Children with autism spectrum disorder show marked difficulties in reading comprehension, a complex cognitive skill fundamental to successful daily functioning that is associated with core executive functions. However, the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying reading comprehension deficits in these children remain elusive. Twenty-one right-handed males with high-functioning ASD and 23 age-, IQ-, educational level-, sex- and handedness-matched typically developing individuals underwent a reading comprehension test and the semantic verbal fluency test that tapped core executive functions underlying reading comprehension during concurrent prefrontal functional (...) near-infrared spectroscopy measurement. Participants’ information processing efficiency was also assessed. High-functioning ASD children exhibited general reading comprehension [main effect of group: F = 7.58, p = 0.009], selective verbal fluency deficits [Group × category interaction: F = 4.90, p = 0.032] and slower processing speed. Regarding the hemodynamics of the prefrontal cortex, although ASD individuals showed comparable patterns of PFC brain activation to their healthy counterparts, lower PFC intrahemispheric [main effect of group: F = 11.36, p = 0.002] and interhemispheric [main effect of group: F = 7.79, p = 0.008] functional connectivity were evident during the semantic verbal fluency test. At the whole-group level, poorer reading comprehension performance was associated with poorer performance in the semantic verbal fluency test. Moreover, poorer semantic verbal fluency test performance was associated with slower information processing speed, which is associated with reduced left medial PFC functional connectivity. Abnormal intrahemispheric and interhemispheric prefrontal hypoconnectivity is associated with deficits in executive processes essential for reading comprehension in ASD. Our study has provided important implications for the neuropsychological and neurophysiological mechanisms underlying reading comprehension deficits in ASD. (shrink)

BackgroundBreast cancer patients are at elevated risk of depression during treatment, thus provoking the chance of poor clinical outcomes. This retrospective cohort study aimed to investigate whether integrating Chinese herbal medicines citation into conventional cancer therapy could decrease the risk of depression in the long-term breast cancer survivors.MethodsA cohort of patients aged 20–70 years and with newly diagnosed breast cancer during 2000–2008 was identified from a nationwide claims database. In this study, we focused solely on survivors of breast cancer at (...) least1 year after diagnosis. After one-to-one matching for age, sex, and baseline comorbidities, breast cancer patients who received and did not receive CHM treatment were enrolled. The incidence rate and hazard ratio citation for depression between the two groups was estimated at the end of 2012. A Cox proportional hazard model was constructed to examine the impact of the CHM use on the risk of depression.ResultsDuring the study period, the incidence rate of depression was significantly lower in the treated cohort than in the untreated cohort [8.57 compared with 11.01 per 1,000 person-years citation], and the adjusted HR remained significant at 0.74 in a Cox proportional hazards regression model. The corresponding risk further decreasing to 43% among those using CHM for more than 1 year.ConclusionFinding from this investigation indicated that the lower risk of depression observed in breast cancer patients treated with CHM, suggesting that CHM treatment should be considered for disease management toward breast cancer. Yet, the optimal administered dose should be determined in further clinical trials. (shrink)

Reorienting the Political examines the reception of two controversial German philosophers, Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss, in the Chinese-speaking world. This volume explores the powerful resonance of both thinkers in Chinese political thought from a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary perspective.

For a graph G, its variable sum exdeg index is defined as SEI a G = ∑ x y ∈ E G a d x + a d y, where a is a real number other than 1 and d x is the degree of a vertex x. In this paper, we characterize all trees on n vertices with first three maximum and first three minimum values of the SEI a index. Also, we determine all the trees of order n (...) with given diameter d and having first three largest values of the SEI a index. (shrink)

