The specious present (James, 1890/1950) is the phenomenal temporal structure of the representational content of my present experience. This article is a study of the mereological structure of the specious present and what it reveals about the nature of the mind. I argue that the specious present has certain features that cannot be easily explained within the framework of physicalism about the mind — the view that consciousness is nothing over and above what is physical. In particular, the specious present (...) is a phenomenally extended (i.e.non-instantaneous) whole whose parts are conceptual abstractions and are therefore dependent on this whole. However, unlike the specious present, what is physical does not have this special property of the parts being dependent on the whole. Therefore, it is unclear how the specious present can be explained in physicalistic terms. (shrink)

With the prevalence of values and the advent of the idea of rationalist education, the values characteristic of distinct subjectivity and affectiveness face many theoretical and practical problems when taught within the framework of modern education, which seeks certainty of knowledge. The challenges that values education encounters in today’s world urgently demand that we return to the origins of human spiritual life. We must be informed by the Marxist disclosure of the intrinsic value of human existence, and grasp the intrinsic (...) isomorphism between values education and human existence within the web of original and historical dialectic relations by relying on a complementary understanding of values and the essence of education: real men possess a logic of existence that endows value independence and consciousness of edification, and on the basis of the nature of the value of human existence, values education obtains a solid foundation both in the sense of fact and of value. Human existence thus displays the value content of self-selection, self-edification, and self-improvement peculiar to it due to its mutual dependence on and fulfillment of values education. (shrink)

If God exists atemporally, could God still be temporally conscious? This article aims to clarify a conceptual space for a divine temporal mode of consciousness under the traditional assumption that God exists atemporally. I contend that an atemporally existing and conscious God – by the divine nature, and not just the human nature in Christ – could also be conscious of the temporal world – and indeed, all possible temporal worlds – through a temporal mode that is akin to human (...) temporal consciousness, albeit exempt from its limitations. I submit that although (a) God exists atemporally (ontological atemporalism), (b) God could be both temporally and atemporally conscious (bimodalism of divine consciousness), and (c) these two modes of consciousness could be unified in an absolute divine consciousness without incurring schizophrenia-like problems (unity of bimodal divine consciousness). (shrink)

Aesthetic experiences play an important role in human culture and spiritual life and are closely related to aesthetic perception and appreciation of art, music, literature and natural landscapes. With the development of neuroscience and cognitive psychology, our understanding of aesthetic experiences continues to deepen; in this context, the study of neuroplasticity has attracted widespread attention. This study explores in detail how this process affects the perception of aesthetic cognition, thereby enhancing the aesthetic experience in several key ways. The study finds (...) that neuroplasticity plays a role in the evolution of an individual’s perception and appreciation of beauty, as it facilitates adjustments in perception, attention, emotion, and cross-perceptual integration based on individual experiences. These findings provide a theoretical basis for deepening the perception and appreciation of beauty and insights to better understand and advance the aesthetic experience provided by art, music and literature. Future research will explore how to maximise the use of neuroplasticity to enhance the quality and depth of the aesthetic experience, advance the field of aesthetic psychology and art research and further enrich and satisfy individuals’ perception and experience of beauty. (shrink)

Drawing on the perspective of causal reasoning and the social cognitive theory of moral thought and action, this study explores the mechanisms underlying the association between exposure to exploitative leadership and employee workplace deviance. The results of a time-lagged survey conducted in China reveal that exposure to exploitative leadership can evoke a moral justification process that leads to increased employee organizational and interpersonal deviance. A tendency toward hostile attribution bias reinforces the direct link between exploitative leadership and moral justification and (...) the indirect effects of exploitative leadership on employee organizational and interpersonal deviance, via moral justification. The theoretical and practical implications of this study are discussed and potential directions for future studies are proposed. (shrink)

Focusing on the domain of self-compassion, this study explored the promotion mechanism of online learning behavioral engagement of international students in China under COVID-19. Positive emotion and self-improvement motivation were selected as mediators. Participants were 606 international students from 8 countries who were studying online in their own countries due to the international travel restriction of COVID-19. Results showed positive emotion and self-improvement motivation completely mediated self-compassionate mindfulness and OLBE of international students. Positive emotion and self-improvement partially mediated SCM and (...) OLBE of international students respectively. Students with higher SCM engage with online learning more in that they possess more positive emotion and self-improvement motivation. This study suggested that SCM may facilitate OLBE via positive emotion and effective self-improvement motivation. (shrink)

