Traditional rehabilitation strategies become difficult in the chronic phase stage of stroke prognosis. Brain–computer interface combined with external devices may improve motor function in chronic stroke patients, but it lacks comprehensive assessments of neurological changes regarding functional rehabilitation. This study aimed to comprehensively and quantitatively investigate the changes in brain activity induced by BCI–FES training in patients with chronic stroke. We analyzed the EEG of two groups of patients with chronic stroke, one group received functional electrical stimulation rehabilitation training and (...) the other group received BCI combined with FES training. We constructed functional networks in both groups of patients based on direct directed transfer function and assessed the changes in brain activity using graph theory analysis. The results of this study can be summarized as follows: after rehabilitation training, the Fugl–Meyer assessment scale score was significantly improved in the BCI–FES group, and there was no significant difference in the FES group. Both the global and local graph theory measures of the brain network of patients with chronic stroke in the BCI–FES group were improved after rehabilitation training. The node strength in the contralesional hemisphere and central region of patients in the BCI–FES group was significantly higher than that in the FES group after the intervention, and a significant increase in the node strength of C4 in the contralesional sensorimotor cortex region could be observed in the BCI–FES group. These results suggest that BCI–FES rehabilitation training can induce clinically significant improvements in motor function of patients with chronic stroke. It can improve the functional integration and functional separation of brain networks and boost compensatory activity in the contralesional hemisphere to a certain extent. The findings of our study may provide new insights into understanding the plastic changes of brain activity in patients with chronic stroke induced by BCI–FES rehabilitation training. (shrink)

This paper introduces the history and the present situation of Chinese scholarly research on "Chinese modernity." Due to the limited amount of source materials, this outline is concise and sketchy. Before explaining the tendencies and the characteristics of Chinese scholars' research on modernity, we must first give an overview of the historical sequence of the trends and theories on modernization that were introduced in China from the West and Japan.

This article discusses the traditional approaches to creating images in China and Europe, which basically relate to two different understandings of truth and perception. On the basis of the concept mimesis, classical European paintings concentrate on a rigorous correspondence to the visually perceived reality. In contrast, literary paintings – one of the representational forms of traditional Chinese painting – take a different approach. In order to avoid a radical differentiation between image and phenomenon, it does not strive for a precise (...) imitation of external forms. Given the influence of the concept of change, the primary task of Chinese painters is to reveal the vitality that permeates all existence and the dynamic interaction of opposing elements. This does not mean that imitation can be completely abandoned in the artistic creation. Instead, imitation is a fundamental step towards progress. (shrink)

The essay centers on Gödel's views on the place of our intuitive concept of time in philosophy and in physics. It presents my interpretation of his work on the theory of relativity, his observations on the relationship between Einstein's theory and Kantian philosophy, as well as some of the scattered remarks in his conversations with me in the seventies — namely, those on the philosophies of Leibniz, Hegel and Husserl — as a successor of Kant — in relation to their (...) conceptions of time. (shrink)

China has seen rapid economic development as well as severe environmental degradation over the past two decades. Although the Chinese government has made a great effort to provide environmental protection, it has been stymied by China’s economic development pattern, which follows the traditional industrialization mode of low efficiency in resource use and considerable pollutant discharge. In other words, China achieved its rapid economic growth at the cost of depleting natural resources and environmental quality. Should comprehensive and effective actions not be (...) undertaken in the next 15 years, the pollution pressures will exceed China’s environmental carrying capacity and lead to an irreversible environmental crisis. Should this occur, environmental issues would become not only the greatest obstacle to China’s achievement of a xiao kang society and undermine China’s international image, but would also have a severe effect on the global environment. (shrink)

Attentional biases have received considerable focus in research on cognitive biases and body dissatisfaction (BD). However, most work has focused on spatial allocation of attention. The current two experiments employed a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task to investigate the temporal allocation of attention to body-related words among young females with high and low BD. Experiment 1 assessed the stimulus-driven attention of body-related stimuli. Participants identified a neutral second target (T2) as accurately as possible while ignoring the preceding neutral, fat-, (...) or thin-related first target (T1). As expected, we observed spontaneous attentional blink effects elicited by fat- and thin-related T1s among participants with high BD, suggesting enhanced awareness of body-related stimuli even when this information does not have to be identified. Such effects did not emerge among participants without BD. Experimental 2 investigated the goal-directed attention of body-related stimuli, during which participants needed to identify both the T1 and neutral T2. Participants with BD showed reduced attentional blink effects after both fat- and thin-related T1, suggesting facilitated consolidation of body-related information in goal-directed attention among participants with BD. The findings may have important clinical implications for understanding how to decrease and even prevent body image dissatisfaction. (shrink)

