Background:When the contagious COVID-19 spread worldwide, the frontline staff faced unprecedented excessive work pressure and expectations of all of the society.Objective:The aim was to explore healthcare workers’ stress and influencing factors when caring for COVID-19 patients from an altruistic perspective.Methods:A cross-sectional, descriptive study was conducted in a tertiary hospital during the outbreak of COVID-19 between February and March 2020 in Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei province in China. Data were collected from 1208 healthcare workers. Descriptive statistics and multiple linear (...) regression were used to analyze the data.Ethical considerations:Research ethics approval (with the code of TJ-IRB20200379) was obtained from Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College of Huazhong University of Science and Technology. Written informed consent was also received from participants.Results:Less than 60% of participants chose moderate or severe stress on all stressors, indicating a low stress level among healthcare workers. The main source of stress among frontline healthcare workers caring for COVID-19 patients came from the fear of being infected, the fear of family members being infected, and the discomfort caused by protective equipment. Frontline staff who were nurses, were married, and had worked more than 20 days suffered higher stress, whereas rescue staff showed lower stress.Conclusion:The healthcare workers caring for patients with COVID-19 had low stress level, although they still had the fear of being infected or uncomfortable feeling caused by personal protective equipment. A low stress level among healthcare workers indicated their professional devotion and altruism during COVID-19 epidemic. Medical institutions and the government should continue to strengthen infection prevention measures and provide more comprehensive care involving families of frontline healthcare workers, especially nurses and married staff. It will be a lesson to other countries that awaking healthcare workers’ inside motivation and providing necessary support from government and society were significant. (shrink)

The validity of Husserl’s early apprehension/content of apprehension schema (_Auffassung/Auffassungsinhalt Schema_) of intentionality has long been a subject of dispute. In the case of phantasy (_Phantasie_), commentators often assert that the talk of “non-intentional content,” i.e. the phantasm, is abandoned in Husserl’s mature phenomenology of phantasy, and his subsequent theory of reproductive consciousness aims precisely to replace the previous schema. Against the current dismissive stance in the literature, this paper argues for the centrality of the concept of phantasm in the (...) phenomenology of phantasy. This is achieved in three steps. First, I argue for a functional interpretation of the schema, which maintains that it is not an empirical-genetic account of how non-intentional “sense-data” is transformed into presentations of intentional objects, but a structural exposition of the essential moments of objectifying consciousness. Second, I revisit Husserl’s theory of reproductive consciousness, arguing that in reproduction, what is reproduced is not only the noetic experience but also the hyletic substrate. Hence, the theory of reproductive consciousness, far from calling for an abandonment of the concept of phantasm, instead clarifies this concept and its function in phantasy. To fortify the point that the phantasm is crucial for the phenomenology of phantasy, I examine two features of phantasy, namely the perspectivalness of phantasized objects and the experience of my phantasy Ego being the “zero point of orientation” in phantasy, arguing that these two essential features can only be accounted for by appealing to the concept of phantasm. (shrink)

Recent studies have found abnormal levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor in a variety of central nervous system diseases. This suggests that BDNF may be involved in the pathogenesis of these diseases. Moreover, regulating BDNF signaling may represent a potential treatment for such diseases. With reference to recent research papers in related fields, this article reviews the production and regulation of BDNF in CNS and the role of BDNF signaling disorders in these diseases. A brief introduction of the clinical application status (...) of BDNF is also provided. (shrink)

PurposeThe primary angle-closure glaucoma is an irreversible blinding eye disease in the world. Previous neuroimaging studies demonstrated that PACG patients were associated with cerebral changes. However, the effect of optic atrophy on local and remote brain functional connectivity in PACG patients remains unknown.Materials and MethodsIn total, 23 patients with PACG and 23 well-matched Health Controls were enrolled in our study and underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning. The regional homogeneity method and functional connectivity method were used to evaluate the (...) local and remote brain functional connectivity. Moreover, support vector machine method was applied to constructing PACG classification model.ResultsCompared with the HC, PACG patients showed increased ReHo values in right cerebellum _8, left CER_4-5, and right CER_8. In contrast, PACG patients showed decreased ReHo values in the bilateral lingual gyrus /calcarine /superior occipital gyrus and right postcentral gyrus. The ReHo value exhibited an accuracy of 91.30% and area under curve of 0.95 for distinguishing the PACG patients from HC.ConclusionOur study demonstrated that the PACG patients showed abnormal ReHo value in the cerebellum, visual cortex, and supplementary motor area, which might be reflect the neurological mechanisms underlying vision loss and eye pain in PACG patients. Moreover, the ReHo values can be used as a useful biomarker for distinguishing the PACG patients from HCs. (shrink)