As companies are transforming their branding, marketing, operations, and research and development by running online communities to build their core competitive advantages in the digital era, the silent majority is still the norm in the online community and has become the focus of online community operations. Thus, it has become the core issue that why silent behavior of online community members occurs and its impact on operation performance of the online community. According to the traditional theory of organizational behavior, this (...) study focuses on the theoretical model of the relationship between proactive personality, silent behavior of online community members, and operation performance of the online community, and further analyzes the impact of community identification on these relationships. Eight hundred online community members in China participated in this study. The results indicate that: proactive personality has a significant negative impact on acquiescent silent and defensive silent behavior of the online community members, and a significant positive impact on prosocial silent behavior of the online community members; The acquiescent silence and defensive silence have a significant negative impact on online community operation performance, whereas prosocial silence has a significant positive impact on community operation performance; The acquiescent silence and defensive silence have a significant mediating effect on the relationship between proactive personality and community operation performance; Online community identification has a moderating effect on the relationship between silent behavior and online community operation performance. The study proposes the mechanisms and double-edged sword effects of the silent behavior of online community members from the perspective of personality traits. On the one hand, it generalizes the research of traditional organizational silent behavior theory to the context of the online community. On the other hand, it provides reference and inspiration for the theoretical research and practical management of silent behavior of online community members. (shrink)

With the advancement of China’s economic transformation, the impact of economic policy uncertainty on family firms has become increasingly significant. The “familism” of family firms makes them more motivated to maintain family harmony, pursue innovative activities, and the long-term development of enterprises when faced with economic policy uncertainty. In this paper, we employed the data of listed Chinese family firms from 2010 to 2018 to analyze the impact of economic policy uncertainty on family business innovation activities, analyze the inherent characteristics (...) of family firm innovation, and find the path that enables the innovative activities of family firms and provides a valuable experience for the innovation of private enterprises in economic policy uncertainty. We provide evidence that economic policy uncertainty positively relates to family firm innovation. Moreover, the relationship is affected by factors such as directors’ executive background and access to state-owned equity. Further analysis indicates that economic policy uncertainty can promote family firms’ innovation activities by improving their risk-taking, internal capital market circulation, and reducing political connections. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to improve the entrepreneurial performance and sports morality of college teacher-and-student entrepreneurs. Consequently, psychological capital is creatively combined with social and political education to explore college entrepreneurs’ EP and sports morality. First, following a theoretical model implementation, this article proposes several hypotheses. Then, a questionnaire survey was designed, and the data were analyzed. The results show that gender has little impact on EP and sports morality; PsyCap significantly affects the EP of college entrepreneurs at (...) the age of 33–38 years; in terms of educational background, average scores of PsyCap + SPE of bachelors are the highest, followed by masters or above, and finally, the college undergraduate; the average score of PsyCap + SPE of married respondents is 4.0, while that of the unmarried is 3.7; there is a significant difference between college entrepreneurs’ EP under the dimension of the basic enterprise situation; and the average score of the length of entrepreneurship is 9.87, which has the most significant impact on the EP and sports morality, and the significance of sports morality is 0.04. Among them, the most significant impact on EP and sports morality is weekly sports participation, with a score of 9.67. Therefore, PsyCap + SPE plays a positive role in the EP of college entrepreneurs. In contrast, sports morality has little impact on EP. This study provides a reference for the research on the influence of entrepreneurship and sports morality of college entrepreneurs. (shrink)

As traditional methods such as questionnaires for measuring risk propensity are not applicable in some scenarios, a nonintrusive method that could automatically identify individuals' risk propensity could be valuable. This study utilized Defense of the Ancients 2 single match data and historical statistics to train predictive models to identify risk propensity by machine learning methods. Self-reported risk propensity scores from 218 DOTA 2 players were paired with their behavioral metrics. The best-performing model occurred with Gaussian process regression. The root mean (...) square error of this model was 1.10, the correlation between predicted scores and self-reported questionnaire scores was 0.44, the R-squared was 0.17, and the test–retest reliability was 0.67. We discussed how selected behavioral features could contribute to predicting risk propensity and how the approach could be of potential value in the application of perceiving individuals' risk propensities. Moreover, the limitations of our study were discussed, and recommendations were made for future studies in this field. (shrink)

