Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, EarlyView.

A novel data-driven model-free adaptive control approach is first proposed by combining the advantages of model-free adaptive control and data-driven optimal iterative learning control, and then its stability and convergence analysis is given to prove algorithm stability and asymptotical convergence of tracking error. Besides, the parameters of presented approach are adaptively adjusted with fuzzy logic to determine the occupied proportions of MFAC and DDOILC according to their different control performances in different control stages. Lastly, the proposed fuzzy DDMFAC approach is (...) applied to the control of particle quality in drug development phase of spray fluidized-bed granulation process, and its control effect is compared with MFAC and DDOILC and their fuzzy forms, in which the parameters of MFAC and DDOILC are adaptively adjusted with fuzzy logic. The effectiveness of the presented FDDMFAC approach is verified by a series of simulations. (shrink)

ObjectivesAbnormal brain function in ASD patients changes dynamically across developmental stages. However, no one has studied the brain function of prepubertal children with ASD. Prepuberty is an important stage for children’s socialization. This study aimed to investigate alterations in local spontaneous brain activity in prepubertal boys with ASD.Materials and MethodsMeasures of the amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations and regional homogeneity acquired from resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging database, including 34 boys with ASD and 49 typically developing boys aged 7 to 10 (...) years, were used to detect regional brain activity. Pearson correlation analyses were conducted on the relationship between abnormal ALFF and ReHo values and Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule and Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised scores.ResultsIn the ASD group, we found decreased ALFF in the left inferior parietal lobule and decreased ReHo in the left lingual gyrus, left superior temporal gyrus, left middle occipital gyrus, and right cuneus. There were negative correlations between ReHo values in the left LG and left STG and the ADOS social affect score and a negative correlation between ReHo values in the left STG and the calibrated severity total ADOS score.ConclusionBrain regions with functional abnormalities, including the left IPL, left LG, left STG, left MOG, and right cuneus may be crucial in the neuropathology of prepubertal boys with ASD. Furthermore, ReHo abnormalities in the left LG and left STG were correlated with sociality. These results will supplement the study of neural mechanisms in ASD at different developmental stages, and be helpful in exploring the neural mechanisms of prepubertal boys with ASD. (shrink)

Objectives: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a juvenile onset neurodevelopmental disorder with social impairment and stereotyped behavior as the main symptoms. Unaffected relatives may also exhibit similar ASD features due to genetic factors. Although previous studies have demonstrated atypical brain morphological features as well as task-state brain function abnormalities in unaffected parents with ASD children, it remains unclear the pattern of brain function in the resting state.Methods: A total of 42 unaffected parents of ASD children (pASD) and 39 age-, sex-, (...) and handedness-matched controls were enrolled. Multiple resting-state fMRI (rsfMRI) analyzing methods were applied, including amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF), regional homogeneity (ReHo), degree centrality (DC), and functional connectivity (FC), to reveal the functional abnormalities of unaffected parents in ASD-related brain regions. Spearman Rho correlation analysis between imaging metric values and the severity of ASD traits were evaluated as well.Results: ALFF, ReHo, and DC methods all revealed abnormal brain regions in the pASD group, such as the left medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC) and rectal gyrus (ROI-1), bilateral supplementary motor area (ROI-2), right caudate nucleus head and right amygdala/para-hippocampal gyrus (ROI-3). FC decreasing was observed between ROI-1 and right anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), ROI-2, and bilateral precuneus. FC enhancing was observed between ROI-3 and right anterior cerebellar lobe, left medial temporal gyrus, left superior temporal gyrus, left medial frontal gyrus, left precentral gyrus, right postcentral gyrus in pASD. In addition, ALFF values in ROI-1, DC values in ROI-3 were positively correlated with AQ scores in pASD (ρ1 = 0.298, P1 = 0.007; ρ2 = 0.220, P2 = 0.040), while FC values between ROI-1 and right ACC were negatively correlated with AQ scores (ρ3 = −0.334, P3 = 0.002).Conclusion: rsfMRI metrics could be used as biomarkers to reveal the underlying neurobiological feature of ASD for unaffected parents. (shrink)

