The ring‐shaped ATPase machine, cohesin, regulates sister chromatid cohesion, transcription, and DNA repair by topologically entrapping DNA. Here, we propose a rigid scaffold model to explain how the cohesin regulators Pds5 and Wapl release cohesin from chromosomes. Recent studies have established the Smc3‐Scc1 interface as the DNA exit gate of cohesin, revealed a requirement for ATP hydrolysis in ring opening, suggested regulation of the cohesin ATPase activity by DNA and Smc3 acetylation, and provided insights into how Pds5 and Wapl open (...) this exit gate. We hypothesize that Pds5, Wapl, and SA1/2 form a rigid scaffold that docks on Scc1 and anchors the N‐terminal domain of Scc1 (Scc1N) to the Smc1 ATPase head. Relative movements between the Smc1‐3 ATPase heads driven by ATP and Wapl disrupt the Smc3‐Scc1 interface. Pds5 binds the dissociated Scc1N and prolongs this open state of cohesin, releasing DNA. We review the evidence supporting this model and suggest experiments that can further test its key principles. (shrink)

Various features of the interpretation of these schools main positions, the reasons for their appearance and the consequences for the development of Mahayana Buddhism have been the subject of discussion in this research. Attention is drawn to the existence of various ideas of Buddhist authors about the interpretation of fundamental philosophical ideas of these schools. The influence of the peculiarities of translation into other languages for the adequate transmission of the author’s thought is discussed. It is noted that the possibility (...) of different interpretations was already established in the very methodology of the transmission of Buddhist doctrines, formed at the earliest stages of Buddhism. The opinions of a number of Tibetan authors are analyzed. The study presents the derivation of the existence of different interpretations of some categories central to Mahayana Buddhism due to the presence of different philosophical methodologies. A number of features were associated with the interpretation of the correlation of logical-critical knowledge, yogic methods and their priority in choosing ways to achieve an exit from the chain of rebirth. The factor of similarities in the positions of such authors as Nāgārjuna and Vasubandhu (traditionally attributed to different schools) makes it problematic to unambiguously interpret their philosophical positions; Some features of these schools were determined not only by theoretical backgrounds, but also by political struggle for a leading place in the Buddhist hierarchy of a certain country, as well as the desire to affect authorities. (shrink)

1. IntroductionCan the discourse of tianxia (“All-under-Heaven”) provide a peaceful resolution to the “Taiwan problem”? This article seeks to address this question. The urgency of such a resolution seems to be evident at this moment: since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, starting on February 24, 2022, observers of international politics have focused on the People’s Republic of China (PRC) with regard to its position on Russia’s aggression, on the one hand, and to its decision on Taiwan, on the other. Consequently, (...) the question of “Will Taiwan be the next Ukraine?” was raised so frequently that the PRC’s former minister of foreign affairs had to urge other states to stop drawing a comparison between Taiwan and Ukraine.1 However, such a call has not eased the concern over the PRC’s potential invasion of Taiwan, as key actors in international politics, such as the United States, the European Union, and the United Kingdom, continue to reiterate their position regarding a peaceful resolution between China and Taiwan,2 suggesting the lack of it to this day. (shrink)

This study investigates how COVID-19 advice is creatively delivered in a one-minute video produced by the Taiwan Centers for Disease Control in February 2022. It examines metaphors in verbal, visual, and multimodal modes, and illustrates how such metaphors interact with multimodal narrativity. Drawing on the insights of studies on multimodal metaphors, this paper seeks to identify which are the most pervasive metaphors or what dominant metaphor, if any, is used in the video. It finds that the metaphorical mappings between coping (...) with the covid pandemic and handling olympic weightlifting are represented across modes and that the creative delivery of COVID-19 advice is woven from a warp of metaphors in various modes and a weft of narrativity across modes. Such metaphorical creativity is underpinned by the semiotic flow that features four interconnected configurations: moving between metaphorization, literalization, and re-metaphorization; somehow blurring the source-target boundary; expanding the range of functions that the multimodal representation can serve; and initiating a metaphorical thought from one or more contextual factors. (shrink)

啓蒙思想の系譜を繙き、理性の力を問い直す。古代ギリシアから、ホッブズ、カント、フランクフルト学派を経て最新の議論まで。啓蒙を巡る問題意識の変遷を追う論考集。.

