We study the identifiability and estimation of functional causal models under selection bias, with a focus on the situation where the selection depends solely on the effect variable, which is known as outcome-dependent selection. We address two questions of identifiability: the identifiability of the causal direction between two variables in the presence of selection bias, and, given the causal direction, the identifiability of the model with outcome-dependent selection. Regarding the first, we show that in the framework of post-nonlinear causal models, (...) once outcome-dependent selection is properly modeled, the causal direction between two variables is generically identifiable; regarding the second, we identify some mild conditions under which an additive noise causal model with outcome-dependent selection is to a large extent identifiable. We also propose two methods for estimating an additive noise model from data that are generated with outcome-dependent selection. (shrink)

It is commonplace to encounter nonstationary or heterogeneous data, of which the underlying generating process changes over time or across data sets. Such a distribution shift feature presents both challenges and opportunities for causal discovery. In this paper we develop a principled framework for causal discovery from such data, called Constraint-based causal Discovery from Nonstationary/heterogeneous Data, which addresses two important questions. First, we propose an enhanced constraint-based procedure to detect variables whose local mechanisms change and recover the skeleton of the (...) causal structure over observed variables. Second, we present a way to determine causal orientations by making use of independence changes in the data distribution implied by the underlying causal model, benefiting from information carried by changing distributions. Experimental results on various synthetic and real-world data sets are presented to demonstrate the efficacy of our methods. (shrink)

Uncertainty is inherent in new and unexpected viral outbreaks such as the current COVID-19 pandemic. It imposes challenges for health officials in soliciting cooperative behavioural changes based on incomplete information. In this paper, we use evolving mask recommendations in the United States as an example to analyse the ethical importance and practical demonstration of trustworthiness in pandemic messaging and decision-making. We argue that responsible public health interventions in the time of uncertainties requires explicit intersecting ethical considerations both in action and (...) in communication to promote trustworthiness. First, as public health decisions have to be made in the face of incomplete and evolving data, health officials need to exhibit competence while committing to epistemic humility. They can explain the methods used in making and updating mask recommendations as well as explicitly acknowledge the need to incorporate sociocultural and other contextual considerations in translating scientific data into mask recommendations. Second, officials and agencies must uphold and communicate decisional transparency as part of their effort to demonstrate accountability and promote the public’s understanding of the evolving pandemic. Third, especially since both the pandemic and mask recommendations may have disparate impact on different populations, officials should start with the fair implementation of the least restrictive measures that can help reduce harm. (shrink)

Despite its prevalence in emerging economies, everyday-life business deviance and its antecedents have received surprisingly little research attention. Drawing on strain theory and the business-ethics literature, we develop a socio-psychological explanation for this deviance. Our analysis of 741 owners of Chinese small- and medium-sized enterprises suggests that materialism and trust in institutional justice affect EBD both directly and indirectly in a relationship mediated by the ethical standards of SME owners. These findings have important implications for researching deviant business behavior within (...) SMEs. (shrink)

We examine the impact of a government-initiated CSR project on corporate misconduct using the unique setting of China’s Targeted Poverty Alleviation (TPA) program. The difference-in-differences estimates show that firms participating in the TPA program engage in fewer misconduct activities than do their counterparts. This finding is robust to the parallel trends test, the placebo test, alternative regression specifications, alternative research designs, the reverse causality analysis, and the bivariate probit model with partial observability. Further analysis shows that TPA participation enhances the (...) ability of external financial professionals to monitor performance by stimulating the dissemination of TPA-related incremental information, thereby contributing to the decline in corporate misconduct. The cross-sectional heterogeneity analysis shows that the impact of TPA participation on corporate misconduct is more pronounced in firms with higher information asymmetry, with weaker political connections, and with weaker internal governance. Furthermore, we find evidence that TPA participation improves corporate financial performance but does not deteriorate information transparency. (shrink)

本书集合了中德专家学者对启蒙思想的内涵、启蒙与宗教的关系的研究成果。收录了《启蒙的主体》、《宽容是人类独有的财富——启蒙时代的理性概念和普遍主义》、《中国，启蒙何用？》、《启蒙与宗教》、《千万不要跟我 们谈康德！》等研究论文。.