With the rapid development of Internet of Things technology, RFID technology has been widely used in various fields. In order to optimize the RFID system hardware deployment strategy and improve the deployment efficiency, the prediction of the RFID system identification rate has become a new challenge. In this paper, a neighborhood rough set and random forest combination model is proposed to predict the identification rate of an RFID system. Firstly, the initial influencing factors of the RFID system identification rate are (...) reduced using neighborhood rough set theory combined with the principle of heuristic attribute reduction of neighborhood weighted dependency, thus obtaining a kernel factor subset. Secondly, a random forest prediction model is established based on the kernel factor subset, and a confusion matrix is established using out-of-bag data to evaluate the prediction results. The test is conducted under the constructed RFID experimental environment, whose results showed that the model can predict the identification rate of the RFID system in a fast and efficient way, and the classification accuracy can reach 90.5%. It can effectively guide the hardware deployment and communication parameter protocol setting of the system and improve the system performance. Compared with BP neural network and other prediction models, NRS-RF has shorter prediction time and faster calculation speed. Finally, the validity of the proposed model was verified by the RFID intelligent archives management platform. (shrink)

本辞典包括马克思主义哲学、中国哲学史、西方哲学史方面的概念、范畴、命题、人物、学派等词目1855条。.

Background and PurposeTranscranial direct current stimulation is an emerging non-invasive neuromodulation technique for focal epilepsy. Because epilepsy is a disease affecting the brain network, our study was aimed to evaluate and predict the treatment outcome of cathodal tDCS by analyzing the ctDCS-induced functional network alterations.MethodsEither the active 5-day, −1.0 mA, 20-min ctDCS or sham ctDCS targeting at the most active interictal epileptiform discharge regions was applied to 27 subjects suffering from focal epilepsy. The functional networks before and after ctDCS were (...) compared employing graph theoretical analysis based on the functional magnetic resonance imaging data. A support vector machine prediction model was built to predict the treatment outcome of ctDCS using the graph theoretical measures as markers.ResultsOur results revealed that the mean clustering coefficient and the global efficiency decreased significantly, as well as the characteristic path length and the mean shortest path length at the stimulation sites in the fMRI functional networks increased significantly after ctDCS only for the patients with response to the active ctDCS. Our prediction model achieved the mean prediction accuracy of 68.3% after the nested cross validation. The mean area under the receiver operating curve was 0.75, which showed good prediction performance.ConclusionThe study demonstrated that the response to ctDCS was related to the topological alterations in the functional networks of epilepsy patients detected by fMRI. The graph theoretical measures were promising for clinical prediction of ctDCS treatment outcome. (shrink)

Pain has not only sensory, but also emotional and cognitive, components. Some studies have explored the effect of pain on time perception, but the results remain controversial. Whether individual pain-related emotional and cognitive factors play roles in this process should also be explored. In this study, we investigated the effect of electrical stimulation–induced pain on interval timing using a temporal bisection task. During each task session, subjects received one of five types of stimulation randomly: no stimulus and 100 and 300 (...) ms of non-painful and painful stimulation. Pain-related emotional and cognitive factors were measured using a series of questionnaires. The proportion of “long” judgments of a 1,200-ms visual stimulus duration was significantly smaller with 300 ms painful stimulation than with no stimulus and 100 ms and 300 ms non-painful stimulation. The point of subjective equality did not differ among sessions, but the average Weber fraction was higher for painful sessions than for no-stimulus session. The pain fear score correlated positively with the PSE under 100 ms non-painful and painful and 300 ms painful stimulation. Pain catastrophizing and pain anxiety scores correlated significantly with the WF under no stimulus and 100 ms non-painful stimulation, respectively. These results suggest that electrical stimulation–induced pain affects temporal sensitivity, and that pain-related emotional and cognitive factors are associated with the processing of time perception. (shrink)

Background: It has been reported that type 2 diabetes is associated with olfactory identification impairments and cognitive decline. However, the relationship between OI impairments and cognitive decline is largely unknown in T2DM patients.Methods: Sixty-eight T2DM patients and 68 healthy controls underwent 3D-T1 MRI scans, olfactory and cognitive assessments. The cortical thickness of olfaction-related brain regions, olfactory and cognitive scores were compared between groups. Correlation analyses were carried out among cognition, olfaction, and cortical thickness of olfaction-related brain regions.Results: First, the cognitive (...) and olfactory test scores of T2DM patients were lower than healthy subjects. Second, higher olfactory scores were associated with increased cortical thickness in the left parahippocampal gyrus and bilateral insula in T2DM. Third, higher olfactory scores were associated with higher cognitive performance in T2DM. Fourth, some cognitive performances were related to cortical thickness in the left parahippocampal gyrus and left insula in T2DM.Conclusion: These findings indicated that olfactory dysfunction may be useful for future applications that attempt to predict cognitive decline or develop tailored therapies in T2DM patients. (shrink)

