In poor and remote areas, teachers frequently encounter serious ongoing challenges and experience teacher exhaustion due to the uneven distribution of resource supply, and a shortage of professional support. Maintaining teachers’ professional wellbeing in an unfavorable teaching environment has become a major challenge. The current study explores teachers’ professional wellbeing in the context of a five-month-long professional development program designed for teachers in areas of deep poverty in China. This study adopted the method of narrative enquiry and collected diaries written (...) before and after the program from 46 primary school English teachers. Based on the manually analyzed data, it was found that teachers’ overall wellbeing at work was enhanced in terms of their professional meaning, engagement, and achievement. The systematic analysis of the diaries helped to better understand how the program exerted such an effect on teachers’ learning experiences and their wellbeing. (shrink)

Using the theoretical perspective of market stakeholders, we analyze the impact of external innovations from upstream enterprises, downstream enterprises, and competitors on the exports of private enterprises. By using data from the China Industrial Enterprises Database, we find that external innovations from upstream suppliers, downstream customers and horizontal competitors show positive impacts on the export propensity, intensity and scale for private enterprises. The results of a heterogeneity analysis indicate that the positive relationships between the external innovations of stakeholders and the (...) exports of private enterprises are stable in different factor-intensive industries. In addition, while the exports of private enterprises are positively correlated with their external innovations in the eastern and central regions, this relationship is not significant in the western region. Further, the mechanism analysis confirms that enterprise innovation played an important mediating role for the external innovations of stakeholders to promote the exports of private enterprises. This study provides useful policy implications for enhancing the export competitiveness of private enterprises. (shrink)

Kindergarten teachers’ professional commitment affects their emotional input and turnover intention, and it is affected by the spiritual and material factors of teachers’ families, kindergartens, and society. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the mediating effect of the dimensions of subjective well-being in the relationship between social support and professional commitment. The study is grounded in human ecology theory and social exchange theory. We surveyed 778 kindergarten teachers from different educational systems in Guangdong Province in China. We used the “Appreciative (...) Social Support” and “Subjective Well-being” Scales and the “Professional Commitment Questionnaire.” The results showed that the four variables of social support, positive affect, life satisfaction, and professional commitment of kindergarten teachers were significantly and positively correlated with each other: social support positively predicted positive affect and life satisfaction, positive affect and life satisfaction positively predicted professional commitment, and social support indirectly influenced professional commitment through the parallel and chain path of positive affect and life satisfaction. This represents a compound multiple mediating effects on professional commitment. (shrink)

The present study constructed a moderated mediation model to examine whether borderline pathological celebrity worship may be associated with higher levels of impulsive buying intent. The mediating role of empathy and the moderating role of gender were also examined. A total of 1,319 participants recruited from a college through the campus network. The results indicated that borderline pathological celebrity worship could positively predict individuals’ impulsive buying intent; the predictive effect of borderline pathological celebrity worship on impulsive buying intent could be (...) mediated by empathy; and gender moderated the predictive effect of borderline pathological celebrity worship on impulsive buying intent. Specifically, relatively higher levels of borderline pathological celebrity worship were found to be associated with higher impulsive buying intent among men. However, this was relatively less significant among women.ConclusionThe results contribute to previous findings by demonstrating that borderline pathological celebrity worship could affect impulsive buying intent. Moreover, the mediating role of empathy and the moderating role of gender were also revealed. (shrink)

Toxic gas leakage has diffusion characteristics and thus dynamically affects surrounding zones. Most of current evacuation traffic management models set the road risk level as a static value, which is related to the distance to the hazard source, or a dynamic value, which is determined by the toxic gas concentration. However, the toxic gas propagation direction is not considered, and this may lead some evacuees driving from less dangerous regions to higher dangerous regions. To address the shortcomings of traditional evacuation (...) traffic management models, this paper proposes an improved road risk level assessment method based on the difference of the risk levels of upstream and downstream zones of road and develops a safer evacuation traffic management model under the diffusion of toxic gas. The Cell Transmission Model is used to depict the evacuation traffic loading process. A numerical test is carried out on Nguyen and Dupuis Network. The test results show that the improved road risk level assessment method can avoid the evacuees driving into higher risk level regions from less dangerous regions. (shrink)

If the Past Hypothesis underlies the arrows of time, what is the status of the Past Hypothesis? In this paper, I examine the role of the Past Hypothesis in the Boltzmannian account and defend the view that the Past Hypothesis is a candidate fundamental law of nature. Such a view is known to be compatible with Humeanism about laws, but as I argue it is also supported by a minimal non-Humean "governing'' view. Some worries arise from the non-dynamical and time-dependent (...) character of the Past Hypothesis as a boundary condition, the intrinsic vagueness in its specification, and the nature of the initial probability distribution. I show that these worries do not have much force, and in any case they become less relevant in a new quantum framework for analyzing time's arrows---the Wentaculus. Hence, the view that the Past Hypothesis is a candidate fundamental law should be more widely accepted than it is now. (shrink)

