Social norms play an essential role in human interactions and the development of the evolution of human history. Extensive studies corroborate that compliance with social norms typically requires a punishment threat as almost always specific individuals have self-interests that tempt them to violate the norm. Neural imaging studies demonstrate that lateral orbitofrontal cortex and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (rDLPFC) are activated when individuals decide to increase social norm compliance when punishment is possible. Moreover, rDLPFC is affirmed to be involved in (...) social norm compliance with or without external punishment threats in a series of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) research. However, these neuroscience studies are based on the ultimatum game in which the decision-making power between the proposer and the responder is unequal, and no studies support the causal relationship between rDLPFC and voluntary cooperative norms compliance among the equal decision-making power of subjects. Whether modulating the excitability of rDLPFC, which plays a role in norm compliance, alters the extent of compliance with voluntary cooperative norms under equal decision-making power and how norms from different types with asymmetric endowment influence compliance remain unknown. The present study aimed to provide evidence of a direct link between the neural and behavioral results through the application of tDCS over rDLPFC on compliance with voluntary cooperative norms under equal decision-making power. Results verified that activating rDLPFC altered voluntary cooperative norms compliance of all our participants and significant effect over different initial endowments was observed. The role of norm.own and norm.other in compliance was changed in the anodal treatment. Findings validate that enhancing the excitability of the rDLPFC using tDCS leads to high compliance in voluntary cooperation and this effect is specific to equal decision-making power rather than unequal decision-making power. (shrink)

This essay reviews the philosophical roots and the development of the concept of creativity in the West and East. In particular, two conceptions of creativity that originated in the West--divinely inspired creativity and individual creativity--are discussed and compared to the two Eastern conceptions of creativity that are rooted in ancient Chinese philosophical thought--natural and individual creativity. Both Western and Eastern conceptions of individual creativity come from a theistic or cosmic tradition of either divinely inspired or natural creativity. However, a defining (...) feature of the Western concept of creativity--novelty--is not necessarily embraced by ancient Chinese concepts of creativity, but does exist in both modern Eastern conceptions. Reasons for cultural differences are explored and discussed. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

It will be settled out for the open problem of designing an r-order finite-time state observer for reaction-diffusion genetic regulatory networks with time-varying delays. By assuming the Dirichlet boundary conditions, aiming to estimate the mRNA and protein concentrations via available network measurements. Firstly, sufficient F-T stability conditions for the filtering error system have been investigated via constructing an appropriate Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional and using several integral inequalities and convex technique simultaneously. These conditions are delay-dependent and reaction-diffusion-dependent and can be checked by (...) MATLAB toolbox. Furthermore, a method is proposed to design an r-order F-T state observer, and the explicit expressions of observer gains are given. Finally, a numerical example is presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. (shrink)

Philosophers debate over the truth of the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing, the thesis that there is a morally significant difference between doing harm and merely allowing harm to happen. Deontologists tend to accept this doctrine, whereas consequentialists tend to reject it. A robust defence of this doctrine would require a conceptual distinction between doing and allowing that both matches our ordinary use of the concepts in a wide range of cases and enables a justification for the alleged moral difference. (...) In this article, I argue not only that a robust defence of this doctrine is available, but also that it is available within a consequentialist framework. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to improve the practical argument for beliefs in God. Some theists, most famously Kant and William James, called our attention to a particular set of beliefs, the Jamesian-type beliefs, which are justified by virtue of their practical significance, and these theists tried to justify theistic beliefs on the exact same ground. I argue, contra the Jamesian tradition, that theistic beliefs are different from the Jamesian-type beliefs and thus cannot be justified on the same ground. I (...) also argue that the practical argument, as it stands, faces a problem of self-defeat. I then construct a new practical argument that avoids both problems. According to this new argument, theistic beliefs are rational to accept because such beliefs best supply us with motivation strong enough to carry out demanding moral tasks. (shrink)

It is the continuity between epistemology and empirical science that the naturalism in contemporary philosophy of science emphasizes. After its individual and social dimensions, the philosophy of scientific practice takes a stand on naturalism in order to observe complex scientific activities through practice. However, regarding the naturalism’s problem of normativity, the philosophy of scientific practice today has deconstructed more than it has constructed.