The human brain shows neuroplastic adaptations induced by motor skill training. However, the description of the plastic architecture of the whole-brain network in resting-state is still limited. In the present study, we aimed to detect how motor training affected the density distribution of whole-brain resting-state functional connectivity (FC) brain in fast-ball student-athletes using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data of student-athletes (SA), and non-athlete healthy controls (NC). The voxel-wise data-driven graph theory approach, namely global functional connectivity density (gFCD) mapping (...) was applied. The results showed that the SA group exhibited significantly decreased gFCD in brain regions centered at left triangular part of inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), extending to opercular part of left IFG and middle frontal gyrus (MFG) compared with NC group. The findings supported the idea of an increased neural efficiency of athletes’ brain in the brain regions associated with attentional-motor modulation and executive control. Furthermore, the behavioral results demonstrated that in the SA group, faster executive control reaction time was associated with smaller gFCD values in left IFG. The findings implied that the motor skill training would decrease the numbers of FC in IFG to accelerate the execution control with high attentional demands, and focus the attention to the target detection the athletes are interested in. (shrink)

By empirically testing the scale and structure hypotheses of aging’s impacts on the financial market using Tobit, FRM, and Heckman selection models, this paper proves that the number and proportion of elderly family members change the structure of families’ financial assets, though without significant effects on their overall size. Specifically, aging increases the share of cash and deposits in families’ total financial assets and decreases both the quantity and percentage of investment in risky assets. One more family member aged sixty (...) and over, the risky assets decline by 5, 500RMB and its share decreases by 8.8 percent. A Heckman two-step model verifies the robustness of our results. The heterogeneity analysis reveals that aging plays different roles in different types of financial assets. (shrink)

本书内容包括:立法的准则、司法的尺度、司法推理的艺术、最好的论证、最好的反驳五部分。.

公孙龙是战国后期著名的逻辑学家和辩士，其著作《公孙龙子》是先秦名辩学派至今尚存的唯一完整文献。本书分上下两编。上编立足于《公孙龙子》六篇文本，进行详细校注、今译、英译和注疏，重新整理和编排顺序，并运用 文史互证等方法，探求公孙龙思想发展的轨迹，以重建公孙龙的思想体系。下编将公孙龙的思想分为逻辑学、语言学和一般哲学，分别结合亚里士多德形式逻辑、欧陆语言分析哲学和西方形而上学思想，进行了多学科的分析和对 比研究。.

Playing an important role in electromechanical systems, hydraulic servo system is crucial to mechanical systems like engineering machinery, metallurgical machinery, ships, and other equipment. Fault diagnosis based on monitoring and sensory signals plays an important role in avoiding catastrophic accidents and enormous economic losses. This study presents a fault diagnosis scheme for hydraulic servo system using compressed random subspace based ReliefF method. From the point of view of feature selection, the scheme utilizes CRSR method to determine the most stable feature (...) combination that contains the most adequate information simultaneously. Based on the feature selection structure of ReliefF, CRSR employs feature integration rules in the compressed domain. Meanwhile, CRSR substitutes information entropy and fuzzy membership for traditional distance measurement index. The proposed CRSR method is able to enhance the robustness of the feature information against interference while selecting the feature combination with balanced information expressing ability. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed CRSR method, a hydraulic servo system joint simulation model is constructed by HyPneu and Simulink, and three fault modes are injected to generate the validation data. (shrink)

Patients requiring deep brain stimulation due to intracerebral metallic foreign substances have not been reported elsewhere in the world. Additionally, the long-term effects of metallic foreign bodies on deep brain stimulation are unknown. A 79-year-old man with a 5-year history of Parkinson's disease reported that, 40 years ago, while playing with a pistol, a metallic bullet was accidentally discharged into the left brain through the edge of the left eye, causing no discomfort other than blurry vision in the left eye. (...) DBS was performed due to the short duration of efficacy for oral medication. Because the bullet was on the left subthalamic nucleus electrode trajectory and the patient's right limb was primarily stiff, the patient received globus pallidus interna -DBS implantation in the left hemisphere and STN-DBS implantation in the right hemisphere. During a 6-month postoperative follow-up, the patient's PD symptoms were effectively managed with no noticeable discomfort. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to explore the role of ethical climate on the relationship between the paternalistic leadership and team identification at the team level. In contrast to the prior studies which tended to focus on ethical climate as a whole dimension, this paper further classified the domain of construct into the categories of egoism, benevolence, and principle using a sample from 143 teams in Mainland China and Taiwan. Hierarchical regression results showed that the average paternalistic leadership had (...) a significant impact on the team identification at the team level. Moreover, the results indicated that the ethical climate of benevolence fully mediated while the ethical climate of egoism partially mediated the relationship between authoritarian leadership and team identification. Also, the ethical climates of benevolence and principle had a partial mediating effect on the relationship between benevolent leadership and team identification as well as moral leadership and team identification, respectively, but the ethical climate of egoism did not play a significant role. The major findings, theoretical contributions, practical implications, and the limitations were discussed. (shrink)