The psychological impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on college students is an important topic. With the entry of the post-epidemic era, how universities can better improve students’ psychological resilience in teaching is the research topic of this article. In the form of a questionnaire survey, some entrepreneurial college students investigated the loneliness and psychological resilience of college students after the outbreak of the epidemic and explored the role of self-efficacy in it. The data is collected online through cooperation with an (...) entrepreneurial event, and the participating students are asked for background information such as colleges, grade, and majors. After collecting this information, they answered a series of simplified scale questions about loneliness, self-efficacy, and psychological resilience. In the end, a total of 200 questionnaires from different universities were collected, and the structural equation model was used to explore the role of self-efficacy. The results show that: loneliness has a significant negative effect on Self-efficacy, β = -0.292, p < 0.001; Self-efficacy has a significant positive effect on psychological resilience, β = 0.556, p < 0.0 01; loneliness has a significant negative effect on psychological resilience, β = -0.244, p < 0.01. Self-Efficacy has a significant intermediate effect in loneliness and psychological resilience, with an effective value of -0.111 and p < 0.01. The results show that this exploratory survey finds it important to provide targeted personal self-efficacy improvement activities for college students with a strong sense of loneliness and to combine school and family education organically to help college students form a healthy and upward mentality to better cope with the unknown and troubles caused by the epidemic, which will help improve the psychological resilience of college students in the epidemic. (shrink)

ObjectiveRetinal vein occlusion (RVO) is the second most common retinal vascular disorder after diabetic retinopathy, which is the main cause of vision loss. Retinal vein occlusion might lead to macular edema, causing severe vision loss. Previous neuroimaging studies of patients with RVO demonstrated that RVO was accompanied by cerebral changes, and was related to stroke. The purpose of the study is to investigate synchronous neural activity changes in patients with RVO.MethodsA total of 50 patients with RVO and 48 healthy subjects (...) with matched sex, age, and education were enrolled in the study. The ReHo method was applied to investigate synchronous neural activity changes in patients with RVO.ResultsCompared with HC, patients with RVO showed increased ReHo values in the bilateral cerebellum_4_5. On the contrary, patients with RVO had decreased ReHo values in the bilateral middle occipital gyrus, right cerebelum_crus1, and right inferior temporal gyrus.ConclusionOur study demonstrated that patients with RVO were associated with abnormal synchronous neural activities in the cerebellum, middle occipital gyrus, and inferior temporal gyrus. These findings shed new insight into neural mechanisms of vision loss in patients with RVO. (shrink)

COVID-19 often manifests with different outcomes in different patients, highlighting the complexity of the host-pathogen interactions involved in manifestations of the disease at the molecular and cellular levels. In this paper, we propose a set of postulates and a framework for systematically understanding complex molecular host-pathogen interaction networks. Specifically, we first propose four host-pathogen interaction (HPI) postulates as the basis for understanding molecular and cellular host-pathogen interactions and their relations to disease outcomes. These four postulates cover the evolutionary dispositions involved (...) in HPIs, the dynamic nature of HPI outcomes, roles that HPI components may occupy leading to such outcomes, and HPI checkpoints that are critical for specific disease outcomes. Based on these postulates, an HPI Postulate and Ontology (HPIPO) framework is proposed to apply interoperable ontologies to systematically model and represent various granular details and knowledge within the scope of the HPI postulates, in a way that will support AI-ready data standardization, sharing, integration, and analysis. As a demonstration, the HPI postulates and the HPIPO framework were applied to study COVID-19 with the Coronavirus Infectious Disease Ontology (CIDO), leading to a novel approach to rational design of drug/vaccine cocktails aimed at interrupting processes occurring at critical host-coronavirus interaction checkpoints. Furthermore, the host-coronavirus protein-protein interactions (PPIs) relevant to COVID-19 were predicted and evaluated based on prior knowledge of curated PPIs and domain-domain interactions, and how such studies can be further explored with the HPI postulates and the HPIPO framework is discussed. (shrink)

