We present a novel method, called graph sparse nonnegative matrix factorization, for dimensionality reduction. The affinity graph and sparse constraint are further taken into consideration in nonnegative matrix factorization and it is shown that the proposed matrix factorization method can respect the intrinsic graph structure and provide the sparse representation. Different from some existing traditional methods, the inertial neural network was developed, which can be used to optimize our proposed matrix factorization problem. By adopting one parameter in the neural network, (...) the global optimal solution can be searched. Finally, simulations on numerical examples and clustering in real-world data illustrate the effectiveness and performance of the proposed method. (shrink)

Many empirical studies have been conducted to investigate self-regulated learning in the Western countries. Less well investigated is the SRL in the Chinese Mainland students and how it affects their academic achievement. On the basis of PISA 2009, this paper is aimed at exploring the SRL of 15-year-old Shanghai students, as measured by cognitive strategy, metacognition, and motivational belief. In the aspect of SRL nature, the results reveal that 15-year-old students in Shanghai use elaboration strategy frequently and seldom use memorization (...) strategy, and that they have high metacognition in understanding, remembering, and summarizing but have low control strategy, and that their enjoyment of reading is relatively high. In the aspect of SRL’s consequence for reading literacy, findings from multilevel linear regression corroborate previous evidence from the Western countries about the effect of SRL on academic achievement. Specifically, elaboration strategy, metacognition in understanding and remembering, metacognition in summarizing, control strategy, and enjoyment of reading are conducive to students’ reading literacy, while memorization strategy exerts a significantly negative effect on reading literacy. The findings could be useful in helping us to gain a better understanding of Shanghai students’ SRL. (shrink)

The approach of returning to the original and recovering nature is a typical characteristic of Chinese philosophy. It was founded by the Daoist School and followed by both Daoist and Confucian schools. The precondition of returning to the original and recovering nature is the stillness and goodness within nature integrated into a whole afterwards. Its implementation includes not only returning to the original root so as to achieve the philosophical aim but also restoration to the original nature after it is (...) injured by man’s physical nature and desire. The realization of human nature depends on the work making up for the loss of the original nature. Although there are different methods of realization concerning the return to the original nature, such as returning to the root, seeking the lost mind, extinguishing desire, being good at return, and the self-consciousness of intuitive knowledge, all of these aim at returning to the original nature of stillness and purity. The philosophical value consists in the unceasing pursuit of returning to the original nature. (shrink)

Through a key passage (Xici 2.2) from the Book of Changes, this paper shows that Ernst Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms shares similarities with the canonical account of symbolic formation in the Chinese tradition: the genesis of xiang (象), often translated as image or symbol. xiang became identified with the origins of culture/civilisation itself. In both cases, the world is understood as primordially (phenomenologically) meaningful; the expressiveness of the world requires a human subject to consummate it in a (...) symbol, whilst the symbol in turn gives us access to higher orders of meaning. It is the self-conscious creation of the symbol that then allows for the higher forms of culture. For both the Xici and Cassirer, symbols and the symbolic consciousness that comes with it is the pre-condition for the freedom, ethics and the cultivation of agency. As for both the Xici and Cassirer, it is human agency that creates these symbols, it will be argued that the Xici is making a Cassirerian argument about the (ethical) relationship between human agency, symbols and ethics/freedom. (shrink)

In this article I explain why scientists cannot always resolve their disagreements about experiments even if they do not hold conflicting theoretical assumptions, and how incommensurability in experiments can occur even if experiments are not deeply encumbered by theoretical assumptions. On the basis of recent discoveries in cognitive psychology and an extended analysis of a historical case, I explore a cognitive mechanism that may generate incommensurability in experiment appraisal. I find that, because of the involvement of goal-derived categories, incommensurability in (...) experiments may result from the conflict of goals that scientists pursue in their researches, from the differences of goal-derived classification schemata that they employ in analyzing experiments, and from discrepancies between skills that they have developed in their practices. This account differs from the conventional interpretation of Kuhn’s thesis, which attributes the cause of incommensurability solely to theoretical differences. In the conclusion, I further discuss the implications of this new account of incommensurability for both philosophical and historical studies of science. (shrink)

This volume brings the first English translation of the Confucian classics Four Books for Women, with extensive commentaries, to the English-speaking world. Written by women for women's education, this work provides an invaluable look at the tradition of Chinese women's writing, education, history, and philosophy, from the 1st to the 16th century.

