Objective: Tangent Space Mapping using the geometric structure of the covariance matrices is an effective method to recognize multiclass motor imagery. Compared with the traditional CSP method, the Riemann geometric method based on TSM takes into account the nonlinear information contained in the covariance matrix, and can extract more abundant and effective features. Moreover, the method is an unsupervised operation, which can reduce the time of feature extraction. However, EEG features induced by MI mental activities of different subjects are not (...) the same, so selection of subject-specific discriminative EEG frequency components play a vital role in the recognition of multiclass MI. In order to solve the problem, a discriminative and multi-scale filter bank tangent space mapping algorithm is proposed in this article to design the subject-specific Filter Bank so as to effectively recognize multiclass MI tasks. Methods: On the 4-class BCI competition IV-2a dataset, first, a non-parametric method of multivariate analysis of variance based on the sum of squared distances is used to select discriminative frequency bands for a subject; next, a multi-scale FB is generated according to the range of these frequency bands, and then decompose multi-channel EEG of the subject into multiple sub-bands combined with several time windows. Then TSM algorithm is used to estimate Riemannian tangent space features in each sub-band and finally a liner Support Vector Machines is used for classification. Main Results: The analysis results show that the proposed discriminative FB enhances the multi-scale TSM algorithm, improves the classification accuracy and reduces the execution time during training and testing. On the 4-class BCI competition IV-2a dataset, the average session to session classification accuracy of nine subjects reached 77.33 ± 12.3%. When the training time and the test time are similar, the average classification accuracy is 2.56% higher than the latest TSM method based on multi-scale filter bank analysis technology. When the classification accuracy is similar, the training speed is increased by more than three times, and the test speed is increased two times more. Compared with Supervised Fisher Geodesic Minimum Distance to the Mean, another new variant based on Riemann geometry classifier, the average accuracy is 3.36% higher, we also compared with the latest Deep Learning method, and the average accuracy of 10-fold cross validation improved by 2.58%. Conclusion: Research shows that the proposed DMFBTSM algorithm can improve the classification accuracy of MI tasks. Significance: Compared with the MFBTSM algorithm, the algorithm proposed in this article is expected to select frequency bands with good separability for specific subject to improve the classification accuracy of multiclass MI tasks and reduce the feature dimension to reduce training time and testing time. (shrink)

Teacher self-efficacy is one of the most critical factors influencing Students’ learning outcomes. Studies have shown that teacher-perceived principal leadership, teacher collaboration, and teaching experience are the critical factor that affects teacher self-efficacy. However, little is known about the mechanisms behind this relationship. This study examined whether teacher collaboration would mediate the relationship between teacher-perceived principal leadership and teacher self-efficacy, and the moderating role of teaching experience in the mediating process. With an analysis of a dataset from 14,121 middle school (...) teachers in China, this study first testified to the positive role that teacher-perceived principal leadership played in teacher self-efficacy. Furthermore, it revealed that teacher collaboration mediates this relationship and the mediated path was moderated by teaching experience. Finally, it also indicated that the threshold of teaching experience linking the teacher-perceived leadership with teacher self-efficacy was approximately in the third year, and their relationship was stronger when teaching experience was below the threshold. This study highlighted the mediating and moderating mechanisms linking the teacher-perceived principal leadership and teacher self-efficacy, which has important theoretical and practical implications for intervention and enhancement of teacher self-efficacy. (shrink)

As an emerging language variant, practitioners have extensively used Internet slang in advertising and other communication activities. However, its unique characteristics that differ from standard language have yet to be explored. Drawing upon interdisciplinary theories on schema and communication styles, this research makes the first attempt to conceptualize and measure these characteristics by introducing a new multi-dimensional construct, “Internet slang style,” in the marketing context. It develops and validates a new scale to measure Internet slang style along the dimensions of (...) amiability, overtness, candor, and harshness through a series of in-depth interviews, two surveys, and one experiment with consumers. In addition, this research investigates the impact of Internet slang styles on brand personality and brand attitude. The results indicate that different Internet slang style dimensions positively correspond to different brand personality dimensions but exert no influence on brand attitude. Practically, the scale provides an easy-to-use instrument to evaluate Internet slang styles from a consumer perspective to help companies appropriately employ Internet slang in marketing communication activities. (shrink)