Greenway is a kind of corridors in the city that takes natural elements as the main constituent foundation and connects open spaces with functions such as leisure and recreation. The assessment of the built greenway is a review of the past construction experiences, and it is also a supplement and improvement to the future greenway planning concept system, which has important academic and application value. This study will explore how greenway design factors influenced the local cyclists’ perception of the landscape (...) using on-site questionnaire and photo rating method. The results indicated that greenways with continuous cycling paths, high security awareness, open landscapes, and rich human activities evoke positive perceptions. Among the visual elements, natural elements such as plants and sky are more favorable than artificial elements. The research results show that the formation of greenway cyclists’ landscape imagery is affected by visual perception elements, which suggests that special consideration should be given to the laws of cyclists’ mental perception when designing greenways. (shrink)

Background: Healthcare professionals follow codes of ethics, making them responsible for providing holistic care to all disaster victims. However, this often results in ethical dilemmas due to the need to provide rapid critical care while simultaneously attending to a complex spectrum of patient needs. These dilemmas can cause negative emotions to accumulate over time and impact physiological and psychological health, which can also threaten nurse–patient relationships. Aim: This study aimed to understand the experience of nurses who cared for burn victims (...) of the color-dust explosion and the meaning of ethical relationships between nurse and patient. Research design: A qualitative descriptive study using a phenomenological approach. Participants and research context: Clinical nurses who provided care to the patients of the Formosa color-dust explosion of 2015 were selected by purposive sampling from a medical center in Taiwan. Data were collected using individual in-depth semi-structured interviews. Audiotaped interviews were transcribed and analyzed using Colaizzi’s method. Ethical considerations: This study was approved by the institutional review board of the study hospital. All participants provided written informed consent. Findings Three main themes described the essence of the ethical dilemmas experienced by nurses who cared for the burn-injured patients: the calling must be answered, the calling provoked my feelings, and the calling called out my strengths. Conclusions: Healthcare providers should recognize that nurses believed they had an ethical responsibility to care for color-dust explosion burn victims. Understanding the feelings of nurses during the care of patients and encouraging them to differentiate between the self and the other by fostering patient–nurse relationships based on intersubjectivity could help nurses increase self-care and improve patient caregiving. (shrink)

ObjectiveThis study aims to investigate the effectiveness of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy combined with medication therapy in preventing the recurrence of major depressive disorder in convalescent patients.MethodsA total of 130 patients with convalescent MDD were enrolled in this prospective study. Sixty-five patients were assigned to the experimental group and received medication therapy combined with MBCT, and 65 patients were assigned to the control group and treated with medication alone. The recurrence rate and related hormonal changes were compared between the two groups.ResultsAfter (...) 1 year of MBCT intervention, eight patients experienced recurrence in the experimental group, a recurrence rate of 12.31%, and 19 patients experienced recurrence in the control group, a recurrence rate of 29.23%. The Hamilton Depression Rating Scale and the World Health Organization Quality of Life Scale scores in both the experimental and the control groups were significantly improved after treatment. The difference in the HAM-D scores before and after treatment in the experimental group was 16.74 ± 4.54; this was significantly higher than that of the control group. The WHOQOL-BREF scores in the experimental group were significantly improved compared with those of the control group. The differences in the levels of corticotrophin-releasing hormone, adrenocorticotropic hormone, and cortisol before and after treatment in the experimental group and the control group were statistically significant. The difference in CRH before and after treatment in the experimental group was 16.8 ± 7.2, which was higher than that of the control group. The intervention with MBCT had a significant impact on the recurrence of MDD [β = 1.206, P = 0.039, 95% CI = 0.0790–1.229]. The difference in the HAM-D scores also had a significant impact on the recurrence of MDD.ConclusionCompared with medication therapy alone, the use of MBCT combined with medication therapy can effectively prevent the recurrence of MDD in convalescent patients. (shrink)

