Spirtes, Glymour and Scheines [Causation, Prediction, and Search Springer] described a pointwise consistent estimator of the Markov equivalence class of any causal structure that can be represented by a directed acyclic graph for any parametric family with a uniformly consistent test of conditional independence, under the Causal Markov and Causal Faithfulness assumptions. Robins et al. [Biometrika 90 491–515], however, proved that there are no uniformly consistent estimators of Markov equivalence classes of causal structures under those assumptions. Subsequently, Kalisch and B¨uhlmann (...) [J. Mach. Learn. Res. 8 613–636] described a uniformly consistent estimator of the Markov equivalence class of a linear Gaussian causal structure under the Causal Markov and Strong Causal Faithfulness assumptions. However, the Strong Faithfulness assumption may be false with high probability in many domains. We describe a uniformly consistent estimator of both the Markov equivalence class of a linear Gaussian causal structure and the identifiable structural coefficients in the Markov equivalence class under the Causal Markov assumption and the considerably weaker k-Triangle-Faithfulness assumption. (shrink)

Evidence accumulation has been the core component in recent development of perceptual and value-based decision-making theories. Most studies have focused on the evaluation of evidence between alternative options. What remains largely unknown is the process that prepares evidence: how may the decision-maker sample different sources of information sequentially, if they can only sample one source at a time? Here we propose a normative framework in prescribing how different sources of information should be sampled proactively to facilitate the decision process: beliefs (...) for different noisy sources are updated in a Bayesian manner and participants can proactively allocate resource for sampling (i.e. saccades) among different sources to maximize the information gain in such process. We show that our framework can account for human participants’ actual choice and saccade behaviors in a two-alternative value-based decision-making task. Moreover, our framework makes novel predictions about the empirical eye movement patterns. (shrink)

Building on the human resource management behavioral and organizational climate literature, this study explores the linkage between socially responsible HRM and employee support for perceived external corporate social responsibility and the underlying social and psychological process. Multilevel analysis of data gathered over two separate periods confirmed that the relationship between SRHRM and employee support for external CSR initiatives of the employing organization is mediated by the organizational CSR climate. Moreover, the indirect effect is contingent on perceived internal CSR. This study (...) extends CSR research into the HRM domain and develops a better understanding of the micro-foundations of CSR by integrating the micro- and macro-perspectives of CSR. Based on the study findings, this paper also discusses theoretical contributions and future research directions. (shrink)

The target article describes a Dutch case that happened in 2008, where Albert Heringa helped his 98-year-old mother, whose general practitioner rejected her request for an assisted d...

From a hermeneutic point of view, understanding is always conditioned by one's own horizon and perspective. as the great poet Su Shi remarks, we do not know the “true face of Mount Lu” because what we see constantly changes as we move high or low, far off or up close. But the point of the “hermeneutic circle” is not to legitimize the circularity or subjectivity of one's understanding, but to make us conscious of the challenge. How do we understand China, (...) its history and culture? What should be the appropriate paradigm or perspective for China studies? More than twenty years ago, Paul Cohen argued for a “China-centered” approach to understanding Chinese history, but to assume an insider's perspective does not guarantee adequate understanding any more than does an outsider's position guarantee emancipation from an insider's myopia or blindness. By discussing several exemplary cases in China studies, this essay argues that neither insiders nor outsiders have monopolistic or privileged access to knowledge, and that integration of different perspectives and their dynamic interaction beyond the isolation of native Chinese scholarship and Western Sinology may lead us to a better understanding of China and its history. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was twofold: to validate the College Teachers’ Academic Frustration Tolerance Questionnaire and the College Teachers’ Academic Performance Questionnaire and to explore the relationship between frustration tolerance and academic performance among college teachers. A total of 25 experts were recruited to modify and validate both questionnaires, and the results showed that the questionnaires had good content validity. Exploratory factor analysis provided further evidence supporting the reliability of the CTAFT and the CTAP, suggesting that the instruments are (...) reliable and valid. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that frustration tolerance affected academic performance, which could best be modeled in the three dimensions of Affect, Preferred Difficulties, and Action. A total of 450 college teachers from each faculty of both universities were then recruited to explore the significant positive correlation between academic frustration tolerance and academic performance. The results from the structural equation model suggested that AC and PD combined significantly predicted academic performance. To our knowledge, this is the first study to explore the relationship between college teachers’ academic frustration tolerance and academic performance in China. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to examine how culture shapes creativity by reviewing empirical findings across diverse studies. The impact of culture on creativity is typically manifested in three ways: (a) people from different cultures or settings have distinct implicit and/or explicit conceptions of creativity; (b) individuals from different cultures, particularly those from individualist and collectivist cultures, show differences in preferred creative processes and creative processing modes (e.g., usefulness seems more important than novelty in the East, whereas novelty seems (...) equally important as usefulness, if not more so, in the West) when they are engaged in creative endeavors; (c) creativity may be assessed using different measures based on culture-related contents or materials, and findings are accurate only when culturally appropriate or culturally fair measures are used. Potential implications and future directions are also proposed. (shrink)

Chinese philosophy is practical in orientation. This practical orientation is consistent with field philosophy, which aims to break the disciplinary mode of knowledge production and establish inter...

