Introduction There is a paramount need for moral development for pharmacists and pharmacy students to practice the patient-centered profession. We aimed to explore the current situational judgment utilizing ethical reasoning among undergraduate pharmacy students. Methods A set of ten ethical dilemmas, representing potential real-life situations that the students come across in the university and may face in the future as a pharmacist were developed by a team of students, academic staff, and stakeholders. These ethical dilemmas were validated, checked for accuracy, (...) and piloted. An online questionnaire was created consisting of these ten scenarios as open-ended questions and administered to fourth year and fifth year PharmD students in a public university located at the city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, asking them how they would react in that situation. Responses of the participants were analyzed using thematic analysis independently by four researchers and inter-rater agreement were achieved through consensus. Results Out of 205, 186 students completed the questionnaire with a response rate of 90.7%. Analysis and resulted in the generation of 32 codes, which were then categorized into seven overarching themes: student engagement, social and professional responsibility, academic integrity, legal obligation, moral obligation, signposting, and moral engagement and patient safety. Conclusions Undergraduate pharmacy students experience complex state of mind in connection with ethical reasoning. The participants’ situational judgment were driven by cultural norm, authority, and responsibility. Student engagement is also affected by the state of mind and feelings of mutual trust, perceived cultural influence and peer pressure. The students were prone to seek help from university administrators or teachers when faced with situations in which they were helpless. (shrink)

In the real world, individual resources are crucial for patients when epidemics outbreak. Thus, the coupled dynamics of resource diffusion and epidemic spreading have been widely investigated when the recovery of diseases significantly depends on the resources from neighbors in static social networks. However, the social relationships of individuals are time-varying, which affects such coupled dynamics. For that, we propose a coupled resource-epidemic dynamic model on a time-varying multiplex network to synchronously simulate the resource diffusion and epidemic spreading in dynamic (...) social networks. The equilibrium analysis of the coupled model is conducted in a general scenario where the resource generation varies between susceptible and infected states and the recovery rate changes between resourceful and noresource states. By using the microscopic Markov chain approach and Monte Carlo simulations, we determine a probabilistic framework of the intralayer and interlayer dynamic processes of the coupled model and obtain the outbreak threshold of epidemic spreading. Meanwhile, the experimental results show the trivially asymmetric interactions between resource diffusion and epidemic spreading. They also indicate that the stronger activity heterogeneity and the larger contact capacity of individuals in the resource layer can more greatly promote resource diffusion, effectively suppressing epidemic spreading. However, these two individual characters in the epidemic layer can cause more resource depletion, which greatly promotes epidemic spreading. Furthermore, we also find that the contact capacity finitely impacts the coupled dynamics of resource diffusion and epidemic spreading. (shrink)

Understanding the neural basis of schizophrenia (SZ) is important for shedding light on the neurobiological mechanisms underlying this mental disorder. Structural and functional alterations in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), hippocampus, and medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) have been implicated in the neurobiology of SZ. However, the effective connectivity among them in SZ remains unclear. The current study investigated how neuronal pathways involving these regions were affected in first-episode SZ using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Forty-nine patients (...) with a first-episode of psychosis and diagnosis of SZ—according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision—were studied. Fifty healthy controls (HCs) were included for comparison. All subjects underwent resting state fMRI. We used spectral dynamic causal modeling (DCM) to estimate directed connections among the bilateral ACC, DLPFC, hippocampus, and MPFC. We characterized the differences using Bayesian parameter averaging (BPA) in addition to classical inference (t-test). In addition to common effective connectivity in these two groups, HCs displayed widespread significant connections predominantly involved in ACC not detected in SZ patients, but SZ showed few connections. Based on BPA results, SZ patients exhibited anterior cingulate cortico-prefrontal-hippocampal hyperconnectivity, as well as ACC-related and hippocampal-dorsolateral prefrontal-medial prefrontal hypoconnectivity. In summary, spectral DCM revealed the pattern of effective connectivity involving ACC in patients with first-episode SZ. This study provides a potential link between SZ and dysfunction of ACC, creating an ideal situation to associate mechanisms behind SZ with aberrant connectivity among these cognition and emotion-related regions. (shrink)

Time-varying formation-containment problems for a second-order multiagent system are studied via pulse-modulated intermittent control in this paper. A distributed control framework utilizing the neighbors’ positions and velocities is designed so that leaders in the multiagent system form a formation, and followers move to the convex hull formed by each leader. Different from the traditional formation-containment problems, this paper applies the PMIC framework, which is more common and more in line with the actual control scenarios. Based on the knowledge of matrix (...) theory, algebraic graph theory, and stability theory, some sufficient conditions are given for the time-varying formation-containment problem of the second-order multiagent system. Some numerical simulations are proposed to verify the effectiveness of the results presented in this paper. (shrink)

Photovoltaic power forecasting can provide strong support for the safe operation of the power system. Existing forecasting methods are ineffective for grid scheduling decisions or risk analysis. The novel multicluster interval prediction method is proposed to consider the volatility and randomness of PV power output. First, this method utilizes the sparse autoencoder and Bayesian regularized NARX network for point forecasting of PV power. Second, density peak clustering improved by kernel Mahalanobis distance is applied to classify the dataset into multiple clusters, (...) including forecasting error and meteorological factors. Finally, the joint probability density is established by multivariate kernel density estimation to accomplish the PV power interval prediction. The proposed hybrid method is applied for the interval prediction of PV power at Yulara, Australia. Comparative research of point forecasting is implemented to evaluate the machine learning and deep learning methods, with the proposed SAE-BRNARX under four different periods. Results shows that the average values of nRMSE, MRE, nMAE, and R2 for the four periods are 4.45%, 0.90%, −0.15%, 3.39%, and 95.93%, respectively. Moreover, the results of interval prediction obtained by the other interval prediction approaches are compared with the proposed KMDDPC-MKDE. It shows that the average values of PICP, PINAW, ACE, and nMPICD for four periods are 93.93%, 9.50%, 3.93%, and 7.10% at 90% confidence level, respectively. Outcomes demonstrate that the proposed method can obtain more accuracy, a higher coverage rate, narrower average bandwidth, and a closer distance between the middle of interval and actual value than other methods. (shrink)