Companies that use online group-buying to get new business expansion opportunities at a price advantage are failing. Therefore, there is a need to develop new marketing strategies for group-buying companies to achieve market share and consumer favor. Given that consumers are society members, we used the social interaction theory to investigate the combination of factors that stimulate consumers’ purchase intentions. Fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis was performed to evaluate different strategy configurations of social interaction elements, perceived quality, benefits and trust to (...) promote purchase decisions from 406 group-buying consumer questionnaires. We revealed four pathways with different configurations that can prompt consumers to make group-buying decisions: information strategy, Word-of-Mouth strategy, sense of community strategy, as well as combining Word-of-Mouth and sense of community strategy. These strategies provide viable approaches through which group-buying companies can rationally use marketing programs to promote consumers’ purchase intentions. (shrink)

Background The ethical competence of head nurses plays a pivotal role in nursing ethics. Ethical climate is a prerequisite for ethical competence, and moral resilience can positively influence an individual’s ethical competence. However, few studies have focused on the relationship between ethical climate, moral resilience, and ethical competence among them. Objectives To investigate the relationship between ethical climate, moral resilience, and ethical competence, and examine the mediating role of moral resilience between ethical climate and ethical competence among head nurses. Design (...) A quantitative, cross-sectional study. Methods A total of 309 Chinese head nurses completed an online survey, including ethical climate questionnaire, Rushton moral resilience scale, and ethical competence questionnaire. Inferential statistical analysis includes Pearson’s correlation and a structural equation model. Ethical considerations This study received ethical approval from the Institutional Review Board of Xiangya Nursing School of Central South University (No. E2023146). Results Head nurses’ ethical climate score positively impacted ethical competence (r = 0.208, p <.001), and ethical climate could affect ethical competence through the mediating role of moral resilience. Conclusion This study emphasized the value of ethical climate in moral resilience of head nurses, ultimately leading to an enhancement in their ethical competence. (shrink)

This study examines the relationship between chief executive officers ’ collectivistic cultural background and corporate pollution abatement behavior among industrial firms in China. Using hand-collected data on birthplaces of CEOs of the industrial firms, we provided robust evidence that CEOs born in provinces with a higher level of collectivistic culture promote corporate pollution abatement performance. This study further shows that firms exhibit significant differences in their emission reduction behavior when firms are subjected to environmental regulation shocks: firms with collectivistic CEOs (...) tend to reduce more pollution than firms with individualistic CEOs without sacrificing their firms’ production. (shrink)

As a pair of important categories in traditional Chinese culture, "ming 命 (destiny or decrees)" and "tian ming 天命 (heavenly ordinances)" mainly refer to the constraints placed on human beings. Both originated from "ling 令 (decrees)," which evolved from "wang ling 王令 (royal decrees)" into "tian ling 天令 (heavenly decrees)," and then became "ming" from a throne because of the decisive role of "heavenly decrees" over a throne. "Ming" and "tian ming" have different definitions: "Ming" represented the limits Heaven placed (...) on the natural lives of human beings and was an objective force that men could not direct, but was embodied in human beings as their "destiny"; "Tian ming" reflected the moral ideals of human beings in their self-identification; It originated in man but had to be verified by Heaven, and it was therefore the true ordinance that Heaven placed on human beings. "Ming" and "tian ming" are two perspectives on the traditional relationship between Heaven and human beings, and at the same time Confucians and Daoists placed different emphasis on them. /// 摘要 "命" 与 "天命" 是传统文化中的-对重要范畴，主要指人所受到的限制。 二者都起源 "令", 由 "王令" "而" 天令又因 "天令" 对王权的决定作用从 而成为王权之 "命" 。"命" 与 "天命" 有不同规定 "命" 体现着天对人之自然 生命的限制，表现的是人所无法驾驭的客观力量，但落实于人并表现为人之 "命" ; "天命" 体现的则是人之自我确认的道德理想，其虽然出于人却又必须证之于天， 所以是天之真正的命于人者。命与天命，既体现了传统天人关系的双重视角，同时 也是儒道两家不同探索侧重的一个基本分野。. (shrink)

With the rapid development of computer science and information technology, artificial intelligence has been developed from theory to application. As a key technology in the modern society, AI is increasingly affecting all aspects of people’s daily lives, including sports training. AI can be considered as an assistive technology to provide specific support to athletes’ physical education training through various means such as data analysis and simulation of training scenarios. Although research on AI is still in the preliminary stage, it is (...) significant to explore how AI can be applied in sports training since this emerging technology could facilitate people’s physical training to some extent. This paper first reviews the existing research on AI applications. Then, based on the fundamental concept and related research results of AI, this study explores three specific cases of AI application in sports training and explains the main principles. This research focuses on discussing the strong relationship between AI technology and physical education training and highlights the advantages of AI, including utilization, convenience, and innovation. (shrink)