ABSTRACTFilm clips are widely used in emotion research due to their relatively high ecological validity. Although researchers have established various film clip sets for different cultures, the few that exist related to Chinese culture do not adequately address positive emotions. The main purposes of the present study were to establish a standardised database of Chinese emotional film clips that could elicit more categories of reported positive emotions compared to the existing databases and to expand the available film clips that can (...) be used as neutral materials. Two experiments were conducted to construct the database. In experiment 1, 111 film clips were selected from more than one thousand Chinese movies for preliminary screening. After 315 participants viewed and evaluated these film clips, 39 excerpts were selected for further validation. In experiment 2, 147 participants watched and rated these 39 film clips, as well as another 8 excerpts chosen from the existing databases, to compare their validit... (shrink)

In this study we examine how a firm’s corporate philanthropic behavior may affect its subsequent acquisitions. Drawing upon stakeholder theory, we argue that firms may strategically use philanthropic donations to obtain support or approval from stakeholders so as to advance subsequent acquisitions, suggesting a positive relationship between corporate giving and corporate acquisitions in terms of both acquisition number and value. We further contend that stakeholders’ support for acquisitions would be even more critical for firms with negative or conservative attitudes to (...) external stakeholders. Therefore, it is expected that both negative media coverage and controversial industry sectors will strengthen the positive relationship between corporate giving and subsequent corporate acquisitions. Analyses of publicly listed manufacturing firms in China during 2004–2015 largely support our predictions. This study deepens our understanding about the drivers of corporate giving and highlights its role in corporate acquisitions. (shrink)

Heidegger maintains that the root of modern technology, like that of all other technologies, lies in technē. However, because the art dimension of technē is suppressed in modern technology, the essence of this technology becomes a Gestell that enforces product-making, and thus drives technology beyond the control of human beings. The more fundamental reason underlying this “frame-becoming” nature is “the mathematical” that emerges in ancient Greece, which, through the Cartesian subject-object dichotomy, turns the world into the images represented by the (...) subject, and things into definite objects. To escape the dictatorship of the Gestell, it is necessary to re-realize the art-dimension of technē in modern technology, i. e. to let the gentle granting nature of the enowning re-master technology. In this respect, both Heidegger and Heisenberg were inspired by or at least resonated with Lao Zi or Zhuang Zi’s Dao. Confucians will greatly appreciate the critique of modern technology by Heidegger, and especially his view of returning “home” to overcome the possible dangers brought about by technology. However, from the perspective of Confucianism, Heidegger’s critique contains some shortcomings: for example, his ignorance of the individualistic impact in the Gestell and his unidirectional “ontological difference,” which leads him to a view of “home” that lacks “family” and therefore renders his solution loose and rootless. Only an organic community originated in the family, be it Confucian or Amish, can effectively reduce the control of modern technology over the human being. (shrink)

[full article, abstract in English; abstract in Lithuanian] Modern revolution as the beginning of founding a new political order has to confront the vicious circle inhered in all beginnings: in so far as it is the beginning, where does its principle come from? Or, if there is no principle, how could the beginning establish one? Set in the context of modern political experience, the aporia is equal to the problem of how modern politics to be self-grounded or how to reestablish (...) political authority in modernity? By an exploration into the relevant writings of Hannah Arendt, the article tries to investigate the vicious circle of beginning and principle in the political realm, and to point out that Arendt has told a story about the mutual generating of beginning and principle, turning the so-called vicious circle into a hermeneutic circle, in which those implicit principles become explicit through the performance of founding actions. (shrink)

After the COVID-19 outbreak, the health status of the general population has suffered a huge threat, and the health system has also encountered great challenges. As critical members of human capital in the health sector, medical students with specialized knowledge and skills have positively fought against the epidemic by providing volunteer services that boosted the resilience of the health system. Although volunteer behavior is associated with individual internal motivation, there is sparse evidence on this relationship among medical students, especially regarding (...) potential mechanisms. Therefore, this study had two main objectives: to examine the influence of prosocial motivation of medical students on their VB; and to verify the chain-mediating role of calling and vocation as well as social responsibility in the relationship between PM and VB. Study I: a total of 2454 Chinese full-time medical students were invited to complete an online survey. Data analysis was performed using descriptive statistics, Pearson’s correlation coefficient, and multiple linear regression analysis. The results demonstrated that PM significantly affected VB in medical students ; CV as well as SR chain-mediated the relationship between PM and VB. PM promoted the formation of SR by positively evoking CV of medical students, further resulting in increased VB. Study II: A 28 person qualitative interview was conducted. Qualitative data are added to reduce the limitations of online questionnaires. At the same time, we can also critically study the VB of Chinese medical students during COVID-19. The results showed that there were various reasons for medical students to volunteer in the process of fighting against COVID-19, and the experience of volunteer service and the impact on their future life were different. Lastly, the current findings suggest that fostering volunteerism among medical students requires the joint effort of the government, non-profit organizations, and medical colleges. (shrink)