The Great Divide in metaphysical debates about laws of nature is between Humeans, who think that laws merely describe the distribution of matter, and non-Humeans, who think that laws govern it. The metaphysics can place demands on the proper formulations of physical theories. It is sometimes assumed that the governing view requires a fundamental / intrinsic direction of time: to govern, laws must be dynamical, producing later states of the world from earlier ones, in accord with the fundamental direction of (...) time in the universe. In this paper, we propose a minimal primitivism about laws of nature (MinP) according to which there is no such requirement. On our view, laws govern by constraining the physical possibilities. Our view captures the essence of the governing view without taking on extraneous commitments about the direction of time or dynamic production. Moreover, as a version of primitivism, our view requires no reduction / analysis of laws in terms of universals, powers, or dispositions. Our view accommodates several potential candidates for fundamental laws, including the principle of least action, the Past Hypothesis, the Einstein equation of general relativity, and even controversial examples found in the Wheeler-Feynman theory of electrodynamics and retrocausal theories of quantum mechanics. By understanding governing as constraining, non-Humeans who accept MinP have the same freedom to contemplate a wide variety of candidate fundamental laws as Humeans do. (shrink)

A growing interest has been observed among K-12 school educators to incorporate maker pedagogy into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education to engage students in the design and making process. Both cognitive engagement and emotional engagement of students can be promoted through satisfying the psychological need of relatedness that concerns a sense of connection and belonging. How to support relatedness would influence the effective development of students’ cognitive competencies, namely creativity and critical thinking, and non-cognitive characteristics, namely interest and identity. (...) Therefore, the present study investigated how two relatedness support strategies—real-world problems and mentoring influence the development of student’s STEM-related cognitive competencies and non-cognitive characteristics in STEM marker activities. We implemented a 7-week intervention study with three classes of Grade 9 students in Hong Kong. Three intervention conditions were designed in the experiment, comprising textbook problem, RWP, and RWP with mentoring. Our analysis showed that the differences in creativity among the three groups were non-significant, the RWP and RWPM groups showed stronger critical thinking than the TBP group, and the RWPM group exhibited stronger STEM interest and identity than the other two groups. This study revealed the effectiveness of adopting RWP strategy in developing secondary students’ perceived cognitive competencies and the feasibility of employing a mentoring mechanism for cultivating learners’ perceived non-cognitive characteristics. Hence, we also offered practical suggestions for teachers. (shrink)

The current study aimed to verify the multidimensional factor structure of teacher reflection and to examine the psychometric properties of a widely used teacher reflection scale using a large-scale representative dataset of 1,611 practicing Iranian English as a Foreign Language teachers. Furthermore, the measurement invariance of the hypothesized, a priori six-factor model of teacher reflection as measured by the adapted scale was assessed across gender and educational degree in Mplus program. In addition, the differences in latent factor means of the (...) same groups were examined. The result of confirmatory factor analysis revealed that teacher reflection was a multidimensional construct, encompassing six underlying factors. Overall, the adapted teacher reflection scale based on the 6-factor model showed an overall good fit. The results also indicated metric and scalar invariance which manifests that the factors underlying the adapted scale had an identical theoretical structure across educational degree/gender groups. Finally, there were significant factor mean differences in reflection components across gender and educational degree groups. A discussion of the results and their implications ensue. (shrink)

This study aims to assess the level and determinants of the general public's willingness to organ donation. We conducted a population-based cross-sectional study of 4261 participants in China. The primary outcome was the willingness to donate organs. Logistic regression modelling was used to determine the factors that affect willingness to donate organs. Overall, the proportion of participants who showed a willingness to donate organs was 47.45% (95%CI: 0.46, 0.49) in this study. Logistic regression modelling showed participants from Western (OR = (...) 1.33, 95%CI = 1.11-1.59) and Eastern China (OR = 1.40, 95%CI = 1.19-1.65) were more willing to donate organs compared with those from Central China. The odds of being willing to donate organs was higher in females than males (OR = 1.35, 95%CI = 1.17-1.55); and was higher in those participants with experience of organ donation (OR = 1.58, 95%CI = 1.13-2.21), experience of caring for organ transplant patients (OR = 1.45, 95%CI = 1.01-2.07), and those undertaking related voluntary activities (OR = 1.67, 95%CI = 1.45-1.94), than those without. The general public's level of willingness to organ donation was not high in this study. Geographical region, gender, experience of organ donation related activities, taking care of organ transplant patients and volunteering in related activities were independently associated with participants' willingness to donate organs. (shrink)

