Meat is a multi-billion-dollar industry that relies on people performing risky physical work inside meat-processing facilities over long shifts in close proximity. These workers are socially disempowered, and many are members of groups beset by historic and ongoing structural discrimination. The combination of working conditions and worker characteristics facilitate the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Workers have been expected to put their health and lives at risk during the pandemic because of government and industry pressures to keep (...) this “essential industry” producing. Numerous interventions can significantly reduce the risks to workers and their communities; however, the industry’s implementation has been sporadic and inconsistent. With a focus on the U.S. context, this paper offers an ethical framework for infection prevention and control recommendations grounded in public health values of health and safety, interdependence and solidarity, and health equity and justice, with particular attention to considerations of reciprocity, equitable burden sharing, harm reduction, and health promotion. Meat-processing workers are owed an approach that protects their health relative to the risks of harms to them, their families, and their communities. Sacrifices from businesses benefitting financially from essential industry status are ethically warranted and should acknowledge the risks assumed by workers in the context of existing structural inequities. (shrink)

Facing the possibility of a surge of COVID-19-infected patients requiring ventilatory support in Intensive Care Units, the Singapore Hospice Council and the Chapter of Palliative Medicine Physicians forward its position on the guiding principles that ought to drive the allocation of ICU beds and its role in care of these patients and their families.

In this article, I argue for a distinct and novel right-based account of risks and I call it the Sophisticated High-risk Thesis. I argue that there is a distinction between rights-infringing risk impositions and no-rights-infringing risk impositions. An action imposing a high risk of harm infringes rights, whereas an act imposing a low risk of harm does not. I also suggest three principles that govern the permissibility of highly risky actions. If a highly risky action meets the conditions specified by (...) any of these three principles, it can be justified. These principles are the consent principle*, the prevent disaster principle* and the reciprocity principle**. I show that the Sophisticated High-risk Thesis is, in general, better than the alternative Risk Thesis defended by McCarthy. (shrink)

The decision to trust encompasses evaluation of multiple information cues that are used by evaluators to make inference about the trustee’s qualities and capabilities. The information about the social status of the trustee firm is one of such cues available to evaluators. Yet the relationship between perceived social status of the trustee and the evaluator’s trust remains underexplored. In two experimental studies, we find a non-linear relationship between a firm’s status and the evaluator’s trust, and test theorized mechanisms that can (...) explain this relationship. The paper reveals that firms having low, middle, and high status are not only trusted differently, but are trusted for different reasons: qualities, such as perceived benevolence and integrity, mediate higher trust for middle-status firms, while trust for high-status firms is mediated by ability and integrity. The findings thus suggest that in the assessment of an organization’s trustworthiness, the relative importance of a particular virtue, such as ability, benevolence, or integrity, varies depending on the status position of that organization. (shrink)

At present, there are problems in the construction of the tourism public service system such as poor coordination and coordination among various departments, lack of resource integration mechanism, and low level of information of tourism public services. Therefore, by analysing the problems existing in the tourism public service system in the context of smart cities, this paper puts forward strategies to optimize the tourism public service system. First, we build a smart tourism public service system platform for overall development and (...) optimize the tourism public service platform. Secondly, by focusing on the behaviour of tourists, we construct a big data analysis and management system for the behaviour of smart tourism tourists. Finally, for the traffic situation in the process of tourism, a smart traffic line network based on pheromone ant colony is constructed. The results of the questionnaire survey on tourists show that the optimized public service system platform has achieved great satisfaction. (shrink)

In order to manage the electricity consumption information of microgrid users, the reliability of electricity information collection is studied in this paper. The normal communication between the acquisition terminal and the smart meter is a key factor affecting the accurate collection of power information; it is the basis for ensuring the operation of the microgrid as well. In order to improve the reliability of the low power line communication between the acquisition terminal and smart meters, this article first uses the (...) static networking method to layer the smart meters and select relays from them and then select the optimal communication path based on integrating communication quality and relay forwarding number dynamically, which could avoid the signal conflict problem caused by simultaneous communication. Finally, by analyzing the influence of the time-varying power line channel on the smart meter communication, a method based on the integrated communication quality and the relay number to consider the time variability of low power line communication is proposed. Choosing the optimal path of the smart meters when the communication path is abnormal can not only establish a new communication path for communication in time, but also avoid communication failures caused by the time-varying channel. Through MATLAB simulation, the time-varying dynamic network of the power line channel is introduced in this paper, which improves the reliability of the smart meter communication and has certain guiding significance for the actual smart meter network construction in microgrid. (shrink)