In the context of the slowing growth of the real economy and the rapid development of the financial industry, more and more non-financial companies are participating in the financial industry for the purpose of development and profit expansion. China has gradually appeared the phenomenon of corporate financialization. This paper uses the panel fixed effect model empirically examines the effect of political turnover on corporate financialization by using data of listed companies and top prefecture level officials in China between 2007 and (...) 2020. We find that the turnover of mayors significantly decreases corporate financialization, while the turnover of party secretaries has no impact on corporate financialization. Moreover, these results are moderated by the characteristics of government officials and firm’s characteristics. Our results further show that changes by mayors increase fixed asset investment and decrease cash holdings, and, thus, reduce corporate financialization. These findings could assist in solving the “from real to virtual” problems, strengthening financial services, and realizing high-quality economic development. (shrink)

The outbreak of COVID-19 at the end of 2019 has become the most devastating public health event of the 21st century. The different performances of governments and people in different countries and regions show that national values may play an important role in the prevention and control of COVID-19. Based on data from the seventh wave of World Values Survey and the Human Freedom Index report in 2020, three national value factors are extracted in this manuscript, including religious belief, government (...) satisfaction and individual freedom. Then ordinary least squares regression regression model is constructed to explore the influence of these three value factors on the prevention and control of COVID-19 and some heterogeneity analysis is implemented. The results show that religious belief and individual freedom significantly increased the COVID-19 infection rate, while government satisfaction significantly reduced the COVID-19 infection rate. The study findings have the ability to hold up after a range of robustness. For countries and regions with different COVID-19 testing policies, the influence of national values is different. Only in countries and regions with high testing rate policies and complete systems of the prevention and control of COVID-19, the influence of national values is significant. Based on these findings, a series of targeted policy recommendations for building national values in the post-epidemic era are proposed. (shrink)

To reduce the workload of paper evaluation and improve the fairness and accuracy of the evaluation process, a writing assistant scoring system for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners is designed based on the principle of machine learning. According to the characteristics of the data processing process and the advantages and disadvantages of the Browser/server (B/s) structure, the equipment structure design of the project online evaluation teaching auxiliary system is further optimized. The panda method is used to read the (...) data, the clean method is used to realize the data preprocessing, the model test is carried out, the cross validation method is selected, the data is divided in advance, and the process of programming the problem scoring system is further optimized, the automatic scoring technology is constructed by English teaching recognition module, feature extraction module and scoring module, the table structure of programming problems is designed, the auxiliary evaluation program of English writing is designed, and the design of writing auxiliary scoring system is completed. The analysis of the experimental results shows that the accuracy of the system is close to 90%, and the total average difference is 0.56. The system can normally take out a variety of test papers. Considering the subjectivity of manual scoring and the impact of key code setting on scoring, the carefully set key code can effectively improve the scoring accuracy of the system. The scoring strategy of the automatic scoring system is effective and the scoring effect is good, and it can be used in practical application. (shrink)

Although work engagement as a positive organizational behavior has gained considerable achievements in recent years, there is still a lack of content research based on certain culture, job, and group characteristics. This study conducts a grounded theory research on work engagement by coding and analyzing the interview files from public servants working in the government located in Eastern China. The result shows a five-dimension construct of work engagement, which includes loyalty to the work, commitment to the working relationships, positive emotion, (...) initiative action, and priority for mixed roles. Additionally, the current study also constructs a theoretical model which discovers the dynamic variables motivating the process of work engagement and the influence of Confucianism. (shrink)

Offers a thorough, multidisciplinary picture of the informational challenges of our media ecosystem, as well as collaborative strategies for addressing them.

