Modern consumers face a dramatic rise in web-based technological advancements and have trouble making rational and proper decisions when they shop online. When they try to make decisions about products and services, they also feel pressured against time when sorting among all of the unnecessary items in the flood of information available on the web. In this sense, they need to use consumer decision-making creativity to make rational decisions. However, unexplored research questions on this subject remain. First, in what ways (...) do task difficulty and time constraints affect visual attention on exploitative and exploratory activities differently? Second, how does the location of the reference influence the level of visual attention to exploitative and exploratory activities depending on affordance theory? Third, how do exploratory and exploitative activities affect CDMC? Eye-tracking experiments were conducted with 70 participants to obtain relevant metrics such as total fixation duration, fixation count, and visit count to answer these research questions. Our findings suggest that task difficulty influences exploitative activity, whereas time constraint is related to the exploratory activity. The result of the location of hints aligns with the affordance theory for the exploitative activity. Besides, exploratory activity positively affected CDMC, but exploitative activity did not show any effect. (shrink)

In this study, experiments were conducted on 30 subjects by means of electrocardiogram and electroencephalogram methodologies as well as a money game to examine the effects of stress on creativity in business problem-solving. The study explained the relationship between creativity and human physiological response using the biopsychosocial model of challenge and threat. The subjects were asked to perform a cognitive mapping task. Based on the brain wave theory, we identified the types of brain waves and locations of brain activities that (...) occurred during the creative problem-solving process in a business environment and studied the effects of stress on creativity. The results of the experiments showed significant differences in creativity in business problem-solving depending on whether or not stress was triggered. Differences were found in the time domain and frequency domain of heart rates, a physiological stress indicator, between the stress group and the no-stress group. A brain wave analysis confirmed that alpha waves increased in the frontal lobe of the brain during creative business problem-solving but decreased when the subjects were under stress, during which beta waves in the brain increased. This study seeks to examine creativity in business problem-solving by studying the effects of stress on human physiological response and cognitive functions in the hope of providing a new and objective interpretation of existing research results. (shrink)

Because robots are physically embodied agents, touch is one of the important modalities through which robots communicate with humans. Among the several factors that affect human-robot interaction, this research focuses on the effect of a user’s personality traits on tactile interactions with a robot. Participants interacted freely with a robot and their tactile interaction patterns were analyzed. Several classifiers were used to examine the effect of a participant’s degree of extroversion on tactile communication patterns with the robot and our results (...) showed that a user’s personality traits affected the way in which they interacted with the robot. Specifically, important features of Bayesian networks, such as the Markov blanket and what-if/goal-seeking power were tested and showed the effect of personality on tactile interaction with respect to where and how participants touched the robot. We also found that, by using Bayesian network classifiers, a user’s personality traits can be inferred based on tactile communication patterns. (shrink)

Because robots are physically embodied agents, touch is one of the important modalities through which robots communicate with humans. Among the several factors that affect human-robot interaction, this research focuses on the effect of a user’s personality traits on tactile interactions with a robot. Participants interacted freely with a robot and their tactile interaction patterns were analyzed. Several classifiers were used to examine the effect of a participant’s degree of extroversion on tactile communication patterns with the robot and our results (...) showed that a user’s personality traits affected the way in which they interacted with the robot. Specifically, important features of Bayesian networks, such as the Markov blanket and what-if/goal-seeking power were tested and showed the effect of personality on tactile interaction with respect to where and how participants touched the robot. We also found that, by using Bayesian network classifiers, a user’s personality traits can be inferred based on tactile communication patterns. (shrink)

General intelligence is largely based on two distinguishable mental abilities: crystallized intelligence (gC) and fluid reasoning ability (gF). The target article authors' P-FIT model emphasizes a network of regions throughout the brain as the neural basis for fluid reasoning and/or working memory. However, it provides little significant insight into the neural basis of gC, or how or why gC is more stable than gF across the life span.

The dominant position of e-commerce is especially being articulated in the retailing industry once again due to several constraints that the world faces in the COVID-19 pandemic era. In this regard, this study explores the significant role of trust transfer and the moderating effect of consumers’ neurotic traits in the framework of trust-satisfaction-repurchase intention in the e-commerce context based on a survey with 406 Korean e-commerce consumers. Moreover, a prediction-oriented segmentation technique combined with structural equation models was utilized to reveal (...) consumers’ probable hidden heterogeneous characteristics. The outcomes of the global model SEM analysis indicate that offline-online trust transference occurs in e-commerce, and the conveyed trust significantly influences satisfaction and consumers’ repeat purchase intention through satisfaction. Neuroticism also has significant positive effects on trust transfer in the global model. However, results in three subgroups generated by POS show heterogeneous characteristics that considerably differed from the global model test results. The implications from this study will be beneficial to field practitioners in the e-commerce industry in addressing the importance of trust transfer, negative neurotic traits as well as heterogeneous aspects of consumers. (shrink)