On January 1, 1958, in the journal Democratic Critique, Zhang Junmai, Mou Zongsan, Tang Junyi, and Xu Fuguan published the "Manifesto on Chinese Culture for the World: Our Common Understanding of Chinese Scholarship Research and of the Future of Chinese Culture and World Culture."1 This manifesto is commonly seen as the founding statement of the New Confucianism movement. Section 2 of the manifesto, "Three Motives, Approaches, and their Shortcomings in the Study of Chinese Culture in World Scholarship," claimed that Chinese (...) culture had not been understood by three kinds of people who had approached it, namely, Christian missionaries, sinologists, and students of present world history. For the New Confucians, the... (shrink)

This article argues that Cassirer’s thinking about the relationship between the different symbolic forms is best elucidated via the paradigm of “organic harmony.” Although Cassirer did not use the term himself, the harmonious cooperation between the parts found in the organic world provided him with a welcome alternative to traditional accounts of order (i.e., identity or hierarchy). This article gives three examples of “organic harmony” from which Cassirer drew inspiration: Goethe’s idealistic morphology, Wilhelm von Humboldt’s account of language, and Herder’s (...) account of history. Through “organic harmony” we can make better sense of and better articulate the pluralism of Cassirer’s PSF. Finally, this article shows how the motif of organic harmony is the normative moment in Cassirer’s own challenge to twentieth-century fascism and argues that the Cassirerian emphasis on finding a coherence which does justice to the uniqueness of particulars—harmony—is an ethical injunction relevant for our times. (shrink)

This paper concentrates on a debate over dispersion in the second half of the 1830s, in which both sides utilized the same set of experimental data to test a proposed wave account of dispersion, but could not agree on how these data should be used. The conflict regarding experimental data was caused by differences in instruments. In the debate, optical instruments in many ways functioned like paradigms, shaping scientists' opinions. Instruments also led the debate into an impasse, because no apparatus (...) was available for the necessary experimental replication. Because of unreconcilable differences regarding experimental evidence, the wave theory's failure in explaining dispersion did not become an obstacle to its acceptance. (shrink)

In most cases, a wh-question calls for an answer that names an entity in the set denoted by the extension of the wh-complement. However, evidence from questions with necessity modals and questions with collective predicates argues that sometimes a wh-question must be interpreted with a higher-order reading, in which this question calls for an answer that names a generalized quantifier. This paper investigates the distribution and compositional derivation of higher-order readings of wh-questions. First, I argue that the generalized quantifiers that (...) can serve as semantic answers to wh-questions must be homogeneously positive. Next, on the distribution of higher-order readings, I observe that questions in which the wh-complement is singular-marked or numeral-modified can be answered by elided disjunctions but not by conjunctions. I further present two ways to account for this disjunction–conjunction asymmetry. In the uniform account, these questions admit disjunctions because disjunctions may satisfy the atomicity requirement of singular-marking and the cardinality requirement of numeral modification. In the reconstruction account, the wh-complement is syntactically reconstructed, which gives rise to local uniqueness and yields a contradiction for conjunctive answers. (shrink)

IntroductionDuring the COVID-19 outbreak, many citizens were asked to stay at home in self-quarantine, which can pose a significant challenge with respect to remaining physically active and maintaining mental health. This study aimed to evaluate the prevalence of inadequate physical activity, anxiety, and depression and to explore the relationship of physical activity with anxiety and depression symptoms among Chinese college students during quarantine.MethodUsing a web-based cross-sectional survey, we collected data from 1,396 Chinese college students. Anxiety and depression were assessed with (...) the Self-Rating Anxiety Scale and the Self-Rating Depression Scale, respectively. The data on physical activity were collected by types of physical activity and the International Physical Activity Questionnaire.ResultsDuring the COVID-19 outbreak, about 52.3% of Chinese college students had inadequate physical activity. The rates of anxiety and depression symptoms were 31.0 and 41.8%, respectively. A high level of physical activity was significantly closely associated with low anxiety, while a moderate, or high level of physical activity was significantly closely associated with reduced depression after adjusting confounding demographic factors. Moreover, specific types of physical activity, such as stretching and resistance training, were negatively correlated with both anxiety and depression; doing household chores was negatively correlated with depression.ConclusionOur findings highlight specific levels and types of home-based physical activities that need to be taken into consideration to protect the mental health of college students during the COVID-19 epidemic. (shrink)