Guided by Basic Psychological Need Theory, we investigated the combined associations between need satisfaction and need frustration and their relations with theoretically relevant correlates including mindfulness, physical literacy, physical activity enjoyment, and physical activity. The participants were Singapore-based school students who completed a cross-sectional survey. The results of the latent profile analysis identified four distinct need profiles: profile 1–average satisfaction and frustration ; profile 2–low satisfaction, above average frustration; profile 3–very high satisfaction, very low frustration ; and profile 4–high satisfaction, (...) very high frustration. Among these, profile 3 was the most adaptive one; it had the highest levels of mindfulness, physical literacy, physical activity enjoyment, and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. Experiences of need satisfaction countered the negative effects of need frustration on these correlates. These findings enhance our understanding of students’ psychological need experiences and highlight the need for investigating the combined associations between need satisfaction and need frustration. (shrink)

The current WSN is vulnerable to a variety of malicious attacks, resulting in the decline of its comprehensive performance. Multihop routing involves a number of safety and privacy issues. Problems such as snooping, sinkhole, manipulation, cloning, wormhole, spoofing, and so on affect the integrity, availability, and confidentiality of the WSNs. Therefore, this paper mainly studies the mathematical modeling of WSN multiattack behavior discrimination based on the incidence matrix. The WSN node model is used to collect relevant data and mark and (...) map the disguised data, so as to determine the characteristics of multiattack behavior and establish the WSN multiattack behavior discrimination model based on the incidence matrix. The experimental results show that the designed multiattack behavior discrimination model can distinguish the attack type according to the characteristics, has high recognition ability, can spend a short time to effectively distinguish the attack behavior, has a low false positive rate, and can effectively improve the antiattack ability of the WSN. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose to incorporate the local attention in WaveNet-CTC to improve the performance of Tibetan speech recognition in multitask learning. With an increase in task number, such as simultaneous Tibetan speech content recognition, dialect identification, and speaker recognition, the accuracy rate of a single WaveNet-CTC decreases on speech recognition. Inspired by the attention mechanism, we introduce the local attention to automatically tune the weights of feature frames in a window and pay different attention on context information for (...) multitask learning. The experimental results show that our method improves the accuracies of speech recognition for all Tibetan dialects in three-task learning, compared with the baseline model. Furthermore, our method significantly improves the accuracy for low-resource dialect by 5.11% against the specific-dialect model. (shrink)

In the current research, we show that low-power state promotes variety-seeking. We argue that this effect occurs because consumers in low-power state desire control and variety-seeking as a way to restore sense of control. The effect of power on variety-seeking is reduced when consumer knowledge in a certain consumption domain is high because knowledge is an alternative way to retain sense of control. Three experiments provide systematic evidence for this effect across different product categories. These findings contribute to the literature (...) on how variety-seeking can be used as a way to compensate and enhance our understanding of power and consumer knowledge. (shrink)

Amid the social background of China where the Internet has penetrated into every corner of an adolescent’s life, we were concerned of the role of Internet usage in influencing the educational gap among social classes. We investigated the mediating role of Internet usage preference for entertainment in the relationship between the family socioeconomic status and the adolescent’s academic achievement and explored the moderating role of future orientation in the relationship. A total of 614 junior high school students were recruited to (...) complete a questionnaire survey, including questionnaires for family SES, Internet usage preference, and adolescent future orientation. The results showed that the relationship between family SES and academic achievement was mediated by Internet usage preference for entertainment; the indirect effect was moderated by future orientation, such that the negative association between family SES and Internet usage preference for entertainment was only indicated in adolescents with low future orientation; and the direct association between family SES and Internet usage preference for entertainment was moderated by future orientation. (shrink)