The current COVID-19 pandemic and the previous SARS/MERS outbreaks of 2003 and 2012 have resulted in a series of major global public health crises. We argue that in the interest of developing effective and safe vaccines and drugs and to better understand coronaviruses and associated disease mechenisms it is necessary to integrate the large and exponentially growing body of heterogeneous coronavirus data. Ontologies play an important role in standard-based knowledge and data representation, integration, sharing, and analysis. Accordingly, we initiated the (...) development of the community-based Coronavirus Infectious Disease Ontology in early 2020. -/- As an Open Biomedical Ontology (OBO) library ontology, CIDO is open source and interoperable with other existing OBO ontologies. CIDO is aligned with the Basic Formal Ontology and Viral Infectious Disease Ontology. CIDO has imported terms from over 30 OBO ontologies. For example, CIDO imports all SARS-CoV-2 protein terms from the Protein Ontology, COVID-19-related phenotype terms from the Human Phenotype Ontology, and over 100 COVID-19 terms for vaccines (both authorized and in clinical trial) from the Vaccine Ontology. CIDO systematically represents variants of SARS-CoV-2 viruses and over 300 amino acid substitutions therein, along with over 300 diagnostic kits and methods. CIDO also describes hundreds of host-coronavirus protein-protein interactions (PPIs) and the drugs that target proteins in these PPIs. CIDO has been used to model COVID-19 related phenomena in areas such as epidemiology. The scope of CIDO was evaluated by visual analysis supported by a summarization network method. CIDO has been used in various applications such as term standardization, inference, natural language processing (NLP) and clinical data integration. We have applied the amino acid variant knowledge present in CIDO to analyze differences between SARS-CoV-2 Delta and Omicron variants. CIDO's integrative host-coronavirus PPIs and drug-target knowledge has also been used to support drug repurposing for COVID-19 treatment. -/- CIDO represents entities and relations in the domain of coronavirus diseases with a special focus on COVID-19. It supports shared knowledge representation, data and metadata standardization and integration, and has been used in a range of applications. (shrink)

This study examines Nǐ yìsi shì X ‘Your Meaning is X’ as a practice of doing other-initiation in Mandarin conversations, focusing on how it addresses different sources of troubles systematically in informing sequences. It is found that while ‘Nǐ yìsi shì’ signals the speaker’s having trouble with the prior informing turn, ‘X’ is deployed to locate different aspects of the trouble source, being shaped by how an informing emerges in talk-in-interaction. Specifically, when following a volunteered informing, ‘X’ is usually built (...) to clarify specific words or phrases in preceding informing, thereby treating a certain element as underspecified or ambiguous. However, when following a question-solicited informing, ‘X’ is typically constructed to work out what the provided information exactly conveys, indicating the whole informing turn/action is in some way problematic, inappropriate, or inapposite. In both cases, ‘Nǐ yìsi shì X’ serves as an OI, working to target different kinds of the trouble source, and simultaneously proposes a potential solution to it. (shrink)

A scientific paper’s citation represents its influence, which is the most intuitive indicator to access the quality of papers. This paper mainly adopts the social network analysis method, using the authors and the keywords of sports industry papers in China to constitute the networks of collaboration and knowledge, to explore effects of the degree centrality of authors and keywords and the structural hole of authors and keywords on the citation of papers in the collaboration and knowledge networks and draw the (...) following conclusions: as for collaboration networks, the degree centrality at the paper level is positively correlated with citations; in the collaboration network, the positive correlation between the structural hole at the paper level and citations does not exist; within knowledge networks, an inverted- U shape was found between degree centrality and paper’s citation; and within knowledge networks, a positive correlation is in existence between the structural hole of papers and their citation. This study synthesizes the already widely used collaboration network with the knowledge network constructed through keywords, distinguishes from the previous network features focusing at the author level, and explores research projects of Chinese Sports Industry from the paper level, providing a new perspective for the research of sports industry in China, complementing the methods and ideas of sports industry research, as well as providing a reference for the research in other disciplinary fields. (shrink)

