A stochastic prey-predator system in a polluted environment with Beddington-DeAngelis functional response is proposed and analyzed. Firstly, for the system with white noise perturbation, by analyzing the limit system, the existence of boundary periodic solutions and positive periodic solutions is proved and the sufficient conditions for the existence of boundary periodic solutions and positive periodic solutions are derived. And then for the stochastic system, by introducing Markov regime switching, the sufficient conditions for extinction or persistence of such system are obtained. (...) Furthermore, we proved that the system is ergodic and has a stationary distribution when the concentration of toxicant is a positive constant. Finally, two examples with numerical simulations are carried out in order to illustrate the theoretical results. (shrink)

Mobile English learning has multiple advantages and brings enormous benefits to EFL learners. However, not everyone adopts it, and the determinants of learners’ adoption intention have not yet been investigated fully. This study aimed to better understand learners’ adoption by employing the theory of planned behaviour in conjunction with the influences of technostress and compatibility. Based on existing literature, a research model was proposed and verified with a sample of 409 undergraduates from a Chinese university. The results indicated that in (...) the context of mobile English learning: Individuals with higher adoption intention are more likely to engage in mobile English learning with higher frequency. Practical implications related to mobile English learning were discussed. (shrink)

Modal epistemologies aim to explicate the necessary link between belief and truth that constitutes knowledge. This strain of epistemological theorizing is typically externalist; hence, it does not require that the agent know or understand the nature of the knowledge-constituting link. A central concern of modal epistemology is to articulate conditions on knowing such that no merely lucky true belief counts as knowledge. In the effort to eliminate luck, epistemic principles are often cast modally, requiring that an agent’s belief is true (...) not only in the actual world but also in relevant possible worlds, indicating that the link between truth and belief is more than an actual world lucky coincidence. (Note, then, that this entry is not about the epistemology of modals—statements involving modal operators such as “necessarily,” “possibly,” and the like—but about the use of modal principles in characterizing the nature of knowledge in general. For purposes of disambiguation and in deference to the other topic, perhaps “modalized epistemologies” would be a better term, though it is not typically used here.) Modal epistemologies typically have antiskeptical consequences, but the strengths of the antiskeptical results vary significantly, especially between the two best-known modal principles, sensitivity and safety. (shrink)

Rationale and objectives: Medical humanities are becoming increasingly recognized as positively impacting medical education and medical practice. However, the extent of medical humanities teaching in medical schools is largely unknown. We reviewed medical school curricula in Canada, the UK and the US. We also explored the relationship between medical school ranking and the inclusion of medical humanities in the curricula. -/- Methods: We searched the curriculum websites of all accredited medical schools in Canada, the UK and the US to check (...) which medical humanities topics were taught, and whether they were mandatory or optional. We then noted rankings both by Times Higher Education and U.S. News and World Report and calculated the average rank. We formally explored whether there was an association between average medical school ranking and medical humanities offerings using Spearman's correlation and inverse variance weighting meta-analysis. -/- Results: We identified 18 accredited medical school programmes in Canada, 41 in the UK, and 154 in the US. Of these, nine (56%) in Canada, 34 (73%) in the UK and 124 (80%) in the US offered at least one medical humanity that was not ethics. The most common medical humanities were medical humanities (unspecified), history, and literature (Canada); sociology and social medicine, medical humanities (unspecified), and art (UK); and medical humanities (unspecified), literature and history (US). Higher ranked medical schools appeared less likely to offer medical humanities. -/- Conclusions: The extent and content of medical humanities offerings at accredited medical schools in Canada, the UK and the US varies, and there appears to be an inverse relationship between medical school quality and medical humanities offerings. Our analysis was limited by the data provided on the Universities' websites. Given the potential for medical humanities to improve medical education and medical practice, opportunities to reduce this variation should be exploited. (shrink)