This paper propounds a new reading of Berkeley's account of the activity of finite spirits. Against existing interpretations, the paper argues that Berkeley does not hold that we causally contribute to the movement of our bodies. In contrast, our volitions to move our bodies are but occasions for God to cause their movement. In answer to the question of wherein then consists our activity, the paper proposes that our activity consists in the dual powers to produce (1) our volitions ? (...) the acts of willing ? and (2) our ideas of imagination. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Clinical CommentaryChua Hong Choon, Adjunct Associate ProfessorThe case for commentary describes a difficult, and yet not uncommon, clinical situation faced by clinicians at the Institute of Mental Health (IMH) in the course of their work. Based on the information provided on the case, the patient is likely to be suffering from the paranoid subtype of schizophrenia, and his illness is characterised by hostile and aggressive behaviour during episodes (...) of relapse.Although aggressive behaviour is known to be associated with young, male patients with paranoid delusions, auditory hallucinations and lack of insight,1 it is still necessary to exclude other causes of aggressive behaviour in this young man. Two causes of aggressive behaviour that are sometimes misattributed to schizophrenia are antisocial personality disorder and substance abuse. However, Mr. T did not have a history of conduct or behavioural problems prior to the onset of his psychotic illness, and he was also not reported to be violent or disruptive during the periods when he was on regular medication. There was also no history of illicit drug use.The initial onset of Mr. T’s illness while he was serving his National Service is a fairly common presentation of the first episode of schizophrenia in Singaporean males. While traits apparent prior to National Service such as his academic difficulties and inability to make friends are associated with the development of schizophrenia,2 the stress of regimented life and military drills might be more closely associated with his initial full-blown psychotic episode with prominent paranoid (and persecutory) delusions.The systematised nature of Mr. T’s delusions and the prominent threatening auditory hallucinations significantly increase his risk of [End Page 217] dangerousness,3 and when his wife became “incorporated” into his delusional beliefs, he began to threaten her physically during episodes of relapse. Despite being only 28 years old, Mr. T has already been hospitalised numerous times for inpatient treatment, due to frequent relapses of his illness. While relapses in schizophrenia may be attributed to various factors, including lack of social support, substance abuse, poor (or partial) response to medication and psychosocial stressors, Mr. T’s multiple relapses were primarily due to the stopping of his medication and his refusal to continue with any form of psychiatric treatment.The key problem to be addressed in this case is therefore the patient’s severe lack of insight which leads to recurrent episodes of treatment non-adherence and subsequent relapses.Mr. T’s wife has come to the clinic to ask for medication to secretly put into his food. Although the patient is apparently in remission of his condition (having just been treated and discharged from hospital), he has again stopped his medication, and she is justifiably afraid that he will become unwell again. Recognising that the patient’s lack of insight is the main (and possibly only) reason for his refusal to take medication, it would be prudent to first consider if all possible actions had been taken to create an awareness and to help the patient gain insight into his illness and the need to take medication. This may yet be possible in the window of opportunity that exists when the patient is in remission of his illness (and is therefore not disturbed by the symptoms of his psychotic disorder).Recent studies have demonstrated that psycho-education is able to reduce self-stigmatisation in individuals with schizophrenia, and also significantly improve insight 4 (as measured by the Birchwood’s Psychosis Insight Scale). A 2011 Cochrane Review 5 also concluded psycho-education does seem to reduce relapse, readmission and encourage medication compliance, as well as reduce the length of hospital stays in patients with schizophrenia. In this case, psycho-education could be given to Mr. T even after he has been discharged from hospital; he might not want to continue with medication, but he might consider seeing a trained clinician (case manager, nurse or medical social worker) to make sense of his life experiences. Engaging Mr. T through psycho-education may result in sufficient insight for him to consider resuming medication voluntarily, at least in the short term.Although there is a paucity of studies examining specific psycho-therapies (including cognitive behavioural therapy... (shrink)

Is a human more conscious than an octopus? In the science of consciousness, it’s oftentimes assumed that some creatures (or mental states) are more conscious than others. But in recent years, a number of philosophers have argued that the notion of degrees of consciousness is conceptually confused. This paper (1) argues that the most prominent objections to degrees of consciousness are unsustainable, (2) examines the semantics of ‘more conscious than’ expressions, (3) develops an analysis of what it is for a (...) degreed property to count as degrees of consciousness, and (4) applies the analysis to various theories of consciousness. I argue that whether consciousness comes in degrees ultimately depends on which theory of consciousness turns out to be correct. But I also argue that most theories of consciousness entail that consciousness comes in degrees. (shrink)