My wife was a student from among the "workers, peasants, and soldiers" and studied history at university. One day, during her junior year, a female student from a country village announced loudly in class, "I don't know what a eunuch is!" She looked very pleased with herself when she had said this. Other students in the class chimed in: "I don't know either." "Neither do I." My wife is a very straightforward sort of person and she said shyly, "Oh, I (...) think I might know—a eunuch is a man who has been castrated." Someone asked, "What does ‘castrated’ mean?" and she blushed scarlet and was unable to speak. She was only a girl at the time, and it upset her very much to admit in front of everybody that she knew what eunuchs and castration were. For a long while she felt miserable, not daring to see anybody or to say anything. (shrink)

In his book The Road Ahead, Bill Gates writes that modern developments in information technology mean that engineers already have the capability to produce real sensations. They can put goggles on you that show colored pictures and give you stereo earphones so that what you see and hear is controlled by computer. Once the hardware and software are sophisticated enough, we will not be able to tell the difference between electronic sounds and images and real sounds and images. The hardware (...) and software available at present are probably not yet that sophisticated and are not at the stage where this would be feasible; but in the past twenty years technological progress has been amazing, and we must prepare ourselves psychologically for the day when it does become possible. (shrink)

About a month ago, I went to a university to give a lecture. During the questions-and-answers and discussion, a young fellow standing in the last row drew a good deal of attention: "Some people today show concern for spiritual values but are very helpless where material life is concerned." However, he said, "more people are pursuing only material benefits and have absolutely no spiritual requirements." You may perhaps doubt that people today truly, as he indicated, regard the spiritual and the (...) material as "fish-and-bear's-paws"—if you want the one, you have to give up the other. (shrink)

To this day I still do not know exactly what sort of people are to be regarded as intellectuals, and what sort of people are not. When I was being re-educated in the countryside during the Cultural Revolution, a military representative once told me that I was a "petty bourgeois intellectual." I was only seventeen at the time, had received six years of primary school education, and was barely literate, so I felt I did not deserve to be called an (...) intellectual. By the way, I also felt I did not deserve the appellation "petty bourgeois." My family lived on wages from the government; even our furniture belonged to the government. We had not set up a stall to sell cigarettes in front of our house, so where did he get the term "petty bourgeois"? As for myself as an individual, it was only right and proper that I should belong to one social class or another, and I was not against doing so. However, to this day, I do not know in what class intellectual youths should be counted. In my opinion, if one insists on making comparisons or analogies, they should be counted as lumpen proletarians or the like. But this is taking the subject too far. (shrink)

Someone asks a climber why he wants to climb a mountain—everyone knows that climbing is dangerous and is of no practical advantage—and he replies, "Because it is there." I like this answer because it shows a sense of humor—it is quite clear that it is because he wants to climb it, but he tries to trick us by saying that it is because the mountain is there that he is itching to get at it. Apart from this, I also like (...) what the climber does, scaling sheer cliffs for no good reason. It may cause aching muscles, and there is a risk you might knock your brains out, so the average person does all he can to avoid climbing mountains. From the point of view of thermodynamics, this is the very rarely seen phenomenon of negative entropy. Because human beings always tend toward what is beneficial and avoid what is harmful, and in thermodynamics spontaneous phenomena are known as entropy-increasing phenomena, anything that tends toward the harmful and avoids the beneficial must be negative entropy. (shrink)

In the history of ethical thoughts of China and the West, ethical relations are always regarded as social relations among people, and the objects to which ethical norms apply are targeted for social business or man’s behavior. What traditional ethics concerns is ethical relationship among people or ethical feature of socialbusiness or man’s behavior. By comparison with it, environmental ethics has a good reputation for its research on ethical relationship between human being and natural environment. It has been discussing and (...) reconstructing ethical relationship between man and nature from the very beginning, and requires ethical solicitude or moral concern for natural environment. As a result, environmental ethics has to answer the question how it is possible. However, the mainstream views in environmental ethics, based on the position of moral expansion and non-anthropocentrism, can't and won't explain how environmental ethics is possible. What environmental ethics deals with is no other than the ethical relationship between man and man represented by the relationship between man and nature, what it confirms is no other than our obligations and duties to others and next generations when dealing with the relationship between man and nature, and finally, the criterion of evaluation it pursues in dealing with the man-nature relationship is no other than the integrated and long-run interest of all human beings. All these are the ground on which the contemporary environmental ethics stands possibly. (shrink)

