Linear regression and its variants have been widely used for classification problems. However, they usually predefine a strict binary label matrix which has no freedom to fit the samples. In addition, they cannot deal with complex real-world applications such as the case of face recognition where samples may not be linearly separable owing to varying poses, expressions, and illumination conditions. Therefore, in this paper, we propose the kernel negative ε dragging linear regression method for robust classification on noised and nonlinear (...) data. First, a technique called negative ε dragging is introduced for relaxing class labels and is integrated into the LR model for classification to properly treat the class margin of conventional linear regressions for obtaining robust result. Then, the data is implicitly mapped into a high dimensional kernel space by using the nonlinear mapping determined by a kernel function to make the data more linearly separable. Finally, our obtained KNDLR method is able to partially alleviate the problem of overfitting and can perform classification well for noised and deformable data. Experimental results show that the KNDLR classification algorithm obtains greater generalization performance and leads to better robust classification decision. (shrink)

Bioethics is a subject far removed from the Chinese, even from many Chinese medical students and medical professionals. In-depth interviews with eighteen physicians, patients, and family members provided a deeper understanding of bioethical practices in contemporary China, especially with regard to the doctor-patient relationship (DPR) and informed consent. The Chinese model of doctor-family-patient relationship (DFPR), instead of DPR, is taken to reflect Chinese Confucian cultural commitments. An examination of the history of Chinese culture and the profession of medicine in China (...) is used to disclose the deep roots of these commitments. The author predicts that the DFPR model will further develop in China but that it will maintain its Chinese character. (shrink)

《东西均》是明清之际哲学家方以智的著作,在本书中他提出并论证了“公因反因”这一重要学说。作者详加注释并阐明了书中抉发的哲学奥理,对研究和认识方以智的哲学思想和哲学地位,均有极高的参考价值。.

This article examines the rise and decline of the enthusiasm for intelligence testing in early twentieth-century China, focusing on the appeal, the challenges, and the critiques revolving around this psychological instrument. The introduction of intelligence testing reflected not only China’s urgent needs in modernizing its merit system, but also Chinese psychologists’ aspirations for pursuing exactitude and redefining the racial characteristics of their compatriots against foreign interpretations. But despite psychologists’ endeavors, the political and geographical fragmentation of Republican China troubled the epistemic (...) imperative of uniformity demanded by Euro-American psychometrics and therefore undermined the validity of measurement. Subsequently, the legitimacy of intelligence testing began to be questioned by several influential Chinese psychologists in the late 1920s and 30s. The difficulties in standardization and the hostility within the psychology community formed a vicious cycle, impeding the progress of nationwide testing. Through this history, the article demonstrates not only the elevation of measurement to epistemic authority in modern China, but also how its promise was challenged by a diverse and rapidly changing society. (shrink)

This article analyzes a popular meme that has spread rapidly among Chinese internet users in the last few years, ‘garlic chives’ ( jiucai), as a self-mockery of the bio-economic subject in contemporary China. This metaphor refers to those ordinary Chinese people who are constantly lured to participate in all kinds of economic activities, but whose investments are destined to be consumed by the establishment. Through a close study of this popular meme and the social conditions from which it arises, this (...) article demonstrates two main features of the Chinese economic subject that supports the state’s economic sovereignty: the thriving of self-sufficient and rule-abiding individuals, and the quality of these individuals as hard working and capable of producing wealth on their own. This article offers a critique of PRC’s post-socialist governmentality, and it provides insights about the relation between the biological and the political in our complicated world order. (shrink)

Readings in Chinese Women's Philosophical and Feminist Thought gathers 40 original writings on women by 32 authors (many of whom are women) from the Yuan dynasty to the Republics, an important 700-year historical period during which women's learning in China blossomed as a result of economic prosperity, the development of commercial printing, and the interaction between East and West. -/- Selections are made not only from canonical texts on women's virtues, but also from less orthodox literary works such as plays, (...) poetry, novels, essays, and revolutionary writings that illuminate the lived experience of women and the perception of gender. With many texts translated into English for the first time, this reader provides the context needed to understand them. It features: -/- - Chronologically organized readings in the sequence of the Yuan, Ming, Qing dynasties, and the Republics to demonstrate historical progression of thought (or the lack of) - Introductions to each section and chapter covering essential information about the authors and the cultural, historical, and philosophical background to their work - A chronology of dynasties, Republics, key events, and a map -/- Recovering discourse so often neglected in discussion of Chinese thought, this is the first collection to pay special attention to women-authored works from the late 13th to the early 21st century. By bringing these readings together in a single volume, it juxtaposes and compares female and male perspectives from the same time and creates a new narrative of Chinese philosophical thought. (shrink)

The preferences of patients who lack DMC (Decision-Making-Capacity) should have some moral weight. However, I disagree with the author’s stronger claim, which argues that two other types of DMC (bu...