Using pure statistical evidence about a group to judge a particular member of that group is often found objectionable. One natural explanation of why this is objectionable appeals to the moral notion of respecting individuality: to properly respect individuality, we need individualized evidence, not pure statistical evidence. However, this explanation has been criticized on the ground that there is no fundamental difference between the so-called “individualized evidence” and “pure statistical evidence”. This paper defends the respecting-individuality explanation by developing an account (...) of what it means to respect individuality. It combines an idealistic account of respecting individuality and a prioritization account of respecting individuality, and offers a principled way to distinguish individualized evidence from non-individualized evidence. (shrink)

A frequent caveat in online dating profiles – “No fats, femmes, or Asians” – caused an LGBT activist to complain about the bias against Asians in the American gay community, which he called “racial looksism”. In response, he was asked that, if he himself would not date a fat person, why he should find others not dating Asians so upsetting. This response embodies a popular attitude that personal preferences or tastes are simply personal matters – they are not subject to (...) moral evaluation. In this paper, I argue, against this popular attitude, that a personal preference like racial looksism is indeed wrong. A preference like racial looksism is wrong because it is an overgeneralization that disrespects individuality by treating people as exchangeable tokens of one type, and such disrespect denies its objects appreciation that their dignity entitles them to. As it turns out, there is on my account a relevant moral difference between racial looksism and simple looksism. (shrink)

This thesis first introduces the basic principles of model-based image sequence coding technology, then discusses in detail the specific steps in various implementation algorithms, and proposes a basic feature point calibration required in three-dimensional motion and structure estimation. This is a simple and effective solution. Aiming at the monocular video image sequence obtained by only one camera, this paper introduces the 3D model of the sculpture building into the pose tracking framework to provide initial depth information. The whole posture tracking (...) framework can be divided into three parts, namely, the construction of the initial sculpture model, the posture tracking between frames, and the robustness processing during continuous tracking. In order to reduce the complexity of calculation, this paper proposes a new three-dimensional mesh model and a moving image restoration algorithm based on this model. At the same time, the influence of the intensity and direction factors in the scene is added, the simulation results are given, and the next step is discussed. The optimization work that needs to be done. (shrink)

One type of soft-line reply to manipulation arguments, which I call ‘the another-agent reply’, focuses on the existence of some controlling agent and how this can undermine the actor's moral responsibility. A well-known challenge to this type of reply is the so-called ‘machine induction’ case. This paper provides an argument for why ‘machine induction’ presents no real challenge to the another-agent reply. It further argues that any soft-liner who does not leave room for the existence of some controlling agent in (...) their explanation of why manipulation undermines responsibility will face a dilemma. Thus, instead of presenting a challenge to the another-agent reply, ‘machine induction’ actually presents a reason in support of it. (shrink)

With a previous paper (Niu & Wang, 1995), a general, hypothetical outline of the mechanism of carcinogenesis was proposed. With reference to the fact of starvation-induced hypermutation in micro-organisms, we propose that the hypoxia commonly seen in the cells at the centre of solid tumours might also result in hypermutation, and then p53-dependent programmed cell death. Like the apparently adaptive mutations in micro-organisms, only those genes (e.g. p53) that enable the cells to escape from apoptosis may be selected.

Of the three powers—Wei, Shu, and Wu—that divided China for the better part of the third century, Wei has received the most attention in the standard literary historical accounts. In a typical book of Chinese literary history in any language, little, if anything, is said about Wu and Shu. This article argues that the consideration of the literary production of Shu and Wu is crucial to a fuller picture of the cultural dynamics of the Three Kingdoms period. The three states (...) competed with one another for the claim to political legitimacy and cultural supremacy, and Wu in particular was in a position to contend with Wei in its cultural undertakings, notably in the areas of history writing and ritual music. This article begins with an overview of Shu and Wu literary production, and moves on to a more detailed discussion of Wu’s cultural projects, both of which were intended to assert Wu’s legitimacy and cultural power vis-à-vis Wei and Shu’s claims to cultural and political orthodoxy. Ultimately, this article implicitly asks the question of how to write literary history when there is scant material from the period under question, and suggests that we perform textual excavations and make use of what we have to try and reconstruct, as best as we can, what once was. A good literary history of the Chinese medieval period, the age of manuscript culture and that of heavy textual losses and transfigurations, should be written with the awareness of the incomplete and imperfect nature of the data we do have, and incorporate the phenomenon of textual losses and transfigurations as well as some reflections on the underlying reasons into its narrative and critical inquiry. (shrink)