Mismatch negativity of event-related potentials is a biomarker reflecting the preattentional change detection under non-attentional conditions. This study was performed to explore whether high self-related information could elicit MMN in the visual channel, indicating the automatic processing of self-related information at the preattentional stage. Thirty-five participants were recruited and asked to list 25 city names including the birthplace. According to the difference of relevance reported from the participants, we divided names of the different cities into high, medium, and low self-related (...) information. Visual MMN was elicited by high self-related information but not by medium self-related information, with an occipital–temporal scalp distribution, indicating that, under non-attentional condition, high self-related information can be effectively processed automatically in the preattentional stage compared with low self-related information. These data provided new electrophysiological evidence for self-related information processing. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives toward internal and external stakeholders can independently contribute to employee attitudes and behaviors. However, little is known about the joint effects of (in)congruent internal-external CSR strategies on employee outcomes. Drawing from social exchange theory, we argue that when employees perceive that their organizations excessively favor CSR efforts to external rather than internal stakeholders, it can trigger a psychological contract breach, resulting in increased employees' turnover intention. We utilized a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis method and the (...) data of 511 employee from various industries in the Philippines to investigate the interaction effects. The results revealed that a congruent CSR strategy with high internal and external CSR perceptions is critical in fulfilling employees' psychological contracts and retaining employees. However, for employees with low perceived internal CSR, a high incongruent CSR perception led to a psychological contract breach and ultimately to high turnover intention. Psychological contract breach weakened the negative joint effect of high perceived internal and external CSR on turnover intention and strengthened the positive effect of high perceived incongruent CSR on turnover intention. Implications for research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

In recent years, precise high flow oxygen therapy as a new type of oxygen therapy machine has gradually attracted people’s attention and has been widely used in hospital emergency and clinical treatment of respiratory diseases; especially in recent years, severe coronavirus disease has played an important role in the treatment of patients. This paper presents a new type of precise high flow oxygen therapy machine with electromagnetic pneumatic flow valve as the core control element. A sliding mode control strategy based (...) on the system is proposed to realize the accurate control of oxygen concentration and output flow of oxygen therapy mixture. The physical equipment of the precision high flow system is established, and its working performance is verified through the test platform. The optimization design goal of the precision high flow equipment is achieved. (shrink)

We review recent anticipatory looking and violation-of-expectancy studies suggesting that infants and young preschoolers have spontaneous (implicit) understanding of mind despite their known problems until later in life on elicited (explicit) tests of false-belief reasoning. Straightforwardly differentiating spontaneous and elicited expressions of complex mental state understanding in relation to an implicit-explicit knowledge framework may be challenging; early action predictions may be based on behavior rules that are complementary to the mentalistic attributions under consideration. We discuss that the way forward for (...) diagnosing early mentalism is to analyze whether young candidate mind-readers’ visual orienting cohere across different belief-formation by belief-use combinations. Adopting this formal cognitive analysis, we conclude that whilst some studies come tantalizingly close to sign-posting mentalism in infants and young children’s spontaneous responses, the bulk of evidence for early mentalism grades into behaviorism. (shrink)

It has become an academic self-evidence that space can only inadequately be conceptualized as a material or earth-bound base for social processes. This could commend a theoretical view of space as the outcome of action, which brings both social production practices and bodily deployment into focus. The action-theoretical perspective allows the constitution of space to be understood as taking place in perception. Not only are things alone perceived but also the relations between objects. This article develops a space-theoretical concept according (...) to which space is constituted through acts as the outcome of synthesis and positioning practices. This opens up a theoretical perspective defining atmospheres as an external effect, instantiated in perception, of social goods and human beings in their situated spatial order/ing. Exclusion and inclusion are accordingly comprehended in terms of perception of the attunement of places. With reference to Anthony Giddens, this article discusses how space can be understood as a duality of structural ordering and action elements. (shrink)

In the present research, we qualitatively document the process by which spiritual leader and leadership emerge in religion-based organizations. Data from 26 participants in three religion-based organizations revealed three cardinal themes that depict the development of spiritual leader and spiritual leadership, the process of developing a spiritual leader and spiritual leadership, and outcomes of spiritual leader and leadership development. Based on the results, we propose a model that depicts the phases involved in the development of spiritual leader/leadership in the religion-based (...) workplace. These phases are proposed to impact the outcomes for the leader, followers, and the organization. The implications of our results are discussed. (shrink)