This paper reports the results of a survey of 842 undergraduate business students in four nations - the United States of America, the Peoples' Republic of China, Japan, and the Republic of Korea. This survey asked students to respond to four scenarios with potentially unethical business behavior and a string of questions related to the importance of ethics in business strategy and in personal behaviors. Based on arguments related to differences in recent historical experiences, the authors suggest that student responses (...) may be as different within the East Asian environment as they are between this environment as a whole and the USA. Survey results indicate a greater perception of ethical problems and more importance placed on ethics per se in business practices, as well as less of an emphasis on social harmony on the part of USA students. At the same time, substantial national differences in response are also witnessed within the set of East Asian students. A priori expectations as to the manner in which these East Asian responses should vary based on differences in recent historical experiences are partially, but not fully, supported. The authors argue that the key value of the reported research rests on a demonstration that national differences within a common cultural area can be as great as differences across cultural areas and that practitioners of global business must fine-tune their expectations as to acceptable business and personal actions to accommodate specific national historical experiences to be effective. (shrink)

Qoheleth's theology concerns the practical realities of life and how one can cope in a topsy-turvy world. He espouses an ethic of liberality and enjoyment in the face of uncertainty.

The rainwater system is an important part of the urban infrastructure as well as a key hub for maintaining the dynamic operation of the city and a clear indicator of the level of urban development. With the rapid development of urbanization, the hardened area of roads and residential areas has increased, and the construction of rainwater systems is so far insufficient, causing the urban waterlogging and water pollution problems to become increasingly serious. Accordingly, combined with the “sponge city” construction concept (...) of the six-character policy of “seepage, retention, storage, use, purification, and drainage,” we propose to adopt measures for the local conditions and to reasonably select sponge city engineering measures to increase rainwater utilization, effectively reduce rainwater runoff, and alleviate the city waterlogging and water pollution problems. We used the analytic hierarchy process to evaluate the effect of a sponge city “pocket park” rainwater system in Chaohu City before and after the transformation. The results showed that the pocket park after the renovation was well controlled, the waterlogging was basically eliminated, the water quality pollution was clearly improved, and the ecological environment was significantly improved. (shrink)

Transnational articulation programmes are one way China is attempting to advance its higher education system. We report a study of twelve Chinese students’ experiences in two China-Australia 2...

Tao has been built into the foundation of East Asian culture for millennia, and many books have been written to explain it. But Tao cannot fully be explained in words; it can only felt and experienced. Tao is something you live, day by day, moment by moment. Its the omnipresent oneness beyond ephemeral phenomena that expresses itself in everything.

本书收入了31篇论文,涉及价值哲学研究领域的诸多方面,包括关于价值哲学研究的一般方法与价值哲学的范畴体系的讨论,关于价值存在范围与价值本质的商榷与争鸣等内容。.

This paper examines the idea of "objective phenomenology," or a way of understanding the phenomenal character of conscious experiences that doesn’t require one to have had the kinds of experiences under consideration. My central thesis is that structural facts about experience—facts that characterize purely how conscious experiences are structured—are objective phenomenal facts. I begin by precisifying the idea of objective phenomenology and diagnosing what makes any given phenomenal fact subjective. Then I defend the view that structural facts about experience are (...) objective. I also argue that structural facts about experience, despite being objective, nevertheless still give rise to an explanatory gap. (shrink)

Bartky draws on the experience of daily life to unmask the many disguises by which intimations of inferiority are visited upon women. She critiques both the male bias of current theory and the debilitating dominion held by notions of "proper femininity" over women and their bodies in patriarchal culture.

Long before Wittgenstein drew attention to its complexities, the concept of play had captured the interest of theorists for millennia. How do games contribute to our knowledge of the world? Wherein lies their universal appeal? Play is usually associated with a certain blitheness and buoyancy - could it nevertheless be argued that playfulness is not quite as innocent as it might seem? Bence Kun draws on Adorno's writings to explore the relation between philosophical play (understood here as imaginative thought as (...) well as experimental expression) and an experience of dread Adorno links to children's first encounter with death. By investigating his less familiar works, some of which have not yet been translated, Kun challenges the received view on Adorno's approach to metaphysics, the role of systematic inquiry and the modern condition. As he has Adorno say, the originary impression of shock at the heart of philosophical reflection can only be fully apprehended through an open-ended and defiantly creative intellectual practice. (shrink)

We examine whether investors value the disclosure of first-time standalone corporate social responsibility reports, and whether market valuations differ between government-controlled and privately controlled firms. Using a matched sample of Chinese publicly listed firms, we find that CSR initiators have higher market valuations than matched CSR non-initiators, and CSR initiators controlled by the central and local governments have lower market valuations than CSR non-initiators and CSR initiators controlled by private shareholders. Additional analyses demonstrate that CSR initiators with high CSR reporting (...) quality and perceived credibility have higher market valuations than CSR initiators with low CSR reporting quality and medium or low perceived credibility of CSR reporting. We do not find convincing evidence that CSR mandate, litigation risk, and prior stock returns affect market reactions to CSR reporting. Overall, we find that the market values standalone CSR reports, and that CSR reporting quality and perceived credibility are important factors in market valuation. (shrink)

Erratum to: Found Sci DOI 10.1007/s10699-014-9364-0The author, Kun Wu’s name, affiliation and biography have been incorrectly published in the original article. The correct affiliation and biography are provided below.