The principle of differential marginality (Casajus in Theory and Decis 71(2):163-–174) for cooperative games is a very appealing property that requires equal productivity differentials to translate into equal payoff differentials. In this paper we apply this property to axiomatic characterizations of values. We show that differential marginality implies additivity and symmetry under certain conditions. Based on this result, we propose new characterizations of the equal division and the equal surplus division values. Finally, we characterize two classes of convex combinations of (...) values, i.e., α\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\alpha$$\end{document}-egalitarian Shapley values and α\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\alpha$$\end{document}-equal surplus division values, by employing differential marginality and establishing the uniqueness of these values on inessential games. (shrink)

Since the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 in China, people have been exposed to a flood of media news related to the pandemic every day. Studies have shown that media news about public crisis events have a significant impact on individuals' depression. However, how and when the duration of attention to pandemic news predicts depression still remains an open question. This study established a moderated mediating model to investigate the relationship between the duration of attention to pandemic news and depression, (...) the mediating effect of risk perception, and the moderating effect of future time perspective on the relationship. In early February 2020, 701 individuals from 29 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities across China were asked to self-report their duration of attention to pandemic news, level of depression, risk perception, and future time perspective during the COVID-19 outbreak. Results show that there is a significant positive correlation between the duration of attention to news on COVID-19 and depression; risk perception mediates the association between the duration of attention to pandemic news and depression; and future time perspective plays a moderating role between risk perception and depression. The findings of the present study provide theoretical implications and practically throw some light on alleviating the public's depression during pandemic periods. We highlight that the individual's hope for a better future, focusing on positive news, and time perspective balance during an epidemic disease are also beneficial to promoting positive emotion and reducing depression. (shrink)

The aim of the present study was to investigate relationships among epidemic risk perception, perceived stress, mental health, future time perspective, and confidence in society during the novel coronavirus disease pandemic in China. Especially, we wonder that whether perceived stress mediates associations between epidemic risk perception and mental health and that whether future time perspective and confidence in society moderate the link between perceived stress and mental health. This cross-sectional study was conducted among 693 Chinese adults aged 18–60 years. The (...) results showed that epidemic risk perception was positively related to perceived stress, depression, and anxiety. The correlations between epidemic risk perception and depression and anxiety were reduced when perceived stress was included, suggesting that perceived stress mediated these relationships. Moreover, the boundary conditions for the associations among perceived stress, depression, and anxiety were found in the study. Specifically, positive future time perspective could buffer the negative effects of perceived stress on depression, and confidence in society could weaken the negative effects of perceived stress on anxiety. Based on these findings, practical guidance and theoretical implications are provided for the public to maintain mental health during COVID-19 pandemic. Limitations and future directions are also discussed. (shrink)

This study introduces the self-construction methods of consumers and the tendency characteristics of experiential purchase to study the effects of physical purchase and experiential purchase on wellbeing. The dependent self-builders obtain higher happiness from experiential purchase; however, the independent self-builders get higher happiness from physical purchase. Furthermore, consumers with a high purchase experience get higher happiness from experiential purchase. Consumers with high material consumption tendency get significantly higher happiness than physical purchase from experiential purchase. Consumers with high materialism tendency gain (...) higher happiness in experiential purchase, which is in line with the expectations of self-construction and consumption theories. This study provides the first evidence for the impact of self-construction methods on wellbeing with different consumption choices. (shrink)

BackgroundThe prognosis of patients undergoing lung cancer treatment might be influenced by mental health status. Resilience is one of the important predictors to reflect the mental health status. It has been shown that patients with higher levels of social support, self-care self-efficacy, and positive coping have greater resilience. This study aimed to determine the mediating role of self-efficacy and positive coping in the relationship between social support and psychological resilience in patients with lung cancer.MethodThis is a cross-sectional study that was (...) conducted in in the oncology departments and thoracic surgical wards of four tertiary hospitals in Hunan Province, China, between November 2016 and November 2017. Three hundred and three patients who were undergoing treatment for lung cancer volunteered their participation in the study. Participants completed questionnaires, including the Chinese version of the Perceived Social Support Seale Scale, the Chinese version of Strategies Used by People to Promote Health Scale, and the Chinese version of the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale.ResultsMediation analysis indicated that self-care self-efficacy and social support partially mediate the effect of social support on resilience. Direct paths from social support to self-efficacy, self-efficacy to positive coping, positive coping to psychological resilience, self-efficacy to psychological resilience, and social support to psychological resilience were significant. The indirect paths from social support to self-efficacy and self-efficacy to psychological resilience were also significant. The chain mediation from social support to self-efficacy, self-efficacy to positive coping, and positive coping to resilience were significant.ConclusionSelf-efficacy and positive coping play an important role in the relationship between social support and resilience in patients receiving cancer treatment. Social support not only directly influenced psychological resilience but also indirectly influenced psychological resilience through self-efficacy and positive coping. (shrink)