A number of claims made by Derrida concerning Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of Husserl will be carefully considered and evaluated here. First, Derrida’s claim that Merleau-Ponty’s mis-interprets Husserl’s letter to Lévy-Bruhl will be challenged. Secondly, Derrida’s claim that his criticism of Husserl’s phenomenology can be applied just as well to Merleau-Ponty’s will be challenged. Thirdly, it is a careful consideration of textual evidence that will be used to support these challenges. Finally, Merleau-Ponty’s late lectures will take us back to the Lévy-Bruhl letter (...) and finally to Merleau-Ponty’s own phenomenology of language, one that integrates perception and language and yet that still privileges not eidetic essences or linguistic expression but perception as its primary term. (shrink)

It is frequently remarked that Merleau-Ponty did not write about race, gender, or anti-Semitism. Overall, this is true, but the relatively recent re-publication of his Sorbonne lectures, along with some new materials, shows that his lectures did address the issues of racism, sexism, and anti-Semitism. In addition, Emily Lee’s framing of Merleau-Ponty’s theory of the human body provides a useful way to understand its relationship to race and gender. While humans are fundamentally the same biologically, “secondary biological characteristics” such as (...) skin color (and gender), situated in various social contexts, have a significant impact on the formation of one’s personal and social identity. What I seek to do here is find in Merleau-Ponty’s work the philosophical roots of Lee’s claim. I also seek to find the moral recognition of the other in Merleau-Ponty’s treatment of time and how his treatment of time relates to the two-dimensionality of the human body. It is this treatment that allows us to recognize the sameness of the other but that also allows us to recognize and respect differences. (shrink)

Individual choices are commonly taken to manifest personal preferences. The present study investigated whether social and statistical cues influence young children's inferences about the generalizability of preferences. Preschoolers were exposed to either 1 or 2 demonstrators’ selections of objects. The selected objects constituted 18%, 50%, or 100% of all available objects. We found that children took a single demonstrator's choices as indicative only of his or her personal preference. However, when 2 demonstrators made the same selection, then children inferred that (...) it generalized to other agents of the same kind as the original demonstrator's, but not to agents of a different kind. Lastly, only when both demonstrators blatantly violated random selection (i.e., in the 18% condition) did children generalize the preference even to an agent of a different kind. Thus, from a young age, social and statistical cues inform children's naïve sociology. (shrink)

Over the past 10 years two concepts of central significance in the social sciences have come up for rediscussion: ‘space’ and ‘gender’. Today the two concepts are seen as relational, as a production process based on relation and demarcation. Gender and space alike are a provisional result of an – invariably temporal – process of attribution and arrangement that both forms and reproduces structures. This article takes a microsociological look at the construction of the local, seeking to trace the genderization (...) of spaces. For this purpose, it discusses the organization of perceptions, in particular of glances and corresponding body technologies. Referring to the example of beach life, the article shows that the genderization of perception leads, in the sense of an embodiment of social order, to a practice of localization that reproduces the structural principles of society. In other words, gender may be seen as inscribed, via body practices, in the production of spaces. (shrink)

This article investigates the theoretical assumptions and implications of de Ste. Croix’s approach to interstate politics in The Origins of the Peloponnesian War. It suggests that two approaches can be identified in the work: one which sees a fundamental connection between political systems within a state and that state’s conduct of interstate politics, and another, closer to conventional ‘Realist’ theories, which sees a clear dividing line between domestic and interstate politics, and in which interstate relations need to be understood according (...) to a distinct analytical framework. Although this tension was probably not a particular concern to de Ste. Croix himself, it does have a bearing on ongoing debates in International Theory; the final part of the article briefly explores the possibility that the concept of ‘compulsion’, important to both Thucydides’ and de Ste. Croix’s understanding of the causes of the Peloponnesian War, might provide a way of reconciling these two approaches. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose a method to design the pseudorandom number generator using three kinds of four-wing memristive hyperchaotic systems with different dimensions as multientropy sources. The principle of this method is to obtain pseudorandom numbers with good randomness by coupling XOR operation on the three kinds of FWMHSs with different dimensions. In order to prove its potential application in secure communication, the security of PRNG based on this scheme is analyzed from the perspective of cryptography. In addition, PRNG (...) has passed the NIST 800.22 and ENT test, which shows that PRNG has good statistical characteristics. Finally, an image encryption algorithm based on PRNG is adopted. In the encryption algorithm, the optimized Arnold matrix scrambling method and the diffusion processing based on XOR are used to obtain the final encrypted image. Through the evaluation of encryption performance, it is concluded that there is no direct relationship between the pristine image and encrypted image. The results show that the proposed image encryption scheme has good statistical output characteristics and security performance in line with cryptography. (shrink)