Augustine of Hippo is often regarded as the champion of the doctrine of weakness of the will. John M. Rist in his 1994 'Augustine: Ancient Thought Baptized' draws an interesting analogy between Aristotle's 'akrasia' and Augustine's 'concupiscentia'. However, such an analogy without further qualification is defective and misleading because it implies that Augustine commits himself to the notion that since everyone is perpetually akratic and, thus, always morally blameworthy. I argue that, for Augustine, weakness of the will has equivocal meanings (...) and is manifested in four kinds of case--their scope goes far beyond Aristotle's discussion of 'akrasia' in Book Seven of the 'Nicomachean Ethics'. There are, therefore, considerable differences between Aristotle's and Augustine's account of weakness of the will. Consequently, for Augustine, moral responsibility for the moral agent also varies in each of the four cases. (shrink)

A 78-year-old Chinese woman joined a clinical trial sponsored by a Pharmaceutical companies. Unfortunately a serious Serious Adverse Event occurred. The sponsor paid for the cost of the medical care arising from the SAE, but refused the family’s request for compensation. The family then sued the company and the hospital in Beijing. Although the SAE was related to a complication of lower extremity angiography and not the drug itself, it was a direct consequence of participating in the trial. According Good (...) Clinical Practice, a set of regulations promulgated under Chinese law, “the sponsor should provide Insurance to those human subjects who participate in clinical trials, cover the cost of Treatment and the corresponding economic compensation for the occurrence of the harm or death associated with the trial”. The court ordered the trial sponsor to provide a translation of the company’s insurance policy, so that the court could understand the amount of compensation available to the Patient under the policy, but the sponsor never surrendered either the documentation or a translation. Consensus was never reached about the amount of compensation due to the patient through negotiation with the hospital, the company and the family. The Litigation ended after nine hearings and five long years. This chapter provides an ethical analysis of the case relative to at least three areas of Risks of Exploitation when a major, international Pharmaceutical companies sponsors clinical research in a country with an immature legal system and where Research participants have limited resources. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:206 Feminist Studies 46, no. 1. © 2020 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Pang Laikwan Identity Politics and Democracy in Hong Kong’s Social Unrest Hong Kong’s anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill (anti-ELAB) movement began with legislation proposed in February 2019 to allow the transfer of fugitives to jurisdictions with which the city lacks formal extradition treaties. The law quickly attracted a tremendous amount of criticism and generated enormous anxiety because (...) mainland China was one of those jurisdictions.1 In fact, many believe that this bill was proposed to allow the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to transfer wanted persons of any nationality from Hong Kong to China, subject to a legal process that many view as highly dubious. A large-scale anti-government movement exploded in June 2019 when pro-establishment legislators in Hong Kong insisted on passing it, and millions of people took to the streets. The government waited three months to withdraw the bill, only doing so after some of the most violent confrontations between civilians and the police in Hong Kong’s history. With Beijing’s 1. The law was originally proposed after a Hong Kong man, who killed his pregnant girlfriend in Taiwan, could not be extradited back to Taiwan to stand trial for the murder due to the lack of formal extradition laws. The proposed law, which would be applied to Hong Kong citizens, foreign residents, and even people passing through on business or as tourists, is being opposed due to the fear that it would be used to extradite Hong Kong political/civil rights activists and dissidents to China, where they would be harshly punished. Pang Laikwan 207 support, the Hong Kong government has doggedly resisted negotiating with the protestors over other demands, such as setting up an independent inquiry into police misconduct. As people have become completely disillusioned with the government and their own futures, tensions have increased. Collapsing many of the city’s socioeconomic problems into one cause, the anti-ELAB movement is primarily an anti-authoritarian impulse motivated by the unifying power of the term “Hongkongers.” As the movement unfolds, one of the most popular slogans, “Add Oil, Hongkongers!” (meaning “Keep going, Hongkongers!”) gradually transformed into “Rebel, Hongkongers!” and “Revenge, Hongkongers!” showing the protestors ’ anger about unrestrained police violence and the Beijing regime behind it. The militarization associated with these protests is both worrisome and symptomatic. This short essay analyzes this movement and uses it as a vehicle to disentangle social and political identity. My concern is about how a large-scale political movement can realign identities to generate power from the bottom. I use an Arendtian approach to ground my theoretical orientation, asking: How can political actions be understood as the pursuit of freedom to transcend one’s biological and social identity? From an intersectional feminist angle, if we are aware that social discrimination operates within a complex network of simultaneous discriminations, real social change can only be envisioned using a broad political canvas. Hong Kong’s anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill movement provides such a setting. Division and Inclusion “The people” might be the emptiest, but also the most powerful, phrase in the modern political lexicon. It can be used by politicians to justify groundless proposals or criticisms, but it is also the foundation and source of legitimacy for all modern political institutions. Indeed, the most basic meaning of democracy is “rule of the people,” which is impossible to avoid in any democratic imagination. As has been widely seen throughout the world, however, “the people” is often attached to various degrees of xenophobia—hatred of outsiders in the name of in-group solidarity. While the Hong Kong protestors’ courageous demands for the PRC to honor its promise to grant the city a high degree of autonomy have gained widespread international sympathy, thorny social divisions persist within the movement. 208 Pang Laikwan While Hong Kong has never been a united society, the anti-ELAB protests—like most social movements—have been highly divisive, splitting Hong Kong people apart. Most obviously, “the people” are divided by their political identifications, forming a primary antagonism between those who support the protests and those who do not, usually described... (shrink)