Attention has been studied in cognitive psychology for more than half a century, but until recently it was largely neglected in philosophy. Now, however, attention has been recognized by philosophers of mind as having an important role to play in our theories of consciousness and of cognition. At the same time, several recent developments in psychology have led psychologists to foundational questions about the nature of attention and its implementation in the brain. As a result there has been a convergence (...) of interest in fundamental questions about attention. This volume presents the latest thinking from the philosophers and psychologists who are working at the interface between these two disciplines. Its fourteen chapters contain detailed philosophical and scientific arguments about the nature and mechanisms of attention; the relationship between attention and consciousness; the role of attention in explaining reference, rational thought, and the control of action; the fundamental metaphysical status of attention, and the details of its implementation in the brain. These contributions combine ideas from phenomenology, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and philosophy of mind to further our understanding of this centrally important mental phenomenon, and to bring to light the foundational questions that any satisfactory theory of attention will need to address. (from OUP website). (shrink)

Eye-tracking technology has become a powerful tool for biomedical-related applications due to its simplicity of operation and low requirements on patient language skills. This study aims to use the machine-learning models and deep-learning networks to identify key features of eye movements in Alzheimer's Disease (AD) under specific visual tasks, thereby facilitating computer-aided diagnosis of AD. Firstly, a three-dimensional (3D) visuospatial memory task is designed to provide participants with visual stimuli while their eye-movement data are recorded and used to build an (...) eye-tracking dataset. Then, we propose a novel deep-learning-based model for identifying patients with Alzheimer's Disease (PwAD) and healthy controls (HCs) based on the collected eye-movement data. The proposed model utilizes a nested autoencoder network to extract the eye-movement features from the generated fixation heatmaps and a weight adaptive network layer for the feature fusion, which can preserve as much useful information as possible for the final binary classification. To fully verify the performance of the proposed model, we also design two types of models based on traditional machine-learning and typical deep-learning for comparison. Furthermore, we have also done ablation experiments to verify the effectiveness of each module of the proposed network. Finally, these models are evaluated by four-fold cross-validation on the built eye-tracking dataset. The proposed model shows 85% average accuracy in AD recognition, outperforming machine-learning methods and other typical deep-learning networks. (shrink)

The race among global firms to launch its respective products and services into the market sooner than the competitors puts pressure to equip its employees with job-related skills at the pace of business. Today’s global and dynamic business requires employees to develop highly complex cognitive skills such as decision-making, problem-solving, troubleshooting to perform their jobs proficiently. Traditional training models used by some organizations lead to a very slow speed at which employees gain an acceptable level of proficiency in the targeted (...) job skills. Also, these models have long and regimented instructional development cycle. Thus, traditional models are inherently counter-productive to the business and do not enable employees and organizations for today’s business needs. Therefore, business organizations need to explore new training models and strategies that could reduce the time an employee takes to reach target proficiency in complex skills without compromising the effectiveness or outcome. A comprehensive review of the literature shows a very limited amount of academic or practitioner research on this topic. This doctorate research study aims to find various training strategies that have proven successful in organizations for accelerating proficiency of employees in complex job skills. The researcher collected data primarily through 74 in-depth interviews with 86 training experts with known work experience of reducing time-to-proficiency in various settings. A total of 105 project cases have been collected across 42 industries to date. A grounded theory approach with constant comparison method is used to guide the theoretical saturation, analyze the data and to develop a theoretical model of training strategies. This unique study revealed a range of training strategies from non-training solutions to classroom instructions to workplace training to accelerate proficiency of employees in acquiring complex skills. This paper will specifically report the preliminary findings and conceptual model of major classroom-based instructional strategies only that has been found to hold the potential to shorten time-to-proficiency of employees at the workplace. This paper will also discuss the implications of the findings for the practitioners. Results in this study confirmed that classroom-based instructional strategies need to be designed and delivered the way the work is being performed in reality by the learners. Research findings suggest a pattern of five classroom-based instructional strategies that are more successful in reducing time-to-proficiency - 1) Contextualized learning 2) Performance analysis of star performer 3) Active processing and emotional involvement 4) Access to self-guided learning resources 5) Social interconnectivity and informal learning. (shrink)