In classical Chinese wu 吾 is commonly employed as the first-person pronoun, similar to wo 我 that retains its use in modern Chinese. Although these two words are usually understood as stylistic variants of “I,” “me,” and “myself,” Chinese scholars of the Zhuangzi 莊子 have long been aware of the possible differences in their semantics, especially in the philosophical context of discussing the relation between the self and the person, as evinced by their occurrences in the much-discussed line “Now (...) I have lost myself” in the chapter “Discussion on Making All Things Equal”. In this essay, I first provide an exegesis of the proffered explanations of the semantical differences between wu and wo as an introduction to two ways of understanding them in the Zhuangzi literature, viz. the single-reference view and the double-reference view. Then I shall argue against these two views in favor of the no-reference view, meaning that both pronouns in “Now I have lost myself” do not function referentially, given the peculiarity of the verb “lose.” I believe the no-reference view has not been explicitly articulated and defended in the literature, although some scholars who want to read the no-self view into the Zhuangzi might have implied it. My argument is supported by a close reading of the targeted passage in the Zhuangzi, premised on the assumption that the part on the “piping of Heaven” immediately following the discussion of losing oneself is an indirect explanation rather than a digression. My explanation is framed within a similar discussion of “I” by the British philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe. This comparative interpretation, I believe, not only provides the grounds for understanding Zhuangzi’s ideal of attaining the state where “the ten thousand things are one with me,” but also demonstrates how metaphysics and the philosophy of language are two interwoven threads in Zhuangzi’s reasoning. (shrink)

Enquiry teaching approaches are widely considered as more useful than didactic approaches for the development of environmentally responsible behaviour. This paper is a report of an empirical study on the validity of this belief with reference to higher-ability and lower- to medium-ability groups drawn from geography classes at the Advanced Level in Hong Kong. The hypotheses were that, taken together, enquiry approaches are more effective than didactic approaches for the development of environmentally responsible behaviour in both the short and (...) class='Hi'>long terms for students as a whole, and for students within the same range of academic ability. A quasi-experimental control group design was used for selecting students and classes from schools in the territory. A questionnaire survey and a series of interviews were conducted to collect data about students' behaviour before and after they were taught a people-environment topic with a didactic approach or an enquiry approach. The results suggest that the students on the whole were not behaving as positively for the environment as their peers in other countries. For both the higher- and the lower- to medium-ability classes, those who were taught with an enquiry approach were behaving positively in more areas than those who were taught with a didactic approach in both the short and long terms. This trend could be attributed to their greater attention to critical thinking, positive behavioural changes, and the development of internal locus of control, while society as a whole was still largely apathetic to personal efforts for improving environmental quality. To further enhance the effectiveness of enquiry for the development of environmentally responsible behaviour, it is suggested that teachers should give more attention to the elements of concern and empathy in the classroom. Improvements in teacher education and training and in the guidelines for teachers, restructuring and revision of environmental education in schools, providing adequate funding and resources, and revision of the style and content of questions in public examinations are also recommended. (shrink)

To improve the spatial resolution of imaging and get more effective brain function information, a multi-distance probe configuration with three distances and 52 channels is designed. At the same time, a data conversion method of modified Beer–Lambert law with partial pathlength is proposed. In the experiment, three kinds of tasks, grip of left hand, grip of right hand, and rest, are performed with eight healthy subjects. First, with a typical single-distance probe configuration, the feasibility of the proposed MBLL with PPL (...) is preliminarily validated. Further, the characteristic of the proposed method is evaluated with the multi-distance probe configuration. Compared with MBLL with differential pathlength factor, the proposed MBLL with PPL is able to acquire more obvious concentration change and can achieve higher classification accuracy of the three tasks. Then, with the proposed method, the performance of the multi-distance probe configuration is discussed. Results show that, compared with a single distance, the combination of the three distances has better spatial resolution and could explore more accurate brain activation information. Besides, the classification accuracy of the three tasks obtained with the combination of three distances is higher than that of any combination of two distances. Also, with the combination of the three distances, the two-class classification between different tasks is carried out. Both theory and experimental results demonstrate that, using multi-distance probe configuration and the MBLL with PPL method, the performance of brain function detected by NIRS can be improved. (shrink)

Memory limitations and probabilistic expectations are two key factors that have been posited to play a role in the incremental processing of natural language. Relative clauses (RCs) have long served as a key proving ground for such theories of language processing. Across three self-paced reading experiments, we test the online comprehension of Hungarian subject- and object-extracted RCs (SRCs and ORCs, respectively). We capitalize on the syntactic properties of Hungarian that allow for a variety of word orders within RCs, which (...) helps us to delineate the processing costs associated with memory demand and violated expectations. Results showed a processing cost at the RC verb for structures that have longer verb-argument distances, despite those structures being more frequent in the corpus. These findings thus support theories that attribute processing difficulty to memory limitations, rather than theories that attribute difficulty to less expected structures. (shrink)

How motor proteins induce mechanical movement at the molecular level has been a focus of biophysicists for a long time. While the whole picture is yet to be completely revealed, recent developments in looking at nanometer‐scale movement with millisecond‐time resolution driven by single motors have revealed important new details about the moving step size and amount of force generated per molecule.

BackgroundThe Basal ganglia (BG) played a crucial role in the brain-level mechanisms of chronic pain disorders. However, the functional changes of BG in chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome (CP/CPPS) are still poorly understood. This study investigated the BG subregions’ resting-state functional connectivity (rs-FC) in CP/CPPS patients compared with healthy controls.MethodsTwenty eight patients with CP/CPPS and 28 age- and education-matched healthy males underwent clinical measurements and 3T brain MR imaging, including T1-weighted structural images and resting-state functional imaging. The data were analyzed (...) by the seeded-based rs-FC analysis. Then, a machine learning method was applied to assess the feasibility of detecting CP/CPPS patients through the changed rs-FC.ResultsCompared with healthy males, patients presented decreased rs-FC between the BG subregions and right middle cingulate cortex, and correlated with pain (r = 0.51, p-uncorrected = 0.005) and urinary symptoms (r = –0.4, p-uncorrected = 0.034). The left superior temporal gyrus and right supramarginal gyrus showed decreased rs-FC with the BG subregions as well. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.943 (accuracy = 80%, F1-score = 80.6%) was achieved for the classification of CP/CPPS patients and healthy males with support vector machine (SVM) based on the changed rs-FC.ConclusionThese findings provide evidence of altered BG subregions’ rs-FC in CP/CPPS, which may contribute to our understanding of the BG’s role in CP/CPPS. (shrink)

