Ankeny et al. focuses on the recent creation of “iBlastoids” and defends the need for reflexive, anticipatory, and deliberative approaches in the domain of emerging and potentially contentio...

The purpose of this paper is to explore job performance, mergers and acquisitions (M&A) from an ethical perceptive. A great number of studies have extensively discussed the link between M&A and performance; however, most focused on the financial functions and strategy selections. Although ethical issues emerge in the M&A process, it is a less studied area. This study adopted the structural equation modeling approach to empirically test our hypotheses. Based on 264 samples from financial companies, data analyses indicated that ethical (...) conduct in M&A is significantly correlated with employee job performance. Ensuring employment security and caring practices can significantly explain organizational commitment. Organizational commitment also plays a significant mediating role between a company’s ethical conduct and employee job performance. Managerial implications are also provided. (shrink)

In January 2019, What is Peppa?, a promotional video for a Chinese New Year movie, received widespread attention in China immediately after its release. This paper explains the success of the video from the perspective of visual framing, and employs Systemic Visual Grammar to analyze how visual semiotics are applied to frame prominent topics so as to achieve promotional purposes. The results show that: (i) visual semiotics are used to frame the topic of empty nesters, implying that this issue brings (...) negative consequences and evoking the audience’s empathy and concern; (ii) visuals frame the topic of family love, in which the main protagonist’s actions are highlighted; and (iii) the topic of family reunion is mainly framed and realized by delicate compositional arrangements. Using various visual semiotics at the denotative, stylistic-semantic, connotative, and ideological levels, this video establishes both visual and emotional communication between the main character and the audience, making the promotional purpose more successful. The results highlight and specify the important roles of visual frames in promotional videos, and the integration of Peppa with traditional Chinese culture, love, and family reunion represents a visual approach to glocalization. (shrink)

Using a data set of 30 authentic institutional emails written by Chinese college students to their native English teacher, this article investigates the frequency and combinations of apology strategies used by English as a Foreign Language learners in natural contexts. Drawing on the coding framework adapted from previous studies, this article carries out a fine-grained analysis of apology behaviors of Chinese EFL learners when they offended their teacher for various reasons. Results revealed that the most frequently used strategy was illustrative (...) force indicating devices, and “IFIDs + taking on responsibility” ranked the most frequent combination. Among IFID sub-strategies, an expression of regret had the highest frequency. In addition, a new strategy—request for a chance to repair—was identified, which was used by Chinese learners to show their respectful and pious attitude when a more serious offense was made to their teacher. Findings from the study indicate that Chinese EFL learners tend to use culture-specific apology strategies in academic contexts. This study has pedagogical implications for EFL pragmatics instruction in Chinese contexts and also second language pragmatics instruction tailored for native Chinese learners in English-speaking countries. (shrink)

This study aims to investigate the moderating effect of the board chair's role on the relationship between board human capital and firm performance. Board human capital has been regarded as a valuable asset that enhances firm performance. Especially, the board chair plays a crucial role in developing this high-echelon human capital. This study utilises a set of longitudinal data to examine 275 firms in Taiwan. The result indicates that board human capital is positively related to firm performance, and the individual (...) human capital of the board chair represents a moderating effect on the relationship between board human capital and performance. (shrink)

For linear discrete-time systems with randomly variable input trail length, a proportional- type iterative learning control law is proposed. To tackle the randomly variable input trail length, a modified control input at the desirable trail length is introduced in the proposed ILC law. Under the assumption that the initial state fluctuates around the desired initial state with zero mean, the designed ILC scheme can drive the ILC tracking errors to zero at the desirable trail length in expectation sense. The designed (...) ILC algorithm allows the trail length of control input which is different from system state and output at a specific iteration. In addition, the identical initial condition widely used in conventional ILC design is also mitigated. An example manifests the validity of the proposed ILC algorithm. (shrink)