Humans regularly pursue activities characterized by dramatic success or failure outcomes where, critically, the chances of success depend on the time invested working toward it. How should people allocate time between such make‐or‐break challenges and safe alternatives, where rewards are more predictable (e.g., linear) functions of performance? We present a formal framework for studying time allocation between these two types of activities, and we explore optimal behavior in both one‐shot and dynamic versions of the problem. In the one‐shot version, we (...) illustrate striking discontinuities in the optimal time allocation policy as we gradually change the parameters of the decision‐making problem. In the dynamic version, we formulate the optimal strategy—defined by a giving‐up threshold—which adaptively dictates when people should stop pursuing the make‐or‐break goal. We then show that this strategy is computationally inaccessible for humans, and we explore boundedly rational alternatives. We compare the performance of the optimal model against (a) a myopic giving‐up threshold that is easier to compute, and even simpler heuristic strategies that either (b) only decide whether or not to start pursuing the goal and never give up or (c) consider giving up at a fixed number of control points. Comparing strategies across environments, we investigate the cost and behavioral implications of sidestepping the computational burden of full rationality. (shrink)

Two types of guanxi have a close association with auditor independence in China: firm-level connections derived from state ownership and personal connections developed through management affiliations with external auditors. This article examines the effects of these two types of connection and their joint effect on audit quality. We find that state ownership and management affiliations with the external auditor both increase the probability of receiving a clean audit opinion in China. Furthermore, the probability increment brought by management affiliations for non-state-owned (...) enterprises (NSOEs) is greater than that for state-owned enterprises (SOEs). These results suggest that state ownership and management affiliations are two important types of connection that impair auditor independence, and that management affiliations are of greater importance to private-sector firms than to SOEs. (shrink)

本书对自组织理论进行综合性研究,并探讨了关于自然界自组织演化的自然图景和自然观,关于自然科学自组织演化的科学图景和科学观。.

EDITOR’S ABSTRACTIn this article, Huang stresses the important role played by the Chinese cultural context in the historical process of translation of Western concepts. Huang exemplifies this point through an analysis of Yan Fu’s translation of “individualism.”.

Developing World Bioethics, Volume 22, Issue 3, Page 170-178, September 2022.

The masked priming paradigm has been extensively used to investigate the indirect impacts of unconscious stimuli on conscious behaviors, and the congruency effect of priming on free choices has gained increasing attention. Free choices allow participants to voluntarily choose a response from multiple options during each trial. While repeated practice is known to increase priming effects in subliminal visual tasks, whether practice increases the priming effect of free choices in the masked priming paradigm is unclear. And it is also not (...) clear how the proportions of free choice and forced choice trials in one block will affect the free choice masked priming effect. The present study applied repeated practice in the masked priming paradigm and found that after training, the participants were more likely to be influenced by masked primes during free choice, but this training process did not alter the visibility of masked stimuli. In addition, this study revealed that when the proportions of free choice and forced choice trials were equal during the training stage, this enhanced effect by practice was the strongest. These results indicated that practice could enhance masked stimulus processing in free-choice, and that the learning effect may mainly be derived from the early selection and integrated processing of masked stimuli. (shrink)

Scientific papers written as dialogues evoke Platonist philosophical discourses and are foreseen as elementary forms of expression in neoclassical scientific renaissance. Here we report on a study of the Brazil nut effect in a series of macroscopic and microscopic systems in the form of a play in three acts. The nut effect predicting the segregation of smaller grains at the bottom of the mixture and larger ones at the top was observed in a polydisperse mix of manually shaken playground pebbles, (...) albeit following different kinetics than in an agitated pile of chess pieces. Common sense predicts that vertical, gravity-driven segregation in colloidal dispersions with heterogeneous particle size distributions is such that larger particles would settle toward the bottom and the lighter ones cream at the top. Here we refute this expectation and demonstrate that segregation of colloidal particles in the vertical direction conforms to the Brazil nut effect when the agitation is delivered in the forms of vortex mixing or audio vibration, but not when the colloids are manually shaken. The effect is demonstrated on aqueous dispersions of hydroxyapatite and iron oxide nanoparticles. Kinetic experiments showed that segregation increases with the agitation time in mixtures of pebbles and with the post-agitation aging time in fine particle colloids. The particle size gradient established due to agitation-induced segregation led to a corresponding gradient in optoelectronic properties—band gap, conductivity, lattice acoustics—in the vertical direction of the colloidal column for both types of nanoparticles. Such morphological gradients induced by the Brazil nut effect can be harnessed as affordable and facile templates for the synthesis of functionally gradient materials. Discussion of the mechanism and the application potential of the observed effect in colloidal and coarse systems is enriched with a literature review of this curious effect and entwined with the literary elements of the dramaturgical narrative involving a family of scientist in exile from mainstream scientific institutions: the mother, the father, an elementary school boy and a kindergarten girl. The narrative conforms in its structure to the shape of a Brazil nut and presents the first research study whose findings are enacted through a dream. The play questions the humaneness and creative prospects of modern science and celebrates children’s science projects performed with meager resources and a plentiful of imagination, showing that they could be gateways to important scientific discoveries. (shrink)