Public value facilitates the democratization of public policy making, it should be the common-sense and bottom-line for policymakers. However, it has not been paid enough attention by the practical and theoretical circles. How to realize the transformation from individual value to public value and make public policies be in line with citizens’ preferences, is vital for the democratic politics. How individual value becomes public value in the agenda-setting stage during the policy-making process? What are the key influencing factors? Using the (...) case of Yangzhou Chemical Co. Youjia Program and interview data, this paper studies the mechanisms that could make individual value be transformed to public value through deeply observing and measuring individuals’ attitudes, demands, motivations, beliefs, and preferences. We argue that (1) public value is an essential foundation for agenda setting and guidance to policy making, whereas individual value cannot naturally substitute value orientation in the public sphere. (2) Transferring individual value to public value can reduce divergence appearing in the subsequent stage in policy activities. (3) Factors that can influence this transformation are policy subjects, relations, rule and expression channels with various determinants and conditions. (4) Public value can terminate irrational and unreasonable policies or drag the policy issues back into the agenda-setting stage. This paper provides unique insights into why individual citizens enter the public sphere to take public actions so that the Chinese government can recognize additional public opinions, which makes cooperative governance be realized. (shrink)

Searching is one of the most fundamental operations in many complex systems. However, the complexity of the search process would increase dramatically in high-dimensional space. K-dimensional tree, as a classical data structure, has been widely used in high-dimensional vital data search. However, at present, common methods proposed for KD tree construction are either unstable or time-consuming. This paper proposed a new algorithm to construct a balanced KD tree based on presorted results. Compared with previous similar method, the new algorithm could (...) reduce the complexity of the construction process from O level to O level, where K is the number of dimensions and N is the number of data. In addition, with the help of presorted results, the performance of the new method is no longer subject to the initial conditions, which expands the application scope of KD tree. (shrink)

The intertemporal stability of research and development investment is a key issue in successfully promoting the continuation of innovation activities under high uncertainty in entrepreneurship. R&D smoothing helps firms to navigate the uncertainties of the external environment and maintain the stability of their investments in innovation. Chief executive officers are the most important decision-makers in firms' strategic planning. However, overconfident CEOs may overlook the importance of their firms' strategic actions on innovative activities. Drawing on upper echelons theory, this paper examines (...) how CEO overconfidence affects firms' R&D smoothing. Using a sample of firms listed in China's Growth Enterprises Market between 2013 and 2020, this study finds that CEO overconfidence has a significant negative impact on R&D smoothing. Furthermore, our findings reveal that firms' internal control quality and institutional investor monitoring can mitigate the negative association between CEO overconfidence and R&D smoothing. Our findings provide new insights into the micro-level theoretical explanations for R&D smoothing and offer practical implications for technology-based entrepreneurial firms. (shrink)

Irresponsible research practices damaging the value of science has been an increasing concern among researchers, but previous work failed to estimate the prevalence of all forms of irresponsible research behavior. Additionally, these analyses have not included articles published in the last decade from 2011 to 2020. This meta-analysis provides an updated meta-analysis that calculates the pooled estimates of research misconduct and questionable research practices, and explores the factors associated with the prevalence of these issues. The estimates, committing RM concern at (...) least 1 of FFP and QRPs concern 1 or more QRPs, were 2.9% and 12.5%, respectively. In addition, 15.5% of researchers witnessed others who had committed at least 1 RM, while 39.7% were aware of others who had used at least 1 QRP. The results document that response proportion, limited recall period, career level, disciplinary background and locations all affect significantly the prevalence of these issues. This meta-analysis addresses a gap in existing meta-analyses and estimates the prevalence of all forms of RM and QRPs, thus providing a better understanding of irresponsible research behaviors. (shrink)

