "Unconquered", "North-7", "Parasites", etc. In addition to works of art, theoretical works and reflections by researchers of contemporary art in St. Petersburg and the spaces of its public presentation are involved. The methodological basis is the analysis of the works of St. Petersburg masters of the beginning of the XXI century in the context of the development of urban institutions of artistic communication. The research is based on theoretical works devoted to the problem of artistic communication and trends in the current art process. Comparative-interpretative and typological methods are used to compare the works of artists and forms of artistic communication. The problem of artistic communication in the field of fine art in St. Petersburg is becoming the subject of a separate study. This area of city life is currently developing quite dynamically, as new art associations, curatorial practices and alternative classical platforms for the presentation of the work of authors belonging to different generations and art movements are emerging. Traditional museums and galleries, as well as creative spaces, art clusters and other often non-core institutions, such as libraries and cafes, are involved in this process. Against this background, the features of St. Petersburg artistic communication crystallize, which is characterized by a desire to organize communities, to fuse realistic traditions and current trends, to escapism and symbolism, as well as an interest in oriental themes and stylistics. (shrink)

本书是文化哲学著述,对人类历史发展中的许多文化(精神)现象作了个性化的阐释,如人类开始为何要将自然神化,为何既需要上帝又需要尼采,为何后来又否定了神等问题。.

Our paper draws attention to a neglected channel of corruption—the bribe payments by state-owned enterprises. This is an important phenomenon as bribe payments by SOEs fruitlessly waste national resources, compromising public welfare and national prosperity. Using a large dataset of 30,249 firms from 50 countries, we show that, in general, SOEs are less likely to pay bribes for achieving organizational objectives owing to their political connectivity. However, in deteriorated institutional environments, SOEs may be subjected to potential managerial rent-seeking behaviors, which (...) disproportionately increase SOE bribe propensity relative to privately owned enterprises. Specifically, our findings highlight the importance of fostering democracy and rule of law, reducing prevalence of corruption and shortening power distance in reducing the incidence of SOE bribery. (shrink)

The late French literary and social critic's intimate journal, first published after his death and translated into English here for the first time, and three other autobiographical texts in which he explores his homosexuality are combined in one volume. Original.

As teams of people increasingly incorporate robot members, it is essential to consider how a robot's actions may influence the team's social dynamics and interactions. In this work, we investigated the effects of verbal support from a robot on human team members' interactions related to psychological safety and inclusion. We conducted a between-subjects experiment where the robot team member either gave verbal support or did not give verbal support to the human team members of a human-robot team comprised of 2 (...) human ingroup members, 1 human outgroup member, and 1 robot. We found that targeted support from the robot had a positive effect on outgroup members, who increased their verbal participation after receiving targeted support from the robot. When comparing groups that did and did not have verbal support from the robot, we found that outgroup members received fewer verbal backchannels from ingroup members if their group had robot verbal support. These results suggest that verbal support from a robot may have some direct benefits to outgroup members but may also reduce the obligation ingroup members feel to support the verbal contributions of outgroup members. (shrink)

Liang Qichao was a leading political thinker and publicist. His manifesto, On the New People, was published serially in Japan, where Liang—like many other progressive intellectuals in the late Qing—lived and worked for a decade in order to avoid governmental suppression. The present essay was published in 1902 as part of On the New People. Liang began writing about rights as early as 1896; they came to occupy a prominent place in his theorizing after he arrived in (...) Japan in 1898. He was influenced by the Social Darwinist ideas of Kato Hiroyuki, which can be seen most clearly in Liang's 1899 essay "The Right of the Strongest." Although some of these ideas are still present in the current essay, Liang had by this time developed a more complex position, partly through reading and interpreting the ideas of Rudolph von Jhering , a pioneering German legal theorist whose influence on Liang was significant, as Liang himself declares early in this essay. (shrink)

Compared with the related western studies, Russian ecological philosophy has paid more attention to Eschatology and represented a unique path of thinking, that is, an intense rational conception and a religious consciousness. In the era of globalization, Russian ecological Eschatology, as an active response of Russian ideology to the world ecosystem crisis, contains a strong eschatological emotion and a spirit of salvation. It mainly deals with the sin and punishment between the nature and human being as well as the endeavor (...) of atoning humanity. The first part of the essay traces back the origin and evolution of eschatology and ecology in the two systems of Russian philosophy—humanism and cosmism, with a trimming of the original relationship between the ecological eschatology and the traditional eschatology. The second part explores the way of salvation for the human being in crisis directed by Russian ecological philosophy, which is nourished by the profound spiritual tradition. For the human being, the way of civilization lies in a rebuild of rationality by faith. The goal of faith is to achieve a self-completeness in morality by a heart-open through God. In this way, the destiny of the world may be changed. This is the only hope of the human being and, therefore, a new chapter of salvation for our times. (shrink)

Compensation rules for patent infringement greatly affect patent quality, which is closely related to R & D investments. In this study, A duopoly game model was developed to analyze innovative factories’ R&D investment and patent licensing behavior, as well as the strategic choices of potential infringers under different compensation rules for patent infringement. Furthermore, a comparative analysis was conducted to analyze the patent quality under different scenarios, ultimately finalizing an optimal sequence rule for patent infringement compensation. The results show that (...) patent quality is influenced by the invention height of patent and R&D efficiency, while the amount of patent infringement compensation has a great effect on potential infringement behavior. Patent quality can be effectively improved if the court adopts a proper sequence rule for patent infringement compensation according to the market circumstances. (shrink)

本书是文化哲学著述,对人类历史发展中的许多文化(精神)现象作了个性化的阐释,如人类开始为何要将自然神化,为何既需要上帝又需要尼采,为何后来又否定了神等问题。.