This co-edited volume compares Chinese and Western experiences of engineering, technology, and development. In doing so, it builds a bridge between the East and West and advances a dialogue in the philosophy of engineering. Divided into three parts, the book starts with studies on epistemological and ontological issues, with a special focus on engineering design, creativity, management, feasibility, and sustainability. Part II considers relationships between the history and philosophy of engineering, and includes a general argument for the necessity of dialogue (...) between history and philosophy. It continues with a general introduction to traditional Chinese attitudes toward engineering and technology, and philosophical case studies of the Chinese steel industry, railroads, and cybernetics in the Soviet Union. Part III focuses on engineering, ethics, and society, with chapters on engineering education and practice in China and the West. The book’s analyses of the interactions of science, engineering, ethics, politics, and policy in different societal contexts are of special interest. The volume as a whole marks a new stage in the emergence of the philosophy of engineering as a new regionalization of philosophy. This carefully edited interdisciplinary volume grew out of an international conference on the philosophy of engineering hosted by the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. It includes 30 contributions by leading philosophers, social scientists, and engineers from Australia, China, Europe, and the United States. (shrink)

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) must often address moral conflicts given their responsibilities to meet conflicting demands from diverse stakeholders in transnational operations. Thus, this study constructs a comprehensive theoretical framework to understand the co-evolution between MNEs’ ambidexterity strategies and moral conflicts by incorporating studies on institutional theory and strategic management. Through a longitudinal case study, we find that the balance of three dimensions of ambidexterity strategies influences the content and intensity of MNEs’ moral conflicts by shaping the dual structure of stakeholders (...) from home and host countries. Further, moral conflicts reshape the balance of ambidexterity strategies by the pressure of legitimacy and performance. Hence, to achieve better performance in transnational operations, MNEs must not only pay attention to the contingent ambidexterity strategies in dynamic environments, but also leverage the fitness among different dimensions of ambidexterity strategies. The findings provide implications for MNEs’ transnational operations in the increasingly complex global business. (shrink)

Previous research has shown that the proactive deprioritization of emotional distractors through the provision of information about the distractors or passive habituation of emotional distractors may attenuate emotion-induced blindness (EIB) in the rapid serial visual presentation stream. However, whether prior memory encoding of emotional distractors could bias the EIB effect remains unknown. To address this question, this study employed a three-phase paradigm integrating an item-method direct forgetting (DF) procedure with a classic EIB procedure. Participants completed a memory coding phase to (...) either remember or forget negative pictures, then performed an intermediate phase of the EIB test, and finally finished a recognition test. Critically, the same to-be-forgotten (TBF) and to-be-remembered (TBR) negative pictures in the memory learning phase were used as emotional distractors in the intermediate EIB test. The results replicated the typical DF effect by showing higher recognition accuracies for TBR pictures compared to those for TBF pictures. More importantly, the TBF negative distractors attenuated the EIB effect compared to the TBR negative distractors, but showed a comparable EIB effect as the novel negative distractors. These findings indicate that prior memory encoding manipulations of negative distractors could bias subsequent EIB effects, providing an important approach to modulate the EIB effect. (shrink)

In this study, we examine how top management teams' foreign experience affects firms' green innovation performance and what role environmental regulation plays in their association. Using a large data set on firms' green patents and foreign work or education experience of top management teams from China, we find robust evidence that firms whose top management team members have foreign experience achieve significantly more green patents, and this positive relationship is more pronounced for firms subject to strong environmental regulation. Our findings (...) indicate that via enhancing firms' green innovation performance, top management teams' foreign experience has a positive corporate governance effect on advancing sustainable social development, and environmental regulation is helpful to promote this effect. (shrink)

BackgroundThe underrepresentation of scholarly works from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in academic literature is a documented concern, attributed partly to editorial biases. This trend, prevalent across various disciplines, has been less explored in the context of medical ethics journals. This study aimed to examine the composition of editorial board members (EBM) in high-impact medical ethics journals and to evaluate the extent of international diversity within these editorial teams.MethodsThis study incorporated an analysis of 16 high-impact medical ethics journals. Information regarding (...) the EBM of these journals was systematically gathered and categorized based on the World Bank’s country income classifications. An in-depth examination of the editorial board compositions was then conducted.ResultsThe study identified 669 EBM across the selected journals. A predominant 89.84% (601) of these members were from high-income countries (HICs), with upper-middle-income countries contributing 7.47% (50) and lower-middle-income countries 2.69% (18). No EBM were associated with low-income countries. A regional breakdown indicated that North America was the most represented area, accounting for 48.88% (327), followed by Europe & Central Asia (27.50%, 184), East Asia & Pacific (13.45%, 90), Latin America & Caribbean (4.63%, 31), Sub-Saharan Africa (4.19%, 28), Middle East & North Africa (0.75%, 5), and South Asia (0.60%, 4). In total, these EBMs hailed from 46 different countries, with the United States representing the largest proportion (43.80%, 293), followed by the United Kingdom (13.15%, 88), Australia (7.92%, 53), Germany (6.73%, 45), and Canada (5.08%, 34).ConclusionsThere is a significant lack of international representation within the EBM of high-impact medical ethics journals. The majority of editors in this field are affiliated with HICs, leading to a severe underrepresentation of LMICs within the editorial boards. (shrink)