We investigate how firms adjust corporate pension plans in response to economic policy uncertainty (EPU). Using a sample of US-listed firms, we find that firms increase pension underfunding levels when facing higher EPU. The result is robust to controlling for pension portfolio returns, discount rates, plan sizes, pension liability, numbers of employees, other macroeconomic factors, difference-in-differences and instrumental variable estimation, and additional evidence of pension risk-shifting. Further analysis reveals that financial distress and information asymmetry induced through EPU are the potential (...) channels. The effect is stronger for firms having CEOs being excessively paid, using cash flow as a performance metric in CEO compensation, paying high dividends, and having short-term institutional investors, whereas the presence of unions, positive corporate culture, and social capital alleviate the effect. Notably, managers, not shareholders, appear to be the party reaping the benefits. Our findings suggest that firms may shift risk to employees in response to heightened uncertainty and institutional characteristics play a moderating role in this crucial business ethics issue. (shrink)

Instances of the ad baculum argument (also known as the threat appeal argument or the argument from threat) are common in both private and public sphere discourse. Although contemporary argumentation scholarship recognizes these instances as contingently fallacious, the literature lacks not only a well-motivated ad baculum argument scheme but also a complete list of critical questions (CQs). In combining argument scheme and speech act theoretic elements, we formulate the felicity conditions of the speech act of threatening from the viewpoint of (...) a rational third party and use the recognition conditions of this speech act to construct the ad baculum argument scheme and its correctness conditions to construct the CQs. Results include revised felicity conditions of the speech act of threatening, a new ad baculum argument scheme, and a set of arguably complete, functionally distinct CQs. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to explore whether the performance of the green innovation brought positive effect to the competitive advantage. This study found that the performances of the green product innovation and green process innovation were positively correlated to the corporate competitive advantage. Therefore, the result meant that the investment in the green product innovation and green process innovation was helpful to the businesses. This study argued that the businesses should cognize the correct value and positioning of the (...) green innovation. (shrink)

Resumen: En China los templos de varias creencias o religiones conforman una parte importante del espacio sagrado. En este trabajo pretendemos realizar una introducción a los templos de las creencias prehistóricas, ligadas a la naturaleza y los ancestros, así como a los de las tres principales religiones en dicho país, que son el taoísmo, el budismo y el confucianismo. Por otra parte, se exponen de manera sucinta la ubicación, el diseño, la historia, los distintos modelos y las deidades consagradas de (...) los templos. (shrink)

Public value facilitates the democratization of public policy making, it should be the common-sense and bottom-line for policymakers. However, it has not been paid enough attention by the practical and theoretical circles. How to realize the transformation from individual value to public value and make public policies be in line with citizens’ preferences, is vital for the democratic politics. How individual value becomes public value in the agenda-setting stage during the policy-making process? What are the key influencing factors? Using the (...) case of Yangzhou Chemical Co. Youjia Program and interview data, this paper studies the mechanisms that could make individual value be transformed to public value through deeply observing and measuring individuals’ attitudes, demands, motivations, beliefs, and preferences. We argue that (1) public value is an essential foundation for agenda setting and guidance to policy making, whereas individual value cannot naturally substitute value orientation in the public sphere. (2) Transferring individual value to public value can reduce divergence appearing in the subsequent stage in policy activities. (3) Factors that can influence this transformation are policy subjects, relations, rule and expression channels with various determinants and conditions. (4) Public value can terminate irrational and unreasonable policies or drag the policy issues back into the agenda-setting stage. This paper provides unique insights into why individual citizens enter the public sphere to take public actions so that the Chinese government can recognize additional public opinions, which makes cooperative governance be realized. (shrink)

Many previous studies have documented the detrimental effects of social loafing on others (_inter_personal impacts) at the between-person level. However, social loafing may carry underappreciated _intra_personal functional effects at the within-person level. Our research develops a novel theoretical framework to investigate _when_ and _how_ engaging in social loafing enhances one’s job performance. Drawing on the effort-recovery model and moral cleansing theory, we propose that social loafing may improve subsequent job performance by enhancing recovery and guilt. Specifically, we argue that among (...) employees who experience higher job demands or have higher moral identity, social loafing in the morning enhances their job performance in the afternoon by facilitating recovery or guilt in the morning. Two-wave daily data collected across ten consecutive workdays using the experience sampling method (ESM) supports this model. We discuss how this research identifies a functional basis for social loafing and provides implications for research and practice. (shrink)