Confucianism designed a kind of social political theory quite different from those in the west. It was rooted in their realistic understandings on man, society, and the natural world. Generally, Confucians held that humankind has a specific meaning owing to mind though man came from the natural world and connected with all things. Human nature had to be defined in terms of mind whatever it was looked like. The potential ability of mind would be formed and perfected in a (...) class='Hi'>long empirical history so as to shape one’s essence. The ability of mind to endow something with meanings was primary and then those of value judgment and rational cognition. It was the ability to plant meanings into things that was regarded as moral or positive in Confucians’ eyes because one’s world of meaning would be continuously widened and enriched. The process of resting meanings on things was exactly “efforts morally”. It led to a conclusion that education to help one require autonomy plays the key role in a society. It seems to be the only standard to judge whether a society is good or right. (shrink)

This article presents an economic analysis of information good pricing and consumer welfare, and discusses the implications of price discrimination in the information economy. It argues that network externalities, coupled with information asymmetry, enable a dominant marketer to price unequally, extracting late adopters surplus to compensate for the loss from early adopters. In the short term, the minority early adopters benefit by paying less, but in the long term, the majority late adopters suffer by paying more. Considering that late (...) adopters are likely to be at a disadvantage in resources, this discriminatory pricing amounts to the poor subsidizing the rich. Based on this analysis, implications for consumer welfare are discussed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Aestheticism and SpiritualismA Narrative Study of the Exploration of Self through the Practice of Chinese CalligraphyMing-Tak Hue (bio)IntroductionCalligraphy has been used to preserve significant writings and texts in a beautiful form and to make the different styles of writing enjoyable. It is not only the art of beautiful handwriting but also a cultural heritage and tradition that reflects the culture and history of a society, a race, a nation, (...) and a country. Hence, it has very great educational value. In China calligraphy is done with a brush, which was a common writing implement in ancient times. In addition to its utilitarian function, calligraphy is the most fundamental element in other types of art, such as painting and seal-carving, and is closely connected to many subject disciplines, such as literature, history, and philosophy. Brush calligraphy is still popular in Chinese society and is frequently used in different forms of publication, such as banners and newspapers; however, it is becoming more popular for these publications to be created mechanically or in electronic form with computers rather than by hand. In the context of schooling, a similar phenomenon can be seen. Many teachers in Hong Kong, as elsewhere, are concerned that fewer and fewer students have the chance to write with a pen and enjoy the beauty of writing, as the use of computers and different types of electronic devices for writing become more popular with the general public.The aim of this article is to examine the meaning of the practice of Chinese calligraphy from a cultural perspective and to draw school practitioners' attention to the importance of calligraphy education in the promotion of the whole-person growth of students and of multicultural education. Relevant literature on Western and Chinese calligraphy will be reviewed. Then an explanation will be given on how a narrative approach to the personal experience method and textual analysis were adopted for the data analysis. The article argues that calligraphy serves more than a utilitarian function. It [End Page 18] has also been used as an aesthetic practice and spiritual discipline. Hence, it is suggested that the calligraphy of brushwork is not only delightful to the eye but also an inspiration to the spirit. It is a practice of mindfulness for promoting self-reflection and self-cultivation, which leads calligraphy practitioners to reflect in their mind and heart, and so brings them into a harmonious relationship with others and the natural world.Literature ReviewIn Western societies for the last one hundred years, calligraphy has been rediscovered and relearned.1 Knight pointed out that the heritage and traditions of calligraphy have not been properly addressed and inherited in Western societies. Uyehara further suggested that calligraphy had been basically restudied and relearned in Europe and the United States up until the end of World War II. Edward Johnston (1872-1944) could be the most influential scholar who attempted to rediscover the art of Western calligraphy, lettering, and illuminating. In his study of ancient inscriptions and old manuscripts, three essential qualities of calligraphy were identified: "legibility," "beauty," and "character."2 When creating a piece of artwork, calligraphers have to ensure the legibility of the letter forms, the mastery of the skills of creating beautiful writing, and the readability of their works. As he explained,To make good letters and to arrange them well. To make good letters is not necessarily to "design" them—they have been designed long ago—but it is to take the best letters we can find, and to acquire them and make them our own. To arrange letters well requires no great art, but it requires a working knowledge of letter-forms and of the reasonable methods of grouping these forms to suit every circumstance.3Similarly, Knight highlighted the essential qualities of "legibility" and "beauty." Further, he stressed that the "creativity" of calligraphy should be imposed upon the tradition and cultural heritage of ancient manuscripts. As he said,[M]any of the conventions we use today in letter design and typography were established during the manuscript age. To know the classic work of this period is to know more about the ground we stand upon. If we grasp the... (shrink)

The phenomenal character of dreaming has long been a matter of philosophical debates. Most of the time, dreaming is either likened to perception or likened to imagination, in order to decide whether it gets closer to normal or abnormal states of consciousness. This line of debates extends from the traditional dream argument to the contemporary movement of phenomenology. This article presents what specific contributions phenomenology has made to the millennial investigations of dreaming. Its structure is twofold. Firstly, we introduce (...) how pioneering phenomenologists, including Edmund Husserl, Jan Patočka, Jean-Paul Sartre, Eugen Fink, and Jean Héring, analyse the lived characters of dreaming respectively. Secondly, we show that those pioneering phenomenologists, by engaging with the traditional dream argument, have laid out the worldliness of dreams as a crucial criterion for deciding how similar dreams and reality can be. (shrink)