It has been contended that ostracism is prevalent in the workplace, and there has been increasing research interest in its potential effects. This paper extends the theoretical framework of workplace ostracism by linking it with affective commitment and intention to leave from the perspective of job embeddedness. Using time-lagged data from China, we apply job embeddedness theory to confirm that workplace ostracism decreases the cultivation of job embeddedness, which in turn undermines affective commitment and induces intention to leave. We also (...) find that intrinsic work motivation strengthens the detrimental effects of workplace ostracism on job embeddedness such that the negative relationship is stronger when intrinsic motivation is high rather than low. We further discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings and offer future research directions. (shrink)

Journal Name: Cognitive Linguistics Issue: Ahead of print.

This paper aims to explore whether the usage of credit cards has peer effects in rural areas of China. The results suggest that the usage of credit cards will be affected by the behavior of other farmers; namely, the usage of credit cards has peer effects in rural areas. We also verify that women, older, and low-academic farmers show stronger peer effects. The results emphasize that, compared with the mass farmers and vulnerable farmers, the usage of elite farmers is more (...) likely to affect the same behaviors of other farmers. Our study contributes to prior literature by giving empirical insights into the consequences of peer effects on the credit card usage of farmers, which conduces to a better understanding of the financial decision-making of farmers. The research may provide a practical implication for the optimal design of policy interventions. On the one hand, banks and other financial institutions can promote innovative financial products in rural areas with the help of peer effects; on the other hand, regulators can regulate farmers’ wrong financial behaviors by the social multiplier of peer effects to reduce systemic risks in rural finance. (shrink)

The virtual display of products in e-commerce brings new problems of information asymmetry, and the overload of digital information also increases the difficulty of consumers' purchasing decisions. The real-time interaction between the streamer and the consumer during live streaming e-commerce will promote consumers' understanding of the product, reduce information asymmetry, and increase consumers' purchase intention. However, why do people trust the untouchable and unfamiliar streamers from live streaming e-commerce to purchase online? To understand this phenomenon, based on the perspective of (...) the information asymmetry theory and parasocial relationship theory, this research identified how social capital affected purchase intention in live streaming e-commerce. Through a questionnaire survey of live viewers, the purchase intention model constructed by empirical testing was used. The findings showed that the streamer's professionalism, the reciprocal expectation of live streaming, and the viewer's parasocial relationship could effectively increase the viewer's purchase intention. The occurrence of a streamer's negative public events could significantly reduce the viewer's purchase intention. The scale of live streaming and the streamer's commitment had no significant impact on the viewer's purchase intention. Trust played an intermediary role between the streamer's professionalism and parasocial relationship and the viewer's purchase intention. (shrink)

English as a verb-medial language has a short-before-long preference, whereas Korean and Japanese as verb-final languages show a long-before-short preference. In second language research, little is known regarding how L1 processing strategies affect the ultimate attainment of target structures. Existing work has shown that native speakers of Chinese strongly prefer to utter demonstrative-classifier phrases first in subject-extracted relatives and DCLs second in object-extracted relatives. But it remains unknown whether L2 learners with typologically different language backgrounds are able to acquire native-like (...) strategies, and how they deviate from native speakers or even among themselves. Using a phrase-assembly task, we investigated advanced L2-Chinese learners whose L1s were English, Korean, and Japanese, because English lacks individual classifiers and has postnominal relative clause, whereas Korean and Japanese have individual classifiers and prenominal RCs. Results showed that the English and Korean groups deviated from the native controls’ asymmetric pattern, but the Japanese group approximated native-like performance. Furthermore, compared to the English group, the Korean and Japanese groups favored the DCL-second configuration in SRs and ORs. No differences were found between the Korean and Japanese groups. Overall, our findings suggest that L1 processing strategies play an overarching role in L2 acquisition of asymmetric positioning of DCLs in Chinese RCs. (shrink)

