Using listed firms in China over the period 2010–2018, we investigate the association between directors’ network and quality of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure from the lens of resource-based view. We find a significantly positive effect of directors’ network centrality on the CSR disclosure quality, and the effect is more pronounced when the firm (1) invests less in advertising; (2) is followed by less analysts; (3) is less financially constrained; and (4) has no assurance of sustainability report. Furthermore, we document (...) that independent directors’ network centrality is positively associated with CSR disclosure quality. Our findings have important implication for practitioners, policy makers, and regulators. (shrink)

Entrepreneurship plays a significant role in promoting the social and economic development of a country. At present, entrepreneurship education is widely carried out in universities and colleges in order to improve students’ entrepreneurial ability, and then to provide support for the formation of a comprehensive entrepreneurial situation. As entrepreneurship education has gradually become a hot topic of teaching for innovation and entrepreneurship education of international students, studies on the influencing mechanism of entrepreneurship education of international students in relation to their (...) entrepreneurial behavior are conducive to providing theoretical basis and empirical evidence for international students’ entrepreneurship education, so as to pertinently guide international students’ innovation and entrepreneurship practice. This study aims to explore the influence of entrepreneurship education, government support for entrepreneurship, global competence, entrepreneurial self-efficacy, and entrepreneurial intention on the entrepreneurial behavior of international students in the Republic of Korea. It summarized and drew on the results of the existing literature research. According to the contents and points of research, this study takes the international students studying in Korea as the sample and uses statistical analysis software, SPSS 22.0 and AMOS 24.0, to establish a structural equation model to conduct empirical study on the influencing mechanism of entrepreneurial behavior of international students in Korea, so as to better understand the influence of entrepreneurship education in Korean universities and colleges on entrepreneurial behavior of international students in Korea. Based on the analysis results, this study puts forward the theoretical basis for the policies related to effective management of entrepreneurship, which will help alleviate the unemployment of young people studying in Korea and the tight labor market supply and demand. (shrink)

The rapid development of Internet technology has facilitated the dissemination of information that can threaten national security and public health, and effectively controlling the process of public opinion communication is an important topic in contemporary social network research. This paper establishes an official information-controlled public opinion propagation model based on the delay, latency, and conversion of public opinion communication under the control of official information. According to the influence and importance of the network nodes, we theoretically derive the attitude conversion (...) probability of the nodes, making the model more in line with the actual situation. Through actual cases, we analyzed the important influence of official information on the public opinion communication process and provided a theoretical basis for the government and relevant departments to supervise and correctly guide the public opinion network, which has certain practical significance. (shrink)

This volume fills that gap and offers teachers in criminal justice ethics and law enforcement practitioners a rich selection of materials that have emerged in ...

The development of factor markets has opened Chinese agriculture for the penetration of capitalism. This new round of rural transformation—China’s agrarian transition— raises the agrarian question in the Chinese context. This study investigates how capitalist forms and relations of production transform agricultural production and the peasantry class in rural China. The authors identify six forms of nonpeasant agricultural production, compare the labor regimes and direct producers’ socioeconomic statuses across these forms, and evaluate the role of China’s land-rights institution in shaping (...) these forms. The empirical investigation presents three main findings: Peasant differentiation : capitalist forms of agricultural production differentiate peasants into a variety of new class positions. Market-based stratification: producers in capitalist agriculture are primarily stratified by their positions in labor and land markets; their socioeconomic statuses are linked with their varying degrees of proletarianization. Institutional mediation: rural China’s dual-track land system plays a crucial role in shaping the diverse and unique forms of capitalist production. (shrink)

Coronavirus disease 2019 can lead to respiratory failure. Some patients require extracorporeal membrane oxygenation support. During the current pandemic, health care resources in some cities have been overwhelmed, and doctors have faced complex decisions about resource allocation. We present a case in which a pediatric hospital caring for both children and adults seeks to establish guidelines for the use of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation if there are not enough resources to treat every patient. Experts in critical care, end-of-life care, bioethics, and (...) health policy discuss if age should guide rationing decisions. (shrink)