Cultural development is often reflected in the emotional expression of various cultural carriers, such as literary works, movies, etc. Therefore, the cultural development can be analyzed through emotion analysis of the text, so as to sort out its context and obtain its development dynamics. This paper proposes a text emotion analysis method based on deep learning. The traditional neural network model mainly deals with the classification task of short texts in the form of word vectors, which causes the model to (...) rely too much on the accuracy of word segmentation. In addition, the short texts have the characteristics of short corpus and divergent features. A text emotion classification model combing the Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers and Bi-directional Long Short-Term Memory is developed in this work. First, the BERT model is used to convert the trained text into a word-based vector representation. Then, the generated word vector is employed as the input of the BiLSTM to obtain the semantic representation of the context of the relevant word. By adding random dropout, the mechanism prevents the model from overfitting. Finally, the extracted feature vector is input to the fully connected layer, and the emotion category to which the text belongs is calculated through the Softmax function. Experiments show that in processing short texts, the proposed model based on BERT-BiLSTM is more accurate and reliable than the traditional neural network model using word vectors. The proposed method has a better analysis effect on the development of western culture. (shrink)

This paper argues against the continued practice of Confucian familism, even in its moderate form, in East Asian hospitals. According to moderate familism, a physician acting in concert with the patient's family may withhold diagnostic information from the patient, and may give it to the patient's family members without her prior approval. There are two main approaches to defend moderate familism: one argues that it can uphold patient's autonomy and protect her best interests; the other appeals to cultural relativism by (...) construing the principle of ‘family autonomy’ to be incommensurable with that of individual autonomy. We respond to the first approach by explaining how the familist arguments either depend on some unreasonable assumptions or simply fail to articulate. The critique of the second approach is based on our recent survey showing that there is no dichotomy of relevant values between the East and the West: we believe that the result can effectively block the familist's reliance on certain traditional or cultural values to explain their resistance to the incorporation of pluralist values. Despite our disagreement with familism, we consider the Eastern emphasis on the family to be conducive to the communication between patient, family members and medical personnel, which is indispensible to the patient's well being and autonomy. We conclude that respect for patient autonomy is perfectly consistent with the involvement of the family in making medical decision as long as the family plays a merely consultant role. (shrink)

This paper argues against the continued practice of Confucian familism, even in its moderate form, in East Asian hospitals. According to moderate familism, a physician acting in concert with the patient's family may withhold diagnostic information from the patient, and may give it to the patient's family members without her prior approval. There are two main approaches to defend moderate familism: one argues that it can uphold patient's autonomy and protect her best interests; the other appeals to cultural relativism by (...) construing the principle of ‘family autonomy’ to be incommensurable with that of individual autonomy. We respond to the first approach by explaining how the familist arguments either depend on some unreasonable assumptions or simply fail to articulate. The critique of the second approach is based on our recent survey showing that there is no dichotomy of relevant values between the East and the West: we believe that the result can effectively block the familist's reliance on certain traditional or cultural values to explain their resistance to the incorporation of pluralist values. Despite our disagreement with familism, we consider the Eastern emphasis on the family to be conducive to the communication between patient, family members and medical personnel, which is indispensible to the patient's well being and autonomy. We conclude that respect for patient autonomy is perfectly consistent with the involvement of the family in making medical decision as long as the family plays a merely consultant role. (shrink)

The linguistic theory of Chomsky has changed the long, traditional way of studying language. The nature of knowledge, which is closely tied to human knowledge in general, makes it a logical step for Chomsky to generalize his theory to the study of the relation between language and the world-in particular, the study of truth and reference. But his theory has been controversial and his proposal of "innate ideas" has been resisted by some empiricists who characterize him as rationalist. In (...) our view, these empiricists make a mistake. In the present paper we attend to his position regarding linguistics as a science of mind/brain, which we believe is an important aspect of his theory that has not been paid enough attention or understood by his opponents. In turn, this will help to clarify some of the confusions around his theory. Finally we will discuss some of the debatable issues based on the outlines we draw. (shrink)

In various guises (usually referred to as the “basic emotion” or “discrete emotion” approach), scientists and philosophers have long argued that certain categories of emotion are natural kinds. In a recent paper, Colombetti (2009) proposed yet another natural kind account, and in so doing, characterized and critiqued psychological constructionist approaches to emotion, including our own Conceptual Act Model. In this commentary, we briefly address three topics raised by Columbetti. First, we correct several common misperceptions about the discrete emotion approach (...) to emotion. Second, we discuss misconceptions of our Conceptual Act Model. Finally, we briefly comment on Columbetti's Dynamical Discrete Emotion model. (shrink)