This study aims to assess the level and determinants of the general public's willingness to organ donation. We conducted a population-based cross-sectional study of 4261 participants in China. The primary outcome was the willingness to donate organs. Logistic regression modelling was used to determine the factors that affect willingness to donate organs. Overall, the proportion of participants who showed a willingness to donate organs was 47.45% (95%CI: 0.46, 0.49) in this study. Logistic regression modelling showed participants from Western (OR = (...) 1.33, 95%CI = 1.11-1.59) and Eastern China (OR = 1.40, 95%CI = 1.19-1.65) were more willing to donate organs compared with those from Central China. The odds of being willing to donate organs was higher in females than males (OR = 1.35, 95%CI = 1.17-1.55); and was higher in those participants with experience of organ donation (OR = 1.58, 95%CI = 1.13-2.21), experience of caring for organ transplant patients (OR = 1.45, 95%CI = 1.01-2.07), and those undertaking related voluntary activities (OR = 1.67, 95%CI = 1.45-1.94), than those without. The general public's level of willingness to organ donation was not high in this study. Geographical region, gender, experience of organ donation related activities, taking care of organ transplant patients and volunteering in related activities were independently associated with participants' willingness to donate organs. (shrink)

This study aims to assess the level and determinants of the general public's willingness to organ donation. We conducted a population-based cross-sectional study of 4261 participants in China. The primary outcome was the willingness to donate organs. Logistic regression modelling was used to determine the factors that affect willingness to donate organs. Overall, the proportion of participants who showed a willingness to donate organs was 47.45% (95%CI: 0.46, 0.49) in this study. Logistic regression modelling showed participants from Western (OR = (...) 1.33, 95%CI = 1.11-1.59) and Eastern China (OR = 1.40, 95%CI = 1.19-1.65) were more willing to donate organs compared with those from Central China. The odds of being willing to donate organs was higher in females than males (OR = 1.35, 95%CI = 1.17-1.55); and was higher in those participants with experience of organ donation (OR = 1.58, 95%CI = 1.13-2.21), experience of caring for organ transplant patients (OR = 1.45, 95%CI = 1.01-2.07), and those undertaking related voluntary activities (OR = 1.67, 95%CI = 1.45-1.94), than those without. The general public's level of willingness to organ donation was not high in this study. Geographical region, gender, experience of organ donation related activities, taking care of organ transplant patients and volunteering in related activities were independently associated with participants' willingness to donate organs. (shrink)

In this paper, I characterize and elaborate on the “Wentaculus” theory, a new approach to time’s arrow in a quantum universe that offers a unified solution to the problems of what gives rise to the arrow of time and what the ontology of quantum mechanics is.

Yang Jiong 楊炯 (650–ca. 694), though hailed both by his contemporaries and later generations as one of the “Four Elites of the Early Tang,” has yet to receive due scholarly attention. This article contributes to the study of Yang Jiong by examining his “Fu on the Bookcase for Reading While Lying Down” (“Wodu shu- jia fu” 臥讀書架賦). It demonstrates how the poet displays his literary genius by skillfully employing various allusions, using self-deprecating humor for assertive self-display, devising close echoes among (...) different parts, and building an extremely well-balanced structure, written in verse of an elaborately parallel style. More importantly, he cleverly crafts a double text so that both the physical bookcase and he himself, the “mental bookcase,” become the dual subjects of the fu. The interplay between the bookcase, the poet, and his self-representation also contributes to the wider discussions of material culture, social norms, and literary expression. (shrink)

In their forthcoming article, ‘What makes a medical intervention invasive?’ De Marco, Simons, and colleagues explore the meaning and usage of the term ‘invasive’ in medical contexts. They describe a ‘Standard Account’, drawn from dictionary definitions, which defines invasiveness as ‘incision of the skin or insertion of an object into the body’. They then highlight cases wherein invasiveness is employed in a manner that is inconsistent with this account (eg, in describing psychotherapy) to argue that the term invasiveness is often (...) used to explicitly or implicitly reference interventions that do not fall under the standard account. The authors offer an alternative ‘schematic’ definition of invasiveness, whereby medical interventions entail an underlying context-independent property of ‘basic invasiveness’ and may be understood both relative to each other and to a context-specific threshold of what is ‘invasive’. 1 We propose that the meaning of terms such as ‘invasiveness’ is necessarily heterogeneous,... (shrink)

Di 1 bian. Kongzi si xiang ji lun yu -- di 2 bian. Mengzi si xiang ji Meng Xun tong yi -- di 3 bian. Gaozi si xiang -- di 4 bian. Ming li -- di 5 bian. Jiao yu xiu yang Wen hua.