In recent years policy makers and public health professionals have described obesity and its associated diseases as a major global public health problem. Bioethicists have tried to address the normative implications of proposed public health interventions by developing guidelines or proposing ethical principles that ethically grounded health policy responses should take into consideration. We are reviewing here relevant literature and conclude that while there are clearly health implications resulting from the increasing number of seriously obese people across the globe, there (...) appear to be legitimate questions about the scope of the problem as well as questions about whether particular demonstrable correlations are indicative of causations. These empirical questions require further clinical and epidemiological research. We then review currently discussed public health ethics guidance documents and proposals. Suffering from the same conceptual problems that are known features of principle-based bioethics, insofar as their capacity to ground ethically justifiable policies is concerned, they are unsuitable for actual policy development. Even if the empirical questions were resolved, health policy makers could not rely on currently existing prominent public health ethics guidance documents to develop ethically defensible policies. Further empirical and ethics research is necessary to develop ethically defensible public health policies targeting obesity. (shrink)

Due to the current COVID-19 pandemic, colleges and universities have implemented network teaching. E-learning engagement is the most important concern of educators and parents because this will directly affect student academic performance. Hence, this study focuses on students’ perceived family support and their e-learning engagement and analyses the effects of e-learning normative consciousness and behaviours and self-efficacy on the relationship between family support and e-learning engagement in college students. Prior to this study, the relationship between these variables was unknown. Four (...) structural equation models revealed the multiple mediating roles of e-learning normative consciousness and behaviours and self-efficacy in the relationship between family support and e-learning engagement. A total of 1317 college students (mean age = 19.51; 52.2% freshman) voluntarily participated in our study. The results showed that e-learning normative consciousness and behaviours and self-efficacy played significant and mediating roles between students’ perceived family support and their e-learning engagement. Specifically, these two individual variables fully mediated the relationship between students’ perceived family support and their e-learning engagement. The multiple mediation model showed that family members can increase family support of their children by creating a household environment conducive to learning, displaying positive emotions, demonstrating the capability to assist their children, advocating the significance of learning normative consciousness and behaviours and encouraging dedicated and efficient learning. The findings complement and extend the understanding of factors influencing student e-learning engagement. (shrink)

Inventory prediction and management is a key issue in a retail store. There are a number of inventory prediction techniques. However, it is difficult to identify a time series prediction model for inventory forecasting that provides uniformly good results for all the products in a store. This paper uses data from a small retail store to demonstrate the variability of results for different modeling techniques and different products. We demonstrate inadequacy of a generic inventory model. Stability and seasonality analysis of (...) the time series is used to identify groups of products exhibiting similar sales patterns. Different clustering techniques are applied to determine reasonable local groups. With the help of Mean absolute percentage error, the effectiveness of dataset partitioning for better inventory management is demonstrated. Appropriate inventory management strategies are proposed based on the stability and seasonality analysis. (shrink)

We propose a fast and reliable corner detector that can detect corners under non-uniform illumination and fuzzy mineshaft images effectively. First, we presented an inner mask that used only four pixels to determine the flat and corner regions of an image, which could eliminate unnecessary computation of flat regions, thus reducing computing cost. Second, we separated the corner regions into background and foreground and computed the separate corner threshold to settle non-uniform illumination. Third, we proposed a fast corner-detection algorithm to (...) compute the nucleus continuous contributive segment based on the corner state. Finally, we proposed two effective methods to remove the false corners. Experimental results showed that our approach has a better detection quality and is less time consuming than three other algorithms on an artificial image, a noisy image, and non-uniform images and could meet the real-time requirement of mineshaft applications. (shrink)