This paper studies the epistemic failures to reach understanding in relation to scientific explanations. We make a distinction between genuine understanding and its negative phenomena—lack of understanding and misunderstanding. We define explanatory understanding as inclusive as possible, as the epistemic success that depends on abilities, skills, and correct explanations. This success, we add, is often supplemented by specific positive phenomenology which plays a part in forming epistemic inclinations—tendencies to receive an insight from familiar types of explanations. We define lack of (...) understanding as the epistemic failure that results from a lack of an explanation or from an incorrect one. This can occur due to insufficient abilities and skills, or to fallacious explanatory information. Finally, we characterize misunderstanding by cases where one’s epistemic inclinations do not align with an otherwise correct explanation. We suggest that it leads to potential debates about the explanatory power of different explanatory strategies. We further illustrate this idea with a short meta-philosophical study on the current debates about distinctively mathematical explanations. (shrink)

What is the significance of bodily awareness for bodily action? The orthodox philosophical account from O'Shaughnessy claims that bodily awareness is necessary for bodily action. Whilst O'Shaughnessy's account appears to be consonant with the phenomenology of ordinary agency, it falls afoul to empirical counterexamples. The failure of O'Shaughnessy's account and its cousins might suggest that bodily action does not depend on bodily awareness. On the contrary, I argue that the contrast between the character of afferented and deafferented agency shows that (...) bodily awareness is crucial to explaining the distinctive character of bodily action in neurologically normal agents. In particular, the capacity to feel one's body ‘from the inside’ appears to be a condition on the capacity to act with one's body in a way that is not like remote control. This dependency of capacities is at once empirically adequate and in tune with the phenomenology of ordinary agency. (shrink)

This article proposed four novel constructs – green brand image, green satisfaction, green trust, and green brand equity, and explored the positive relationships between green brand equity and its three drivers – green brand image, green satisfaction, and green trust. The object of this research study was information and electronics products in Taiwan. This research employed an empirical study by use of the questionnaire survey method. The questionnaires were randomly mailed to consumers who had the experience of purchasing information and (...) electronics products. The results showed that green brand image, green satisfaction, and green trust are positively related to green brand equity. Furthermore, the positive relationship between green brand image and green brand equity is partially mediated by green satisfaction and green trust. Hence, investing on resources to increase green brand image, green satisfaction, and green trust is helpful to enhance green brand equity. (shrink)

The development and application of artificial intelligence (AI) technology has raised many concerns about privacy violations in the public. Thus, privacy-preserving computation technologies (PPCTs) have been developed, and it is expected that these new privacy protection technologies can solve the current privacy problems. By not directly using raw data provided by users, PPCTs claim to protect privacy in a better way than their predecessors. They still have technical limitations, and considerable research has treated PPCTs as a privacy-protecting tool and focused (...) on possible technical improvements. In this article, we argue that PPCTs cannot effectively protect privacy in the narrow sense due to their technical limitations. Moreover, although these shortcomings could be remedied, they still fall into a paradox because their aim is to protect privacy, but they could reveal private information from users. This paradox of privacy protection not only aggravates the social impact arising from AI privacy issues but may also make the current privacy protection lose its meaning, resulting in a situation in which privacy protection is useless. (shrink)

No research explored intellectual capital about green innovation or environmental management. This study wanted to fill this research gap, and proposed a novel construct – green intellectual capital – to explore the positive relationship between green intellectual capital and competitive advantages of firms. The empirical results of this study showed that the three types of green intellectual capital – green human capital, green structural capital, and green relational capital – had positive effects on competitive advantages of firms. Moreover, this study (...) found that green relational capital was the most common among these three types of green intellectual capital, and the three types of green intellectual capital of Medium & Small Enterprises (SMEs) were all significantly less than those of large enterprises in the information and electronics industry in Taiwan. In sum, companies investing many resources and efforts in green intellectual capital could not only meet the trends of strict international environmental regulations and popular environmental consciousness of consumers, but also eventually obtain corporate competitive advantages. (shrink)

Previous research shows that people can use the co-occurrence of words and objects in ambiguous situations (i.e., containing multiple words and objects) to learn word meanings during a brief passive training period (Yu & Smith, 2007). However, learners in the world are not completely passive but can affect how their environment is structured by moving their heads, eyes, and even objects. These actions can indicate attention to a language teacher, who may then be more likely to name the attended objects. (...) Using a novel active learning paradigm in which learners choose which four objects they would like to see named on each successive trial, this study asks whether active learning is superior to passive learning in a cross-situational word learning context. Finding that learners perform better in active learning, we investigate the strategies and discover that most learners use immediate repetition to disambiguate pairings. Unexpectedly, we find that learners who repeat only one pair per trial—an easy way to infer this pair—perform worse than those who repeat multiple pairs per trial. Using a working memory extension to an associative model of word learning with uncertainty and familiarity biases, we investigate individual differences that correlate with these assorted strategies. (shrink)