Based on the social network theory and the institutional theory, this study examines the influence of corporate network position on corporate social responsibility, and further explores the moderating role of ownership concentration. Given the characteristics of CSR in different aspects, this study explores the relationship between corporate network position and economic CSR, environmental CSR, and social CSR from the two aspects of the centrality and structural holes of interlocking directorate network based on the data of 1,034 Chinese A-share listed companies (...) from 2010 to 2019. The results show that the centrality and structural holes of interlocking directorate network have positive effects on the overall level of CSR, and the impacts on economic CSR and environmental CSR are stronger than that on social CSR. In addition, ownership concentration has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between corporate network position and CSR. These findings enrich the depth of research on CSR, clarify the influence of the characteristics of interlocking directorate network on CSR in different dimensions, and supplement the knowledge of existing research. (shrink)

Antibiotic resistance in bacteria has become a great threat to global public health. Tigecycline is a next‐generation tetracycline that is the final line of defense against severe infections by pan‐drug‐resistant bacterial pathogens. Unfortunately, this last‐resort antibiotic has been challenged by the recent emergence of the mobile Tet(X) orthologs that can confer high‐level tigecycline resistance. As it is reviewed here, these novel tetracycline destructases represent a growing threat to the next‐generation tetracyclines, and a basic framework for understanding the molecular epidemiology and (...) resistance mechanisms of them is presented. However, further large‐scale epidemiological and functional studies are urgently needed to better understand the prevalence and dissemination of these newly discovered Tet(X) orthologs among Gram‐negative bacteria in both human and veterinary medicine. (shrink)

Sydney Shoemaker, developing an idea of Wittgenstein’s, argues that we are immune to error through misidentification relative to the first-person pronoun. Although we might be liable to error when “I” (or its cognates) is used as an object, we are immune to error when “I” is used as a subject (as when one says, “I have a toothache”). Shoemaker claims that the relationship between “I” as-subject and the mental states of which it is introspectively aware is tautological: when, say, we (...) judge that “I feel pain,” we are tautologically aware that feels pain is instantiated and that it is instantiated in oneself. Moreover, he contends that this relationship holds not just for bodily sensations, but also for the sense of agency and for visual perception. But we deny that this relationship is tautological; instead, we treat Shoemaker’s principle (IEM) as a hypothesis. We then proceed to show that certain pathological states and experimentally-induced illusions can be adduced to show that IEM describes not a necessary relationship but a contingent relationship, one that sometimes fails to obtain. That we are not immune to error in the way Shoemaker describes has grave consequences for many aspects of his ideas concerning the first-person perspective. In the course of arguing that these empirical phenomena count against IEM, we also show that not only can the content of conscious experience be misrepresented, so too can the subject: that is, not only can the what of conscious experience be misrepresented, so too can the who. (shrink)

This is the first collection dedicated to presenting research directly influenced by the innovative and groundbreaking ideas of the eminent linguist Ruqaiya Hasan. The collection offers an insight into the breadth and depth of Hasan's distinctive linguistic approaches and theoretical concerns. The chapters cover areas such as verbal art, context of situation, semantic networks, cohesive harmony, text structure and literacy education, contributed by well-known scholars in the field such as M.A.K. Halliday, Geoffrey Williams, David Butt, Donna Miller, Wendy L. Bowcher, (...) Tom Bartlett and Margaret Berry. The volume contains an interview with Ruqaiya Hasan by David Butt and Jennifer Yameng Liang, and a section in which the contributors describe their connection and/or history with Ruqaiya Hasan and her work. This book is of particular value to scholars and students working in sociolinguistics, literary criticism, stylistics, functional linguistic theories, literacy pedagogy, social semiotics, multimodality and applied linguistics. (shrink)

The joint multifractal analysis is usually conducted in two different variables for their cross-correlations but rarely used for two records of one variable collected at two different places. It is important for the detection of change in multifractality in space. Besides, the cross-correlations in two analyzed series make the analysis of sources of joint multifractality difficult. There are few studies on the source of joint multifractality. We focus on the two issues for two level records at pairs of adjacent sites (...) along one river and carry out an extension of our previous work which is about the single multifractality of one record with the same data set. The data set is collected from 10 observation stations of a northern China river and contains about two million high-frequency river level records. Results of joint multifractal analysis via multifractal detrended cross-correlation analysis show that the change in joint multifractality at pairs of adjacent sites caused by weak cross-correlations can be detected by comparing the single generalized Hurst exponent with the joint scaling exponent function and reveal the effects of human activities on joint multifractality. This analysis provides an approach for detecting the change in multifractality. Following the idea of our previous work, two robust hypothesis tests via a set of pairs of surrogate series are proposed for the source testing of joint multifractality. The analysis of the effects of cross-correlations is carried out via a proposed simultaneously half-shifting technique which can both minimize the cross-correlations between original series and make full use of records. Results of source analysis show not only the effects of autocorrelations in series and probability distribution of river levels but also the effects of cross-correlations between series. (shrink)