Parental participation has gained significant attention in environmental psychology, which has revealed a need for an instrument that can measure parental participation with children regarding environmental issues. The present study met this need by validating the parental participation in the environment scale. This process began with 45 Chinese parents participating in an individual interview and group discussions, which helped generate a list of eighteen parent-child environmental activities. The activities were then modified and validated in the current study with a diverse (...) group of 969 parents recruited from six major Chinese cities. Both score structure evidence and generalizability evidence were obtained within this sample, and psychometric tests suggested a single factor construct with nine items. Once the PPE scale was revised, it showed measurement invariance across the parent who responded to the items, across the child’s primary caregiver, across the family’s living region, as well as across the family’s income group. Finally, evidence based on relations to other variables showed a relationship among parents’ PPE, pro-environmental behavior, and connectedness with nature. As a result, the study provided a novel measure to assess pro-environmental socialization via parental participation. (shrink)

Current COVID-19 pandemic and previous SARS/MERS outbreaks have caused a series of major crises to global public health. We must integrate the large and exponentially growing amount of heterogeneous coronavirus data to better understand coronaviruses and associated disease mechanisms, in the interest of developing effective and safe vaccines and drugs. Ontologies have emerged to play an important role in standard knowledge and data representation, integration, sharing, and analysis. We have initiated the development of the community-based Coronavirus Infectious Disease Ontology (CIDO). (...) As an Open Biomedical Ontology (OBO) library ontology, CIDO is an open source and interoperable with other existing OBO ontologies. In this article, the general architecture and the design patterns of the CIDO are introduced, CIDO representation of coronaviruses, phenotypes, anti-coronavirus drugs and medical devices (e.g. ventilators) are illustrated, and an application of CIDO implemented to identify repurposable drug candidates for effective and safe COVID-19 treatment is presented. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose a method to design the pseudorandom number generator using three kinds of four-wing memristive hyperchaotic systems with different dimensions as multientropy sources. The principle of this method is to obtain pseudorandom numbers with good randomness by coupling XOR operation on the three kinds of FWMHSs with different dimensions. In order to prove its potential application in secure communication, the security of PRNG based on this scheme is analyzed from the perspective of cryptography. In addition, PRNG (...) has passed the NIST 800.22 and ENT test, which shows that PRNG has good statistical characteristics. Finally, an image encryption algorithm based on PRNG is adopted. In the encryption algorithm, the optimized Arnold matrix scrambling method and the diffusion processing based on XOR are used to obtain the final encrypted image. Through the evaluation of encryption performance, it is concluded that there is no direct relationship between the pristine image and encrypted image. The results show that the proposed image encryption scheme has good statistical output characteristics and security performance in line with cryptography. (shrink)

Ethics is central to leadership because of the impact leaders have on establishing organizational values and engaging followers to accomplish mutual goals. The ethical concerns of leaders may influence ethical decision-making of their followers. This paper attempts to investigate the relationship between leaders and followers on moral judgment, and make a comparison between China and Taiwan on the leader–follower moral judgment relationship. Data were collected through a questionnaire survey on purchasing professionals in China and Taiwan. The development of moral judgment (...) was measured using the defining issues test. Research findings indicate that followers exhibit higher level of moral judgment while their leaders have higher level of moral judgment. A positive moral judgment relationship exists between leaders and followers. The comparative study between China and Taiwan reveals that Chinese purchasing professionals are more easily influenced by their workplace leaders than their Taiwanese counterparts. Power distance would strengthen the leader–follower moral judgment relationship. The present research makes contributions toward the ethics literature by providing empirical insight into the relationship between leader moral judgment and follower moral judgment. This paper also suggests implications and opportunities for future research. (shrink)

Three experiments were conducted to test whether watching an animated show with frequent fantastical events decreased Chinese preschoolers’ post-viewing executive function, and to test possible mechanisms of this effect. In all three experiments, children were randomly assigned to watch a video with either frequent or infrequent fantastical events; their EF was immediately assessed after viewing, using behavioral measures of working memory, sustained attention, and cognitive flexibility. Parents completed a questionnaire to assess preschoolers’ hyperactivity level as a potential confounding variable. In (...) Experiment 1, which also included a control group, there was an immediate negative effect of watching frequent fantastical events, as seen in lower scores on the behavioral EF tasks. In Experiment 2, eye tracking data showed more but shorter eye fixations in the high frequency group, suggesting a higher demand on cognitive resources; this group also did more poorly on behavioral measures of EF. In Experiment 3, functional near-infrared spectroscopy data showed that the high frequency group had a higher concentration of oxygenated hemoglobin, an indicator of higher brain activation consistent with a greater use of cognitive resources; this group also had lower scores on the behavioral EF tasks. The findings are discussed in reference to models of limited cognitive resources. (shrink)