In this paper I investigate a reprint of a Meiji anthology titled Meiren qiantai shi 美人千態詩 by Shang- hai shuju in 1914. This is the first time that this anthology has received critical attention. I examine the poems collected by the anthologist, contextualize the anthology in relation to traditions and trends in Japan and China, and analyze the significance of the poetic tradition centered on images of women for understanding border-crossing literati culture from the seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries. (...) My study revises both Japanese and Chinese literary history. I show that the practice of kanshi composition was sustained by major Japanese men of letters through the late Meiji era. With the rise of modern Japanese literature, especially in the genre of fiction, it is generally held that there was a rupture between Edo and Meiji-Taisho literature. Within the discursive space carved out by the beauty anthology, however, we see a continuity that unified the Edo and Meiji eras. Furthermore, the Japanese poets’ particular engagement with the subgenre on beautiful women and related sentiments was concurrent with developments among the Chinese literati from the seventeenth to the early twentieth century. (shrink)

With the development of technology, news media and film and television media are spreading faster and faster, and at the same time, the spread of rumors is also accelerated. This article briefly describes the application of artificial intelligence in news media and film and television media using a back-propagation neural network algorithm to reform refutation of rumors in news media and film and television media, and compared it with K-means and support vector machine algorithms in simulation experiments. The results showed (...) that the BPNN-based rumor recognition model had better recognition performance and shorter recognition time; it was more accurate in recognizing Weibo texts that were complete and faster in recognizing bullet screen comments that were short; the BPNN-based rumor recognition model also had the lowest false detection cost and performed stably when being used in actual Weibo platform and bullet screen video website. (shrink)

Virtual reality has developed rapidly, drawing more businesses to such development. Based on the diffusion of innovations theory, the study combines the flow theory and the satisfaction perspective to explore purchase intention influencing customers’ adoption of the VR shopping platform system. This study found that satisfaction and flow experience enhance their purchase intention. In technological characteristics, relative advantage, service compatibility, spatial presence, and complexity are important in satisfaction. Among them, both relative advantage and spatial presence impact flow experience. Additionally, a (...) cluster analysis based on gender was conducted, and the study found a significant difference between relative advantages, service compatibility, and complexity in women and men users. The flow experience is an important factor affecting women users’ shopping intention, while insignificant for male users. The implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

The outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 has resulted in widespread university lockdown. However, impacts of the university lockdown on the learning and academic development of university students have not been thoroughly investigated. The current study examined college students’ changes of learning outcomes during the COVID-19 lockdown period and clarified what might explain individual differences in students’ learning outcomes after they had learned from home for a whole semester when universities were physically closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were (...) derived from a longitudinal study examining the development of college students including students’ academic achievement and critical thinking before and after the university lockdown. We observed significant decreases in critical thinking skills and dispositions from pre- to post-lockdown. Both perceived academic achievement and critical thinking exhibited greater variability after the lockdown. In addition, students’ readiness for online learning, especially their self-management skills, consistently predicted post-lockdown learning outcomes after controlling for pre-lockdown outcomes and family socioeconomic status. Those who have assumed more responsibilities at home, or who were more vulnerable to emotional distress during the pandemic, performed less well in post-lockdown learning outcomes. These findings call for better management of student learning and development when major changes are required in higher education practices for responding to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis as well as other potential situations. (shrink)

Drawing on the core values of western civilization, the author refines the counterparts in Chinese civilization, summarized as four core principles: duty before freedom, obedience before rights, community before individual, and harmony before conflict. Focusing on guoxue or Sinology as the basis of his approach, the author provides detailed explanations of traditional Chinese values. Recent scholars have addressed the concept of guoxue since the modern age, sorting through it and piecing it together, which has produced an extremely abundant range of (...) information. However, given that the concepts and theories involved have been left largely unanalyzed, this book develops a theoretical treatment of them in several important respects. First, it analyzes the mindset of guoxue, examining the dominant ideas and values of the era from which the term "guoxue" arose, focusing on its connection to early changes and trends in society and culture, and distinguishing three key phases of development. Past scholars mainly had in mind the range of objects studied in guoxue when defining it, and what this book underscores is the meaning of guoxue as a modern body of research. Secondly, it assesses several phases in the modern evolution of the body of guoxue research from the beginning to the end of the 20th century, id est, ending with the later phase of the National Heritage movement. Third and lastly, the book explores the various main modes of modern guoxue, which correspond step by step with the evolutionary phases of guoxue research. (shrink)