We prove the Decomposability Conjecture for functions of Baire class $2$ from a Polish space to a separable metrizable space. This partially answers an important open problem in descriptive set theory.

Here we present and develop the hypothesis that the derepression of endogenous retrotransposable elements (RTEs) – “genomic parasites” – is an important and hitherto under‐unexplored molecular aging process that can potentially occur in most tissues. We further envision that the activation and continued presence of retrotransposition contribute to age‐associated tissue degeneration and pathology. Chromatin is a complex and dynamic structure that needs to be maintained in a functional state throughout our lifetime. Studies of diverse species have revealed that chromatin undergoes (...) extensive rearrangements during aging. Cellular senescence, an important component of mammalian aging, has recently been associated with decreased heterochromatinization of normally silenced regions of the genome. These changes lead to the expression of RTEs, culminating in their transposition. RTEs are common in all kingdoms of life, and comprise close to 50% of mammalian genomes. They are tightly controlled, as their activity is highly destabilizing and mutagenic to their resident genomes. (shrink)

內容簡介 先秦兩漢儒家思想的發展，經歷一個高低起伏的歷史，值得重新注視。加上近年利用出土文獻的大量發現和整理，重寫先秦兩漢思想史的呼聲高唱入雲。本書各篇文章多能利用最新出土文獻，並浸潤於傳世文獻中，以求對此段思 想大潮加以析述。全書共收文章十九篇，主題圍繞先秦兩漢思想與教育為主，開啟了二千年來以儒家思想為主流的中國文化。.

ObjectivesAbnormal brain function in ASD patients changes dynamically across developmental stages. However, no one has studied the brain function of prepubertal children with ASD. Prepuberty is an important stage for children’s socialization. This study aimed to investigate alterations in local spontaneous brain activity in prepubertal boys with ASD.Materials and MethodsMeasures of the amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations and regional homogeneity acquired from resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging database, including 34 boys with ASD and 49 typically developing boys aged 7 to 10 (...) years, were used to detect regional brain activity. Pearson correlation analyses were conducted on the relationship between abnormal ALFF and ReHo values and Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule and Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised scores.ResultsIn the ASD group, we found decreased ALFF in the left inferior parietal lobule and decreased ReHo in the left lingual gyrus, left superior temporal gyrus, left middle occipital gyrus, and right cuneus. There were negative correlations between ReHo values in the left LG and left STG and the ADOS social affect score and a negative correlation between ReHo values in the left STG and the calibrated severity total ADOS score.ConclusionBrain regions with functional abnormalities, including the left IPL, left LG, left STG, left MOG, and right cuneus may be crucial in the neuropathology of prepubertal boys with ASD. Furthermore, ReHo abnormalities in the left LG and left STG were correlated with sociality. These results will supplement the study of neural mechanisms in ASD at different developmental stages, and be helpful in exploring the neural mechanisms of prepubertal boys with ASD. (shrink)

