The purpose of the paper is to use analytical method and optimization tool to suggest a vaccination program intensity for a basic SIR epidemic model with limited resources for vaccination. We show that there are two different scenarios for optimal vaccination strategies, and obtain analytical solutions for the optimal control problem that minimizes the total cost of disease under the assumption of daily vaccine supply being limited. These solutions and their corresponding optimal control policies are derived explicitly in terms of (...) initial conditions, model parameters and resources for vaccination. With sufficient resources, the optimal control strategy is the normal Bang–Bang control. However, with limited resources, the optimal control strategy requires to switch to time-variant vaccination. (shrink)

Although considerable research indicates that mental energy is an important factor in many domains, including athletic performance (Cook & Davis, 2006), athletic mental energy (AME) has never been conceptualized and measured. Therefore, the aim of this study was to conceptualize and develop a reliable and valid instrument to assess athletic mental energy. In Study 1, a focus group interview established the initial framework of athletic mental energy. Study 2 used a survey to collect athletes’ experiences of athletic mental energy and (...) develop a scale draft titled “Athletic Mental Energy Scale (AMES).” In Study 3, we examined the psychometric properties and the underlying structure of AMES via item analysis, internal consistency, and exploratory factor analysis (EFA). In Study 4, we used confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to examine AMES’s factorial validity; and examined concurrent and discriminant validity by examining correlations with athletes’ life stress, positive state of mind, and burnout. In study 5, we examined the measurement invariance of the 6-factor, 18-item AMES with Taiwanese and Malaysian samples. Study 6 examined the predictive validity by comparing AMES scores of successful and unsuccessful martial artists. Across these phases, results showed a 6-factor, 18-item AMES had adequate content validity, factorial structure, nomological validity, discriminant validity, predictive validity, measurement invariance, and reliability. We suggest future studies may use AMES to examine its relationships with athletes’ cognition, affect, and performance. The application of AMES in sport psychology was also discussed. (shrink)