This study is based on the natural resource based view, which examines the impact of holistic marketing orientation on business performance by defining the role of enablers and mediators. The drivers, including corporate social responsibility and environmental culture influence, are tested by analyzing the role of sustainable competitive advantage as a mediator. The analysis is based on 298 samples collected from top and middle-level managers working in the pharmaceutical industry. Structural equation modeling was undertaken using Smart PLS 3.2.8. The research (...) outcomes reveal that corporate social responsibility and environmental culture have a substantial impact on green marketing orientation. The results show that GMO has a significant direct and indirect impact on business performance while a full mediation of sustainable competitive advantage exists between the green marketing orientation and business performance. The outcomes will facilitate managers in green marketing strategy and decision making in the long-term, with 3-fold benefits in addition to strengthening their competitiveness. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Great Synthesis of Wang Yang Ming Neo-Confucianism in Korea: The Chonŏn (Testament) by Chŏng Chedu (Hagok) by Edward Y.J. ChungMaria Hasfeldt Long (bio)The Great Synthesis of Wang Yang Ming Neo-Confucianism in Korea: The Chonŏn (Testament) by Chŏng Chedu (Hagok). By Edward Y.J. Chung. Landham: Lexington Books, 2020. Pp. vii+ 351. Hardcover $137.00, isbn 978-1-7936-1469-8. The Korean Neo-Confucian tradition during the Chosŏn dynasty (1392–1910) was (...) dominated by the orthodox Sŏngnihak (School of Human Nature and Principle), which is also known as the Chŏngjuhak (Cheng–Zhu School). This school of Neo-Confucianism followed the doctrines and teachings of the Great Synthesizer Zhu Xi (1130–1200) to such a point that other Neo-Confucian schools were labeled as wrong and even persecuted until the late nineteenth century. One of these schools was Simhak (School of the Mind/Heart) established by the Chinese scholar Wang Yangming (1472–1529), which during the Ming dynasty (1382–1644) had grown to rival the Cheng–Zhu school. However, the academic-political power of the Cheng–Zhu school in Korea managed to suppress Yangming scholarship and maintain dominance throughout the dynasty. Despite that, a few scholars did take up the scholarship of Simhak in Korea, with the most influential being Chŏng Chedu, also known as Hagok (1649–1736) (p. 4). In his book, The Great Synthesis of Wang Yang Ming Neo-Confucianism in Korea: The Chonŏn (Testament) by Chŏng Chedu (Hagok), Edward Y.J. Chung presents not only an annotated translation of Hagok's main writings but also a look into intellectual scholarship that opposed the orthodoxy of the Cheng–Zhu school of Korea. This in-depth study and translation of Hagok into English was motivated by the lack of attention in Western scholarship on Korean Neo-Confucianism. It presents a study that goes beyond the three most famous scholars, Yi Hwang T'oegye (1501–1570), Yi I Yulgok (1536–1584), and Chŏng Yagyong Tasan (1762–1836), who founded the three mainstream schools of the Chosŏn dynasty. According to Chung, Hagok's writing not only represents important aspects of intellectual history but also serves as a fourth and lesser-known school of Korean Neo-Confucian thinking that should be placed on the same level as the other three. Unlike other Korean scholars who tried to take up the Yangming doctrine, Hagok did not care that the doctrine was prohibited. This set him apart from other scholars. Despite the Cheng–Zhu school being the "right learning," Hagok did not agree with the majority of it and based his theories on the Yangming doctrine. Although Hagok openly followed the Yangming doctrine, he did not do so blindly. [End Page 1] Hagok was aware that Yangming's theories had their flaws and he agreed with some theories of the Cheng–Zhu school (p. 7–8). This resulted in him trying to synthesize the two schools into one harmonious doctrine, which is why Chung believes Hagok to be important and has undertaken the task of bringing attention to this Korean scholar. Consisting of two distinct parts, Chung gives the reader a solid introduction to Hagok and his main theories via the selected translations from his most influential text, Chonŏn, which can be translated into "testament" or "living words." The first part of the book is divided into notes on the translation itself, such as transliteration, citation style, abbreviations, and, more importantly, how and why Chung selected the sections of the Chonŏn that have been translated. Through the selection, translation, annotation, and discussion of forty-one important essays from Chonŏn's three parts, Chung wishes to show the heart of Hagok's Neo-Confucian thought (p. x). The Chonŏn is not organized according to any thematic system and consists of different paragraphs, notes, and comments. Chung has, therefore, chosen which parts to translate in order to best portray Hagok's interpretation of the key concepts, the theories found in the Yangming Neo-Confucianism, and Hagok's criticism of Zhu Xi and T'oegye. All of this is properly introduced and explained in... (shrink)

When art develops to a certain extent, it is bound to be mixed with traces of religion, and art influenced by religion occupies an important position in the entire history of art development. Looking at the development history of Chinese and Western painting art, we can find that there are indeed many connections between religion and art. The spiritual transmission of religion is carried out using intuition through painting art, and its vital role is reflected in the long history (...) of human civilization. This paper studies the relationship between the philosophical fusion of the original aesthetics of Chinese and Western religious painting and contemporary painting by studying the development and characteristics of religious painting in China and the West. This paper studies the differences between Chinese and Western religious doctrines and how religious figure painting embodies divinity and secularized humanity in terms of painting methods and forms of expression. The study of the philosophical fusion of the original aesthetics of Chinese and Western religious paintings and its influence on contemporary paintings fills the gap in this aspect. (shrink)

Emotional design is an important development trend of interaction design. Emotional design in products plays a key role in enhancing user experience and inducing user emotional resonance. In recent years, based on the user's emotional experience, the design concept of strengthening product emotional design has become a new direction for most designers to improve their design thinking. In the emotional interaction design, the machine needs to capture the user's key information in real time, recognize the user's emotional state, and use (...) a variety of clues to finally determine the appropriate user model. Based on this background, this research uses a deep learning mechanism for more accurate and effective emotion recognition, thereby optimizing the design of the interactive system and improving the user experience. First of all, this research discusses how to use user characteristics such as speech, facial expression, video, heartbeat, etc., to make machines more accurately recognize human emotions. Through the analysis of various characteristics, the speech is selected as the experimental material. Second, a speech-based emotion recognition method is proposed. The mel-Frequency cepstral coefficient of the speech signal is used as the input of the improved long and short-term memory network. To ensure the integrity of the information and the accuracy of the output at the next moment, ILSTM makes peephole connections in the forget gate and input gate of LSTM, and adds the unit state as input data to the threshold layer. The emotional features obtained by ILSTM are input into the attention layer, and the self-attention mechanism is used to calculate the weight of each frame of speech signal. The speech features with higher weights are used to distinguish different emotions and complete the emotion recognition of the speech signal. Experiments on the EMO-DB and CASIA datasets verify the effectiveness of the model for emotion recognition. Finally, the feasibility of emotional interaction system design is discussed. (shrink)

Researchers have long been interested in how owners affect firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance. However, owners face diverging ethical preferences between funding and potentially benefiting from their firms’ CSR performance. To better understand owners’ influence on firms’ CSR performance, we focus on ultimate controlling owners with the highest control rights over their firms. We theorize that ultimate controlling owners with more control rights have stronger motivations and greater decision-making power to promote firms’ CSR performance to demonstrate that they (...) are responsible owners and gain legitimacy and goodwill from their stakeholders. Moreover, we explore how this positive relationship is strengthened when ultimate controlling owners and their firms share similar corporate names and receive increased financial analyst coverage, as these conditions increase the likelihood of gaining legitimacy and goodwill through their firms’ improved CSR performance. We test our theory using a sample of 852 publicly listed Chinese firms from 2008 to 2017. Our findings support our theoretical predictions and contribute to a more nuanced understanding of how differences in ownership structure and owner type associated with ultimate controlling owners shape their motives and power to affect CSR performance in their firms. (shrink)