Transportation cyber-physical systems are constrained by spatiality and real-time because of their high level of heterogeneity. Therefore, applications like traffic control generally manage moving objects in a single-machine multithreaded manner, whereas suffering from frequent locking operations. To address this problem and improve the throughput of moving object databases, we propose a GPU-accelerated indexing method, based on a grid data structure, combined with quad-trees. We count object movements and decide whether a particular node should be split or be merged on the (...) GPU. In this case, bottlenecked nodes can be translated to quad-tree without interfering with the CPU. Hence, waiting time of other threads caused by locking operations raised by object data updating can be reduced. The method is simple while more adaptive to scenarios where the distribution of moving objects is skewed. It also avoids shortcomings of existing methods with performance bottleneck on the hot area or spending plenty of calculation resources on structure balancing. Experiments suggest that our method shows higher throughput and lower response time than the existing indexing methods. The advantage is even more significant under the skewed distribution of moving objects. (shrink)

A famous mathematical theorem says that the sum of an infinite series of numbers can depend on the order in which those numbers occur. Suppose we interpret the numbers in such a series as representing instances of some physical quantity, such as the weights of a collection of items. The mathematics seems to lead to the result that the weight of a collection of items can depend on the order in which those items are weighed. But that is very hard (...) to believe. A puzzle then arises: How do we interpret the metaphysical significance of this mathematical theorem? I first argue that prior solutions to the puzzle lead to implausible consequences. Then I develop my own solution, where the basic idea is that the weight of a collection of items is equal to the limit of the weights of its finite subcollections contained within ever-expanding regions of space. I show how my solution is intuitively plausible and philosophically motivated, how it reveals an underexplored line of metaphysical inquiry about quantities and locations, and how it elucidates some classic puzzles concerning supertasks. (shrink)

There is limited knowledge of the prevalence and nature of risky sexual behavior (RSB) among young adults in Hong Kong. This cross-sectional study explored the psychosocial risk factors of RSB with a sample of 1,171 Hong Kong university students (aged 18–40 years). Grounded in the theoretical propositions of several criminological theories (i.e., the theories of self-control, general strain, social learning, social control, and routine activity), engagement in three types of RSB (i.e., general, penetrative, and non-penetrative) was studied alongside a range (...) of psychosocial risk factors. Relative to female participants, male participants reported significantly higher mean levels of general, penetrative, and non-penetrative RSB. Male participants also reported significantly higher mean levels of negative temperament, use of alcohol and other drugs, and paraphilic interests than female participants, who reported significantly higher mean levels of self-control and social bonds than their male counterparts. The results of multivariate analyses (i.e., OLS regressions) revealed that, to a large extent, the male and female participants shared a similar set of psychosocial risk factors (i.e., use of alcohol and other drugs, and paraphilic interest) for their involvement in general, penetrative, and non-penetrative RSB. Furthermore, a high level of negative temperament was significantly associated with penetrative RSB for both genders, while a high level of perceived neighborhood disorganization was found to be an important factor in the participation of females in general, penetrative, and non-penetrative RSB. The findings of this study may have important implications for practice in regard to reducing, if not entirely preventing, the tendency to engage in RSB. (shrink)

Ludwig Wittgenstein and Martin Heidegger are two of the most important--and two of the most difficult--philosophers of the twentieth century, indelibly influencing the course of continental and analytic philosophy, respectively. In _ Groundless Grounds_, Lee Braver argues that the views of both thinkers emerge from a fundamental attempt to create a philosophy that has dispensed with everything transcendent so that we may be satisfied with the human. Examining the central topics of their thought in detail, Braver finds that Wittgenstein and (...) Heidegger construct a philosophy based on _original_ _finitude_--finitude without the contrast of the infinite. In Braver's elegant analysis, these two difficult bodies of work offer mutual illumination rather than compounded obscurity. Moreover, bringing the most influential thinkers in continental and analytic philosophy into dialogue with each other may enable broader conversations between these two divergent branches of philosophy. Braver's meticulously researched and strongly argued account shows that both Wittgenstein and Heidegger strive to construct a new conception of reason, free of the illusions of the past and appropriate to the kind of beings that we are. Readers interested in either philosopher, or concerned more generally with the history of twentieth-century philosophy as well as questions of the nature of reason, will find _Groundless Grounds _of interest. (shrink)