For synchronization of a class of chaotic systems in the presence of nonvanishing uncertainties, a novel time-varying gain observer-based sliding mode control is proposed. First, a novel time-varying gain disturbance observer is developed to estimate the uncertainties. Then, by using the output of TVGDO to modify sliding mode control, a new TVGDO-based SMC scheme is developed. Although the observation and control precision of conventional fixed gain disturbance observer-based control for chaotic systems can be guaranteed by a high observer gain, the (...) undesirable spike problem may be caused by the high gain if the initial values of estimate and true states are not equal. The most attractive feature of this work is that the newly proposed TVGDO can eliminate the spike problem by developing a time-varying gain scheme. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated by the numerical simulation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A Companion to Angus C. Graham's Chuang Tzu: The Inner ChaptersSteve CoutinhoA Companion to Angus C. Graham's Chuang Tzu: The Inner Chapters. By Harold D. Roth. Monographs of the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy, 20. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2003. Pp. 243. Paper $18.00.Scholars of Chuang Tzu—and "children of Angus"—will enthusiastically welcome Harold Roth's A Companion to Angus C Graham's Chuang Tzu: The Inner Chapters, a (...) collection of A. C. Graham's scholarly studies of the Chuang Tzu. Thanks to Roth's concerted efforts, Graham's scholarship on the Chuang Tzu has now been made readily available in a single volume. A. C. Graham was one of the most distinguished Western scholars of classical Chinese philosophy and one of the leading interpreters of the philosophy of Chuang Tzu. His pioneering research—textual, linguistic, and philosophical—on the Chuang Tzu and on its philosophical predecessor, the Later Mohist Canon, have laid the scholarly groundwork for further explorations of this philosophical and literary masterpiece.This collection includes: Graham's "Textual Notes to Chuang Tzu: The Inner Chapters," first published as a scholarly monograph in 1982 as a supplement to the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, under the title "Chuang-tzu: Textual Notes to a Partial Translation"; "How Much of Chuang Tzu Did Chuang Tzu Write?" which first appeared in 1976 in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion; [End Page 126] "Chuang Tzu's Essay on Seeing Things As Equal," written in 1968 for the Bellagio Conference on Taoist Studies and first published in a volume of History of Religions; "Two Notes on the Translation of Taoist Classics," which first appeared in 1991 in Interpreting Culture Through Translation: A Festschrift for D. C. Lau; and "Taoist Spontaneity and the Dichotomy of 'Is' and 'Ought,'" first published in 1983 in Victor Mair's Experimental Essays on the Chuang Tzu. The Companion ends with a Colophon by Harold Roth, "An Appraisal of Angus Graham's Textual scholarship on the Chuang Tzu."Chapter 1 reproduces Graham's textual notes on his translation of the Chuang tzu. Graham had written his "Textual Notes to Chuang Tzu: The Inner Chapters" while working on his translation of the Inner Chapters, and he had hoped to include them in the final version of Chuang Tzu: The Inner Chapters. Since this was not possible, Graham had them published instead by SOAS as a supplement to their Bulletin. Roth begins the Companion with a painstakingly reproduced computer-input version of Graham's original typewritten manuscript, which he also reorganized so that it corresponds to the (somewhat idiosyncratic) order and structure of Graham's translation. For ease of cross-reference, page numbers are provided to both Graham's translation and the Harvard Concordance (Chuang-tzu yin-te), the source text with which Graham worked.Chapter 2 is Graham's study, "How Much of Chuang Tzu Did Chuang Tzu Write?" This was written in large part as a response to Fu Ssu-nien's extraordinary and controversial claim that chapter 2, "Qi Wu Lun," is not the work of Chuang Tzu but of Shen Tao. In this paper Graham also attempts to identify how much of what he calls the "ragbag" chapters could have come from the same author as the Inner Chapters. The technique he uses is a straightforward tabulation of occurrences of characteristic usages and expressions in the various chapters, followed by a set of detailed comments. He compares carefully chosen idioms, grammatical particles and patterns, philosophical terms, and references to persons and themes. Comparisons are made specifically between the Inner Chapters, the "ragbag" chapters together with chapter 32, and the rest of the book.This is followed by a detailed justification of his "reconstruction" of what he believes to be the original introductory paragraph to chapter 3, "Yang Sheng Zhu." The next two sections put forward reasons for dividing the "Anarchist" chapters (8 to 11a, and 28 to 31) into two sections, the former group (8 to 11a) attributed to a person he calls the "Primitivist," the latter (28 to 31), following the argumentation of Kuan Feng, attributed to the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 287-292 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Original Tao: Inward Training and the Foundations of Taoist Mysticism Laughing at the Tao: Debates Among Buddhists and Taoists in Medieval China Taoist Tradition and Change: The Story of the Complete Perfection Sect in Hong Kong Lord of the Three in One: The Spread of a Cult in Southeast China Original Tao: Inward Training and the Foundations of (...) Taoist Mysticism. By Harold D. Roth. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. xv + 275 pp. Laughing at the Tao: Debates Among Buddhists and Taoists in Medieval China. By Livia Kohn. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. xii + 281 pp. Taoist Tradition and Change: The Story of the Complete Perfection Sect in Hong Kong. By Bartholomew P. M. Tsui. Hong Kong: Chinese Study Centre on Chinese Religion and Culture, 1991. 207 pp. Lord of the Three in One: The Spread of a Cult in Southeast China. By Kenneth Dean. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998. xii + 406 pp. Buddhism in China has many forms: sometimes functioning as a foreign object provoking attraction, rivalry, or persecution, and at other times being so integrated that it epitomized or completed Chinese culture. Although the elite monastic community maintained its distinctive Buddhist identity throughout its history, the story of the various forms of popular appropriation of Buddhist elements beyond the monastic [End Page 287] walls is just beginning to be studied. Probably the most important arena where Buddhism became part of Chinese culture is its mixture with Daoist practice, but only in the 1990s have Daoist studies evolved to the point where the Buddhist presence can be traced and evaluated. The four books listed above are among a shelf-full of new studies on Daoism that offer resources for exploring the complex relationships among Buddhism, Daoism, and Chinese culture.The study of the Inner Training by Harold Roth clarifies a core practice within early Daoism that was later integrated--usually without acknowledgment--as a central practice by both Confucianists and Buddhists, especially Ch'an. In contrast, the definitive study by Livia Kohn of the Xiaodao lun shows a carefully constructed Buddhist attack on Daoist scriptures. During the last millennium, the two most influential integrations of the three religions--Daoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism--were achieved by Wang Chong-yang (1113-1170) and Lin Zhao-en (1517-1598). Bartholomew Tsui offers an important field study of the liturgical practices of the contemporary followers of Wang as embodied in Hong Kong temples of Quanzhen (Complete Perfection) Daoism, while Kenneth Dean provides a massive field report of over one thousand temples of the Xiajiao movement in contemporary Fujian Province that revere the teachings of Lin Zhao-en as Lord of the Three-in-One. All four books provide rich materials for reflecting on interreligious encounter in China.The archaeological discovery of lost Chinese texts has made clear that the Lao-tzu is no earlier than the beginning of the third century b.C.E. and did not exist at the time of Confucius. Harold Roth's book argues that earlier than the book of Lao-tzu there was a movement of internal cultivation that was first expressed in two fourth-century b.C.E. texts, the first seven chapters of Chuang-tzu and a text found among the seventy-six texts in the Kuan-tzu that Roth calls Inner Training. Roth proposes that this latter text constitutes the "original Tao" in the sense that it is the core practice embodied in those thinkers who were grouped together by later historians. Roth observes that the earliest identification of a Daoist school (daojia) by Ssu-ma T'an about 110 b.C.E. emphasized techniques or practices, "not the philosophies that developed along with them and that support them.... Techniques must be seen as a way to define pre... (shrink)