In recent years, more and more Chinese women have joined the legal profession and have made remarkable achievements in this field. Gender stereotypes, however, which involve a deep-rooted social concept, have seriously hindered Chinese women’s development in the legal profession and have had a profound and adverse impact on women’s career progression. Based on the statistical data in the public domain as well as the ethnographic data drawn from interviews with legal professionals and informal conversations with lawyers known to the (...) principal author, this paper focuses on women in the Chinese legal profession, identifies the causes of women’s dilemmas in their career development as well as the impact of gender stereotyping on them within the legal profession in order to provide some insights on improving gender equality in China. According to the authors, the causes of gender stereotypes in China are diverse: Existing legal institutions promote and maintain such stereotyping practices; traditional gender concepts enter into and disseminated in people’s thoughts; the theory of biological determinism in the field of science misleads the general public; and the legal system constructs women’s status as workers and mothers. In view of this, it is necessary to achieve substantive equality in China’s legal profession by weakening men’s domination of the legal profession, improving the structure and ideology of relevant institutions and policies in offering women more incentives for career development, and also changing women’s understanding of and efforts against biased gender stereotypes. This will help break down China’s gender stereotypes, promote gender equality in the legal profession, and address the dilemma of women’s legal career development. (shrink)

Dual organizational identification (DOI) is generally considered beneficial to multinational corporations (MNCs) and their employees. However, this study challenges this consensus by exploring the potential negative impacts of DOI in the ethical controversy context when MNCs and host countries have conflicting views on a business decision and both feel that they are ethically correct. Integrating role identity theory, we propose that the DOI of host country nationals (HCNs) may create conflict in their work-related perceptions and behaviors amid an ethical controversy. (...) In Study 1, we interviewed 51 HCNs from MNCs’ Chinese subsidiaries and found that HCNs’ DOI caused their role conflict during ethical controversies, which in turn affected their perceptions (i.e., perceived isolation, ethical pressure) and behaviors (i.e., procrastination, exit, voice, headquarters (HQ)–subsidiary cooperation). We also found that the job level of HCNs played a key role in moderating the above relationship. In Study 2, we tested the theoretical framework developed in Study 1 using a multi-wave survey from a sample of 300 HCNs working in MNCs’ Chinese subsidiaries. The results generally validated the Study 1 model. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

Previous behavioral studies have identified the significant role of subliminal cues in creative problem solving. However, neural mechanisms of such unconscious processing remain poorly understood. Here we utilized an event-related potential approach and sandwich mask technique to investigate cerebral activities underlying the unconscious processing of cues in creative problem solving. College students were instructed to solve divergent problems under three different conditions . Our data showed that creative problem solving can benefit from unconscious cues, although not as much as from (...) conscious cues. More importantly, we found that there are crucial ERP components associated with unconscious processing of cues in solving divergent problems. Similar to the processing of conscious cues, processing unconscious cues in problem solving involves the semantic activation of unconscious cues in the right inferior parietal lobule , new association formation in the right parahippocampal gyrus , and mental representation transformation in the right superior temporal gyrus . The present results suggest that creative problem solving can be modulated by unconscious processing of enlightening information that is weakly diffused in the semantic network beyond our conscious awareness. (shrink)

In the target article by Kolbe and de Melo-Martin (2023), the authors discussed several shortcomings of major instruments of moral distress, including the Moral Distress Scale (MDS) (Corley et al....

The present study analyses the psychometric properties of the irrational procrastination scale in a sample of United States college students using the Rasch modeling approach. Results showed that the IPS items had a high level of reliability, good content validity, structural validity, and substantive validity, and no differential item functioning effects in terms of gender. The IPS was found to be unidimensional, supporting the originally proposed theoretical structure by Steel. Finally, psychometric implications derived from the results and study limitations are (...) discussed; recommendations for future investigations are also offered. (shrink)

Our study finds that relative to firms managed by local CEOs, firms managed by CEOs who have returned from overseas (returnee CEOs) exhibit significantly higher audit fees. We also find this positive association to be stronger for returnee CEOs who manage firms with greater agency problems, have overseas experience in countries with better developed institutions, or have greater business knowledge. Further analyses indicate that firms managed by returnee CEOs tend to exhibit better financial reporting quality, lower propensities for financial fraud, (...) and fewer earnings restatements in subsequent years. In addition, firms managed by returnee CEOs are associated with greater internationalization and higher propensities for seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) than firms managed by local CEOs. Overall, our findings are most consistent with the conjecture that returnees tend to bring ethics and practices that ensure higher financial reporting quality back to their home countries. Our findings offer a plausible explanation that returnee talents could increase firm value. (shrink)

A cross-cultural work which reinvigorates the consideration of enlightenment.

We investigated the pairing of a financial news article prediction system, AZFinText, with sentiment analysis techniques. From our comparisons we found that news articles of a subjective nature were easier to predict in both price direction (59.0% vs 50.4% without sentiment) and through a simple trading engine (3.30% return vs 2.41% without sentiment). Looking into sentiment further, we found that news articles of a negative sentiment were easiest to predict in both price direction (50.9% vs 50.4% without sentiment) and our (...) simple trading engine (3.04% return vs 2.41% without sentiment). Investigating the negative sentiment further, we found that AZFinText was best able to predict price decreases in articles of a positive sentiment (53.5%) and price increases in articles of a negative or neutral sentiment (52.4% and 49.5% respectively). (shrink)