No research explored intellectual capital about green innovation or environmental management. This study wanted to fill this research gap, and proposed a novel construct - green intellectual capital - to explore the positive relationship between green intellectual capital and competitive advantages of firms. The empirical results of this study showed that the three types of green intellectual capital - green human capital, green structural capital, and green relational capital - had positive effects on competitive advantages of firms. Moreover, this study (...) found that green relational capital was the most common among these three types of green intellectual capital, and the three types of green intellectual capital of Medium & Small Enterprises were all significantly less than those of large enterprises in the information and electronics industry in Taiwan. In sum, companies investing many resources and efforts in green intellectual capital could not only meet the trends of strict international environmental regulations and popular environmental consciousness of consumers, but also eventually obtain corporate competitive advantages. (shrink)

This article examines how modern Chinese Buddhism has been influenced by Christianity. For our purposes ‘modern Chinese Buddhism’ refers to a form of what has become known in the West as ‘Engaged Buddhism’, but in Chinese is known by titles which can be translated ‘Humanistic Buddhism’ or ‘Buddhism for Human Life’. This tradition was initiated on the Chinese mainland between the two World Wars by the monk Tài X?, and Part one of the article is devoted to him. Since the (...) communist conquest of China, its main branches have flourished in Taiwan, whence two of them have spread worldwide. The most successful, at least in numerical terms, has been Fo Guang Shan, founded by a personal disciple of Tài X?, Hsing Yun, now very old, and it is on this movement that we concentrate in Parts two and three. We differentiate between conscious imitation and analogous development due to similar social circumstances, and show how Protestant Christianity and Roman Catholicism have had different effects. In Part four, we examine Fo Guang Shan as a missionary religion. (shrink)

To date, game-based learning programs that include comprehensive creativity skills and disposition training are still very limited. The present researchers developed a comprehensive game-based creativity learning program for fifth and sixth grade pupils. Further analysis presented relationship trends between mindful learning experience, flow experience, self-efficacy, and mastery experience. Eighty-three 5th and 6th grade participants undertook the six-week game-based creativity learning program. Upon the completion of experimental instruction, those who scored higher on the concerned variables improved more in self-evaluation of both (...) creativity ability and confidence, than their counterparts. Additionally, path model analysis revealed that mindful learning experience was a powerful predictor of both mastery experience and flow experience; it also influenced mastery experience through flow experience and self-efficacy during game-based creativity learning. The findings support the effectiveness of the game-based learning program developed in this study. Moreover, this study contributes to the theoretical construction of how game-based learning can be designed to facilitate mindful learning experience, flow experience, self-efficacy, and mastery experience during creativity training among pupils. Effective mechanisms include providing rewards for high-quality performance, challenging tasks, free choices of design components, immediate feedback, and idea sharing. The profound theoretical framework proposed in this study provides a valuable approach for creativity instruction through game-based learning or classroom instruction. (shrink)

Digitized information and network have made an enormous impact on the music and movie industries. Internet piracy is popular and has greatly threatened the companies in these industries. This study tests Hunt-Vitell’s ethical decision model and attempts to understand why and how people share unauthorized music files with others in the peer-to-peer (P2P) network. The norm of anti-piracy, the ideology of free software, the norm of reciprocity, and the ideology of consumer rights are proposed as four deontological norms related to (...) using P2P systems. The model is tested using a scenario survey with four alternatives; the results indicate that the deontological norm of anti-piracy is not a main factor in affecting P2P users’ ethical considerations regarding sharing files with others. This finding suggests that to protect their property rights, record companies should try to realize the consumer benefits brought via new digital and network technology, instead of simply declaring their intellectual property and resisting the innovations resulting from new technologies. (shrink)

We prove that the diagonalizable algebras of PA and ZF are not isomorphic.