Background Ethical dilemmas that arise in the clinical setting often require the collaboration of multiple disciplines to be resolved. However, medical and nursing curricula do not prioritize communication among disciplines regarding this issue. A common teaching strategy, problem-based learning, could be used to enhance communication among disciplines. Therefore, a university in southern Taiwan developed an interprofessional ethics education program based on problem-based learning strategies. This study described tutors’ experience teaching in this program. Aim To explore the phenomenon of teaching and (...) learning in interprofessional ethics education for medical and nursing students from the perspectives of tutors. Design Phenomenological qualitative research. Methods Medical and nursing students completed a 6-week interprofessional ethics education program moderated by either physician or nurse tutors. At the conclusion of the ethics education program, all 14 tutors were invited to participate in focus group interviews. Among them, six tutors (three nursing tutors and three physician tutors) participated in additional individual interviews. All of the contents from the focus group interviews and individual interviews were recorded and transcribed. Using the phenomenological approach, the phenomenon of teaching and learning in interprofessional ethics education were generated. Ethical consideration The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board. Findings Three themes emerged from the tutors' teaching perspectives, including the instructor’s motivation to teach, the use of narrative case scenarios, and the emphasis on improving interprofessional ethics communication. Discussion Problem-based learning creates an interprofessional communication platform in interprofessional ethics education. The phenomenon of value convergence between tutors and students, between different students’ professions, and between different students’ professional maturities is observed. Conclusion Problem-based learning is an effective teaching strategy for creating a communication platform for interprofessional ethics education. Ethic curriculum should emphasize motivating instructor, use narrative case scenarios, and focus on interprofessional communication. (shrink)

Highlighting the fluid nature of habitus/capital, this paper critiques a ‘rucksack approach’ (Erel, 2010) in the Bourdieusian studies of Chinese migrants’ cultural reproduction and social inclusion...

Joining the ongoing academic debates around medical students’ alternative career choices, this research examines the role of family in medical school attendees’ entrepreneurial intention. Specifically, this study decomposes the multidimensionality of family embeddedness and highlights the mediated nature of the family–EI relationship. The empirical analysis relied on data from graduation year medical students from diverse geographical locations and from different institution types in China. These data were collected from a total of 687 questionnaires covering the basic information of individual, parents, (...) and family composition, as well as the measuring scale of EI. Examining medical students’ EI and its antecedents provide a dual-missing-link in the extant knowledge, i.e., it adds the medical school piece to the overall picture of university students’ EI, and equally important, it de-trivializes entrepreneurship from the extant theorizations of medical students’ career choices. This study also bears implications for educators, practitioners, and policymakers interested in better understanding EI of medical school attendees and family embeddedness. (shrink)

Education is so strongly emphasized in the Chinese culture that academic success is widely regarded as the only indicator of success, while too much physical activity is often discouraged because it drains energy and affects academic concentration. This study investigated the relations among academic achievement, self?esteem, school conduct and physical activity level. The participants were 333 Chinese pre?adolescents (aged 8?12) in Hong Kong. Examination results and conduct grades were obtained from the school records. Global self?esteem was measured with the Physical (...) self?description questionnaire (PSDQ), while physical activity patterns of the children were assessed with the Physical activity questionnaire for children (PAQ?C). Results showed that high academic achievers consistently attained better school conduct marks. However, physical activity level was quite an independent entity that was related neither to academic achievement nor school conduct. Furthermore, regression analyses showed that only academically high?achieving boys and physically active boys had higher self?esteem. (shrink)

Actuator saturation phenomenon often exists in the actual control system, which could destroy the closed-loop performance of the system and even lead to unstable behavior. Our main contribution is to provide an antiwindup recursive dynamic surface control for a discrete-time system with an unknown state and actuator saturation. The fuzzy compensator is added to perform as an active disturbance rejection term in the feedforward path to avoid windup caused by input saturation. To construct output feedback control, the system is transformed (...) into the form of pure-feedback and an improved HOSM observer is designed to carry out future output prediction. Based on which RDSC is synthesized, only one fuzzy logic system is used and the controller singularity is completely avoided. In addition, the simulation and numeral examples using a continuous stirred tank reactors system with actuator saturation are provided and the results show that the strategy owns good robustness and effectively compensates for the disturbance caused by actuator saturation in the presence of a discrete-time system with an unmeasurable state. (shrink)