In a previous article we have shown that Kuhn's theory of concepts is independently supported by recent research in cognitive psychology. In this paper we propose a cognitive re-reading of Kuhn's cyclical model of scientific revolutions: all of the important features of the model may now be seen as consequences of a more fundamental account of the nature of concepts and their dynamics. We begin by examining incommensurability, the central theme of Kuhn's theory of scientific revolutions, according to two different (...) cognitive models of concept representation. We provide new support for Kuhn 's mature views that incommensurability can be caused by changes in only a few concepts, that even incommensurable conceptual systems can be rationally compared, and that scientific change of the most radical sort—the type labeled revolutionary in earlier studies—does not have to occur holistically and abruptly, but can be achieved by a historically more plausible accumulation of smaller changes. We go on to suggest that the parallel accounts of concepts found in Kuhn and in cognitive science lead to a new understanding of the nature of normal science, of the transition from normal science to crisis, and of scientific revolutions. The same account enables us to understand how scientific communities split to create groups supporting new paradigms, and to resolve various outstanding problems. In particular, we can identify the kind of change needed to create a revolution rather precisely. This new analysis also suggests reasons for the unidirectionality of scientific change. (shrink)

本书系统梳理了中国传统忠伦理的起源,演变等脉络和轨迹,深入挖掘了其在不同历史时期的内涵及价值,从而汲取传统忠伦理的尽心尽力,忠心奉公等丰厚滋养,使忠的核心观念与社会主义核心价值观中的"爱国""敬业"" 诚信""友善"等有机衔接,融通, 建构现代忠诚观念,以更好地将忠于国家和人民的社会公德,忠于职守的职业道德,忠于家庭的家庭美德,忠于他人的个人品德等伦理原则付诸实践.

When a widely reused ontology appears in a new version which is not compatible with older versions, the ontologies reusing it need to be updated accordingly. Ontobull has been developed to automatically update ontologies with new term IRI(s) and associated metadata to take account of such version changes. To use the Ontobull web interface a user is required to (i) upload one or more ontology OWL source files; (ii) input an ontology term IRI mapping; and (where needed) (iii) provide update (...) settings for ontology headers and XML namespace IDs. Using this information, the backend Ontobull Java program automatically updates the OWL ontology files with desired term IRIs and ontology metadata. The Ontobull subprogram BFOConvert supports the conversion of an ontology that imports a previous version of BFO. A use case is provided to demonstrate the features of Ontobull and BFOConvert. (shrink)

Histone post-translational modifications play important roles in transcriptional regulation. It is known that multiple histone modifications can act in a combinatorial manner. In this study, we investigated the effects of multiple histone modifications on expression levels of five gene categories in coding regions. The combinatorial patterns of modifications for the five gene categories were also studied in the regions. Our results indicated that the differences in the expression levels between any two gene categories were significant. There were some corresponding differences (...) in multiple histone modification levels among the five gene categories. Multiple histone modifications jointly impacted expression levels of every gene category. Four mutual combinations of histone modifications were found and analyzed. (shrink)

