Efforts to counter software piracy are an increasing focus of software publishers. This study attempts to develop a profile of those who illegally copy software by looking at undergraduate and graduate students and the extent to which they pirate software. The data indicate factors that can be used to profile the software pirater. In particular, males were found to pirate software more frequently than females and older students more than younger students, based on self-reporting.

From a classical perspective, multinational companies operate based on market determinants, but recent economic discussions emphasize the central role of the human cognitive system in the decision-making process, thereby giving birth to interdisciplinary fields such as behavioral economics and neuroeconomics. While neuroeconomics is still considered an emerging field, hitherto scant studies have investigated the reflection of cultural experiences on the nervous system. Moreover, the interpretation of cultural diversity in the decision-making process, especially from a neuroeconomic perspective, has not been explored. (...) In response, this study, aperspective research in nature, endeavors to research the neural responses to cultural diversity by contextualizing the neuroeconomic discussion within an MNC framework as one of the best multicultural settings. This study demonstrates that the internationalization process of MNCs is established on the cultural identity and integration of the executive. Through a neuroscientific lens, our findings prove that culture is a fundamental determinant of the cognitive makeup; therefore, cultural diversity in MNCs influences their decision-making process. Moreover, the performance of MNCs is driven by cultural harmonization at the executive level. Finally, the study reveals that the novel field of neuroeconomics is instrumental in identifying cultural intuitions on brain cells and the implications on economic decisions even at a corporate level. The main contribution of this study is the initiation of a multidisciplinary merge of the sociocultural and economic as well as neuroscientific fields, as a research center for MNCs’ decision-making processes. (shrink)

Mathematics is an important foundation for the development of science education. In the past, when instructors taught mathematical concepts of geometry shapes, they usually used traditional textbooks and aids to conduct teaching activities, which resulted in students not being able to understand the principles completely. Nowadays, it has become a trend to integrate emerging technologies into mathematics courses and to use digital instructional aids. Emerging technologies can effectively enhance students’ sensory experience while strengthening their impressions and understandings of subject concepts. (...) In this paper, we apply virtual reality immersive technologies to develop a “virtual reality immersive learning mathematics geometry system,” which is used to teach mathematical geometry concepts. Teachers use the system to develop three basic mathematical geometry learning materials: “Triangular pyramid volume = 1/3 prism volume,” “Cone volume calculation,” and “Triangle center of gravity derivation.” In the experimental activity, the teacher uses virtual reality teaching aids to guide students to learn mathematical geometry concepts in a fun way so that they can achieve the effectiveness of immersive learning. This study explores the impact of using the virtual reality immersive learning mathematics geometry system on students’ technology acceptance, learning motivations, and learning performance. The experimental result showed that using the virtual reality immersive learning mathematics geometry system can improve the learning motivation and learning performance of students. The findings indicated that the experimental group had better learning outcomes after completing the learning tasks of three geometric units. The experimental group used the virtual reality immersive learning mathematics geometry system which can lead to better learning outcomes. According to the ARCS questionnaire, students in the experimental group were confident to understand new subjects. At the same time, the mode of completing the game can effectively give students a sense of accomplishment. The use of emerging technologies in the classroom can be an attractive learning mode for students. (shrink)

In this book Prof. Cheng deals with its principle doctrines, its philosophy and its influence on.

Despite tributes paid to Fuller as an intellectual father of ADR, little attention has been paid within the ADR field to the broader interactionist vision that underlies Fuller’s discussion about process. A closer reading of Fuller’s study of mediation, however, reveals that he intended that study to substantiate his interactionist thesis about the nature of social ordering. He understood ordering to be generated by and to reflect a particular experience of social interaction. Fuller’s interactionist vision recognizes the creative, choice-making and (...) purposive dimensions of human reality, emphasizes participation as a normative criterion for institutional design, and gives rise to a pluralistic notion of power arrangements. It appears in Fuller’s thinking about process as a kind of dialectic and integrative mindset that pervades his means-ends analysis, functional analytical approach and his emphasis on institutional design. This interactionist vision has particular relevance for the practice and research of ADR, for example, in helping to develop a more integrative approach to process pluralism. (shrink)

This study explores the psychological mechanism underlying and the boundary condition affecting the relationship between leader unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB) and subordinate silence. Drawing on social cognitive theory (SCT), we posit that leader UPB may decrease subordinate moral ownership, which in turn might trigger subordinate silence; we further hypothesize that corporate social responsibility (CSR) directed toward employees may weaken the relationship between leader UPB and subordinate moral ownership as well as the indirect relationship between leader UPB and subordinate silence via (...) subordinate moral ownership. A time-lagged survey of a sample consisting of 304 leader–subordinate dyads located in China supports the hypothesized moderated mediation model. This research explores the consequences of UPB and provides guidelines for practitioners. (shrink)