My life as a quantum physicist / M. Nakahara -- A review on operator quantum error correction - Dedicated to Professor Mikio Nakahara on the occasion of his 60th birthday / C.-K. Li, Y.-T. Poon and N.-S. Sze -- Implementing measurement operators in linear optical and solid-state qubits / Y. Ota, S. Ashhab and F. Nori -- Fast and accurate simulation of quantum computing by multi-precision MPS: Recent development / A. Saitoh -- Entanglement properties of a quantum lattice-gas model on (...) square and triangular ladders / S. Tanaka, R. Tamura and H. Katsura -- On signal amplification from weak-value amplification / Y. Shikano -- Topological protection of quantum information / K. Fujii -- Quantum annealing with antiferromagnetic fluctuations for mean-field models / Y. Seki and H. Nishimori -- A method to change phase transition nature - Toward annealing methods / R. Tamura and S. Tanaka -- Computational analysis of the first stage of the photosynthetic system, the light-dependent reaction, by quantum chemical simulation method / M. Tada-Umezaki -- Two-qubit gate operation on selected nearest neighboring qubits in a neutral atom quantum computer / E. Hosseini Lapasar... [et al.] -- A simple operator quantum error correction scheme avoiding fully correlated errors / C. Bagnasco, Y. Kondo and M. Nakahara -- Black hole predictability, classical and quantum / A. Ishibashi -- Classical field simulation of finite-temperature Bose gases / T. Sato -- Atomic quantum simulations of lattice gauge theory: Effect of gauge symmetry breaking / K. Kasamatsu, I. Ichinose and T. Matsui -- Recursive construction of noiseless subsystem for qudits / U. Gungordu... [et al.] -- Composite quantum gates for precise quantum control / M. Bando... [et al.] -- New formulation of statistical mechanics using thermal pure quantum states / S. Sugiura and A. Shimizu -- Thermodynamics in unitary time evolution / T. N. Ikeda -- Second law of thermodynamics with QC-mutual information / T. Sagawa. (shrink)

There is currently an evidentiary gap in the scholarship concerning medical tourism's impact on low- and middle-income destination countries (LMICs). This article reviews relevant evidence that exists and concludes that there are signs of correlation between medical tourism and the expansion of private, technology- intensive health care in LMICs, which has largely remained out of reach for the majority of the local patients. In light of this health care inequity between local residents and medical tourists in LMICs, we argue that (...) the presumption should not be in favor of medical tourism and that governments have a legitimate interest in seeking to regulate this industry to ensure that the net effects for their citizens is positive. Moreover, sending countries, particularly those in the developed world, have the responsibility to adopt public policies to diminish demand on the part of their citizens for medical tourism and to work with LMICs to ensure that the growth of medical tourism does not occur at the expense of the poorest of the poor. (shrink)

Travelling internationally to acquire medical treatments otherwise unavailable or inaccessible in one’s home country is not a novel concept. Conventionally, such medical travel largely entailed patients from developed countries or wealthy patients from the developing world seeking care in Western facilities like the Mayo Clinic in the U.S. and myriad private clinics along Harley Street in London, England. What is different about the topical phenomenon known as “medical tourism” is the growing trend of health services export in the opposite direction. (...) The number of patients travelling from the developed world to low- and middle-income countries for treatments has ballooned in recent years, primarily driven by difficulties with accessing affordable care at home. According to a liberal estimate by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, the number of Americans travelling abroad for care rose from 750,000 in 2007 to 1.6 million in 2012. On the flip side, Thailand reportedly treated a total of 1.3 million foreign nationals in 2007, which represented a 16% leap from 2001. (shrink)

Background: Although ethics consultation has been introduced to clinical practice for many years, the results of empirical studies to evaluate the effectiveness of ethics consultation are still controversial. The design of randomised controlled trials is considered the best research design to evaluate the effect of a clinical practice on the outcomes of interests. In order to understand the effects of ethics consultation, we conducted this search for studies with the design of randomised controlled trials to evaluate ethics consultation.Objective: To provide (...) an integrated review of studies with the design of randomised controlled trials to evaluate the effectiveness of ethics consultation.Methods: PubMed was used to search for studies using the randomised controlled trial design to evaluate the effectiveness of ethics consultation. The search term used was “ethics consultation”. The selection criterion was limited to “randomised controlled trial”.Results: Four articles that met both search criteria were retrieved. One of these articles reported a study that did not actually use the design of a randomised controlled trial and is excluded from the following discussion.Conclusions: To apply randomised controlled trials to evaluate the effectiveness of ethics consultation is extremely difficult as long as two issues are not resolved: the standardisation of ethics consultation and a placebo for ethics consultation to eliminate the placebo effect. Thus, the results generated by the design of randomised controlled trials are always problematic. Furthermore, as long as the two issues exist, the results generated by the design of quantitative research methods always pose problems. (shrink)