Following the COVID-19 pandemic, online learning has become a new mode of learning that students must adapt to. However, the mechanisms by which students receive and grasp knowledge in the online learning mode remain unknown. Cognitive load theory offers instructions to students considering the knowledge of human cognition. Therefore, this study considers the CLT to explore the internal mechanism of learning under the online mode in an experimental study. We recruited 76 undergraduates and randomly assigned them to four groups in (...) which they will watch videos at four different kinds of speed. The study observed and analyzed how video playback speed affected students' learning and cognitive load to obtain the following results: Video playback speed significantly influenced the students' learning effect. The best effect was observed at the speed of 1.25× and 1.5×. The speed that affected the learning effect best differed according to the students' learning abilities. High-level group students performed best at the speed of 1.5×, whereas low-level group students performed best at the speed of 1.25×. The 1.5× speed showed significant differences in the learning effect by students' majors. This indicates that the cognitive load of liberal arts students increased greatly at this speed. A change in playback speed has a significant impact on the cognitive load. Accelerated playback speed increases the cognitive load of students. The highest learning effect is observed under medium cognitive load. (shrink)

We analyze and study the tracking of nonrigid complex targets of sports video based on mean shift fusion color histogram algorithm. A simple and controllable 3D template generation method based on monocular video sequences is constructed, which is used as a preprocessing stage of dynamic target 3D reconstruction algorithm to achieve the construction of templates for a variety of complex objects, such as human faces and human hands, broadening the use of the reconstruction method. This stage requires video sequences of (...) rigid moving target objects or sets of target images taken from different angles as input. First, the standard rigid body method of Visuals is used to obtain the external camera parameters of the sequence frames as well as the sparse feature point reconstruction data, and the algorithm has high accuracy and robustness. Then, a dense depth map is computed for each input image frame by the Multi-View Stereo algorithm. The depth reconstruction with a too high resolution not only increases the processing time significantly but also generates more noise, so the resolution of the depth map is controlled by parameters. The multiple hypothesis target tracking algorithms are used to track multiple targets, while the chunking feature is used to solve the problem of mutual occlusion and adhesion between targets. After finishing the matching, the target and background models are updated online separately to ensure the validity of the target and background models. Our results of nonrigid complex target tracking by mean shift fusion color histogram algorithm for sports video improve the accuracy by about 8% compared to other studies. The proposed tracking method based on the mean shift algorithm and color histogram algorithm can not only estimate the position of the target effectively but also depict the shape of the target well, which solves the problem that the nonrigid targets in sports video have complicated shapes and are not easy to track. An example is given to demonstrate the effectiveness and adaptiveness of the applied method. (shrink)

This article theoretically proposes and empirically verifies an understudied issue in the business ethics and corporate social responsibility literature—how moral degradation in a society influences the relationship between BE or CSR and firm performance. Building on strategic choice theory, we propose that both BE and CSR become more important in enhancing business success when the perceived MD is heightened. Our analysis of 300 firms operating in China statistically confirms our hypotheses: first, under high MD, firms’ engagement in CSR results in (...) higher corporate legitimacy and competitive advantage, and second, their adherence to ethical business codes leads to higher corporate legitimacy. We conclude the article by outlining the implications for both theory and practice. (shrink)

The existing literature provides conflicting results on the association between firm performance and corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure. This paper empirically examines the effect of firm performance on CSR disclosure in terms of disclosure frequency and quality among Chinese listed firms and the possible mediating effect of corporate ownership on the relationship between firm performance and CSR disclosure. Our findings show that better-performing firms are more likely than worse-performing ones to disclose CSR information and to produce higher quality CSR reports. (...) In addition, the link between firm performance and CSR disclosure is found to be weaker among state-owned enterprises compared with non-state-owned ones. (shrink)

The existing literature provides conflicting results on the association between firm performance and corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure. This paper empirically examines the effect of firm performance on CSR disclosure in terms of disclosure frequency and quality among Chinese listed firms and the possible mediating effect of corporate ownership on the relationship between firm performance and CSR disclosure. Our findings show that better‐performing firms are more likely than worse‐performing ones to disclose CSR information and to produce higher quality CSR reports. (...) In addition, the link between firm performance and CSR disclosure is found to be weaker among state‐owned enterprises compared with non‐state‐owned ones. (shrink)