Zen Buddhism often appears to be ‘anti-intellectual’, ‘illogical’ and ‘trivial’. These apparent aspects of Zen have puzzled many students of Buddhism. Why is Zen so ‘irrational’? By what Buddhist doctrines, tenets or philosophies did Zen masters develop their unconventional and dramatic teachings and practices? The aim of this paper is to show that main San-lun Mādhyamika doctrines, such as Emptiness, the Middle Way, the Twofold Truth and the refutation of erroneous views as the illumination of right views, have been assimilated (...) into Zen teachings and practices Mādhyamika philosophy seems to provide a major ‘theoretical’ foundation for as a ‘practical’; ‘anti-intellectual’, ‘irrational’, ‘unconventional’ and ‘dramatic’ religious movement. (shrink)

In this study, we propose a way to link the scholarly contents of scientific papers by constructing a knowledge graph based on the semantic organization of argumentation units and relations in scientific papers. We carried out an argumentation graph data model aimed at linking multiple discourses, and also developed a semantic annotation platform for scientific papers and an argumentation graph visualization system. A construction experiment was performed using 12 articles. The final argumentation graph has 1,262 nodes and 1,628 edges, including (...) 1,628 intra-article relations and 190 inter-article relations. Knowledge evolution representation, strategic reading, and automatic abstracting use cases are presented to demonstrate the application of the argumentation graph. In contrast to existing knowledge graphs used in academic fields, the argumentation graph better supports the organization and representation of scientific paper content and can be used as data infrastructure in scientific knowledge retrieval, reorganization, reasoning, and evolution. Moreover, it supports automatic abstract and strategic reading. (shrink)

Background Care homes have been disproportionately affected during the COVID-19 pandemic. Practical challenges of enacting infection control measures in care home settings have been widely reported, but little is known about the ethical concerns of care home staff during the implementation of such measures.. Objectives To understand the ethical challenges perceived by care home staff during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Research design An exploratory qualitative study. Participants and research context A purposive sample of 15 care home staff (...) in different roles and ranks in Hong Kong was recruited to take part in semi-structured interviews between June and August 2020. Ethical considerations Ethical approval for this study was obtained. Participation was voluntary and anonymous. Participants had the right to withdraw from the study at any time without reprisal. Findings Three themes were identified: unclear legitimacy regarding infection control measures, limited autonomy in choices over infection control measures and inevitable harms to residents’ well-being. While the participants expected that they would have legitimated power to implement infection control measures, they were resistant when their right to self-determination of testing and vaccination was infringed. They also felt trapped between ethical duties to protect care home residents from infection risk and the anticipated detrimental effects of infection control measures. Conclusions The findings of this study reveal tensions among the ethical obligations of care home staff in response to a public health emergency. They highlight the importance of strengthening ethical sensitivity and ethical leadership in identifying and resolving the challenges of pandemic responses. (shrink)

Several studies have demonstrated that individuals’ ability to perceive a speech sound contrast is related to the production of that contrast in their native language. The theoretical account for this relationship is that speech perception and production have a shared multimodal representation in relevant sensory spaces. This gives rise to a prediction that individuals with more narrowly defined targets will produce greater separation between contrasting sounds, as well as lower variability in the production of each sound. However, empirical studies that (...) tested this hypothesis, particularly with regard to variability, have reported mixed outcomes. The current study investigates the relationship between perceptual ability and production ability, focusing on the auditory domain. We examined whether individuals’ categorical labeling consistency for the American English /ε/–/æ/ contrast, measured using a perceptual identification task, is related to distance between the centroids of vowel categories in acoustic space and to two measures of production variability: the overall distribution of repeated tokens for the vowels and the proportional within-trial decrease in variability as defined as the magnitude of self-correction to the initial acoustic variation of each token. No significant associations were found between categorical labeling consistency and vowel contrast distance, between categorical labeling consistency and area of the ellipse, or between categorical labeling consistency and centering ratio. These null results suggest that the perception-production relation may not be as robust as suggested by a widely adopted theoretical framing in terms of the size of auditory target regions. However, the present results may also be attributable to choices in implementation that should be subject to further investigation. (shrink)

In this paper I will investigate Nāgārjuna's approach to the problem of the existence of God. Nāgārjuna lived in the second century A.D. and founded Mādhyamika Buddhism. 1 He is considered to be one of the greatest thinkers of India 2 and his philosophy, ‘the central philosophy of Buddhism’. 3 Although there have been some systematic studies and presentations of Nāgārjuna's writings among Eastern and Western scholars during the past six or seven decades, 4 many aspects of his teachings have (...) not been adequately treated. One of these aspects is his examination of the concept of God or deity. (shrink)