Venneman and colleagues argue that “do not resuscitate” (DNR) is problematic and should be replaced by “allow natural death” (AND). Their argument is flawed. First, while end-of-life discussions should be as positive as possible, they cannot and should not sidestep painful but necessary confrontations with morality. Second, while DNR can indeed be nonspecific and confusing, AND merely replaces one problematic term with another. Finally, the study’s results are not generalisable to the populations of physicians and working nurses and certainly do (...) not support the authors’ claim that there is a movement to replace DNR with AND. (shrink)

A system as complex as man can be viewed from many sides, and the one or the other axis can be selected to form a theoretical image. Partial truths will emerge, and their mutual intermeshing will gradually raise truth to higher levels. … It has always proven prejudicial to attribute general validity to a partial truth. Yet, a partial truth could not have been reached without overstating its value. Thus the history of truth is intimately interconnected with the history of (...) emotion, but the latter has remained in the dark.Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities. (shrink)

The effect of emotion on memory often leads to the trade-off: enhanced memory for emotional items comes at the cost of memory for background information. Although this effect is usually attributed...

Previous research has explored how emotional valence affected face-context associative memory, while little is known about how arousing stimuli that share the same valence but differ in emotionality are bound together and retained in memory. In this study, we manipulated the emotional similarity between the target face and the face associated with the context emotion, and examined the effect of emotional similarity of negative emotion on face-context associative memory. Our results showed that the greater the emotional similarity between the faces, (...) the better the face memory and face-context associative memory were. These findings suggest that the processing of facial expression and its associated context may benefit from taking into account the emotional similarity between the faces. (shrink)

本书分上下册,主要内容包括格言联壁,交友论,小窗幽记,安得长者言,菜根潭,围炉夜话,六事箴言,居官格言三十三条.

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

This paper explores the context of a Hermetic frame story in the pseudepigraphical alchemical treatise The Book of the Ziziphus Tree of the Furthest Boundary. The treatise is attributed to a prominent figure in the Arabic occult sciences, Abū Bakr b. Waḥshīya. It was written in the form of a dialogue between the protagonist, Ibn Waḥshīya, and an alchemist from the Islamic West, al-Maghribī al-Qamarī. The last section of the introductory dialogue between these two characters consists of a frame story (...) on the origins of alchemy and a legend of discovery that introduces a cosmogony and an allegorical depiction of the process of transmutation. Both the frame story and the legend of discovery abound in Hermetic motifs and topoi known from other Greek and Arabic alchemical treatises. The exposition of the different prevailing theories on the beginnings of alchemy reflects, moreover, historical phenomena, such as the Graeco-Arabic translation movement and the shu‘ūbīya controversy. Consistent with the literary tradition of the Arabic Hermetica, Ancient Egypt emerges in this treatise as the cradle of alchemy; however, I suggest that more than merely literary convention, such evocations express a genuine fascination with Ancient Egypt and its surviving material culture. In this respect, the littleknown genre of Arabic books on hidden treasure might shed new light on common Hermetic narratives and their circulation in Arabic occult literature. (shrink)

This article argues that agent-based modeling is the methodological implication of Lawson’s championed ontological turn in economics. We single out three major properties of agent-based computational economics, namely, autonomous agents, social interactions, and the micro-macro links, which have been well accepted by the ACE community. We then argue that ACE does make a full commitment to the ontology of economics as proposed by Lawson, based on his prompted critical realism. Nevertheless, the article also points out the current limitations or constraints (...) of ACE. Efforts to overcome them are deemed to be crucial before ACE can make itself more promising to the current ontological turn in economics. (shrink)