Standard animalists are committed to a stringent form of restricted composition, thereby denying the existence of brains, hands, and other proper parts of an organism . One reason for positing this near-nihilistic ontology comes from various challenges to animalism such as the Thinking Parts Argument, the Unity Argument, and the Argument from the Problem of the Many. In this paper, I show that these putatively distinct arguments are all instances of a more general problem, which I call the ‘Too Many (...) Candidates Problem’ . Given my formulation of the problem, it is evident that standard animalists are mistaken in believing that restricting composition is the only solution. I show that there is another option for solving the TMC. The advantage of such a position, which I call ‘unrestricted animalism’, is that it is compatible with unrestricted composition and the existence of brains and other proper parts of an organism. I conclude by sketching several strategies one can take regarding this latter solution to the TMC. (shrink)

Quantum B-algebras, the partially ordered implicational algebras arising as subreducts of quantales, are introduced axiomatically. It is shown that they provide a unified semantic for non-commutative algebraic logic. Specifically, they cover the vast majority of implicational algebras like BCK-algebras, residuated lattices, partially ordered groups, BL- and MV-algebras, effect algebras, and their non-commutative extensions. The opposite of the category of quantum B-algebras is shown to be equivalent to the category of logical quantales, in the way that every quantum B-algebra admits a (...) natural embedding into a logical quantale, the enveloping quantale. Partially defined products of algebras related to effect algebras are handled efficiently in this way. The unit group of the enveloping quantale of a quantum B-algebra X is shown to be always contained in X, which gives a functorial subgroup X× of X. Similar subfunctors are obtained for the non-commutative extensions of BCK-algebras and effect algebras. The results of Galatos, Jónsson, and Tsinakis on the splitting of generalized BL-algebras into a semidirect product of a partially ordered group operating on an integral residuated poset are extended to a characterization of twisted semidirect products of a po-group by a quantum B-algebra. (shrink)