New types of artificial intelligence products are gradually transferring to voice interaction modes with the demand for intelligent products expanding from communication to recognizing users' emotions and instantaneous feedback. At present, affective acoustic models are constructed through deep learning and abstracted into a mathematical model, making computers learn from data and equipping them with prediction abilities. Although this method can result in accurate predictions, it has a limitation in that it lacks explanatory capability; there is an urgent need for an (...) empirical study of the connection between acoustic features and psychology as the theoretical basis for the adjustment of model parameters. Accordingly, this study focuses on exploring the differences between seven major “acoustic features” and their physical characteristics during voice interaction with the recognition and expression of “gender” and “emotional states of the pleasure-arousal-dominance (PAD) model.” In this study, 31 females and 31 males aged between 21 and 60 were invited using the stratified random sampling method for the audio recording of different emotions. Subsequently, parameter values of acoustic features were extracted using Praat voice software. Finally, parameter values were analyzed using a Two-way ANOVA, mixed-design analysis in SPSS software. Results show that gender and emotional states of the PAD model vary among seven major acoustic features. Moreover, their difference values and rankings also vary. The research conclusions lay a theoretical foundation for AI emotional voice interaction and solve deep learning's current dilemma in emotional recognition and parameter optimization of the emotional synthesis model due to the lack of explanatory power. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to explore the influence of consumers’ choice deferral behavior on their intertemporal choice preference. The empirical study shows that consumers’ choice deferral behavior can significantly affect their intertemporal decision preference through the level of hopefulness. Compared with non-choice deferral behavior, choice deferral behavior can improve the level of consumers’ sense of hopefulness, which then makes them prefer larger-longer interests in intertemporal decision-making. The effect of consumers’ sense of hopefulness on their intertemporal choice preference is (...) moderated by their perceived information integrity. When the perceived information integrity is low, the effect of hopefulness on intertemporal decision preference will be enhanced, but when the perceived information integrity is high, the effect of hopefulness on intertemporal decision preference will not be affected. In addition, the theoretical and practical significance of this study and the prospect of future research are also discussed. (shrink)

The purpose of this research is to explore corporate governance and CEO remuneration with banks capitalization strategies and payout policy within the Pakistani banking context. Data were obtained from the financial statements of scheduled banks listed on the Pakistan stock exchange from 2005 to 2020. The findings of the research study revealed that corporate governance mechanisms that promote the bank's shareholders' interests are linked to low capitalization strategies. The size of the board of directors has a significant impact on the (...) capitalization of banks. Banks' capitalization techniques are also adversely correlated with effective board size. The shareholder benefits from low capitalization. Corporate governance is positively related with banking sector instability, as seen by this negative correlation. Bank capitalization strategies have a significant impact on CEO remuneration. In the event of an income shock, dividend payout is essential. Banking sector payout policies are negatively related with corporate governance. In the event of a negative income shock, financial institutions reduce dividends. As a result, it has been argued that effective corporate governance benefits shareholders by reducing capitalization tactics and limiting financial institutions' aggressive payouts.JEL classificationG21, G30, G32, G35. (shrink)

From the perspective of the complex system, university ranking is a complex system that involves multiagent actors, which evolve over time. Yet, current major university rankings fail to reflect the system dynamics of the university innovation system. In this paper, we apply the complex system model in the field of the university innovation system in the context of university ranking in the countries along the Belt and Road, which is a long-term overlooked field. We introduce a new method of university (...) ranking based on the “winning and losing” relationship to measure the relative competitiveness between universities. This paper contributes to complex system research, the Belt and Road research, and the university ranking arena. (shrink)

Values and ethics in in the Ramayana of Valmiki.