This edited volume focuses on big data implications for computational social science and humanities from management to usage. The first part of the book covers geographic data, text corpus data, and social media data, and exemplifies their concrete applications in a wide range of fields including anthropology, economics, finance, geography, history, linguistics, political science, psychology, public health, and mass communications. The second part of the book provides a panoramic view of the development of big data in the fields of computational (...) social sciences and humanities. The following questions are addressed: why is there a need for novel data governance for this new type of data?, why is big data important for social scientists?, and how will it revolutionize the way social scientists conduct research? With the advent of the information age and technologies such as Web 2.0, ubiquitous computing, wearable devices, and the Internet of Things, digital society has fundamentally changed what we now know as "data", the very use of this data, and what we now call "knowledge". Big data has become the standard in social sciences, and has made these sciences more computational. Big Data in Computational Social Science and Humanities will appeal to graduate students and researchers working in the many subfields of the social sciences and humanities. (shrink)

This article examines the configuration of domestic service within local milieus under globalization. Using Taiwan as a case study, the author argues that the state continues to have an impact even in this age of global interdependence. The management of foreign domestics within employers’ households is not only important for labor control but also central to the state’s administration over alien subjects. The case of Taiwan calls attention to the necessity of bringing the state back into the analysis of gender (...) and carework. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Hong Kong’s Covid-19 epidemic circumstances have given us a valuable opportunity to reflect on Hong Kong’s elderly care policies. This essay argues that Hong Kong should learn from the West and provide a subsidy to family caregivers for proper elderly care. We rebut the social and moralistic reasons for not introducing such a subsidy in Hong Kong. We indicate that providing cash subsidy to family caregivers does not monetize or tarnish Confucian filial obligation to take care of elderly people, but (...) enable adult children from low-income families to undertake this obligation effectively. In addition, we contend that providing such a subsidy would not significantly affect the job market in Hong Kong and that incurred financial and manpower costs for monitoring family care are controllable. (shrink)

Molecular chaperones assist de novo protein folding and facilitate the refolding of stress‐denatured proteins. The molecular chaperone concept was coined nearly 35 years ago, and since then, tremendous strides have been made in understanding how these factors support protein folding. Here, we focus on how various chaperone proteins were first identified to play roles in protein folding. Examples are used to illustrate traditional routes of chaperone discovery and point out their advantages and limitations. Recent advances, including the development of folding (...) biosensors and promising methods for the stabilization of proteins in vivo, provide new routes for chaperone discovery. (shrink)

The idea that imperial Confucianism demands the commoners’ absolute political obedience is widespread. Although some scholars have tried to challenge this popular idea, they leave a theory of imperial Confucian political obligation unaddressed. By engaging with political propaganda of the Qing 清 dynasty, specifically The Amplified Instructions of the Sacred Edict, I argue that imperial Confucian political obligation is a theory of paternalistic gratitude. Accordingly, the commoners’ political obligation is conditioned upon the ruler’s parental benevolence, and as a matter of (...) history, this theory guided discursive interaction between the Qing court and the commoners. Indeed, when the empire’s policies made their lives difficult, the commoners tended to appeal to the public transcript of paternalistic gratitude to justify their political disobedience. Both in theory and practice, then, imperial Confucian political obligation is not absolute, but rather a conditional theory of paternalistic gratitude. (shrink)

The East Asian family-oriented principle is defensible in theory as a shared decision making model and thus a viable alternative to individual-oriented decision making in bioethics. There are two crucial problems with the family-oriented principle, i.e., family-oriented paternalism and conflicts of interests between a patient and his family. These obstacles may appear formidable but they are not insurmountable in practice.