Patients with advanced Alzheimer's disease experience cognitive impairment and physical disabilities in daily life. Currently, there are no treatments available to slow down the course of the disease, and limited treatments exist only to treat symptoms. However, deep brain stimulation of the nucleus basalis of Meynert has been reported to improve cognitive function in individuals with AD. Here, we report the effects of NBM-DBS on cognitive function in a subject with severe AD. An 80-year-old male with severe AD underwent surgery (...) for bilateral NBM-DBS electrode placement. After 10 weeks of stimulation, Mini-Mental State Examination assessment improved from a score of 5 to 9 points, and assessment using the Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale–Cognitive Subscale showed a marked reduction in total score from 43 to 33 points, suggesting cognitive benefits from NBM-DBS. The patient's postoperative course was complicated by a subdural effusion that occurred several days after surgery, with complete recovery. Interestingly, the subject also displayed abnormal thermoregulation with stimulation initiation and stimulation parameter modifications. NBM-DBS may serve as a potential therapy for severe AD patients.Clinical Trial Registration: ChiCTR1900022324. (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)

Lists of species underpin many fields of human endeavour, but there are currently no universally accepted principles for deciding which biological species should be accepted when there are alternative taxonomic treatments (and, by extension, which scientific names should be applied to those species). As improvements in information technology make it easier to communicate, access, and aggregate biodiversity information, there is a need for a framework that helps taxonomists and the users of taxonomy decide which taxa and names should be used (...) by society whilst continuing to encourage taxonomic research that leads to new species discoveries, new knowledge of species relationships, and the refinement of existing species concepts. Here, we present 10 principles that can underpin such a governance framework, namely (i) the species list must be based on science and free from nontaxonomic considerations and interference, (ii) governance of the species list must aim for community support and use, (iii) all decisions about list composition must be transparent, (iv) the governance of validated lists of species is separate from the governance of the names of taxa, (v) governance of lists of accepted species must not constrain academic freedom, (vi) the set of criteria considered sufficient to recognise species boundaries may appropriately vary between different taxonomic groups but should be consistent when possible, (vii) a global list must balance conflicting needs for currency and stability by having archived versions, (viii) contributors need appropriate recognition, (ix) list content should be traceable, and (x) a global listing process needs both to encompass global diversity and to accommodate local knowledge of that diversity. We conclude by outlining issues that must be resolved if such a system of taxonomic list governance and a unified list of accepted scientific names generated are to be universally adopted. (shrink)

This study explores the impact of teachers? perception of trust in colleagues on their sense of empowerment in Mainland China, with a particular focus on the mediating role of teacher efficacy. The results of a survey of 1646 teachers indicate that although teachers scored positively on trust in colleagues, efficacy and empowerment, they had relatively lower scores on general teaching efficacy (GTE) and participation in decision-making. Trust in colleagues was a significant predictor of teacher empowerment. In addition, personal teaching efficacy (...) had a significant mediation effect on the relationship between trust in colleagues and teacher empowerment, while GTE had not. These findings lead to some implications for understanding the nature of GTE and the relationship between trust and teacher empowerment. (shrink)

The Planteome project provides a suite of reference and species-specific ontologies for plants and annotations to genes and phenotypes. Ontologies serve as common standards for semantic integration of a large and growing corpus of plant genomics, phenomics and genetics data. The reference ontologies include the Plant Ontology, Plant Trait Ontology, and the Plant Experimental Conditions Ontology developed by the Planteome project, along with the Gene Ontology, Chemical Entities of Biological Interest, Phenotype and Attribute Ontology, and others. The project also provides (...) access to species-specific Crop Ontologies developed by various plant breeding and research communities from around the world. We provide integrated data on plant traits, phenotypes, and gene function and expression from 95 plant taxa, annotated with reference ontology terms. (shrink)

Although there are various studies comparing Greek and Indian philosophy and religion, and Chinese and Western philosophy and religion, Brahman and Dao: Comparatives Studies in Indian and Chinese Philosophy and Religion is a first of its kind that brings together Indian and Chinese philosophies and religions. Brahman and Dao helps close the gap on a much needed examination on the rich history of Buddhist transmission to China, and the many generations of Indian Buddhist missionaries to China and Chinese Buddhist pilgrims (...) to India, including the legendary Bodhidharma, and Faxian and Xuanzang. (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)

Comparative Political Theory and Cross-Cultural Philosophy explores new forms of philosophizing in the age of globalization by challenging the conventional border between the East and the West, as well as the traditional boundaries among different academic disciplines. This rich investigation demonstrates the importance of cross-cultural thinking in our reading of philosophical texts and explores how cross-cultural thinking transforms our understanding of the traditional philosophical paradigm.