In this paper, we define a first-order logic CFʹ with strong negation and bounded static quantifiers, which is a variant of Thomason's logic CF. For the logic CFʹ, the usual Kripke formal semantics is defined based on situations, and a sound and complete axiomatic system is established based on the axiomatic systems of constructive logics with strong negation and Thomason's completeness proof techniques. With the use of bounded quantifiers, CFʹ allows the domain of quantification to be empty and allows for (...) nondenoting constants. CFʹ is intended as a fragment of a logic for situation theory. Thus the connection between CFʹ and infon logic is discussed. (shrink)

Given the importance of work engagement for organizations and the almost unified and steadfast understanding of its benefits, it is imperative to investigate the potential downside of work engagement to prevent unexpected damage. However, there has been relatively little research on its negative impacts. Drawing on the moral licensing theory, this study identifies the potential negative effects of work engagement by exploring the mediating role of psychological entitlement. An online experiment and a survey are conducted to test the theoretical model. (...) The results reveal that work engagement leads to deviant workplace behavior through psychological entitlement only in cases where there is a higher level of relationship conflict with supervisors. The conclusions of this study shed light on how work engagement negatively affects organizations. The current study also contributes to practice by suggesting that supervisors should be aware of employees with a higher level of work engagement and communicate with them in a reasonable manner. (shrink)

In his reflections on action in Being and Nothingness, Sartre goes to the heart of what it is to be human. Our free actions are not the consequence of ouridentity, they are its foundation. As human beings we go beyond who we are towards a freely chosen future self. Human identity is ambiguous because consciousness simultaneously accepts and sees beyond the identity it discovers; there is an internal disintegration which distances us from ourselves. The intentionality of consciousness means that we (...) are constituted not by an objective presence but by a “presence to” our identity. Personhood is established only when we select certain values and allow them to shape our identity and guide our actions. As “being-for-itself” we go beyond the present and project ourselves towards an identity that does not yet exist, thus creating ourselves through our freedom, through our concrete choices. This article pays careful attention to Sartre’s understanding of consciousness, selfconsciousness, and “selfness,” before drawing some conclusions about the role of human freedom in the construction of identity. (shrink)

• We study a new composition operation on (epistemic) multiagent models and update actions that takes vocabulary extensions into account.

This policy-capturing study, conducted in China, investigated the cognitive basis of managerial decisions to make a corporate charitable donation, a global issue in the context of corporate social responsibility research and practice. Participants responded to a series of scenarios manipulating pressure from the five stakeholders most commonly addressed by CSR research. The independent variables examined included organizational factors and the participants’ personal values. Results indicate a large positive effect of shareholder and governmental pressure on the decision with lesser positive effects (...) from customers and competitors. Surprisingly, employee pressure had a negative effect on the decision to make a charitable donation. Further, personal values and perceived CEO attitudes toward charity were significantly related to the decisions participants made. In line with our theorizing, the findings indicate that a combination of personal, organizational, and institutional factors was salient in the minds of decision makers. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the target tracking problem of an autonomous surface vehicle in the presence of a maneuvering target. The velocity information of target is totally unknown to the follower vehicle, and only the relative distance and angle between the target and follower are obtained. First, a reduced-order extended state observer is used to estimate the unknown relative dynamics due to the unavailable velocity of the target. Based on the reduced-order extended state observer, an antidisturbance guidance law for (...) target tracking is designed. The input-to-state stability of the closed-loop target tracking guidance system is analyzed via cascade theory. Furthermore, the above result is extended to the case that collisions between the target and leader are avoided during tracking, and a collision-free target tracking guidance law is developed. The main feature of the proposed guidance law is twofold. First, the target tracking can be achieved without using the velocity information of the target. Second, collision avoidance can be achieved during target tracking. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed antidisturbance guidance law for tracking a maneuvering target with the arbitrary bounded velocity. (shrink)