This discussion seeks to highlight the ability of poetry to combat loneliness, a growing public health problem with significant negative health outcomes that potentially impact millions of Americans. We argue that poetry can play a very relevant role and have an impact in medicine. Through a brief literature review of previous studies on poetry in medicine, we demonstrate that poetry can not only combat loneliness but can also play important roles in helping patients, physicians, and other healthcare professionals/providers. Because of (...) the COVID-19 pandemic, we believe now is the perfect opportunity to utilize poetry because the benefits can be experienced even in solitude, which is why this is such a timely and pertinent issue today. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Dean of Shandong: Confessions of a Minor Bureaucrat at a Chinese University by Daniel BellShuchen Xiang (bio)The Dean of Shandong: Confessions of a Minor Bureaucrat at a Chinese University. By Daniel Bell. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023. Pp. x+ 196. Hardcover $27.95, isbn ISBN 978-0-691-24712-0.In the Dean of Shandong: Confessions of a Minor Bureaucrat at a Chinese University, Daniel Bell reflects on his experiences of Chinese (...) academia, society and political life from the past two decades, notably the last few years, in which he served as the Dean of the School of Political Science and Public Administration at Shandong University. The role is historic: it is the first time that a foreign dean has been appointed at a political science faculty in mainland China's history. This historic position affords Bell with unique insights that the book records. A deeply personal book that often reads like a memoir (Bell himself compares the work to Rousseau's Confessions), Bell makes no attempts to hide the fact that his account is perspectival, indebted to his own experiences and so not an attempt to speak on behalf of any organization. It is this avowedly perspectival tone that imbues his account with a frankness that endows his account with a convincing authority. One comes away from the book with an investment not only in the China of which Bell is an attentive observer but also in the continuing experiment that is Daniel Bell himself: a Canadian political scientist, visibly invested in Confucianism, working in Confucian-Communist China during historic times.A pervasive theme in this work is a preoccupation with the status of Confucianism for contemporary China. The Confucian texts serve as a hermeneutic framework through which Bell understands many social-political phenomena and runs as a leitmotif throughout the book. This kind of cultural analysis is applied in chapter one, "Dye and Dynamism," in which Bell muses on why Chinese politicians all seem to dye their hair. The answer might be indebted to the Mencian saying (1A.7) that "white-haired people" should be cared for rather than engage in strenuous labor. Dyeing one's hair so that one gives the appearance of still being in the vigors of youth conforms to this tacit Confucian custom. It was Bell's dedication to Confucianism that piqued his interest in becoming the dean at a newly established branch of Shandong University on the coastal city of Qingdao. "What a beautiful opportunity to help promote Confucianism in China," he writes, "while respecting other traditions!" (p. 38).Whilst at Shandong, Bell had the opportunity to reflect on the role of the shuji (书记), an official role that is unique to China. This he does in chapter two, [End Page 1] "The Harmony Secretary." Through his observations, Bell concludes that one of the roles of the shuji is to help keep harmony within his appointed organization, in this case, an academic faculty. In visiting the role of the shuji, Bell highlights an episode between himself and a junior faculty that the shuji mediated in an optimally harmonious manner. I was personally very interested in this anecdote in which said junior faculty "attacked" Bell's work on the faculty WeChat account (p. 41). Bell does not go into detail, but I was left speculating why it was that this junior faculty so vehemently attacked Bell's work and his moral character. Given that Bell is renowned for promoting Confucianism and defending the theoretical legitimacy of China's own indigenous forms of government, I can imagine that perhaps this junior faculty took issue with this profile. Whatever the reason for said junior faculty's disagreement with Bell, the author does not talk about the degree to which Chinese academic life conforms to the attitudes, values, ways of knowing, and power structures perpetuated by western colonizing societies, i.e. coloniality.Bell's own experiences with collective leadership in the administration at Shandong University spurred him to make some conclusions about the qualities needed for effective collective leadership at higher levels of government. This he does in chapter three, "On Collective Leadership." Here, the author reflects on the tendency towards collective decision... (shrink)

A provocative defense of a forgotten Chinese approach to identity and difference Historically, the Western encounter with difference has been catastrophic: the extermination and displacement of aboriginal populations, the transatlantic slave trade, and colonialism. China, however, took a different historical path. In Chinese Cosmopolitanism, Shuchen Xiang argues that the Chinese cultural tradition was, from its formative beginnings and throughout its imperial history, a cosmopolitan melting pot that synthesized the different cultures that came into its orbit. Unlike the West, which (...) cast its collisions with different cultures in Manichean terms of the ontologically irreconcilable difference between civilization and barbarism, China was a dynamic identity created out of difference. The reasons for this, Xiang argues, are philosophical: Chinese philosophy has the conceptual resources for providing alternative ways to understand pluralism. Xiang explains that “Chinese” identity is not what the West understands as a racial identity; it is not a group of people related by common descent or heredity but rather a hybrid of coalescing cultures. To use the Western discourse of race to frame the Chinese view of non-Chinese, she argues, is a category error. Xiang shows that China was both internally cosmopolitan, embracing distinct peoples into a common identity, and externally cosmopolitan, having knowledge of faraway lands without an ideological need to subjugate them. Contrasting the Chinese understanding of efficacy—described as “harmony”—with the Western understanding of order, she argues that the Chinese sought to gain influence over others by having them spontaneously accept the virtue of one’s position. These ideas from Chinese philosophy, she contends, offer a new way to understand today’s multipolar world and can make a valuable contribution to contemporary discussions in the critical philosophy of race. (shrink)