PurposeAsian Americans comprise 21% of matriculating medical students in the United States but little is known about their mental health. With the growing focus on addressing the mental health of medical students, this systematic, nationwide survey assesses the relationship between anxiety and depression symptoms and coping skills among Asian American medical students.Materials and methodsA survey tool comprised of Patient Health Questionnaire-9, General Anxiety Disorder-7, and questions related to coping were emailed to members of the Asian Pacific American Medical Students Association (...) enrolled in a United States medical school during the 2016–2017 academic year. We evaluated associations between anxiety and coping as well as depression and coping.ResultsA total of 511 Asian American medical students completed the survey. Anxiety symptoms were positively correlated with an increase in negative coping skills. Depressive symptoms were not correlated with an increase in negative coping skills.ConclusionProfessionals and medical schools that aim to improve the mental health of medical students should be aware of the needs of specific populations. Asian American students who experience anxiety were more likely to utilize avoidant or negative coping strategies. In addition, Asian American students who experience depressive symptoms were not more likely to utilize these negative coping strategies. Further research must be done to evaluate the factors that influence the use of negative coping strategies to better address anxiety within the Asian American medical student population. (shrink)

It can be a great challenge for second language learners to comprehend meanings that are implied in utterances rather than the surface meaning of what was said. Moreover, L2 learners’ attitudes toward pragmatic learning are unknown. This mixed-methods study investigates L2 learners’ ability to comprehend conversational implicatures. It also explores their beliefs about and intentions to develop this ability using Ajzen’s theory of planned behavior. A total of 498 freshmen from a public university in China participated in the study. Data (...) were collected using a web-based test, stimulated recall tasks and semi-structured interviews. Results show that the participants differed in recognizing the intended meanings. Complicated factors account for the variations. In addition to the types of implicature, learners’ beliefs about developing pragmatic comprehension also influence their learning intention, and subsequent performance. These beliefs include learners’ multi-layered, complex attitudes toward the outcomes of pragmatic learning, perceived self-efficacy beliefs regarding language proficiency and L2 cultural knowledge, actual behavioral control over opportunities and resources for pragmatic learning, and perceptions of less social pressure on pragmatic learning. The use of TPB may help language teachers and test designers to understand learners’ beliefs about L2 pragmatic learning in the English as a foreign language context. Understanding the factors influencing learners’ intention will help design more effective teaching curricula that may integrate pragmatic instruction and testing in the future. (shrink)

A new venture barely makes a profit in its initial stage, and its success depends on innovation. Innovation is related to the work environment, and the innovation behavior of employees is of great significance to the performance improvement of new venture. Based on the previous research, in this study, hypotheses on the correlation between work environment, employee innovation behavior, and corporate performance are put forward first. Then, with team cooperation, organizational incentive, leadership support, sufficient resources, and work pressure as the (...) factors of the work environment, the bosses, middle and senior managers involved in entrepreneurship, and the main members of the entrepreneurial team of 202 newly established enterprises in developed regions are surveyed online or in scene. Multivariate hierarchical regression analysis is performed to analyze the data collected from the questionnaire. The results show that the effective recovery rate of the questionnaire is 86.4%; the number of traditional enterprises is 108, and that of R&D enterprises is 68 ; teamwork, leadership support, and work pressure are all correlated with employees’ innovative behavior ; employee innovation behavior is positively correlated with enterprise performance ; the working environment and employee innovation behavior promote enterprise performance ; and the working environment affects the relationship between employee innovation behavior and enterprise performance. The study theoretically enriches the research on the relationship between innovation behavior, work environment, and enterprise performance of new ventures. In practice, it is suggested that start-up enterprises provide good working environment for employees and attach importance to innovation activities at the individual level of employees, which provides useful guidance and reference for the development of Chinese start-up enterprises. (shrink)