[1] Sefer Orḥot Ḥayim leha-Rosh ʻim beʼur "ha-Shem orḥotenu" ... 2. Ḳunṭres Be-Shaʻar ha-melekh ʻal haḳdamat ha-Rambam, kolel tsiyunim u-meḳorim u-veʼurim be-divre ha-Rambam ṿeha-Raʼabad ... 3. Ḳunṭres Tashlum yefeh ʻenayim ʻal Seder Zeraʻim u-Ṭehorot, ʻeduyot, Tamid, Midot, Ḳenim ṿe-ʻod ṿe-hu tsiyunim ʻal mas. elu mi-Yerushalmi u-midrashim ... 4. Ḳunṭres Marʼot maḳom, ṿe-hu tsiyunim ʻal ha-meḳomot she-Rashi ṿe-Tos. meviʼim mirdrash o Yerushalmi ṿe-Tosefta ṿe-khu. ṿe-lo tsuyan meḳoro ... 5. Ḳunṭres Ṭeʻama de-ḳara, ṿe-hu ḳetsat ḥidushim ʻal ha-Torah ṿe-ʻal Neviʼim u-Khetuvim -- ḥeleḳ (...) 3. Heʻarot ʻal seder ha-Shas (ṿe-kholel gam ezeh ḳunṭresim). (shrink)

Background: Good nurses show concern for patients by caring for them effectively and attentively to foster their well-being. However, nurses cannot be taught didactically to be “good” or any trait that characterizes a good nurse. Nurses’ self-awareness of their role traits warrants further study. Objectives: This study aimed to develop a strategy to elicit nurses’ self-exploration of the importance of good nurse traits and to explore any discrepancies between such role traits perceived by nurses as ideally and actually important. Research (...) design: For this mixed-method study, we used good nurse trait card play to trigger nurses’ reflections based on clinical practice. Nurse participants appraised the ideal and actual importance of each trait using a Q-sort grid. The gap between the perceived ideal and actual importance of each trait was examined quantitatively, while trait-related clinical experiences were analyzed qualitatively. Participants and research context: Participants were 35 in-service nurses ; 10.1 years of nursing experience ) recruited from a teaching hospital in Taiwan. Ethical considerations: The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the study site. Findings: Good nurse trait card play with a Q-sort grid served as an icebreaker to help nurse participants talk about their experiences as embodied in good quality nursing care. Nurses’ perceived role–trait discrepancies were divided into three categories: over-performed, least discrepant, and under-performed. The top over-performed trait was “obedience.” Discussion: Patients’ most valued traits were perceived by participants as ideally important but were under-performed, perhaps due to experienced nurses’ loss of idealism. Conclusion: Good nurse trait card play with Q-sort grid elicited nurses’ self-dialogue and revealed evidence of the incongruity between nurses’ perceived ideal and actual importance of traits. The top over-performed trait, “obedience,” deserves more study. (shrink)

While researchers have offered remonstration-oriented, reciprocal, voluntary, and gratitude-based accounts of political obligation in classical Confucianism, I argue that these interpretations are either in conflict with the textual evidence or merely scratch the surface of Confucius’ theory of political obligation without fully elaborating its essence. Instead, I demonstrate that the theory of political obligation in Confucianism is a specific argument from paternalistic gratitude in which the people’s political obligation is analogically compared to children’s grateful duty to their parents. Moreover, I (...) use the Confucian theory of paternalistic gratitude to critically examine China’s recent politics of political obligation in the wake of the 2008 Sichuan 四川 earthquake. Although the Confucian-sounding references, such as kindness and the parent-state analogy, figure into the CPC’s Gratitude Education campaign, the Party’s politics of political obligation does not meet the Confucian normative standard. Specifically, in the Confucian theory of paternalistic gratitude, the people will be grateful to a benevolent ruler without this feeling being demanded by the state. However, in the Gratitude Education campaign, the Party self-righteously exacted the earthquake survivors’ gratitude. Local dissidents were subject to the stigmatization of “ungratefulness” and faced political violence as a consequence. The case of the Gratitude Education campaign serves as another example of the CPC’s political use of Confucianism for its non-Confucian goals. (shrink)