Confúcio (551 aC - 479 aC) - foi um filósofo, professor e estadista bem conhecido, bastante influente durante os períodos de Primavera-Outono dos Estados Combatentes na China. Somados a esses atributos, destaca-se o fato de ele ter sido um pensador que transmitiu à humanidade numerosos conceitos perspicazes, dentre os quais a doutrina da "retificação de nomes" (正名 - zhèng míng). Esta doutrina, que tem caráter profundo, abrangente e metódico, procura resgatar a sociedade de um estado de caos para um estado (...) de ordem através da aplicação dos princípios da governabilidade benigna e através das virtudes. Nos tempos atuais, teríamos grandes ganhos humanos se conseguíssemos enxergar para além das suas falhas e encampar seus valores. Passado o tempo, nota-se que o pensamento de Confúcio sobre a rectificação de nomes ainda ostenta sua importância e serve como uma lição útil no avanço do desenvolvimento nacional das gentes. (shrink)

BackgroundBreast cancer patients are at elevated risk of depression during treatment, thus provoking the chance of poor clinical outcomes. This retrospective cohort study aimed to investigate whether integrating Chinese herbal medicines citation into conventional cancer therapy could decrease the risk of depression in the long-term breast cancer survivors.MethodsA cohort of patients aged 20–70 years and with newly diagnosed breast cancer during 2000–2008 was identified from a nationwide claims database. In this study, we focused solely on survivors of breast cancer (...) at least1 year after diagnosis. After one-to-one matching for age, sex, and baseline comorbidities, breast cancer patients who received and did not receive CHM treatment were enrolled. The incidence rate and hazard ratio citation for depression between the two groups was estimated at the end of 2012. A Cox proportional hazard model was constructed to examine the impact of the CHM use on the risk of depression.ResultsDuring the study period, the incidence rate of depression was significantly lower in the treated cohort than in the untreated cohort [8.57 compared with 11.01 per 1,000 person-years citation], and the adjusted HR remained significant at 0.74 in a Cox proportional hazards regression model. The corresponding risk further decreasing to 43% among those using CHM for more than 1 year.ConclusionFinding from this investigation indicated that the lower risk of depression observed in breast cancer patients treated with CHM, suggesting that CHM treatment should be considered for disease management toward breast cancer. Yet, the optimal administered dose should be determined in further clinical trials. (shrink)

In this article, the co-editors of the corporate responsibility: quantitative issues section of the journal provide an overview of the quantitative CSR field and offer some new perspectives on where the field is going. They highlight key issues in developing impactful, theory-driven, and ethically grounded research and call for research that examines complex problems facing businesses and the society (e.g., big data and artificial intelligence, political polarization, and the role of CSR in generating social impact). By examining topics that are (...) under-researched, forward-looking, and socially oriented, scholars can expand the boundary of CSR’s substantive domain and produce research that helps businesses act in a long-term, socially responsible way in this quickly evolving, turbulent environment. They also discuss ways to enhance the methodological rigor of quantitative CSR research and encourage scholars to employ cutting-edge, innovative methods to shed light on the micro-level mechanisms of CSR and reveal patterns and relationships hidden in unstructured big data. (shrink)

Enquiry teaching approaches are widely considered as more useful than didactic approaches for the development of environmentally responsible behaviour. This paper is a report of an empirical study on the validity of this belief with reference to higher-ability and lower- to medium-ability groups drawn from geography classes at the Advanced Level in Hong Kong. The hypotheses were that, taken together, enquiry approaches are more effective than didactic approaches for the development of environmentally responsible behaviour in both the short and (...) class='Hi'>long terms for students as a whole, and for students within the same range of academic ability. A quasi-experimental control group design was used for selecting students and classes from schools in the territory. A questionnaire survey and a series of interviews were conducted to collect data about students' behaviour before and after they were taught a people-environment topic with a didactic approach or an enquiry approach. The results suggest that the students on the whole were not behaving as positively for the environment as their peers in other countries. For both the higher- and the lower- to medium-ability classes, those who were taught with an enquiry approach were behaving positively in more areas than those who were taught with a didactic approach in both the short and long terms. This trend could be attributed to their greater attention to critical thinking, positive behavioural changes, and the development of internal locus of control, while society as a whole was still largely apathetic to personal efforts for improving environmental quality. To further enhance the effectiveness of enquiry for the development of environmentally responsible behaviour, it is suggested that teachers should give more attention to the elements of concern and empathy in the classroom. Improvements in teacher education and training and in the guidelines for teachers, restructuring and revision of environmental education in schools, providing adequate funding and resources, and revision of the style and content of questions in public examinations are also recommended. (shrink)

Ben shu gong fen san bu: di yi bu hui gui zhen wo, di er bu hui gui tian di, di san bu hui gui tai ji. Nei rong bao kuo: lun sheng ming; sheng ming yu shi ge; sheng ming yu yin yue; xian dai ren sheng ming de yan bian; wo shi shui, tian di yu wo deng.

Objectives: The corona virus disease-2019 pandemic spread globally, and we aimed to investigate the psychosocial impact on healthcare workers in China during the pandemic.Methods: In this systematic review and meta-analysis, we searched seven electronic databases for cross-sectional studies on psychosocial impact on HWs in relation to COVID-19 from January 1, 2020 to October 7, 2020. We included primary studies involving Chinese HWs during the pandemic, and data were extracted from the published articles. Our primary outcome was prevalence of anxiety, depression, (...) and stress disorders. We pooled prevalence value with their 95% confidence interval using random effect models and assessed study quality on the basis of an 11-item checklist recommended by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The study protocol was registered in PROSPERO.Results: We identified 25 articles comprising a total of 30,841 completed questionnaires and 22 studies for meta-analysis. The prevalence of anxiety, depression, and stress disorders was 34.4%, 31.1%, and 29.1% for HWs. The pooled prevalence of anxiety disorders for HWs from late January to early February was 46.4%, significantly higher than those in mid-term February and after late February. The pooled prevalence of depression disorders for HWs from late January to early February was 46.5%, significantly higher than those in mid-term February and after late February. HWs working in Hubei Province had a higher prevalence of anxiety and a lower prevalence of depression than those working in other regions. Nurses had a higher prevalence of anxiety and depression than other HWs.Conclusions: About one-third of HWs in China suffered anxiety, depression, and stress at the early epidemic of COVID-19. HWs in Hubei Province, especially nurses, had a higher prevalence of psychological disorders. During the pandemic, a negative psychological state may persist in a proportion of Chinese HWs, fluctuating with the control of the pandemic. The long-term impact should continue to be observed. Attention should be paid to HWs for their psychological impact due to the pandemic.Systematic Review Registration: The study protocol was registered with PROSPERO. (shrink)