This essay aims to explore Xunzi’s 荀子 problem, which was originally proposed by David S. Nivison. The problem revolves around a tension in Xunzi’s writings about human nature. In his chapter “Human Nature is Bad (Xing’e 性惡),” Xunzi states that humans have inborn selfish desires and natural feelings, and if they do not control or regulate these desires and feelings, there will certainly be chaos. However, in the chapter “The Regulations of a Sage King (Wangzhi 王制),” Xunzi argues that human (...) beings possess yi 義, which is an important feature distinguishing them from other creatures. I try to analyze how yi should be understood in the Xunzi by focusing on the relationship of yi with fen 分 (division) and li 禮 (ritual). In the process, I also consider Hall and Ames’s understanding of yi as “meaning-bestowing,” and pay attention to Xunzi’s mention that yi is something that enables human beings to jump from natural to social divisions. (shrink)

Optimization for vertical vibration performance of a rail-train coupling system is investigated in this paper with the introduction of inerters for both primary and secondary suspensions. A model of a typical Chinese passenger train that travels on a traditional rail with track, sleepers, and ballast is simulated. The goal is to improve the ride quality for the train and vibration attenuation for the rail system in response to track irregularities. Optimizations for only inertance and all suspension parameters are carried out (...) by the particle swarm algorithm. Performance benefits for both the train and the rail system are demonstrated and suspension layouts with inerters connected in parallel and series are compared with the traditional one in both time domain and frequency domain. (shrink)

This article investigates Kripke-style semantics for two sorts of logics: pseudo-Boolean and weak-Boolean logics. As examples of the first, we introduce G3 and S53pB.G3 is the three-valued Dummett–Gödel logic; S53pB is the modal logic S5 but with its orthonegation replaced by a pB negation. Examples of wB logic are G3wB and S53wB.G3wB is G3 with a wB negation in place of its pB negation; S53wB is S5 with a wB negation replacing its orthonegation. For each system, we provide a three-valued (...) Kripke-style semantics with and without star operation . We prove soundness and completeness theorems in each case. Note that wB logics may be equivalent to logics with Baaz’s projection Δ. We finally introduce the G3 and the S53pB both with Δ and show that they are equivalent to G3wB and S53wB, respectively. (shrink)

BackgroundPhysical activity has a significant health impact worldwide and has been linked to a lower risk of the common cold.ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to estimate the form of PA among Chinese adults and the correlation between PA and number of the common cold in China's eastern, central, and western areas.DesignA cross-sectional study.SettingChina's eastern, central, and western regions from 30 November 2020 to 30 March 2021.PatientsA total of 1,920 healthy participants, who aged over 18 years old, with Internet access, (...) were enrolled, and then self-reported PA behaviors and number of the common cold were collected.MeasurementsThe authors calculated preference, intensity, frequency, and duration of PA in Chinese based on gender, age, and broad occupational categories and explored the potential effect between these factors and the common cold.ResultsApproximately 20.4% of participants reported not participating in sports regularly. Except for gender, there were significant differences in PA preference and intensity among the remaining individuals. However, intensity shows a U-shaped dose-response relationship with colds, whereas the frequency and duration have an inverse dose-response relationship. High intensity combined with high frequency increased colds the most. Nevertheless, non-exercise groups always have the most colds in each comparison.LimitationsThe result may be vulnerable to recall bias.ConclusionIntensity showed that U-shape, frequency, and duration showed inverse response to the number of colds last year, but age, sex, and occupation had no significant effects. High intensity and high frequency mixed increased colds the most, regardless of duration. (shrink)

Exemplary Figures (sometimes translated as Model Sayings) is an unabridged, annotated translation of Fayan, one of three major works by the Chinese court poet-philosopher Yang Xiong (53 BCE-18 CE). Yang sought to "renew the old" by patterning these works on earlier classics, drawing inspiration from the Confucian Analects for Exemplary Figures. In this philosophical masterwork, constructed as a dialogue, Yang poses and then answers questions on philosophical, political, ethical, and literary matters. Michael Nylan's rendering of this text, (...) which is laden with word play and is extraordinarily difficult to translate, is a joy to read-at turns wise, cautionary, and playful. (shrink)