Coevolution spreading dynamics on complex networks is a hot topic, which attracts much attention in network science. This paper proposes a mathematical model to describe the two competing complex information spreading dynamics on multiplex networks. An individual can only accept one of the two pieces of information. A heterogeneous mean-field theory is developed to describe the spreading dynamics. We reveal different regions through Monte Carlo simulations of the competing complex information spreading dynamics: no global information, one information dominant, and two (...) information coexistence. We finally find that the heterogeneity of the multiplex networks’ degree distributions does not qualitatively affect the results. (shrink)

Coronavirus disease is having an unprecedented and unpredictable impact on the world's economy. The pandemic has driven the world toward adapting to the current circumstances regardless of the business, sector, or industry. The coronavirus epidemic has affected the global economy and service sector. The purpose of the current study is to assess the effect of COVID-19 on service sector growth and sustainability. Global sectors and industries are trying to anchor themselves amidst the pandemic. The study focuses on the sectors that (...) are badly hit by the outbreak and discussed the strategies and responses different countries are taking to sustain their economies. This study concludes that the vital role of Information Technology and digitization supports the economies in their fight against the pandemic and helps them sustain themselves amid crises. This study also contributes to the body of literature by suggesting IT-based solutions for various industries to elevate effective responsiveness and avoid significant losses. (shrink)

This article argues that Ernst Cassirer's views about the concept of substance and his views on mythic consciousness are applicable to the concept of race. By analyzing examples from the most influential and representative racial theories, this article shows that the concept of race functions like the concept of substance whereby random, large-scale, and irreducibly complex phenomena is explained through the deterministic behavior of a smaller, material, constituent part. Given that mythic consciousness explains causality in the same way, this substance-mode (...) explanation of becoming can also be termed “mythic.” Further, under this substance/racial understanding of personhood, humans have no agency to determine their own fates. It is this fatalism that Cassirer railed against in The Myth of the State. In place of this substance (racial) understanding of personhood, and as this article will describe, Cassirer argued for a “functional” (cultural) understanding of personhood. (shrink)

In A Philosophical Defense of Culture, Shuchen Xiang draws on the Confucian philosophy of "culture" and Ernst Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms to argue for the importance of "culture" as a philosophic paradigm. A defining ideal of Confucian-Chinese civilization, culture (wen) spans everything from natural patterns and the individual units that make up Chinese writing to literature and other refining vocations of the human being. Wen is thus the soul of Confucian-Chinese philosophy. Similarly, as a philosopher who bridged the (...) classical age of German humanism and postwar modernity, Cassirer implored his and future generations to think of humankind in terms of their culture and to think of the human being as a "symbolic animal." The philosophies of culture of these two traditions, very much compatible, are of urgent relevance to our contemporary epoch. Xiang describes the similarity of their projects by way of their conception of the human being, her relationship to nature, the relationship of human culture to nature, the importance of cultural pluralism, and the role of the arts in human life, as well as the metaphysical frameworks that gave rise to such conceptions. Combining textual exegesis in classical Chinese texts and an exposition of Cassirer's most important insights against the backdrop of post-Kantian philosophy, this book is philosophy written in a cosmopolitan mode, arguing for the contemporary philosophical relevance of "culture" by drawing on and bringing together two different but strikingly similar streams in our world tradition. (shrink)

_Wh_-questions with the modal verb _can_ admit both mention-some (MS) and mention-all (MA) answers. This paper argues that we should treat MS as a grammatical phenomenon, primarily determined by the grammar of the _wh_-interrogative. I assume that MS and MA answers can be modeled using the same definition of answerhood (Fox in Mention-some interpretations, MIT seminar, 2013 ) and attribute the MS/MA ambiguity to structural variations within the question nucleus. The variations are: (i) the scope ambiguity of the higher-order _wh_-trace (...) and (ii) the absence/presence of an anti-exhaustification operator. However, treating MS answers as complete answers in this way contradicts the widely adopted analysis of uniqueness effects in questions of Dayal (Locality in _wh_ quantification: Questions and relative clauses in Hindi, 1996 ), according to which the uniqueness effects of singular _which_-phrases arise from an exhaustivity presupposition, namely that a question must have a unique exhaustive true answer. To solve this dilemma, I propose that question interpretations presuppose Relativized Exhaustivity: roughly, the exhaustivity in questions is evaluated relative to the accessible worlds as opposed to the anchor/utterance world. Relativized Exhaustivity preserves the merits of Dayal’s exhaustivity presupposition while permitting MS; moreover, it explains the local-uniqueness effects in modalized singular _wh_-questions. (shrink)