John Rawls assumes that in the original position, under the veil of ignorance, after bargaining amongst each other, free, equal, moral and rational persons would make a rational decision to accept the principles of justice as fairness and thus the principles are established. Critics, however, question the authenticity and validity of this justification strategy. When rational individuals take the principles of justice as an original agreement, it is not a real contract. Rawls’s conception of justice as fairness is just (...) a personal notion, some individuals may accept it, but it is impossible to be accepted by all human beings in a real world. Therefore there is a justification/acceptance paradox of those principles which are the core of his political philosophy. So how should we justify those principles? Its answers may be provided not in the light of a philosophical justification but of a scientific one. (shrink)

John Rawls assumes that in the original position, under the veil of ignorance, after bargaining amongst each other, free, equal, moral and rational persons would make a rational decision to accept the principles of justice as fairness and thus the principles are established. Critics, however, question the authenticity and validity of this justification strategy. When rational individuals take the principles of justice as an original agreement, it is not a real contract. Rawls’s conception of justice as fairness is just (...) a personal notion, some individuals may accept it, but it is impossible to be accepted by all human beings in a real world. Therefore there is a justification/acceptance paradox of those principles which are the core of his political philosophy. So how should we justify those principles? Its answers may be provided not in the light of a philosophical justification but of a scientific one. (shrink)

© 2015, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.Genetic studies have identified single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with the risk of prostate cancer. It remains unclear whether such genetic variants are associated with disease aggressiveness. The NCI-SPORE Genetics Working Group retrospectively collected clinicopathologic information and genotype data for 36 SNPs which at the time had been validated to be associated with PC risk from 25,674 cases with PC. Cases were grouped according to race, Gleason score and aggressiveness. Statistical analyses were used to compare the frequency (...) of the SNPs between different disease cohorts. After adjusting for multiple testing, only PC-risk SNP rs2735839 was significantly and inversely associated with aggressive and high-grade disease in European men. Similar associations with aggressive and high-grade disease were documented in African-American subjects. The G allele of rs2735839 was associated with disease aggressiveness even at low PSA levels in both European and African-American men. Our results provide further support that a PC-risk SNP rs2735839 near the KLK3 gene on chromosome 19q13 may be associated with aggressive and high-grade PC. Future prospectively designed, case-case GWAS are needed to identify additional SNPs associated with PC aggressiveness. (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)

One important element of globalization is the dissemination of western educational ideals and organizational frameworks through educational development projects. While postcolonial theory has long offered a useful critique of this expansion, it is less clear about how educational development that eschews neo-imperialist tendencies might proceed. This problem poses a question that requires philosophical reflection. However, much of comparative and international development education ignores philosophical modes of inquiry. Moreover, as Libbrecht (2007) argues, philosophy all too often sees itself as synonymous with (...) the Euro-American intellectual tradition, thus ignoring indigenous educational thought that might more appropriately guide local educational development. Drawing on John Dewey's (1938) call for deeper and more inclusive plans of operations in response to social conflicts and Jurgen Habermas (2008) call for ?reciprocal learning processes? and ?cooperative acts of translation,? we will attempt to reach beyond our individual philosophical borders to explore the necessity and possibilities of comparative philosophy of education by sharing three examples of our current efforts to apply philosophical analysis to international educational development. These examples will articulate and embody the necessity and the challenges of applying philosophical analysis to educational development work. (shrink)

By critically reviewing the event of Dewey’s visit to China through historical, philosophical and comparative perspectives, this book finds new value to revive the dialogue between Dewey and Eastern philosophies as a way to respond to contemporary educational challenges.

This book addresses an often-ignored theme in the mission of the current Chinese education reform: cultivating students’ individuality as a foundation of learning. Moreover, it tries to revive the Confucian tradition of self-cultivation while building a connection with the western idea of individuality to provide a meaningful resource for the current reform of Chinese education.

In his 1934 book Art as Experience John Dewey explores the relationship between human experience and art. His theory builds on the conception of experience inspired by Darwinian biology as the dyna...