“Merleau-Ponty on Causality” attempts to reveal Merleau-Ponty’s treatment of causality with respect to the physical, the vital, and the human. The philosophy of causality of both Hume and Mill will be briefly addressed and challenged. Special attention will be paid to Merleau-Ponty’s treatment of causality with respect to human behavior.

Purpose: Short track speed skating is a racing sport with racing tactics are equally crucial to speed and technical skating skills. Therefore, to investigate the relationship between starting and finishing positions for elite skaters and subsequently, explore pacing patterns for champions are necessary.Methods: To investigate a pattern of effective tactical positioning strategy, Kendall’s tau-b correlations between starting and finishing position were calculated, with 500 m races having the most positive correlation.Results: Furthermore, starting position distributions of winners in each round, as (...) well as the fluctuations in champion starting positions across rounds were analyzed. Our findings showed that skaters on the first track were inclined to win the rounds in 500, 1,000, and 1,500 m, and the differences between starting and finishing positions for champions were minimized in semi-finals. Meanwhile, the pacing patterns were gaining more fluctuations by the increase of race distances for champions, as the average standard deviation of lap rankings equaled 0.90, 1.15, and 2.21 for 500, 1,000, and 1,500 m races, respectively.Conclusion: In conclusion, elite skaters should adopt flexible tactics at the lowest cost of energy consumption. The overall variability of lap ranking in long-distance races were distinctly higher than it in short distance. (shrink)

In this paper, the fixed-time practical bipartite tracking problem for the networked robotic systems with parametric uncertainties, input disturbances, and directed signed graphs is investigated. A new fixed-time estimator-based control algorithm for the NRSs is presented to address the abovementioned problem. By applying a sliding surface and the time base generator approach, a new stability analysis method is proposed to achieve the fixed-time practical bipartite tracking for the NRSs. We also derive the upper bound of the convergence time for employing (...) the presented control algorithm to solve the practical bipartite tracking problem and further demonstrate that the convergence time is independent of the initial value. Finally, the simulation examples are given to verify the effectiveness of the presented algorithms. (shrink)

There have been two Japanese Nobel laureates in chemistry, three in physics, and one in the category of medicine or physiology. This relatively small number has been attributed to shortcomings in Japanese science. The award of the Physics Prize in 1949 to Hideki Yukawa and to his colleague Sin'itirô Tomonaga in 1965 gave public evidence of how Japanese could make outstanding individual contributions to science. Paradoxically, the Prize also reinforced a belief that such men formed part of a traditional hierarchical (...) system. This essay examines how the Nobel Prize has been represented in Japan. (shrink)

Bioethicists influence practices and policies in medicine, science, and public health. However, little is known about bioethicists’ views. We recently surveyed 824 U.S. bioethicists on a wide range of ethical issues, including topics related to abortion, medical aid in dying, and resource allocation, among others. We also asked bioethicists about their demographic, religious, academic, and professional backgrounds. We find that bioethicists’ normative commitments predict their views on bioethical issues. We also find that, in important ways, bioethicists’ views do not align (...) with those of the U.S. public: for instance, bioethicists are more likely than members of the public to think abortion is ethically permissible but are less likely to believe compensating organ donors is. Our demographic results indicate the field of bioethics is far less diverse than the U.S. population—less diverse even than other academic disciplines—suggesting far more work needs to be done to build an inclusive field. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty’s late lecture course on Heidegger is primarily concerned with probing the possibility of a phenomenological ontology. Merleau-Ponty’s lectures provide a rather straightforward presentation of Heidegger’s later thought, without elaborate commentary or criticism. However, Merleau-Ponty does favor Heidegger’s later move toward an indirect expression of Being but does not think that he consistently maintains this view. By the time that we reach the end of Merleau-Ponty’s lecture course, we begin to see a number of differences between the two philosophers come (...) into play, with Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy solving more problems than that of his German counterpart. (shrink)