Multiplex networks have been widely used in information diffusion, social networks, transport, and biology multiomics. They contain multiple types of relations between nodes, in which each type of the relation is intuitively modeled as one layer. In the real world, the formation of a type of relations may only depend on some attribute elements of nodes. Most existing multiplex network embedding methods only focus on intralayer and interlayer structural information while neglecting this dependence between node attributes and the topology of (...) each layer. Attributes that are irrelevant to the network structure could affect the embedding quality of multiplex networks. To address this problem, we propose a novel multiplex network embedding model with high-order node dependence, called HMNE. HMNE simultaneously considers three properties: intralayer high-order proximity of nodes, interlayer dependence in respect of nodes, and the dependence between node attributes and the topology of each layer. In the intralayer embedding phase, we present a symmetric graph convolution-deconvolution model to embed high-order proximity information as the intralayer embedding of nodes in an unsupervised manner. In the interlayer embedding phase, we estimate the local structural complementarity of nodes as an embedding constraint of interlayer dependence. Through these two phases, we can achieve the disentangled representation of node attributes, which can be treated as fined-grained semantic dependence on the topology of each layer. In the restructure phase of node attributes, we perform a linear fusion of attribute disentangled representations for each node as a reconstruction of original attributes. Extensive experiments have been conducted on six real-world networks. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed model outperforms the state-of-the-art methods in cross-domain link prediction and shared community detection tasks. (shrink)

The business environment is increasingly uncertain due to the rapid development of disruptive information technologies, the changing global economy, and the COVID-19 pandemic. This brings great uncertainties to investors to predict the performance changes and risks of companies. This research proposes a sequential data-based framework that aggregates data from multiple sources including both structured and unstructured data to predict the performance changes. It leverages data generated from the early risk warning system in China stock market to measure and predict organization (...) performance changes based on the risk warning status changes of public companies. Different from the models in existing literature that focus on the prediction of risk warning of companies, our framework predicts a portfolio of organization performance changes, including business decline and recovery, thus helping investors to not only predict public company risks, but also discover investment opportunities. By incorporating sequential data, our framework achieves 92.3% macro-F1 value on real-world data from listed companies in China, outperforming other static models. (shrink)

With the increasing scale of e-commerce, the complexity of image content makes commodity image classification face great challenges. Image feature extraction often determines the quality of the final classification results. At present, the image feature extraction part mainly includes the underlying visual feature and the intermediate semantic feature. The intermediate semantics of the image acts as a bridge between the underlying features and the advanced semantics of the image, which can make up for the semantic gap to a certain extent (...) and has strong robustness. As a typical intermediate semantic representation method, the bag-of-visual-words model has received extensive attention in image classification. However, the traditional BoVW model loses the location information of local features, and its local feature descriptors mainly focus on the texture shape information of local regions but lack the expression of color information. Therefore, in this paper, the improved bag-of-visual-words model is presented, which contains three aspects of improvement: multiscale local region extraction; local feature description by speeded up robust features and color vector angle histogram ; and diagonal concentric rectangular pattern. Experimental results show that the three aspects of improvement to the BoVW model are complementary, while compared with the traditional BoVW and the BoVW adopting SURF + SPM, the classification accuracy of the improved BoVW is increased by 3.60% and 2.33%, respectively. (shrink)

This research investigated how interpersonal communication with a large audience can influence communicators’ attitudes. Research on the saying-is-believing effect has shown that when an individual’s attitude is perceived in advance by a communicator, the communicator tunes the message to the person, which biases the communicator’s attitude toward the person’s attitude. In this study, we examined the conditions under which audience tuning and attitude bias can occur with audiences containing more than one individual. We manipulated communicators’ perceived group entity for a (...) large audience and the audience’s prior attitudinal valence and measured the audience’s epistemic trust. The results showed that communicators tuned their messages to the audience’s attitude when they perceived group entitativity and epistemic trust. Furthermore, tuning the message to the audience was found to bias communicators’ subsequent impressions of the topic in a direction closer to the audience’s attitude. These results suggest that perceiving a large audience as a group influences the subsequent impressions of electronic word-of-mouth product or service communicators. (shrink)

The capacitive voltage transformer is a special measuring and protecting device, which is commonly applied in high-voltage power systems. Its measurement accuracy is affected seriously by the stray capacitances of the capacitance voltage divider to ground and other charged parts. In this study, based on the boundary element method, a mathematical model was established firstly to calculate the stray capacitance. Then, the voltage distribution of the CVD was obtained by the CVD’s equivalent circuit model. Next, the effect of stray capacitance (...) on the voltage distribution and the voltage difference ratio of CVD was analysed in detail. We finally designed three types of shield and optimized their structure parameters to reduce VDR. The results indicated that the average deviation rate between calculated and experimental measured voltages is only 0.015%; that is to say, the method has high calculation precision. The stray capacitance of the CVD to ground is far larger than that of the CVD to the high-voltage terminal. It results in the inhomogeneous distribution of voltage and the increase of VDR. For the test CVT, its VDR exceeds the requirement of class 0.2. Among all of the three types of shield, the C type reduced the VDR of the test CVT the most. After optimizing the structure parameters of C-type shield, the VDR is further reduced to 0.08%. It is not only in accord with the requirement of class 0.2 but also has an adequate margin. (shrink)