This work is developed to explore the form of mental health education, strengthen scientific educational ideas, and improve the effect of psychological therapy. Virtual reality technology is innovatively applied in adolescent mental health treatment and education. Based on this, the mental health treatment and system design based on virtual reality technology are discussed, and the feasibility of applying VR technology to adolescent mental health education is explored. Second, the research concept of adolescent mental health is discussed. Based on the VR (...) platform setup, questionnaire survey is implemented to analyze the factors influencing the mental health of primary and secondary school students in Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, and five factors are obtained. Based on this, the adolescent mental health treatment system based on VR is designed, and the effectiveness of the system is tested and evaluated. The results show that the integrated delay of the VR equipment used is 29 ms, which can effectively provide service. There are significant differences in mental health status among adolescents of different genders, different ages, only children and non-only children, parents’ accompaniment during growing up, and urban and rural adolescents. Finally, after 3 months of psychological treatment, the mental health score of the experimental group of teenagers is 50–55 points. However, the mental health scores of the control group remain at 56–65 points, indicating that the mental health treatment system designed in this work can effectively help the adolescents to improve their mental health, thus proving the effectiveness of the system. To sum up, this work provides scientific reference for adolescent mental health education in schools. Psychological treatment system can help teenagers improve their psychological problems and promote the development of mental health education. (shrink)

BackgroundThe Coronavirus 2019 outbreak has led to a considerable proportion of adverse psychological symptoms in different subpopulations. This study aimed to investigate the status of anxiety and depression and their associated factors in the adult, working-age population in Mainland China at the early remission stage of the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodsAn online study was conducted among 1,863 participants in 29 provinces in Mainland China from March 23 to 31, 2020. Their mental health was evaluated by the generalized anxiety disorder scale and the (...) patient health questionnaire. Descriptive analysis, Chi-square, and multiple logistic regressions were applied.ResultsAbout 44.5% of the participants had anxiety, 49.2% had depression, and 37.9% showed a combination of depression and anxiety. Around 83.7% of the participants claimed that the pandemic had a negative impact on their medical needs, which was the primary predictor of mental health, the degree of impact being positively related to the prevalence of anxiety and depression. More chronic diseases, moderate to bad self-rated health, severe perceived infection risk, and younger age group were the common risk factors for anxiety and depression. Having no children, unemployment, and a college-level educational background were associated with higher anxiety prevalence, whereas unmarried participants were correlated with higher depression prevalence.ConclusionThe working-age population showed a relatively high risk of anxiety and depression in Mainland China at the early remission stage of the pandemic. To improve medical services capacity for routine and delayed medical service needs should be a part of policy-makers’ priority agenda during this period of crisis. (shrink)

This study presents an evolutionary game to model interactions among stakeholders with potential conflicts, including the operational enterprise of incineration plant, the local government, and the residents nearby. System dynamics is used to simulate the change of strategic actions corresponding to the three players, in order to seek for the evolutionary stability strategies. A numerical case is proposed to demonstrate the game theory application, in which the impacts of governmental incentive and punishment on the player’s actions are investigated. The results (...) indicated that administrative penalty is effective not only in motivating the enterprises to upgrade treatment facilities for ensuring environmental quality but also in helping the local government and residents to approach dominant strategies. Policy implications are given based on the results to lay out a foundation for the alleviation of the conflicts. (shrink)

This thesis discusses the proper relationship between religion and politics, not as two kinds of institutions in a society but as two sets of beliefs within and among belief systems: people's religious ideas of the good human life and their political ideas of a right society, in a religiously plural context. ;It starts its discussion by critically examining two most important positions on this issue in contemporary public discourses: the liberal idea of priority of the right to the good and (...) the communitarian idea of priority of the good to the right . The problem with the liberal view is that its idea of a politics neutral to all religions is merely an illusion. The problem with the communitarian one is that it will lead to either political sectarianism or religious pluralism. ;The thesis therefore aims to develop an alternative position, which is centered around the idea of multiple reflective equilibria. According to this idea, instead of a dichotomy, religious goodness and political rightness, along with many other ideas people may have, are mutually enriching, critical, and transformative, both within an individual's belief system and among different individuals' belief systems. In a religiously plural society, it searches for a universal political idea of the right that is kept in a reflective equilibrium with plural religious ideas of the good. (shrink)

The bamboo slip essay Hengxian 恒先 is historically valuable because it serves to further the ontological understanding and comprehension of issues related to the existence of the universe from the perspective of Laozi's Daoist thought. Hengxian explores important propositions such as how "Qi originated and activated itself and "they came out of the same source but differed in nature" from several aspects. The idea that "Hengxian is ' being' without any defmiteness" responds to the issue of the relationship of difference (...) and identity of all things in the world, and thus examines the interdependent relationships between subjects and objects. It proposes that humans can further understand the existence of the universe through cognitive activities and practices such as "analysis and comparison" in which objective realities are checked. The issues discussed in Hengxian are consistent with Laozi's Dao de jing, the works of Zhuangzi, Huangdi sijing 黄帝四经 (The Four Classics from the Emperor Yellow) and other Daoist works, and deserve significant attention. /// 摘要竹书 "恒先" 的历史价值在于以存在论的立场，深化了老子开创的道家思想 学说对于宇宙存在问题的认识理解。"恒先无有" 因通过 "气是自生自作" 与 "同 出而异性" 等重要命题的多方面阐释，回答了宇宙万物差别与同一关系问题，并且 以此为依据考察了主客体之间的依存关系，认为人类可以通过 "校比" 的认识实践 活动，与客观存在相对照检验，实现对宇宙存在的洞察。所论与老子 "道德经" 以 及庄学、"黄帝四经" 等多有一致之处，非常值得重视。. (shrink)