Given the colexification of perception and cognition, Georgakopoulos et al. (2022. Universal and macro-areal patterns in the lexicon: A case-study in the perception-cognition domain. Linguistic Typology 26(2). 439–487) claim that uncontrolled experience rather than controlled activity has a direct linkage to cognition. To test whether this is a universal tendency, this study conducts a contrastive behavioral profile analysis of two basic vision verbs in Mandarin: kàn, a controlled activity verb, and jiàn, an uncontrolled experience verb. The results show that (i) (...) both kàn and jiàn colexify visual activity and cognitive senses; (ii) kàn is able to express a wider range of cognitive meanings, i.e., know, understand, and think, whereas jiàn only extends into know; and (iii) visual and cognitive meanings have more proximal relationships in the colexification pattern of kàn than that of jiàn. The study confirms the universality of the colexification between vision and cognition while providing counterexamples to the above-mentioned large data-based findings. Accordingly, a dichotomy of controlled activity versus uncontrolled experience is proposed for the colexification of vision and cognition in cognitive typology. (shrink)

Globalization consists of global interculture strengthening local cultures as it depends on them. Globality and locality are interdependent, and “universal” must be replaced by “inter-versal” as existence inter-exists. Chinese thinking thus must be Chinese, not Western, as Western thinking must be Western, not “universal”; China must help the West be Western, as the West must help China be Chinese. As Mrs. Tu speaks English in Chinese syntax, so “sinologists” logicize in Chinese phrases. English speakers parse her to realize the distinctness (...) of English; Chinese thinkers parse Western “sinologists” to realize the distinctness of China. Inter-versal parsing toward cultural inter-enrichment occurs in three stages. This is intercultural globalization. (shrink)

Say that an incomplete d.r.e. degree has almost universal cupping property, if it cups all the r.e. degrees not below it to 0′. In this paper, we construct such a degree d, with all the r.e. degrees not cupping d to 0′ bounded by some r.e. degree strictly below d. The construction itself is an interesting 0″′ argument and this new structural property can be used to study final segments of various degree structures in the Ershov hierarchy.

An esssential work of this enigmatic sage, draws from the ancient traditions of Buddhism, Taosim, and Advaita Vedanta.

In this review of Eric Schwitzgebel's "Perplexities of Consciousness", we discuss the book's arguments in light of the role of attention in introspection.

In 2022, the renowned historian Katja Guenther published “The Mirror and the Mind: A History of Self-Recognition in the Human Sciences.” Throughout the entirety of the book, Guenther meticulously t...

Marketers are increasingly relying on promotional practices (variously labeled as stealth marketing, hybrid messages, covert advertising) based on the diffusion of product information by third parties that appear to be independent of advertisers. In this paper, we examine to what extent the media treat their advertisers favorably, providing these advertisers’ products extra visibility in supposedly neutral editorial content. Empirically, we model the determinant of media coverage of Italian fashion products in an extended dataset of consumer magazines in Italy, France, Germany, (...) UK, and the USA. Research findings show that advertising is an important determinant of product placements in editorial content, and this result is consistent across countries and publishers. Our results imply that resource-rich advertisers engaging in compensatory advertising (that is, advertising investments that compensate poor product quality) might bias media coverage in their favor. Consumers will consequently be exposed twice to favorable messages about those products, in both advertisements and media content, resulting in higher purchases and reduced consumer welfare. (shrink)

Entrepreneurship and its influence on the development of the economy are significant in competitive global advancement. Entrepreneurs need entrepreneurial intentions to improve the commercial environment of the country. Therefore, studying entrepreneurial intentions’ influencing predictors is vital for business development. We collected data from small and medium-sized enterprises employees of the developing country and used partial least square structured equation modeling to analyze the proposed relationships. The results assist the literature extension and practically contribute to developing entrepreneurs’ intentions through education and (...) opportunity recognition. The findings aid the institutions in improving course planning and establishing practical business setups. This study facilitates the government’s ideas of commencing entrepreneurial businesses through proper resource provisions for the entrepreneurs. (shrink)