Data envelopment analysis is a popular mathematical tool for analyzing the relative efficiency of homogenous decision-making units. However, the existing DEA models cannot tackle the newly confronted applications with imprecise and negative data as well as undesirable outputs simultaneously. Thus, we introduce undesirable outputs into modified slack-based measure model and propose an interval-modified slack-based measure model, which extends the application of interval DEA in fields that concern with less undesirable outputs. The novelties of the model are that it considers the (...) undesirable outputs while dealing with imprecise and negative data, and it is slack-based. Furthermore, the model with undesirable outputs is proven translation-invariant and unit-invariant. Moreover, a numerical example is provided to illustrate the changes of the lower and upper bounds of the efficiency score after considering the undesirable outputs. The empirical results show that, without considering undesirable outputs, most of the lower bounds of the efficiency scores will be overestimated when the DMUs are weakly efficient and inefficient. The upper bound will also change after considering undesirable outputs when the DMU is inefficient. Finally, an improved degree of preference approach is introduced to rank the DMUs. (shrink)

To effectively improve the efficiency of international service design talent training and make it more in line with society's needs, we analyze the current status of international service design talent training and its professional training focus. Based on the above problems, from the perspective of cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence and human–computer interaction technology are used to construct the international service design talent training mode of the HCI intelligent service robot. This mode can be used to solve the existing teaching problems (...) by using novel means to ensure the quality of teaching. Finally, through the actual analysis of teaching cases, the effectiveness of the proposed talent training mode is verified. The HCI system is based on knowledge of cognitive psychology. According to the characteristics and functions of an educational robot, the robot is combined with traditional teaching activities, and the robot-assisted talent training mode is designed. Robot-assisted talent training is a feasible training method that can improve the efficiency of talent training. Students have confidence in their learning skills before the course, and the confidence is further strengthened after the end of the course. After the course, the students have a stronger sense of cooperation. This study can provide theoretical ideas for the research of international service talent training mode. (shrink)

In the long 20th century, modern China experienced perhaps the world’s most radical and systematic secularization process and the decimation of traditional religious and ritual cultures. This article seeks to account for this experience by engaging with postcolonial theory, a body of discourse seldom found relevant to China Studies. The article attempts a two-pronged critique of both state secularization and some aspects of existing Postcolonial Studies/theory. It shows the many ways in which nationalist elites in modern China unwittingly absorbed Western (...) Orientalist discourse even as their words and actions were ostensibly anti-colonial, and much of the article examines the consequences of this native Orientalism upon Chinese religiosities. Finally, the article suggests that one cannot discuss governmentality in modern China without understanding how it is intertwined with a sovereign power that is both archaic and, at the same time, has experienced renewal and expansion in modernity. (shrink)

本书阐明自然辩证法这门学科的形成过程,概要地阐述它的基本原理及其一百多年的发展历史。.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between workplace bullying and employee silence as well as its mechanism. This paper collects data from 322 employees of three Chinese enterprises in two waves, with a 2 months interval between the two waves. Moreover, this paper uses confirmatory factor analysis, a bootstrapping mediation test, a simple slope test, and other methods to verify the hypothesis. We find that: WB is positively correlated with ES; psychological safety and affective commitment mediated (...) the relationship between WB and ES, respectively, and these two variables have a chain mediating effect in the above relationship; and a forgiveness climate moderates this chain mediating effect by weakening the negative impact of WB on PS. Our findings can effectively guide organizations to ultimately adjust their management style, pay attention to employees’ cognitive and emotional resources, and formulate some measures to curb WB in organizations. (shrink)

In _On Human Action and Practical Wisdom_, Yang Guorong offers a description of wisdom and action based on his “concrete metaphysics.” Yang attempts to go beyond the excessively linguistic, logical, and abstract focus found in the American analytic tradition.