Recently a gender-selective harvesting strategy has been proposed for possible control of aquatic invasive species, wherein females of the invasive species are harvested, whilst stocking the males (abbreviated as FHMS strategy) (Lyu et al. in Nat Resour Model 33(2):e12252, 2020). We consider the FHMS strategy with a weak Allee effect, and show that its extinction boundary need not be hyperbolic. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first example of a non-hyperbolic extinction boundary in two-compartment mating models structured (...) by sex. The model possesses a rich dynamical structure, with several local co-dimension one bifurcations occurring. We also show the occurrence of a global homoclinic bifurcation, which has applicability for large scale strategic bio-control. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Walking the Bodhisattva Path/Walking the Christ PathU.S. Conference of Catholic BishopsCatholics and Buddhists brought together by Dharma Realm Buddhist Association, the San Francisco Zen Center, and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) met 20-23 March 2003 in the first of an anticipated series of four annual dialogues. Abbot Heng Lyu, the monks and nuns, and members of the Dharma Realm Buddhist Association hosted the dialogue at the (...) City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in Talmage, California. The community had transformed their Confucius Hall into a chapel, with a large, newly constructed wooden cross on a wall above an altar facing out from a raised platform, so the Catholic delegation would have a space for worship. A special poster announcing the theme of the conference, "Walking the Bodhisattva Path/Walking the Christ Path," showing a Buddhist dharma wheel at one foot of a bridge and a Celtic cross at the other foot, had been created by the hosting community.The daily schedule for the dialogue did not interfere with the monastic routine at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, which included early morning chanting (4:00-5:00 am), daily rituals in the Buddha Hall, and the single large meal for monastics before noon to which all participants were invited. Catholics and Buddhists meeting in the dialogue began each day with an optional forty-five minutes of quiet sitting together in the monastery meditation hall, each following their own form of meditation and prayer. There was a Eucharist on Friday and Saturday evenings for the Catholics and to which the Buddhists were invited, and additional meals of breakfast and supper throughout the meeting at the City's Jyun Kang Restaurant.Fourteen Buddhists and fourteen Catholics participated in the formal discussions. Each participant spoke on what it means to them to follow Christ or the way of the Bodhisattvas or enlightened beings. In addition to speaking, each participant distributed a short passage, usually from a traditional text, on this topic. Several passages from Master Dogen's Shobogenzo and the Gospel of John were among those shared by the group. Other passages shared were taken from the Avatamsaka Sutra and the Shurangama Sutra and from the other gospels and the writings of Zen master HakuinZenji, the Dalai Lama, Korean Zen Master I-sahn Hye-yeon, the teachings of Master [End Page 247] Hsuan Hua, Shantideva, Origen, St. Ignatius, St. Benedict, the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, St. John of the Cross, and Chiara Lubich. A minute of silence separated the fifteen-minute segments for each presentation. With so large a group, most of the time in the formal sessions involved listening to series of presentations; however, during discussion periods the participants asked several challenging questions of one another.Some participants noted the tension they felt between belonging to a particular religious group and the need to let go of any consequential narrowness. The goal of the discussion was to promote understanding of the differences and similarities between Christianity and Buddhism. At one point, the participants noted several concerns about mutual enrichment: whether Buddhist methods can be separated from Buddhism and Christian methods from Christianity, and what specific aspects of Christian practice truly enrich Buddhists and which Buddhist practices likewise enrich Christians. Several times participants discussed their understanding of terms such as transformation, grace, the incarnation and the passion of Jesus, discernment of spirits, prayer, Buddha-nature, and related terms. There was consensus that Buddhists and Catholics can practically help one another regarding mental cultivation and religious precepts. They expressed this consensus in their choice of the topic forthe next dialogue, "Transformation of Hearts and Minds: Chan/Zen-Catholic Approaches to Precepts."The group agreed to reconvene in 2004 to respond to six presentations, three from each side, on different aspects of this topic.Chairing the sessions were Rev. Heng Sure for the Dharma Realm Buddhist Association, Rev. Taigen Dan Leighton for the San Francisco Zen Center, and Bishop John Webster for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Their three organizations are the sponsors of the Northern California Chan/Zen-Catholic Dialogue. Chan and Zen are respectively the Chinese and Japanese terms for the meditation school... (shrink)