"New Essays in Chinese Philosophy" explores various facets of Chinese thought which have received dynamic and creative scholarly attention in the recent past. It argues that Chinese culture is not -logic-less-. The Confucian perception of moral sense and of reason can be revitalized to meet current challenges. The book displays the religiosity of Confucian philosophy and explains why contemporary Confucianists may become Christians, and vice versa. It also illuminates the Taoist and Buddhist concepts of the universe by comparing Chinese and (...) Western metaphysics, and expounds how the ideas of yin, yang and harmony in Chinese tradition are consistent with recent advances in science.". (shrink)

本书介绍了阿图尔·叔本华和尼采两位著名的哲学家。阿图尔·叔本华是德国唯意志论哲学家,他的哲学观、世界观、人生观带着神秘主义的和悲观主义的特点。尼采是德国伟大的哲学家。.

One of the problems religious men and philosophers often face is how to convey enlightenment or wisdom to others so that sentient beings can be enlightened or awakened from dogmatic views. This problem is also the question of how truth is made known to men. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the problem of communicating truth in Ch'an Buddhism.

The coronavirus disease pandemic fundamentally disrupted humans’ social life and behavior. Public health measures may have inadvertently impacted how people care for each other. This study investigated prosocial behavior, its association well-being, and predictors of prosocial behavior during the first COVID-19 pandemic lockdown and sought to understand whether region-specific differences exist. Participants from eight regions clustering multiple countries around the world responded to a cross-sectional online-survey investigating the psychological consequences of the first upsurge of lockdowns in spring 2020. Prosocial behavior (...) was reported to occur frequently. Multiple regression analyses showed that prosocial behavior was associated with better well-being consistently across regions. With regard to predictors of prosocial behavior, high levels of perceived social support were most strongly associated with prosocial behavior, followed by high levels of perceived stress, positive affect and psychological flexibility. Sociodemographic and psychosocial predictors of prosocial behavior were similar across regions. (shrink)

Background. Herpes zoster is a disease that mainly causes severe segmental neuralgia and vesicles after infection with herpes zoster virus. At the same time, more than 9 to 34 percent of patients have postherpetic neuralgia present with chronic pain for months or even years. Moxibustion has been used to treat herpes zoster and postherpetic neuralgia for many years; however, there has been no comprehensive study to evaluate the efficacy and safety of moxibustion in the treatment of herpes zoster and postherpetic (...) neuralgia. More studies evaluated the combined effects of acupuncture and moxibustion. Therefore, the purpose of this systematic review is to evaluate their efficacy and safety, so as to provide an evidence-based basis for the clinical application of moxibustion in the treatment of HZ and PHN. Method. The literature search was conducted in nine Chinese and English databases, and randomized controlled trials were pooled from their inceptions to June 2020. The included literature was screened, and data were extracted. RevMan 5.3 software and Stata software were used for statistical analysis. The primary outcome was the total effect. The secondary outcomes include VAS, NRS, and time of analgesia. Outcomes. From a total of 1957 identified studies, 31 were included in analysis. 31 RCTs contained the experimental sample of 1185 cases and the control sample of 1149 cases reported efficiency of different moxibustions in the treatment of herpes zoster, statistical heterogeneity inspection without heterogeneity. So, we used the fixed-effects model, merge effect quantity OR = 3.89, Z = 8.86, and it suggested sample merger analysis was statistically significant. Also, the moxibustion, compared to other methods in the treatment of herpes zoster and herpes zoster neuralgia efficiency, increased significantly. The VAS scales, WMD = 1.69, and the time of analgesia, WMD = 2.41, indicated that moxibustion surpassed others in the relief of pain. NRS was just reported in one study. It was not statistically significant. There was no significant difference in adverse effects OR = 0.61, Z = 1.56. Conclusion. Moxibustion has obvious advantages over other therapies in the treatment of HZ and PHN. However, due to the obvious publication bias, the interpretation of the results should be cautious, and more rigorous randomized controlled clinical studies should be included to further confirm the results in the future. (shrink)

Piracy is the greatest threat facing the global music industry today. This study explores the effects of artist adoration and the perceived risk of being caught on the attitude and intention to engage in pirating a digital song among college students. The moderating effect of cultural environment factor is also examined. Experiments using between-group factorial designs were conducted in the United States and Taiwan. The results show that perceived risk of getting caught and cultural environment are important factors that can (...) significantly affect the attitude and intention toward downloading unauthorized music. In addition, a two-way (Perceived Risk ? Culture) and a three-way interaction in the model are also observed. (shrink)