Reviewing a recent book about early medieval Chinese geographical writings, this essay asks what sort of historical contextualization is needed for historical study, and suggests looking at multiple factors, including the material conditions of textual production, that may be responsible for the proliferation of texts. It cautions against embracing a single story to account for a long historical period, especially if that story fits our modern concerns too neatly; even more importantly, we have to allow the primary sources to take (...) the lead, rather than looking for and presenting only evidence that serves a particular agenda. (shrink)

A cross-generic examination of the discursive representations of a changing rela- tionship to a specific subcategory of things that are observable in writings from early to medieval China, this essay suggests that these representations denote the appearance of a culture of sentimentality about old, worn-out things at the turn of the ninth century. This culture of sentimentality indicates a deep-seated anxiety about the blurred boundary, on a conceptual and ideological level, between humans and things, and bespeaks the complex dynamics in (...) the relationship of self and other at a time of profound cultural and intellectual changes, in which the textual representations of dilapidated ordinary things of daily life participated. It anticipates and yet remains profoundly different from Northern Song antiquarianism, thus showing gaps and fissures in the neat, familiar teleological narrative of the “Tang-Song transition.”. (shrink)

In the presence of heterogeneity between the randomized controlled trial (RCT) participants and the target population, evaluating the treatment effect solely based on the RCT often leads to biased quantification of the real-world treatment effect. To address the problem of lack of generalizability for the treatment effect estimated by the RCT sample, we leverage observational studies with large samples that are representative of the target population. This article concerns evaluating treatment effects on survival outcomes for a target population and considers (...) a broad class of estimands that are functionals of treatment-specific survival functions, including differences in survival probability and restricted mean survival times. Motivated by two intuitive but distinct approaches, i.e., imputation based on survival outcome regression and weighting based on inverse probability of sampling, censoring, and treatment assignment, we propose a semiparametric estimator through the guidance of the efficient influence function. The proposed estimator is doubly robust in the sense that it is consistent for the target population estimands if either the survival model or the weighting model is correctly specified and is locally efficient when both are correct. In addition, as an alternative to parametric estimation, we employ the nonparametric method of sieves for flexible and robust estimation of the nuisance functions and show that the resulting estimator retains the root- n n consistency and efficiency, the so-called rate-double robustness. Simulation studies confirm the theoretical properties of the proposed estimator and show that it outperforms competitors. We apply the proposed method to estimate the effect of adjuvant chemotherapy on survival in patients with early-stage resected non-small cell lung cancer. (shrink)

Abstract Along with China’s stunning economic growth, marketing has become a multi-billion dollar business, afflicted by a plethora of marketing scandals. However, little attention has been paid, until now, to a more systematic approach to marketing ethics in China. This essay attempts to provide a broad and timely, but far from complete, view on marketing issues in China. It uses four ethical guidelines which capture the fundamental features particularly relevant to marketing activities: practicing honest communication; enhancing human capabilities; fostering creative (...) intercultural diversity; and promoting sustainable growth and eco-efficiency. These guidelines are then elucidated with 12 positive and negative cases of Chinese and non-Chinese companies. By combining guidelines with case studies, it is hoped that ethical challenges for marketing in China will be discerned in a more systematic and comprehensible fashion. The article concludes by indicating several perspectives for further research. Content Type Journal Article Category Original Paper Pages 1-20 DOI 10.1007/s13520-011-0014-0 Authors Georges Enderle, Mendoza College of Business, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA Qibin Niu, School of Business Administration, China University of Petroleum, Changping, Beijing, People’s Republic of China Journal Asian Journal of Business Ethics Online ISSN 2210-6731 Print ISSN 2210-6723. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced higher education institutions to shift their teaching activities from traditional face-to-face to online learning. This brings a great challenge to the creativity training of vocational college students, who not only learn theoretical knowledge but also cultivate technical skills. Therefore, it is very important to explore the influencing factors of online learning on students’ creativity during the epidemic. By relying on the related literature review, an extensive model is developed by integrating the expectation confirmation model, technology (...) task fit model, and the technology acceptance model to illustrate key factors that influence creativity. Based on the proposed model, theory-based hypotheses are tested through structural equation modeling employing empirical data gathered through a survey questionnaire of 229 students from different vocational colleges in China. In addition, to extend the analysis results, this paper performs a comparative analysis based on gender. The findings demonstrate that perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness significantly influence knowledge sharing; knowledge sharing significantly affects creativity. However, there is no substantial relationship between perceived usefulness and attitude, and no relationship between attitude and knowledge sharing. Moreover, a multi-group comparison shows that there is a significant gender difference between perceived ease of use and attitude. Based on the findings, theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