This article analyzes the current political predicament of Hong Kong by examining Nightmare Wallpaper, an art project composed of a series of automatic drawings made by local artist Pak Sheung Cheun. He made them while attending the court cases of political activists on trial, and the article further explores his subsequent efforts to transform this work into wallpaper prints, a series of installations, and a book. This political work, which is also very private, vividly and honestly demonstrates the artist’s intense (...) struggles, along with the despair felt by many in the city. The earnest self-reflection shown in the art does not give his audience a way out of the blind alley of the present but invites us to express ourselves and to connect with others. It is both a work of abjection and intersubjectivity, with no naïve expectation to reconcile the tensions between them. It shows, rather, a determination to participate in an uncertain future, combining the artist’s and the city’s capacity of meaning production and imagination. The Nightmare Wallpaper project also reveals how this artist, as part of a protest community, struggles to overcome binary thinking through an affirmation of becoming. (shrink)

The major ethical challenges for critical care medicine in China include the high cost of patient care in the ICU, the effect of payment mechanisms on access to critical care, the fact that much more money is spent on patients who die than on ones who live, the extent to which an attempt to rescue and save a patient is made, and the great geographical disparity in distribution of critical care. The ethical problems surrounding critical care medicine bear much relation (...) to the culture, public policy and health care system in China. The essay concludes that China should allocate more resources to ordinary medical services rather than to critical care medicine. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed social shortcomings and ethical failures, but it also revealed strengths and successes. In this perspective article, we examine and discuss one strength: the duty to care. We understand this duty in a broad sense, as more than a duty to treat individual patients who could infect health care workers. We understand it as a prima facie duty to work to provide care and promote health in the face of risks, obstacles, and inconveniences. Although at least one (...) survey suggested that health care workers would not respond to a SARS-like outbreak according to a duty to care, we give reasons to show that the response was better than expected. The reasons we discuss lead us to consider normative accounts of the duty to care based on the adoption of social roles. Then, we consider one view of the relationship between empirical claims and normative claims about the duty to care in the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, we draw insight from Mengzi, with an emendation from Dewey. Our perspective leaves many question to research, but one point seems clear: there will be future pandemics and the need for health care workers who respond. (shrink)

Based on a case that happened in 2001 in China, the author wants to show the ethical and legal issues arising from a woman's wish, which should be her basic right to have a child by assisted reproduction technology. This paper attempts to analyse if there is some relationship between bioethics and happiness, and to find if there is some reason that bioethics should provide help for those whoever need it. The case is about a woman whose husband was sentenced (...) to death, she applied to court to allow her to have a child for her husband by artificial insemination of her husband. The conclusion of paper is that there is no direct relationship between bioethics and happiness, virtue and vice of bioethics not only depends on its moral background, but also the legal system, social psychology and other social circumstances. (shrink)

Environmental ethics can be cultivated in China and other Asian countries based on Chinese philosophical perspectives. Two major Chinese philosophies relevant to the issues of environmental ethics—Confucianism and Taoism—suggest certain approaches to developing environmental ethics. These approaches can complement each other in developing a Chinese or East Asian theory of environmental ethics. Drawing on these perspectives, China’s Wolong National Nature Reserve can face the challenge of protecting its pandas while developing the local economy. By adopting a set of strategies with (...) elements from both Confucianism and Taoism, Wolong has fared well in both protecting pandas and promoting environmental ethics. This case has implications for both managerial researchers and practitioners. (shrink)

Among the many silk manuscripts excavated from Changsha Mawangdui Tomb 3 in Hunan province in the winter of 1973, one text was named Wu xing [by contemporary scholars]. Twenty years later, in the winter of 1993, there was a text [of itself] titled Wu xing among the many bamboo slip texts excavated from Jingmen Guodian Tomb 1 in Hubei.

In October 1993, a cache of bamboo slips written in the Chu script was excavated from a Warring States period tomb in the village of Guodian in the city of Jingmen in the province of Hubei. After separation and arrangement by experts, the photo plates of the Chu slips and their annotations were published this May by Wenwu Press in the book called Guodian Chu mu zhujian.