Children who live on the margins of society are disadvantaged in achieving their developmental potential because of the lack of a necessary stable environment and nurturing care. Many early prevention programs aim at mitigating such effects, but often the evaluation of their long-term effect is missing. The aim of the study presented here was to evaluate such long-term effects in two prevention programs for children-at-risk growing up in deprived social environments focusing on child attachment representation as the primary (...) outcome as well as on self-reflective capacities of teachers taking care of these children. The latter was a key component for promoting resilient behavior in children. Five hundred and twenty-six children aged 36 to 60 months at risk due to immigration status, low family socio-economic status and child behavior were examined in a cluster-randomized study comparing two preventions, the psychodynamic, attachment-based holistic approach EARLY STEPS (ES) with the classroom based FAUSTLOS (FA) for their efficacy. Primary outcome was the child attachment representation measured by the Manchester Child Attachment Story Task (MCAST). Secondary outcomes were derived from (a) the Caregiver-Teacher Report Form (C-TRF: problem behaviors, including anxiety/depressive symptoms, emotional-reactive and somatic problems, social withdrawal, aggressive behavior, and attention deficit), from (b) the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ, parent version: resilience and wellbeing) and (c) Self-Reflective Scales for teachers (SRS: self-reflective capacities of teachers). Compared to baseline, attachment and behavioral problems improved in both programs. ES led to more secure and more organized attachment representations (medium effect sizes). Aggressive behavior and externalizing problems were reduced in the FA group compared with ES, particularly in boys (medium effect sizes). Self-reflective capacities of the teachers increased only in the ES group. High correlation between children’s attachment type with the number of social risk factors and the increase of problematic social behavior strongly indicate that an increase in teachers’ self-reflective capacities helps to change children’s attachment patterns which thus strengthens the resilience of these children-at-risk [An ethical vote from LPPKJP 2009-02-25 was obtained and the trial registered; Clinical trial registration information: The trial was registered 14.02.2012 (DRKS00003500;https://www.drks.de)]. (shrink)

An interesting phenomenon called “hidden opportunity cost of time effect” was detected in intertemporal choices. The majority of our participants preferred the smaller but sooner (SS) option to the larger but later (LL) option if opportunity cost was explicit. However, a higher proportion of participants preferred the LL to SS option if opportunity cost was hidden. This shift violates the invariance principle and opens a new way to encourage future-oriented behavior. By simply mentioning the ‘obvious’ opportunity cost of alternatives, decision (...) makers can be more informed in prioritizing their long-term goals rather than short-term goals. (shrink)

Recent studies suggest that the tetracycline antibiotic minocycline, or its cousins, hold therapeutic potential for affective and psychotic disorders. This is proposed on the basis of a direct effect on microglia‐mediated frontocortical synaptic pruning (FSP) during adolescence, perhaps in genetically susceptible individuals harboring risk alleles in the complement component cascade that is involved in this normal process of CNS circuit refinement. In reviewing this field, it is argued that minocycline is actually probing and modulating a deeply evolved and intricate system (...) wherein psychosocial stimuli sculpt the circuitry of the “social brain” underlying adult behavior and personality. Furthermore, this system can generate psychiatric morbidity that is not dependent on genetic variation. This view has important ramifications for understanding “pathologies” of human social behavior and cognition as well as providing long‐sought potential mechanistic links between social experience and susceptibility to mental and physical disease. (shrink)

Different countries have different education systems and their advantages and disadvantages. It is necessary to optimize their own higher education system and formulate policy plans to fully realize the optimization of the higher education system. For this reason, we propose to establish a continuous evaluation model of higher education health. This study mainly uses principal component analysis and entropy weight method to determine the evaluation model of higher education health status and makes autoregressive moving average model time series analysis based (...) on the higher education evaluation model, which is obtained by studying long-term trends. The future development of education realizes the evaluation of sustainability. For Vietnam, that needs to be adjusted, the evaluation indicators based on the health status of the higher education system in developing countries will be added, tested, and adjusted and combined with the ARMA model prediction to determine the time period for the policy to meet reasonable expectations, and targeted development policies are proposed. Finally, we test the sensitivity of the established model, evaluate and analyze the advantages and disadvantages of the model, And combine the full text analysis to get the final conclusion. (shrink)