New Confucianism is comparative philosophy par excellence. It stands or falls with the validity of the comparisons its thinkers have made regarding Western and Asian religious and philosophical systems and conceptions. Yet comparative philosophy and comparative religion in and beyond Asia have recently received criticisms. Questions that have been raised include: is it not a fallacy to take Asian philosophy and religion out of their historical and social contexts and to present them as unchanging entities? Are the across-space-and-time comparisons between (...) Asian and Western philosophy and religion far-fetched and forced? To answer these questions, this paper presents a case study of comparative philosophy: Mou Zongsan’s post-Kantian Confucian metaphysics. After showcasing Mou, in the second part of this paper I shall consider the validity of comparative philosophy in general and the implications to my appraisal of Mou in particular. (shrink)

This paper reviews Veli Mitova’s recent article, “The collective epistemic reasons of social-identity groups,” which proposes and defends a collectivist account of epistemic reasons for social-identity groups. The paper first discusses what makes a collectivist account appealing in the context of moral obligations, a context from which Mitova apparently draws inspiration for her collectivist account of epistemic reasons. The paper then considers two issues that may make a collectivist account of epistemic reasons lose much of the theoretical advantage that a (...) collectivist account of moral obligations has over its individualist competitor: (1) epistemic reasons need to be internally possessed and (2) the individual inability that motivates a collectivist account of moral obligations is of a special kind. (shrink)

The level of psychological pain in patients with COVID-19 was investigated in this study by hypothesis testing, one-way ANOVA, multi factor ANOVA, and correlation analysis. The psychological pain thermometer and post-traumatic growth assessment scale were used as research tools. Many factors appear to influence the psychological state of COVID-19 patients including practical problems, communication problems, emotional problems, physical problems, and psychiatric/relative concerns. The severity of the disease, the surrounding environment, family health problems, life perceptions, interpersonal relationships, personal strength, mental changes, (...) new possibilities, and the total post-traumatic growth score are also affected. There is a significant negative correlation between psychological pain and post-traumatic growth. There are significant differences in the degree of psychological pain across the demographic data. Practical problems, communication problems, emotional problems, physical problems, and spiritual/religious concerns show significant effects on the degree of psychological pain. (shrink)

A series of our experimental studies show that some actions which consequentialists would treat as morally right or wrong were not regarded by ordinary people as a matter of morality. These results...

The teaching management department carries all the work related to teaching in the whole school. A scientific, efficient, and complete teaching management system cannot only help the teaching management department improve work efficiency and quality but also greatly reduce many problems caused by manual labour risk. This paper designs and implements a teaching management system based on an improved association rule algorithm. First, aiming at the low efficiency of the Apriori algorithm for mining association rules, an association rule model based (...) on interest is proposed. Second, use the MapReduce calculation model to partition the transaction database, then use the improved Apriori optimization algorithm for mining, and finally merge the mining results to obtain frequent itemsets. Through experiments, the optimized algorithm has greatly improved selection mining and computing time than traditional algorithms. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic, which was first reported at the end of 2019, has had a massive impact on the Chinese economy and society. The pandemic has seriously tested the emergency management capabilities of the Chinese government regarding public health. Based on the panel data of 31 provinces in China for the period of 2006–2019, this paper examines the impacts of government public health spending on regional economic growth. Furthermore, the possibility of spatial spillover effects of government public health spending is (...) investigated through spatial econometric analysis. Government public health spending and regional economic growth have significant positive spatial correlation and spatial agglomeration effects. The indicator of government public health spending significantly promotes regional economic growth. In addition, it significantly promotes the economic growth of neighboring areas through certain spatial spillovers. (shrink)