这是一本为军事学研究生和广大军事思想史爱好者撰写的教材性的学术著作,对中国历代军事思想发展的时代背景、基本内涵、发展轨迹、历史地位等进行了提纲挈领的总结与论述,是军事科学院中国历代战略研究室研究人员多 年从事中国历代军事思想研究和教学的理论结晶。.

We report that upon excitation by a single pulse, a classical harmonic oscillator immersed in the classical electromagnetic zero-point radiation exhibits a discrete harmonic spectrum in agreement with that of its quantum counterpart. This result is interesting in view of the fact that the vacuum field is needed in the classical calculation to obtain the agreement.

This volume features in-depth philosophical analyses of major Japanese Confucian philosophers as well as themes and topics addressed in their writings. Its main historical focus is the early-modern period (1600-1868), when much original Confucian philosophizing occurred. Written by scholars from the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, Japan, and China and eclectic in methodology and disciplinary approach, this anthology seeks to advance new multidimensional studies of Japanese Confucian philosophy for English language readers. It presents essays that focus on Japanese Confucianism, while (...) including topics related to Buddhism, Shintō, Nativism, and even Andō Shōeki (1703-1762), one of the most vehement critics of Confucianism in all of East Asia. The book builds on the premise that Japanese Confucian philosophy consists in the ongoing engagement in critical, self-reflective discussions of and speculative theorizing about ethics, epistemology, metaphysics, political theory, and spiritual problems, as well as aesthetics, cosmology, and ontology. (shrink)

The present study aims to delineate the working mechanism of prediction in sentence comprehension, by disentangling the influence of the facilitated general memory retrieval from the coexistent influence of the predicted language-specific semantic and/or syntactic information for the first time. The results support that prediction might influence the downstream cognitive processing in two aspects: the pre-activated information facilitates the retrieval of a matched input in memory and, the pre-activated information interacts with higher-level semantic/syntactic processing. More importantly, the present findings suggest (...) that these two types of influences seem to occur at different stages of sentence comprehension: the facilitated memory retrieval of the input modulates N400 amplitude and the latency of post-N400 late central-parietal positivity/P600, while the predicted semantic/syntactic information and/or their interactions modulate the amplitude of the late positivity. The present findings would be helpful for interpreting the underlying mechanism of observed effects in prediction studies. (shrink)

Jiwei Ci's Moral China in the Age of Reform is a landmark in our attempt to understand, diagnose, and provide solutions to the moral crisis in post-Mao China. It is difficult not to be deeply impressed by the perceptive observations, provocative claims, and sophisticated arguments Ci presents in this book. In my brief comment, I shall think with Ci on the relationship between the democratic and liberal components of a liberal democratic society on the one hand and that between the (...) right and the good on the other.Ci makes the claim that in the very idea of liberal democracy the liberal component has priority over the democratic component. What he means by this is that "members of a modern society … pursue... (shrink)

The notion of “agent bookkeeping” was proposed when the “Accounting Law of the People’s Republic of China” was updated in 1993. Since their business is specialized in serving small and micro-enterprises, this has created the industry characteristic of generally small in the size of company and low in the salary of employees in Chinese agent bookkeeping companies. Such characteristic results in a series of problems including negative work attitude of employees in the development process, which seriously limit the development of (...) Chinese agent bookkeeping companies. However, issues occurred in the development of agent bookkeeping, such as negative employee attitudes, which severely hampered the growth of Chinese agent bookkeeping companies. Therefore, a model of three dimensions of work attitude has been set up in this paper to demonstrate the working attitude of the staff of the agent bookkeeping companies in China’s Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, including emotional dimension, behavioral dimension, and cognitive dimension which consists of eight factors: work environment, career satisfaction, interpersonal relationship, role engagement, work vitality, responsibility attitude, emotional identity, and retention attitude. The result indicates that female employees outnumber male ones in agent bookkeeping companies, most employees have a low sense of belonging to the company, limited career development affects employees’ enthusiasm for work, work attitudes are influenced by mediocre work performance among employees with a graduate degree or higher. (shrink)