Malaysian voters made a historical decision in May 2018, ushering in what observers termed a “Malay political tsunami” by displacing the UMNO government’s decades-long rule. This paper argues that the spirit of inclusiveness played a crucial role in the first transition of power in Malaysia. Moreover, the inclusive representation of major ethnic groups in the multi-racial state by the winning Alliance Hope coalition was a key factor leading to the transition. This paper also examines the political development in Malaysia, (...) from the beginning of inclusive politics in the early stage of its independence, to the decline of inclusiveness from the 1970s to 1990s, to the collapse of the inclusive politics since 2008 when the DAP produced a major victory over the MCA in the May 2008 elections. Finally, this paper also explores the challenges of the new ruling Alliance Hope in Malaysia. Keywords : Ethno-politics, inclusiveness, UMNO, MCA, MIC, Alliance Hope. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Physiognomy in Ming China: Fortune and the Body by Xing WangWenbin Wang (bio)Physiognomy in Ming China: Fortune and the Body. By Xing Wang. Leiden: Brill, 2020. Pp. x+ 325. Hardcover €114.00, ISBN 978-90-04-42954-3.Physiognomy (xiangshu 相術) as a technique of fortune-telling via the observation of the body has a long history in China and is still a living tradition. As a part of the traditional Chinese (...) technological repertoire of "Techniques and Methods" (fangshu 方術), records of performing physiognomy date back to the Spring and Autumn period (8th-5th centuries B.C.) (p. 31). According to Lisa Raphals, physiognomy was a crucial part of early Chinese philosophical discussion of the body, cosmology and human existence.1 Yet Wang Xing argues that despite its long history, our knowledge of Chinese physiognomy before the Ming dynasty is rather limited due to the small amount of pre-Ming physiognomy manuscripts still in existence. Chinese physiognomy as we know it today is largely based on its predecessors in late imperial China, and it was during the late Ming that most of the well-known extant physiognomy manuals were produced (p. 34). In contrast, the paucity of academic surveys of Ming physiognomy means that when it comes to scholarly examination of Chinese physiognomic texts and academic representation of physiognomic theories, misinterpretation often occurs. Wang is particularly critical of an early academic work on Chinese physiognomy by American anthropologist William Lessa, who made many dubious and broad assertions about the origin and characteristics of Chinese physiognomy (p. 15).2 In this context, Wang's Physiognomy in Ming China: Fortune and the Body is the first monograph in the English-speaking world primarily dedicated to the study of Chinese physiognomy in the Ming dynasty, including its social, textual, intellectual and technological history. It is also the first work in English that comprehensively introduces the history of Chinese physiognomy in early to late imperial China.Wang's investigation of this topic is two-fold. On the one hand he tackles physiognomy manuals and records of physiognomy practice from a historical perspective. Wang uses a very famous Ming physiognomic "encyclopedia," The Compendium of Divine Physiognomy (Shenxiang quanbian 神相全編), as the main text in his discussion of physiognomic knowledge, as well as a large amount of anecdotal writings from the Song to Ming periods. On the other hand, Wang consciously draws links between Chinese physiognomic theories and modern Western philosophical and anthropological debates on the body, symbolism and phenomenology. To push forward this conversation, Wang establishes a unique [End Page 1] framework for interpreting the conceptualization of the body, fortune and the cosmos in Ming physiognomic texts: the "homological" body on which time is "spatialized," discussed further below. It is this second facet of the argument that could most intrigue and inspire scholars of Chinese philosophy like myself. As Marta Hanson comments, Wang's work is an excellent example of how Chinese technical as well as cosmological works could problematize and challenge modern Euro-American academic theorizations of Asian culture and how professional sinological study could contribute to salient modern intellectual debates.3 When reading Wang's book, readers should always bear in mind his intention to bring together Ming physiognomic theories with broader contemporary philosophical discourse.Apart from the introduction, there are seven chapters in the book. The first two chapters serve as the historical section of the discussion (although historical analysis is also an indispensable part of later chapters). Chapter 1 provides readers with an overall background to physiognomy in China, especially its categorization as a form of elite knowledge in traditional catalogues, the development of core physiognomic theories and concepts in relation to traditional Chinese cosmology and medical theories, and the textual history of Ming physiognomy manuals. Beyond providing general information, in my view the author here makes three outstanding points: the first is that what we know as Chinese physiognomy is actually not merely a technique of human body divination, but also a method of predicting human future via observing the whole material world. Wang mentions a very important branch of physiognomy in historical catalogues called "physiognomy of things" (xiangwu 相物) (p. 27), in which anything from a horse... (shrink)

The call for "doing right things on behalf of Heaven" made by Sung Chiang, the hero of the Chinese novel Shui hu [Water Margin], has long been welcomed by some people. They think that a right thing should be defined as the "revolutionary course" or the "reason" by which rebellions can be justified and that "doing right things on behalf of Heaven" is an antigovernment slogan. They are wrong. As has been clearly demonstrated in Shui hu, right things refer (...) to the Confucian-Mencian doctrine and Neo-Confucianism in the Sung and Ming dynasties. Hanging out the white flag of reactionary Neo-Confucianism, Sung Chiang carries out the capitulationist line and buries the peasant uprising. (shrink)

The late Ming monk Hanshan Deqing forced his way into a Buddhist service held around Wanli 10 to pray for the birth of the imperial heir. His action has long been seen as a heroic act that challenged the Wanli Emperor for the benefit of the state, yet an act that would lead to his exile later. However, this paper demonstrates that it was Deqing’s desperate but deliberate attempt to seek support from the inner court. This strategy helped (...) Deqing to rise to a leading Buddhist master in late Ming China, but it asked him to pay a high price by getting him involved in court strife. This paper reveals the fragility of the late Ming Buddhist revival under the pressure of contemporary politics. (shrink)

With this book, Wang Yang-ming has been the subject of three full-scale volumes in English since 1976, the others being Julia Ching's To Acquire Wisdom and Wei-ming Tu's Neo-Confucian Thought in Action. Although there are a few older books and many articles on Wang, the recent surge of interest is long overdue for a philosopher whose influence in East Asia has been comparable roughly to that of Descartes in the West. Wang Yang-ming was a government official, (...) a missionary of Chinese high culture to barbarian tribesmen when exiled by the government, an exceptional general and military strategist, and above all a philosopher concerned to follow and teach the path to sageliness. Raised in a traditional Confucian home, Wang seriously pursued both taoism and Buddhism before returning to Confucianism as a path to sageliness that requires addressing dense social obligation. Because of his first-hand encounter with those other "taos," Wang made a fresh approach to Neo-Confucianism, which supplements the Confucian social orientation with taoist interests in nature and in something like metaphysics and also with a Buddhist interest in personal self-cultivation. (shrink)

By analyzing Zhu Xi and Zhang Zai’s three representative explanatory paradigms—that of Feng Youlan, Mou Zongsan and Zhang Dainian, the paper tries to show that studying Chinese philosophy in a Western way and emphasizing logical consistency will unavoidably lead to the defects of simplicity and partiality. In addition to Buddhism and Daoism, Song-Ming philosophy had also absorbed thoughts from the Pre-Qin, Han, Wei and Jin dynasties. The existence of multiple philosophical thoughts and their new synthesis lead to internal contradictions (...) in Song-Ming philosophy and Li Xue 理学 (Neo-Confucianism in the Song and Ming dynasties). The contradiction between the doctrine of tiandao 天道 (the way in which the world runs) and that of xinxing 心性 (mind and human nature) was even sharper. Li Xue and Xin Xue also overlapped one another. The transition from the doctrine of tiandao to that of xinxing was a long journey. It was begun by Zhu Xi in his later years, and was finally completed by Wang Yangming. Unveiling the complexity and special characteristics of Song-Ming philosophy is a task for scholars on the history of Chinese philosophy. (shrink)