Division of labour is a marked feature of multicellular organisms. Margulis proposed that the ancestors of metazoans had only one microtubule organizing center (MTOC), so they could not move and divide simultaneously. Selection for simultaneous movement and cell division had driven the division of labour between cells. However, no evidence or explanation for this assumption was provided. Why could the unicellular ancetors not have multiple MTOCs? The gain and loss of three possible strategies are discussed. It was found that the (...) advantage of one or two MTOC per cell is environment-dependent. Unicellular organisms with only one MTOC per cell are favored only in resource-limited environments without strong predatory pressure. If division of labour occurring in a bicellular organism just makes simultaneous movement and cell division possible, the possibility of its fixation by natural selection is very low because a somatic cell performing the function of an MTOC is obviously wasting resources. Evolutionary biologists should search for other selective forces for division of labour in cells. (shrink)

To cope with the water deficit resulting from saline environment, plant cells accumulate three kinds of osmotica: salts, small organic solutes and hydrophillic, glycine-rich proteins. Salts such as NaCl are cheap and available but has ion toxicity in high concentrations. Small organic solutes are assistant osmotica, their main function is to protect cytoplasmic enzymes from ionic toxicity and maintain the integrity of cellular membranes. Hydrophillic, glycine-rich proteins are the most effective osmotica, they have some characteristics to avoid crystallization even in (...) high concentration, but because they are expensive they are not as commonly used as salts or organic solutes. In addition there is the question of whether the genetic information for growth in saline environment is present in all kinds of plants, both halophytes and nonhalophytes. (shrink)

From the viewpoint of an evolutionary biologist, carcinogenesis should be looked upon as a protective mechanism against destruction of DNA. Because genes expressed in embryonic cells are covered and protected by heterochromatinization, they are the most appropriate ‘alternate genes’ compared to genes that are expressed already in somatic cells. When DNA-damage occurs, the embryonic genes can be activated. Some somatic cells exhibit some features of embryonic cells.

《樂道》是隴菲多年精心撰著的音樂哲學專著。 自二十世紀八十年代初，隴菲潛心研究音樂哲學，試圖基於中國古典樂道，建立可與世界對話的中國音樂哲學，發表了多篇重要論著，如《行象簡論》、《形》、《春江花月夜 —— 自然、歷史、人生之千古絕唱》、《古琴與鋼琴》等等。自二零零二年起，《樂道》部分章節，陸續由期刊連載，引起廣泛關注，且被許多網站輾轉傳貼。《樂道》傳疏發明之中國古典哲學、中國古典樂道“道、形、器”（《易 經》）、“達、類、私”（《墨經》）、“人，法地地，法天天，法道道，法自然”（《道德經》）、“逝者如斯”（《論語》）、“以類相動”、“大樂與天地同和”、“大樂中天地之節”（《禮記》），以及隴菲拈出之“行 象”（《行象簡論》）等等洪範之疇，已逐漸為世人注目。.

The aim of cognitive diagnosis is to classify respondents' mastery status of latent attributes from their responses on multiple items. Since respondents may answer some but not all items, item-level missing data often occur. Even if the primary interest is to provide diagnostic classification of respondents, misspecification of missing data mechanism may lead to biased conclusions. This paper proposes a joint cognitive diagnosis modeling of item responses and item-level missing data mechanism. A Bayesian Markov chain Monte Carlo method is developed (...) for model parameter estimation. Our simulation studies examine the parameter recovery under different missing data mechanisms. The parameters could be recovered well with correct use of missing data mechanism for model fit, and missing that is not at random is less sensitive to incorrect use. The Program for International Student Assessment 2015 computer-based mathematics data are applied to demonstrate the practical value of the proposed method. (shrink)

With the recent rise of the philosophy of scientific practices, SSK (Sociology of Scientific Knowledge), and feminist approaches to the philosophy of science, a new perspective is gradually coming into being, holding that the starting point for scientific research is opportunity. Opportunistic features in solar neutrino experiments, Opportunistic features of complexity studies emerging from economics, and the measurement of insects' flight can prove the above perspective from different angels. It is important and significant to determine whether the starting point for (...) scientific research is opportunity, a problem, or an observation. /// 近年来由于科学实践哲学的兴起，以及 SSK 和女性主义科学哲学研究的兴起， 科学研究始于机会的观点正在悄然形成之中。太阳中微子实验、复杂性研究和昆虫 飞行测量等案例都从不同角度证明了 "科学研究始于机会" 的观点。区别科学研究 "始于机会"、"始于问题" 和 "始于观察" 这三种观点，是重要而且有意义的。. (shrink)