While much emphasis is placed on the need to improve critical thinking (CT) among college students (Abrami, Bernard, Borokhovski, Wade, Surkes, Tamim, & Zhang, 2008, p. 1102), few studies describe precise methodologies for doing so (Behar-Horenstein & Niu, 2011, p. 36) and even fewer identify improvements in CT dispositions as a desired course outcome (Perkins, Tishman, Ritchhart, Donis, & Andrade, 2000, p. 288). This study attempts to fill a gap in the studies of CT methodologies aimed at improving CT (...) dispositions. In this study, 78 community college students enrolled in a CT course that emphasized targeted CT interventional strategies. The students took the California Critical Thinking Dispositions Inventory (CCTDI) as a pre-test and as a post-test. Results indicate that the targeted instruction significantly influenced overall scores, as well as four of the seven subscale categories. (shrink)

In this paper, high school graduation exam around Marx's religious writing paper, the value of the text, which reflects the analysis of the ideological structure of the young author, also introduced and reviewed the domestic academic research for this article some of the new progress, the last of the Chinese translation of this article made ​​a number of questionable advice. The present writing consists of notes on Karl Marx's gymnasium examination paper interpreting John 15: 1-14. That exegetical work maintains (...) the value of its own, reflecting some traits in the young Marx's thinking. Some recent efforts made by Chinese scholars on this text have been reviewed and noted with comments. Critiques on the text's two translations available in Chinese against the German and English versions bring the writing to the conclusion. (shrink)

Volume 17, Issue 1, February 2020, Page 130-132.

This volume includes nineteen articles by scholars from Asia, North America, and Europe on Chinese thinkers from the eleventh to the eighteenth centuries. Included here are intellectual biographies of literati such as Zhou Dunyi, the Cheng brothers, Zhu Xi, Zhang Shi, Hu Hong, Wang Yangming, and Dai Zhen. Essays are arranged chronologically, and most begin with a biographical sketch of their subject. They provide variety rather than uniformity of approach, but all in all these essays are remarkably rich and (...) offer much new material on both familiar and lesser-known thinkers. (shrink)

This article assumes that a profession is a number of individuals in the same occupation voluntarily organized to earn a living by openly serving a moral ideal in a morally-permissible way beyond what law, market, morality, and public opinion would otherwise require. Our question is whether the concept of profession may have a far wider range than the term, so that, for example, pointing out that a certain language lacks a word for “profession” in our sense, is not enough to (...) show that those who speak the language also lack the concept. We believe the survey of 71 Chinese reported here begins to answer that question. This article has four parts. The first describes who was interviewed, how, when, and so on. The second describes some important features of the survey’s questions, explaining how the questions track the concept of profession. The third part reports and interprets the results relevant to our question. The forth defends a tentative answer to the question with which we began—arguing the survey supports the claim that China has a profession of engineering. This article should serve as a “proof of concept”, that is, a model for similar studies around the world both of engineering and of other occupations thought to be professions. (shrink)

Individuals with narcissism are, by definition, self-centered, focus on self-benefit, and demonstrate less prosocial behaviors. Trusting strangers is risky, as it can result in exploitation and non-reciprocation. Thus, the trust may be antagonistic to narcissism. However, how narcissists make the choice to trust remains to be elucidated. The current study examined 44 participants playing as trustors in one-shot trust games, and their electroencephalograms were recorded. Individuals high in narcissism exhibited less trust toward strangers, especially following gaining feedback for their trust. (...) In addition, narcissists exhibited a larger N2 following distrust and a stronger negatively-valanced difference in feedback-related negativity after trustee feedback. Our findings provide insights into how individuals with narcissism trust strangers. The results also shed light on the temporal course of brain activity involved in trust decision-making and outcome evaluation in individuals with narcissism. (shrink)

A varied air volume air-conditioning system comprises diverse input and/or output disturbances, which are commonly nonlinear, with large lag and uncertainty. Based on the traditional control methods, testing the controlling parameters of a VAV air-conditioning system is challenging. Sliding mode control could improve the robustness of the system due to the adaptive capacity of disturbance rejection. Moreover, the fuzzy algorithm could be employed to determine the stability of a sliding control system by adjusting the parameters in the approach rate, reducing (...) the switching frequency, and weakening chatter. Fuzzy sliding mode control is investigated in this paper to improve the performance of a VAV air-conditioning system. Simulation results verify that the sliding mode control is suitable for a VAV air-conditioning system to achieve good adaptability and robustness considering the influence of multiple external variable disturbances. In addition, the chattering of the system is improved after the introduction of fuzzy control. (shrink)