Ethical decision-making is central to the practice of construction engineering and management. This is no more evident than in the twenty-first century, when the construction industry must function in very diverse organizational contexts. Whilst construction companies pursue projects in international markets, many investors are buying or forming joint ventures with domestic companies. New and varied professional attitudes have recently arrived in western markets such as the United States and Australia because construction companies are increasingly employing managers from developing nations to (...) undertake commercial and infrastructure engineering projects. In many developing countries the construction industry is vulnerable to unethical behavior or corruption – vulnerability in part because of differences in culture and managerial systems across countries; and this diversity is manifest in the different perspectives of professional ethics and professional practice. Importantly, professionals in construction engineering must be aware of these differences; however current ethics education for engineering professionals generally lacks global components. In this chapter, emphasis is placed upon professional registration, including mandatory awareness of professional ethics, as an imperative for the welfare of world citizens; discussion on the nature of the construction industry and globalized trends emphasizes why ethics and professional education must be integrated within civil and construction engineering and management curricula. Only then we can anticipate an appropriate educational foundation for professional registration of the international engineer. (shrink)

Historical progress is a core belief of the Enlightenment and modernity, also a spiritual catalyst of human emancipation in the past centuries. However, due to the naive understanding of scholars and its misuse by political power, the idea of progress has fallen from a realistic political belief in the pursuit of liberty and democracy to a metaphysical faith and a one-sided ideology. Instead of abandoning the concept itself, this paper will provide a new version for progress. In this version, supported (...) theoretically with ideas from a Marxian critique of the paradox of progress in capitalist society and a Habermasian reconstruction of social evolution and progress, progress shall not be understood as an intrinsic trend of history itself, but a “historical-practical project” of humanity. The intent of rewriting progress is to transcend the dilemma between progressivism and catastrophism while at the same time preserving its positive meaning. (shrink)

For achieving the sustainable development goals, green development has been raised to a high position for cities in China. The economic development in Northwest China is slow, the ecological environment is fragile, and the mineral resources are rich. Only through green development can we realize the comprehensive income of regional production development, rich life, and good ecology. This paper measures the green development efficiency of 30 prefecture-level cities in Northwest China by using DEA-SBM model of unexpected output, explores the differences (...) and causes of green development efficiency from the perspective of time and space through convergence coefficient, coordination matrix, GIS, and other methods, and empirically tests the impact of industrial structure, technological progress, and other driving factors on green development efficiency by using panel Tobit model. The results show that, on the whole, the efficiency of green development in Northwest China is low, path dependence is serious and unbalanced, the coordinated development effect of different regions is weak, and the spillover effect of core urban agglomerations has not been effectively exerted; from the perspective of driving factors, economic development, population density, traffic situation, and education investment can significantly improve the efficiency of urban green development, and the second is that the proportion of industries significantly hinders the improvement of green development efficiency, while the impact of scientific and technological innovation is not significant. Based on the empirical results, this paper believes that the harmonious development of natural environment and economic society can be realized only by improving the coordinated development effect among cities, implementing the optimization and upgrading of industrial structure, introducing excellent talents, and promoting the technological upgrading. (shrink)

I am working as both a TEFL teacher and an SLA researcher in China, doing SLA research. Recently, I have been working on new approaches to data analysis and I’ve found that a book titled “Data Visualization and Analysis in Second Language Research” by Dr. Guilherme D. Garcia is of great significance in empirical research in the field of SLA. This book serves only as a practical and user-friendly guide to beginners involved in SLA research, but also navigation to veteran (...) SLA researchers devoted to new perspectives in data analysis. So far, the author has made his first attempt to connect data visualization under R to SLA research. The author reviews the previous research results and suggests some modifications through running R. From my perspective, it fills a gap in the SLA research practice—to lead readers into a new track of visualizing their reported results. Overall, to make an increasingly higher demand for SLA research, this book is particularly designated for quantitative data analysis in SLA. It is strongly recommended to write a book review to introduce readers to the realm of data visualization and help most SLA researchers better understand the potential value of R and visualization in SLA research. (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)