The network-based cooperative information spreading is a widely existing phenomenon in the real world. For instance, the spreading of disease outbreak news and disease prevention information often coexist and interact with each other on the Internet. Promoting the cooperative spreading of information in network-based systems is a subject of great importance in both theoretical and practical perspectives. However, very limited attention has been paid to this specific research area so far. In this study, we propose an effective approach for identifying (...) the influential latent edges which, if added to the original network, can promote the cooperative susceptible-infected-recovered dynamics. To be specific, we first obtain the probabilities of each nodes being in different node states by the message-passing approach. Then, based on the state probabilities of nodes obtained, we come up with an indicator, which incorporates both the information of network topology and the co-SIR dynamics, to measure the influence of each latent edge in promoting the co-SIR dynamics. Thus, the most influential latent edges can be located after ranking all the latent edges according to their quantified influence. We verify the rationality and superiority of the proposed indicator in identifying the influential latent edges of both synthetic and real-world networks by extensive numerical simulations. This study provides an effective approach to identify the influential latent edges for promoting the network-based co-SIR information spreading model and offers inspirations for further research on intervening the cooperative spreading dynamics from the perspective of performing network structural perturbations. (shrink)

本书的重点是谈作者对波普尔的看法,主要包括对波普尔思想的理解和对波普尔思想的评论和批评两部分。.

The little versified treatise on the elements of Buddhist logic, often referred to as the Hetucakraḍamaru, is usually attributed to Dignāga. It is only available in a Tibetan translation and quotations from a few of its verses are extant in Sanskrit sources. On the basis of a novel interpretation that is based on a critical edition of the text, we argue that there is a good reason why its title was Hetucakraḍamaru - a ḍamaru is a two-headed drum. The “heads” (...) of the drum are circular and they refer to the sapakṣa and vipakṣa conditions of the logical reason. These “wheels” can be turned clock-wise and counter clock-wise. The nine positions that are located on the wheels do remind one of a dharmacakra, which has a center and eight positions that are placed around it as if it were a compass. We illustrate our interpretation of the text by means of various diagrams. (shrink)

The little versified treatise on the elements of Buddhist logic, often referred to as the Hetucakraḍamaru, is usually attributed to Dignāga. It is only available in a Tibetan translation and quotations from a few of its verses are extant in Sanskrit sources. On the basis of a novel interpretation that is based on a critical edition of the text, we argue that there is a good reason why its title was Hetucakraḍamaru - a ḍamaru is a two-headed drum. The “heads” (...) of the drum are circular and they refer to the sapakṣa and vipakṣa conditions of the logical reason. These “wheels” can be turned clock-wise and counter clock-wise. The nine positions that are located on the wheels do remind one of a dharmacakra, which has a center and eight positions that are placed around it as if it were a compass. We illustrate our interpretation of the text by means of various diagrams. (shrink)

This study investigates the mediator role of attachment avoidance and the moderator role of rejection sensitivity on the links between life satisfaction and psychological capital. This study uses the Experiences in Close Relationship Scale, Rejection Sensitive Scale, Positive Psychological Capital Scale, and Life Satisfaction Scale among 999 Chinese young adults as subjects. The results presented that life satisfaction had a significant positive predictive effect on PsyCap. Mediation analysis of this study shows that attachment avoidance mediated the association between life satisfaction (...) and PsyCap. Furthermore, moderated mediation analysis indicated that rejection sensitivity moderates the link between life satisfaction and attachment avoidance. Compared with individuals with low rejection sensitivity, individuals with high rejection sensitivity show more attachment avoidance under low life satisfaction. This study helps understand the relationship between life satisfaction and PsyCap from the perspective of rejection sensitivity theory and attachment theory and has implications for guiding college students toward strengthening PsyCap and weakening rejection sensitivity. (shrink)