The rapid acceleration of societal change has subjected contemporary individuals to prolonged periods of diverse pressures, leading to substantial psychological strain, resulting in anxiety, depression, and compromised mental well-being. Within this context, the home has evolved into a vital refuge for modern individuals, offering both physical and psychological respite. Through experimental intervention, this study examines two distinct residential groups: those adhering to traditional housing and those residing in characteristic folk houses, specifically Gannan Hakka architecture. Analysing the psychological state of contemporary (...) individuals and integrating Gannan Hakka architectural elements into folk house design through a psychologically informed approach, this research aims to enhance residents’ aesthetic experiences and alleviate psychological distress. The study involved 120 volunteers with varying psychological stress levels, categorised into characteristic and traditional folk house groups. Psychological assessments evaluated stress, self-efficacy, and quality of life. Findings reveal significantly improved psychological well-being, self-efficacy, and quality of life among the characteristic residential group, affirming the benefits of Gannan Hakka architecture integration. This research underscores the importance of addressing modern individuals’ environmental needs and proposes the integration of Gannan Hakka cultural elements into residential design to enhance well-being. Contribution: This study demonstrates the application of Hakka culture in contemporary housing profoundly influences residents’ lives, enabling both relaxation and a deeper cultural connection. This integration facilitates a comprehensive understanding of Hakka culture, promoting its preservation. Notably recognised for hospitality and diligence, Hakka culture enhances individuals’ appreciation of tradition, fostering physical and mental rejuvenation. These findings offer valuable insights for practical theology scholars and practitioners exploring the impact of religious aspects on modern residential design from a psychological perspective. (shrink)

The student management work model in colleges and universities is an effective plan for college student management, but the traditional college student management work is not very good in terms of student psychology, resulting in negative attitudes such as low learning desire, low learning efficiency, and inactive learning. In recent years, with the development of artificial intelligence technologies such as sentiment analysis and incentive theory, emotional management and incentive theory have been applied to the management of college students. The emotional (...) management and incentive model is a way to help college students get rid of psychological obstacles and guide students to establish positive and correct values by predict and analyze the psychological state of college students through language emotion recognition and BP neural network. This paper compares the college student management work model based on emotional management and incentives with the traditional college management work mode through experiments. The results show that the students’ learning enthusiasm is better than the traditional college student management work mode based on emotional management and incentives. The student management work model in colleges and universities is 15.8% better, and the students’ grades have improved by 12.5%; the college student management work model based on emotional management and incentives also has a positive role in helping students’ mental health. The way of emotional management and motivation can make better use of college students’ psychology to effectively manage students and guide students to develop in a good direction. (shrink)

Problem and Project Based Learning (PBL) has been used as an educational philosophy and methodology in the construction of a student centered and contextualized learning environment. PBL is also regarded as an effective method in producing engineering graduates who can not only meet the needs of professional competences but are also prepared for new challenges in the globalized and technological context. However, can PBL be a solution to the challenge of a general lack of university students studying engineering and technology (...) in many countries? Gender and Diversity in a Problem and Project Based Learning Environment presents an ethnographical study on the learning experiences of engineering students in the PBL environment in Denmark, and it attempts to question the issue of diversity in engineering education via the exploration of which ways the PBL environment is friendly to diverse groups of learners such as women. (shrink)

Emotional design is an important development trend of interaction design. Emotional design in products plays a key role in enhancing user experience and inducing user emotional resonance. In recent years, based on the user's emotional experience, the design concept of strengthening product emotional design has become a new direction for most designers to improve their design thinking. In the emotional interaction design, the machine needs to capture the user's key information in real time, recognize the user's emotional state, and use (...) a variety of clues to finally determine the appropriate user model. Based on this background, this research uses a deep learning mechanism for more accurate and effective emotion recognition, thereby optimizing the design of the interactive system and improving the user experience. First of all, this research discusses how to use user characteristics such as speech, facial expression, video, heartbeat, etc., to make machines more accurately recognize human emotions. Through the analysis of various characteristics, the speech is selected as the experimental material. Second, a speech-based emotion recognition method is proposed. The mel-Frequency cepstral coefficient of the speech signal is used as the input of the improved long and short-term memory network. To ensure the integrity of the information and the accuracy of the output at the next moment, ILSTM makes peephole connections in the forget gate and input gate of LSTM, and adds the unit state as input data to the threshold layer. The emotional features obtained by ILSTM are input into the attention layer, and the self-attention mechanism is used to calculate the weight of each frame of speech signal. The speech features with higher weights are used to distinguish different emotions and complete the emotion recognition of the speech signal. Experiments on the EMO-DB and CASIA datasets verify the effectiveness of the model for emotion recognition. Finally, the feasibility of emotional interaction system design is discussed. (shrink)