How to inculcate virtue in the citizens of Magnesia by means of the dance component ofchoreiaconstitutes one of the principal concerns in theLaws(=Leg.), revealing Plato's evolving ideas about the expediency of music andpaideiafor the construction of his ideal city since theRepublic. Indeed, a steady stream of monographs and articles on theLawshas enriched our understanding of how Plato theorizes the body as a site of intervention and choral dance as instrumental in solidifying social relations and in conditioning the ethical and political (...) self. As one scholar has aptly put it: ‘a city and its sociopolitical character [are] effectively danced into existence.’ Drawing on this recent work, I focus on an enigmatic passage inLawsBook 7 that merits more attention than it has received, in which Plato curiously singles out Bacchic dances from those that are ‘without controversy’ (815b7–d4):τὴν τοίνυν ἀμφισβητουμένην ὄρχησιν δεῖ πρῶτον χωρὶς τῆς ἀναμφισβητήτου διατεμεῖν. τίς οὖν αὕτη, καὶ πῇ δεῖ χωρὶς τέμνειν ἑκατέραν; ὅση μὲν βακχεία τ᾽ ἐστὶν καὶ τῶν ταύταις ἑπομένων, ἃς Νύμφας τε καὶ Πᾶνας καὶ Σειληνοὺς καὶ Σατύρους ἐπονομάζοντες, ὥς φασιν, μιμοῦνται κατῳνωμένους, περὶ καθαρμούς τε καὶ τελετάς τινας ἀποτελούντων, σύμπαν τοῦτο τῆς ὀρχήσεως τὸ γένος οὔθ᾽ ὡς εἰρηνικὸν οὔθ᾽ ὡς πολεμικὸν οὔθ᾽ ὅτι ποτὲ βούλεται ῥᾴδιον ἀφορίσασθαι: διορίσασθαι μήν μοι ταύτῃ δοκεῖ σχεδὸν ὀρθότατον αὐτὸ εἶναι, χωρὶς μὲν πολεμικοῦ, χωρὶς δὲ εἰρηνικοῦ θέντας, εἰπεῖν ὡς οὐκ ἔστι πολιτικὸν τοῦτο τῆς ὀρχήσεως τὸ γένος, ἐνταῦθα δὲ κείμενον ἐάσαντας κεῖσθαι, νῦν ἐπὶ τὸ πολεμικὸν ἅμα καὶ εἰρηνικὸν ὡς ἀναμφισβητήτως ἡμέτερον ὂν ἐπανιέναι.So, first of all, we should separate questionable dancing far from dancing that is without controversy. Which is the controversial kind, and how are the two to be distinguished? All the dancing that is of a Bacchic kind and cultivated by those who indulge in intoxicated imitations of Nymphs, Pans, Sileni and Satyrs (as they name them), when performing certain rites of expiation and initiation—this entire class of dancing cannot easily be marked off either as pacific or as warlike, nor as of any one particular kind. The most correct way of defining it appears to me to be this—to place it away from both pacific and warlike dancing, and to pronounce that this type of dancing is οὐ πολιτικόν; having thus set aside and dismissed it, we will now return to the warlike and pacific types, which without controversy belong to us. (shrink)

This article aims to analyze the factors influencing the adoption of green practices in Chinese logistics industry. The determinant factors are composed of technological, organizational, and environmental dimensions. A questionnaire survey on the green practice adoption of Chinese logistics companies was conducted, and 322 samples were analyzed. Research results reveal that relative advantage and compatibility of green practices, organizational support, quality of human resources, regulatory pressure, and governmental support have significantly positive influences on the adoption of green practices for Chinese (...) logistics companies. Environmental uncertainty and green practice's complexity have significantly negative influences on green practice adoption. However, the influence of customer pressure is not significant for Chinese logistics companies. This article also suggests implications and opportunities for future research. (shrink)