With the outbreak of the COVID-19 crisis, the public keeps getting epidemic-related information on the media. News reports on the increasing number of fatalities have exposed individuals to death, which causes negative emotional experiences such as tension, anxiety, and fear. This study aimed to investigate whether creativity could serve as an anxiety-buffer when mortality is salient. Based on previous findings, the present study utilized type of creative task and personal search for meaning as moderators. In Study 1, a 2 × (...) 2 between-subject design was utilized, and 168 subjects were randomly assigned to four experimental conditions. In Study 2, 221 subjects were recruited. The experimental procedure was similar to Study 1, except that the priming paradigm of mortality was changed and search for meaning was included as an additional moderating variable. State anxiety was measured as the dependent variable in both studies. Results of Study 1 showed that, while the benevolent creative task could buffer anxiety in the mortality salience condition, the malevolent creative task did not have the same effect. Furthermore, there was a significant interaction between mortality salience, type of creative task, and search for meaning in life on anxiety. In Study 2, the buffering function of benevolent creativity was more intense for participants with a higher level of search for meaning. Together, these findings reveal the influence of different types of creative tasks on individual anxiety levels under death priming conditions and the moderating effect of search for meaning in this relationship. Further, they suggest the need to focus on the role of creativity in terror management. (shrink)

As an advanced network calculation mode, cloud computing is becoming more and more popular. However, with the proliferation of large data centers hosting cloud applications, the growth of energy consumption has been explosive. Surveys show that a remarkable part of the large energy consumed in data center results from over-provisioning of the network resource to meet requests during peak demand times. In this paper, we propose a solution to this problem by constructing a dynamic energy-efficient resource management scheme. As a (...) way of saving energy as well as maintaining cloud user’s quality of experience, the scheme presents a multitier cloud architecture by configuring physical machines into two pools: a hot pool and a warm pool. Each PM is configured with a resource search engine that finds an available virtual machine for the request, and a synchronous sleep mechanism is introduced to the warm pool. To analyze the end-to-end performance of the cloud system’s service with the proposed scheme, we establish a hybrid queueing system composed of three stochastic submodels by using a matrix-geometric solution. Accordingly, the average latency of requests and the energy-saving rate of the system are derived. Through numerical results, we show the influence of the synchronous sleep mechanism on the system performance. Moreover, from the perspective of economics, we build a system cost function to study the trade-off between different performance measures. An improved Salp Swarm Algorithm is presented to minimize the system cost and optimize the sleep parameter. (shrink)

If a formal theory T is able to reason about its own syntax, then the diagonalizable algebra of T is defined as its Lindenbaum sentence algebra endowed with a unary operator □ which sends a sentence φ to the sentence □φ asserting the provability of φ in T. We prove that the first order theories of diagonalizable algebras of a wide class of theories are undecidable and establish some related results.

A growing body of research has started to examine how individuals from different countries may differ in their use of ethically questionable tactics during business negotiations. Whereas prior research focused on the main effect of the national culture or nationality of the negotiator, we add a new factor, which is the nationality of the counterpart. Looking at both these variables allows us to examine whether and how people may change their likelihood of using ethically questionable tactics in inter-cultural negotiations as (...) opposed to intra-cultural ones. Results of an experiment show that overall, American participants were less likely than Chinese participants to use ethically questionable tactics in negotiations. However, American participants were more likely to use ethically questionable tactics, particularly those related to false promises and inappropriate information gathering, in inter-cultural negotiations with Chinese counterparts, than in intra-cultural negotiations with American counterparts. By contrast, Chinese participants were less likely to use ethically questionable tactics, particularly those related to false promises and attacking opponent’s network, in inter-cultural negotiations with American counterparts, than in intra-cultural negotiations with Chinese counterparts. Implications and future directions are discussed. (shrink)

Resumo: O clássico cultural chinês Chuang Tzu foi amplamente traduzido para versões em inglês, durante o século passado. Como resultado, essas traduções em inglês refletem, parcialmente, a conceituação da China antiga que mudou, ao longo do tempo, entre os falantes de inglês de outras nações. Desse modo, o presente artigo investiga as imagens reconstruídas da China antiga, tal como se manifestam nas refrações e transcriações das traduções inglesas de Chuang Tzu, as quais foram interpretadas por tradutores estrangeiros, a partir da (...) perspectiva da imagologia na literatura comparada. Todos esses fatos contribuíram para a descoberta de inúmeras imagens nacionais, através da exploração de Chuang Tzu do mundo anglófono, incluindo uma China antiga mestiça, uma China antiga misteriosa, uma China antiga ecológica e uma China antiga multifacetada. O mecanismo operacional da comunicação translacional sino-estrangeira foi elucidado através de um exame cuidadoso das variações das imagens, a fim de melhor compreender como os ocidentais constroem sua percepção geral sobre a nação oriental. (shrink)