The discovery of a stable latent reservoir for HIV‐1 in resting memory CD4+ T cells provides a mechanism for lifelong persistence of HIV‐1. The long‐lived latently infected cells persist in spite of prolonged highly active antiretroviral therapy and present a major barrier to a cure of HIV‐1 infection. In this review, we discuss the current understanding of HIV‐1 persistence and latent viral infection in the context of effective antiretroviral therapy and the recent progress in purging latent viral reservoirs. Recent studies (...) demonstrate that reactivation of latent HIV‐1 is a promising strategy for the depletion of these viral reservoirs. A thorough evaluation of the anti‐latency activity of drug candidates should include the measurement of changes in intracellular viral RNA, plasma virus levels, and the size of latent viral reservoirs, as well as potential adverse effects. Currently, there are several technical barriers to the evaluation of anti‐latency drugs in vivo. We also discuss these challenging issues that remain unresolved. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica - Journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies / Revue de l'Association Internationale de Sémiotique Jahrgang: 2013 Heft: 197 Seiten: 233-265.

On August 24, 1966, during the so-called Great Cultural Revolution, my home was ransacked by the "young generals" who called themselves the Red Guards. All my personal belongings, clothes, and books were taken; nothing remained behind after the sweep. Furthermore, I was forced to move from the rooms in the northern wing of the building and to make my abode in the small cottage in the southern part. At the time I was quite upset, but soon I learned to put (...) the matter aside and make nothing of it. In that period of "leisure," I was able to write the following essays in draft form. Since I didn't have a single book for reference, the writing was entirely from memory. By September 6 I had completed the first essay, and subsequently, on November 10, the second was produced. As for the third, I can no longer recall the date of its completion. (shrink)

A contraction-free and cut-free sequent calculus \ for semi-De Morgan algebras, and a structural-rule-free and single-succedent sequent calculus \ for De Morgan algebras are developed. The cut rule is admissible in both sequent calculi. Both calculi enjoy the decidability and Craig interpolation. The sequent calculi are applied to prove some embedding theorems: \ is embedded into \ via Gödel–Gentzen translation. \ is embedded into a sequent calculus for classical propositional logic. \ is embedded into the sequent calculus \ for intuitionistic (...) propositional logic. (shrink)

Mental ownership concerns who experiences a mental state. According to David Rosenthal (2005: 342), the proper way to characterize mental ownership is: ‘being conscious of a state as present is being conscious of it as belonging to somebody. And being conscious of a state as belonging to somebody other than oneself would plainly not make it a conscious state’. In other words, if a mental state is consciously present to a subject in virtue of a higher-order thought (HOT), then the (...) HOT necessarily representsthe subject as the owner of the state. But, we contend, one of the lessons to be learned from pathological states like somatoparaphrenia is that conscious awareness of a mental state does not guarantee first-person ownership. That is to say, conscious presence does not imply mental ownership. (shrink)

In recent years, with the development of society and the rapid development of the animation industry, people are paying more and more attention to and requirements for animation production. As an indispensable part of animation production, picture composition plays a major role in animation production. It can give full play to the application of color matching and light and shadow design and enhance the depth and space of the animation screen. Tone space conversion refers to the conversion or representation of (...) color data in one color space into corresponding data in another color space. Its purpose is to distinguish and process color components such as hue and saturation in an image. This article first introduces the domestic and foreign research status of digital image preprocessing and analyzes the basic principles of several color space conversions in detail. Then, several color space conversion algorithms are studied, and the performance of the algorithms is compared and analyzed. The paper focuses on the hardware implementation and optimization of the algorithm for converting RGB color space into HSI color space to meet the real-time requirements. This article focuses on the mutual conversion between the RGB tone space and the HSI tone space and describes in detail how each color component in the HSI tone space is converted from the three RGB color components from a geometric perspective, and then the conversion is derived, and several general conversion methods of RGB to HSI tone space are introduced; two conversion methods of geometric derivation method and standard modulus algorithm are implemented in the software, and the comparison verification is carried out, and the comparison is made from the perspective of hardware implementation. The pros and cons of the two methods are discussed. Finally, the paper summarizes the shortcomings in the design and proposes further research directions in the future. (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

Adherence to ethical principles in clinical research and practice is becoming topical issue in China, where the prevalence of mental illness is rising, but treatment facilities remain underdeveloped. This paper reports on a study aiming to understand the ethical knowledge and attitudes of Chinese mental health professionals in relation to the process of diagnosis and treatment, informed consent, and privacy protection in clinical trials.