Human behavior depends on the ability to effectively introspect about our performance. For simple perceptual decisions, this introspective or metacognitive ability varies substantially across individuals and is correlated with the structure of focal areas in prefrontal cortex. This raises the possibility that the ability to introspect about different perceptual decisions might be mediated by a common cognitive process. To test this hypothesis, we examined whether inter-individual differences in metacognitive ability were correlated across two different perceptual tasks where individuals made judgments (...) about different and unrelated visual stimulus properties. We found that inter-individual differences were strongly correlated between the two tasks for metacognitive ability but not objective performance. Such stability of an individual’s metacognitive ability across different perceptual tasks indicates a general mechanism supporting metacognition independent of the specific task. (shrink)

In the contemporary epistemological literature, peer disagreement is often taken to be an instance of a more general phenomenon of “higher-order evidence.” Correspondingly, its epistemic significance is often thought to turn on the epistemic significance of higher-order evidence in general. This chapter attempts to evaluate this claim, and in doing so to clarify some points of unclarity in the current literature – both about what it is for evidence to be “higher-order,” and about the relationship between disagreement and higher-order evidence. (...) We will begin by considering some candidate definitions of “higher-order evidence,” and offering our own definition that attempts to capture the phenomenon of interest. We will then consider, in light of this definition, whether disagreement and its epistemic significance are best-understood as a kind of higher-order evidence. We’ll argue that although peer disagreement can be epistemically significant qua higher-order evidence, this role doesn’t exhaust its significance, and that it can also serve as straightforward first-order evidence. Finally, we’ll suggest that inattention to this latter point has made broadly conciliatory views about peer disagreement seem somewhat easier to resist than they in fact are. (shrink)

If a benevolent and all-powerful God exists, how can there be so much suffering? Could God have created a better world? Or is evil the price we pay for freedom of the will?

With the development of China’s higher education, China has become increasingly popular as an education destination for international students. To explore the rationale and the influencing factors for them to attend Chinese universities, this research adopted a questionnaire survey and interviews with international students from a top university in China. The data were analyzed from four aspects: home countries’ push factors, China’s pull factors, university attractiveness factors and personal choice factors. The findings show that university attractiveness factors are more significant (...) than the China’s pull factors and the home countries push factors; China’s pull factors have significant influence on the university attractiveness factors; For students from different regions, the factors of China’s pull, home country’s push and university attractiveness play significantly different role in affecting their choice of university, with Asian students much more affected than those from other parts of the world. Besides, individual subjective norms and individual value choices also affect students’ choices to study abroad. (shrink)

Weyl's tile argument purports to show that there are no natural distance functions in atomistic space that approximate Euclidean geometry. I advance a response to this argument that relies on a new account of distance in atomistic space, called "the mixed account," according to which local distances are primitive and other distances are derived from them. Under this account, atomistic space can approximate Euclidean space (and continuous space in general) very well. To motivate this account as a genuine solution to (...) Weyl's tile argument, I argue that this account is no less natural than the standard account of distance in continuous space. I also argue that the mixed account has distinctive advantages over Forrest's (1995) account in response to Weyl's tile argument, which can be considered as a restricted version of the mixed account. (shrink)

In The Humanist Spirit of Daoism, Chen Guying presents a concise overview of his understanding of the meaning and significance of Daoist philosophy. Chen is a leading contemporary Chinese thinker and spokesperson for a new Daoist approach to existential and socio-political issues. He was born in mainland China in 1935, but after having resettled to Taiwan, he received his education there and was a student activist in the 1960s. He became famous in the Chinese-speaking world with his writings (...) on Nietzsche, Laozi and Zhuangzi. At present he is a Professor at Peking University. This volume collects representative essays from the past 25 years which not only outline Chen's interpretation of Daoism as a deeply humanist way of thinking and living, but also show how he employs this philosophy in a critique of totalitarianism and neo-imperialism. (shrink)

China is currently afflicted by enormous environmental problems. This book, drawing on ancient and modern Chinese environmental thinking, considers what it is that makes an environment a desirable place for living. The book emphasises ideas of beauty, and discusses how these ideas can be applied in natural, agricultural and urban environments in order to produce desirable environments. The book argues that environment is both a product of nature and of human beings, and as such is potentially alterable by culture. The (...) book explores the three aspects of environmental beauty whereby such alteration might be beneficially made: integrated and holistic; ecological and man-made; and authentic and everyday. (shrink)