「三教合一」的命題猶如一口古井， 看似陳舊， 往深處提煉， 又可伸觸潛藏於井底的水脈。 《君師道合：晚明儒者的三教合一論述》透過管志道、楊起元和周汝登，揭示晚明三教合流思維的演變，以及三教合一思想與君道、師道的關係。尤其值得思考的是，晚明儒者對明太祖的歷史記憶與政治認同，對政教統合的認可 ，試圖以「三教觀」來鞏固「君師道合」的想法，置於晚明的思想語境，到底說明了什麼？由此進一歩探索晚明三教思想的思維特色、三教的政治性意涵以及儒者對現實政教關懷等問題。 本書選擇管志道、楊起元和周汝登為本書論述主要對象，大致有以下幾個原因：（一）他們是廣義的陽明後學，在學承和個人學習經驗有所交錯，例如羅汝芳是楊起元的老師，但管志道和周汝登二人，亦深受羅汝芳啟發；（二） 三人皆有深刻的三教思想關懷，而其三教思想扣緊著當時的政治、社會與學術重要問題；（三）彼此有深刻的論學往來，其中以管志道和楊起元，以及楊起元和周汝登的情誼最深。不僅有書信來往，也常互贈詩歌；（四）三人活 動的時間，集中於隆慶、萬曆期間，並且都是南京學圈的重要儒者。最為關鍵是，三人獨特的三教觀和論述，有所交鋒又各有側重，因此適切成為理解晚明三教論述建構與發展的思想社群。值得留意的是，在《明儒學案》〈泰州 學案〉黃宗羲摘錄了楊起元和周汝登的學說，但管志道僅有一小段傳記。而在當代學界，周汝登在思想史上頗有「能見度」以外，管志道和楊起元的思想鮮少被注意，可說已長久成為哲學史或思想史的「失蹤者」。 《君師道合：晚明儒者的三教合一論述》主要的論題核心在於探索晚明的三教合一論述，探討「合一」觀背後的「思想世界」與「歷史脈絡」，找出合一思想的現實關懷，究竟和儒者所面對的時代和思想危機有什麼關聯，以此建 構晚明三教合一的論述場域。書中揭示中晚明三教合流思維的演變，以及儒者三教合一觀所包含的君道與師道的競爭關係。此外，追問三教合一論述又如何安頓政治權力與道德權威等問題。本書採取「論述」的概念，也是在前文 討論的反思基礎上，認為「三教合一」不僅只是一個思想概念，或者是一種思想整合的複雜形態，圍繞著三教合一的各種話語如「出世法」、「君師道」及「治教」等，是晚明儒者的共同關懷，彼此的討論和回應形成重要的論述 場域。 本書第一章為導論。首先提出本書的問題反思，同時檢視「三教合一」研究的多重視野，把握其研究脈絡，最後再從題目和人物選擇考量說明，進一步勾勒出本書主要問題意識。第二章為「明中葉三教合流之衍變」，主要提供三 教交涉的長時段演變背景，並且以王陽明作為主要分界點，探討其如何開拓包容性的三教觀，而後來學者在此思想基礎上，如何找到思想出路，以致跨出良知學話語，建立自己的思想關懷和立場。第三章探索管志道的「乾元統天 」之學。第四章以楊起元「孝弟慈」大成之學為討論主軸。第五章則論周汝登的「三教統體」之學。第六章為結論。從管志道、楊起元與周汝登三教合一論述的比較，總結其如何蘊含「政教化」傾向。.

To guide the design direction of emotion regulation products that improve the positive emotions of users, investigation into the correlation between relevant visual factors and multi-dimensional complex emotions is needed. In the present study, an extended product emotion measurement method was adopted to describe the multi-dimensional emotional set of each influencing factor and calculate their weight according to the order. The positive and negative emotion indicators of all influencing factors were compared and the evaluation and ranking factors that affect users’ (...) emotional value of emotion regulation products were analyzed. The experimental results reveal that specific emotion mapping scenes on positive emotion are the most significant among the key factors affecting user emotion. Further, the influence of emotional stickers, interactive data visualization, and text on positive emotions decreased in turn. The influence of emotional text on positive emotion was the lowest. Through investigating the visual factors that affect the psychological emotions of users, the development of emotion regulating products could be guided in a more scientific and reasonable manner. (shrink)

Real-time smoke detection is of great significance for early warning of fire, which can avoid the serious loss caused by fire. Detecting smoke in actual scenes is still a challenging task due to large variance of smoke color, texture, and shapes. Moreover, the smoke detection in the actual scene is faced with the difficulties in data collection and insufficient smoke datasets, and the smoke morphology is susceptible to environmental influences. To improve the performance of smoke detection and solve the problem (...) of too few datasets in real scenes, this paper proposes a model that combines a deep convolutional generative adversarial network and a convolutional neural network to extract smoke features and detection. The vibe algorithm was used to collect smoke and nonsmoke images in the dynamic scene and deep convolutional generative adversarial network used these images to generate images that are as realistic as possible. Besides, we designed an improved convolutional neural network model for extracting smoke features and smoke detection. The experimental results show that the method has a good detection performance on the smoke generated in the actual scenes and effectively reduces the false alarm rate. (shrink)

Extreme Learning Machine is widely used in various fields because of its fast training and high accuracy. However, it does not primarily work well for Domain Adaptation in which there are many annotated data from auxiliary domain and few even no annotated data in target domain. In this paper, we propose a new variant of ELM called Discriminative Extreme Learning Machine with Cross-Domain Mean Approximation for unsupervised domain adaptation. It introduces Cross-Domain Mean Approximation into the hidden layer of ELM to (...) reduce distribution discrepancy between domains for domain bias elimination, which is conducive to train a high accuracy ELM on annotated data from auxiliary domains for target tasks. Linear Discriminative Analysis is also adopted to improve the discrimination of learned model and obtain higher accuracy. Moreover, we further provide a Discriminative Kernel Extreme Learning Machine with Cross-Domain Mean Approximation as the kernelization extension of DELM-CDMA. Some experiments are performed to investigate the proposed approach, and the result shows that DELM-CDMA and DKELM-CDMA could effectively extend ELM suitable for domain adaptation and outperform ELM and many other domain adaptation approaches. (shrink)

As one of the basic elements in acoustic events, timbre influences the brain collectively with other factors such as pitch and loudness. Research on timbre perception involve interdisciplinary fields, including physical acoustics, auditory psychology, neurocognitive science and music theory, etc. From the perspectives of psychology and physiology, this article summarizes the features and functions of timbre perception as well as their correlation, among which the multi-dimensional scaling modeling methods to define timbre are the focus; the neurocognition and perception of timbre (...) are outlined; related experiment findings on the deeper level of timbre perception in terms of neural cognition are summarized. In the meantime, potential problems in the process of experiments on timbre perception and future possibilities are also discussed. Thought sorting out the existing research contents, methods and findings of timbre perception, this article aims to provide heuristic guidance for researchers in related fields of timbre perception psychology, physiology and neural mechanism. It is believed that the study of timbre perception will be essential in various fields in the future, including neuroaesthetics, psychological intervention, artistic creation, rehabilitation, etc. (shrink)