By looking at a canonical article representing academic philosophy’s orthodox view against cultural relativism, James Rachels’ “The Challenge of Cultural Relativism,” this paper argues that current mainstream western academic philosophy’s fear of cultural relativism is premised on a fear of the racial Other. The examples that Rachels marshals against cultural relativism default to the persistent, ubiquitous, and age-old stereotypes about the savage/barbarian Other that have dominated the history of western engagement with the non-western world. What academic philosophy fears about cultural (...) relativism, it is argued, is the barbarians of the western imagination and not fellow human beings. The same structure that informs fears of cultural relativism, whereby people with different customs are reduced to the barbarian/savage of the western imagination, can be seen in the genesis of international law which arose as a justification for the domination of the Amerindian. It is argued that implicit in arguments against cultural relativism is the preservation of the same right to dominate the Other. Finally, it is argued that the appeal of the fear of cultural relativism is that, in directing moral outrage at others, one can avoid reflecting on the failures of one’s own cultural tradition. (shrink)

Background: In China, the conventional family-based ageing care model is under pressure from social transitions, raising the question of whether and to what extent families are still capable of dealing with the care of the aged. Objective: This article examines the vulnerability and inadequacy of families to bear responsibility for the care of the aged against a backdrop of socioeconomic transformation and diminishing institutional support in rural China. Research design: This article adopts an empirical ethical approach that integrates empirical investigation (...) with ethical inquiry. Participants and research context: The empirical component of this article focuses on the lived experiences of caring for a wife and mother with dementia in one rural Chinese family, collected from a 6-month fieldwork study conducted at one primary hospital. Ethical considerations: Approval was obtained from the university ethics committee. Findings: The empirical study highlights a conflicted family process of managing and negotiating care that indicates the inadequacies and limited ability of families to deal with aged care tasks. In addition, inadequate structures and institutional deficiencies exacerbate the vulnerability of rural families and their inability to offer adequate care. Conclusion: Acknowledging the vulnerability of families as ageing care providers, this article calls for a socially supported family care model for rural older people in China and also proposes policy recommendations. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper draws upon transitivity and Appraisal within Systemic Functional Linguistics to study the traumatic discourse of Nanjing Massacre in Chinese Mainland’s and Japan’s history textbooks. Through corpus analysis, this research finds that the Chinese discourse mainly uses effective process, relational process, verbal process to construe Japan’s victimizering experience and China’s victimhood, and employs negative Affect, opposite values of Judgment, negative Appreciation, Expand, Raise and Sharpen to construct a critical voice for the Japanese army and a sympathic tone for (...) the Chinese. By contrast, the Japanese discourse largely uses pseudo-effective and middle processes, mental and existential processes to cover up Japan’s victimizering experience, and employs negative Judgment, positive Appreciation, Contract and Raise to construct an almost uncritical voice for the Japanese army and the massacre. The difference in the representation and evaluation of Nanjing Massacre results from the politics of official memories in both countries. As China endeavors to strengthen its patriotic education by using Nanjing Massacre as an ideological weapon for national solidarity, Japan expedites its nationalist historiography move to recreate its normal national image by marginalizing the massacre. (shrink)

Surveys of public opinions on climate change found that a majority of American respondents regarded global warming as a critical or an important threat . Given this consensus, one might expect that a majority of Americans are ready to take immediate action to deal with the environmental crisis. However, when they were asked whether we should begin taking steps now, only 43% of American respondents said yes; 54% of them chose either the option “until we are sure that global warming (...) is really a problem, we should not take any steps that would have economic costs,” or the option “global warming should be addressed, but its effects will be gradual, so we can deal with the problem .. (shrink)