To investigate whether implicit detection occurs uniformly during change blindness with single or combination feature stimuli, and whether implicit detection is affected by exposure duration and delay, two one-shot change detection experiments are designed. The implicit detection effect is measured by comparing the reaction times of baseline trials, in which stimulus exhibits no change and participants report “same,” and change blindness trials, in which the stimulus exhibits a change but participants report “same.” If the RTs of blindness trials are longer (...) than those of baseline trials, implicit detection has occurred. The strength of the implicit detection effect was measured by the difference in RTs between the baseline and change blindness trials, where the larger the difference, the stronger the implicit detection effect. In both Experiments 1 and 2, the results showed that the RTs of change blindness trials were significantly longer than those of baseline trials. Whether under set size 4, 6, or 8, the RTs of the change blindness trials were significantly longer than those in the baseline trials. In Experiment 1, the difference between the baseline trials’ RTs and change blindness trials’ RTs of the single features was significantly larger than that of the combination features. However, in Experiment 2, the difference between the baseline trials’ RTs and the change blindness trials’ RTs of single features was significantly smaller than that of the combination features. In Experiment 1a, when the exposure duration was shorter, the difference between the baseline and change blindness trials’ RTs was smaller. In Experiment 2, when the delay was longer, the difference between the two trials’ RTs was larger. These results suggest that regardless of whether the change occurs in a single or a combination of features and whether there is a long exposure duration or delay, implicit detection occurs uniformly during the change blindness period. Moreover, longer exposure durations and delays strengthen the implicit detection effect. Set sizes had no significant impact on implicit detection. (shrink)

I, too, belong to the "old three classes."* At the age when I should have been in college, I went to Yunnan to dig ditches. This was bad for me; but worse, still, it caused my parents great anxiety. It has been said that worrying about their children took years off the lives of the parents of educated youth who were sent to the countryside, and that is how it was in my family. Parents always try to protect their growing (...) children, and to be powerless to do so during that exceptional decade meant they had a lot of worry. As an adult, I have had pangs of conscience about this, and especially so when my father passed away. When I think about the details, of course, it was not my fault; but those feelings never go away. (shrink)

Since the "Conference on Foreign Philosophy" held in Wuhu in October 1978, the study of foreign philosophy in China has undergone a prosperous stage. This article discusses the significance of the study of foreign philosophy in the context of renovation, transformation and remolding of Chinese contemporary culture, explores the role of the discipline in the context of Chinese cultural construction, and anticipates the future of this discipline. A cross-cultural perspective is needed for a proper understanding of the significance of the (...) learning and study of foreign philosophy in Chinese cultural construction; otherwise we might fall into cultural conservationism. Secondly, to make philosophy and social sciences prosperous is also a task for foreign philosophy studies, and whether or not foreign philosophy can be well studied should be a mark of the prosperousness of the construction of Chinese culture. Finally, philosophy is a product of human beings and should eventually serve human beings. Chinese culture should open itself up to the world and so should foreign philosophy studies in China. (shrink)

Just as classic Marxist writers are included among the world’s top-class artists, Chinese Marxism has gradually nurtured a new tradition of modern aesthetics. This tradition serves to enlighten the people, cultivate their appreciation of artistic masterpieces, and thus establish a complete set of artistic systems that has been inspiring people to constantly reflect on and improve themselves. Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and Xi Jinping, among other leaders, acquired a deep understanding of Marxist aesthetics and incorporated it in their policy making. (...) At present, while reviewing the artistic achievements in the past hundred years, we must be fully aware of the deficiencies caused by reductionism and shortsightedness in literature and art. In order to overcome those problems, there are some useful lessons for artists and writers: getting in touch with people’s concerns, depicting the lives they are familiar with, paying attention to national styles, deciphering the patterns of geographical aesthetics, and pursuing artistic individuality. (shrink)

The main goal of this study is to explore the drivers of meaningful sport consumption and its influence mechanism. In sports consumption, consumers not only seek hedonic value but also pursue to experience greater purpose and meaning in life, which is regarded as meaningful sports consumption. This study extends existing sports management literature by examining how social needs impact meaningful sports behavior with team affiliation, self-improvement, and self-esteem as mediators. Based on the questionnaire data collected from China, the empirical analysis (...) results show that social needs have a significant positive impact on meaningful sports consumption behavior through the mediating effect of team affiliation and self-esteem motivation. However, self-improvement motivation does not have a mediating effect on the relationship between social needs and meaningful sports consumption. This study enriches the research content of sports consumption, adds research object of social needs, and expands the research scope of meaningful consumption by introducing meaningful sports consumption into the above domain. (shrink)