This paper questions claims that the Japanese may have succeeded in testing an atomic weapon shortly before the end of World War II. Historical and empirical evidence is examined which suggests that the lack of scientific expertise in nuclear physics hampered the development of an atomic bomb, the most qualified scientists generally being unwilling to become actively involved in the Japanese project. The paper looks at the wartime mobilization of Japanese scientists; outlines the Japanese atomic bomb project; examines claims that (...) Japan succeeded in completing an atomic weapon; and concludes with a look at the ramifications of the historiography. (shrink)

With the advent of new technology and imaging techniques that measure brain activity and with the development of the computer as a model for human thinking, it is not surprising to find many authors currently addressing issues regarding brain function and themind/body problem. What is perhaps surprising, given the absence of these techniques at the time, is that Merleau-Ponty addresses these same issues with a rigor and insight that equals, and perhaps even exceeds, most current philosophical studies. Merleau-Ponty’s frequently ignored (...) early work, The Structure of Behavior, contains a wealth of analysis still relevant to current biological and neurophysiological studies and to the philosophical consequences frequently drawn from them. Merleau-Ponty critically addresses not only theories that attempt to understand human behavior as the linear calculation of discrete physiological events but also theories that would explain human behavior simply by appealing to abstract conceptual analysis. His theory of emergent materialism focuses on the human body as a concrete organic whole that can be reduced neither to linear physical events nor to abstract conceptual relations. Understanding the human being requires a theory that recognizes the human body as an original whole, that is, that recognizes a body that intimately integrates mind and matter. It is this theory that Merleau-Ponty first articulates in The Structure of Behavior. It is the main themes of this theory that I will attempt to reveal here. (shrink)

What does it mean that a person is psychologically forced to do certain things? It is argued that there are, strictly speaking, no compulsive actions. Talking of compulsive actions people refer to intentional actions that are means of avoiding irrational panic attacks. People know that certain situations will cause them irrational fears and that is the reason why they avoid these situations. These irrational fears are either mediated by wrong perceptions or by emotional delusions. In the former case the people (...) believe wrongly that they are in danger, while in the latter case they know that they “feel wrong”, but cannot help it. The compulsive elements cannot be found in the actions but in the irrational fears and the obsessions that are part of them. (shrink)

On the basis of PM2.5 data of the national air quality monitoring sites, local population data, and baseline all-cause mortality rate, PM2.5-related health economic benefits of the Air Improvement Action Plan implemented in Wuhan in 2013–2017 were investigated using health-impact and valuation functions. Annual avoided premature deaths driven by the average concentration of PM2.5 decrease were evaluated, and the economic benefits were computed by using the value of statistical life (VSL) method. Results showed that the number of avoided premature deaths (...) in Wuhan are 21,384 (95% confidence interval (CI): 15,004 to 27,255) during 2013–2017, due to the implementation of the Air Improvement Action Plan. According to the VSL method, the obtained economic benefits of Huangpi, Wuchang, Hongshan, Xinzhou, Jiang’an, Hanyang, Jiangxia, Qiaokou, Jianghan, Qingshan, Caidian, Dongxihu, and Hannan District were 8.55, 8.19, 8.04, 7.39, 5.78, 4.84, 4.37, 4.04, 3.90, 3.30, 2.87, 2.42, and 0.66 billion RMB (1 RMB = 0.1417 USD On 14 October 2019), respectively. These economic benefits added up to 64.35 billion RMB (95% CI: 45.15 to 82.02 billion RMB), accounting for 4.80% (95% CI: 3.37% to 6.12%) of the total GDP of Wuhan in 2017. Therefore, in the process of formulating a regional air quality improvement scheme, apart from establishing hierarchical emission-reduction standards and policies, policy makers should give integrated consideration to the relationship between regional economic development, environmental protection and residents’ health benefits. Furthermore, for improving air quality, air quality compensation mechanisms can be established on the basis of the status quo and trends of air quality, population distribution, and economic development factors. (shrink)