As one of the most effective medical technologies for the infertile patients, in vitro fertilization has been more and more widely developed in recent years. However, prolonged waiting for IVF procedures has become a problem of great concern, since this technology is only mastered by the large general hospitals. To deal with the insufficiency of IVF service capacity, this paper studies an IVF queuing network in an integrated cloud healthcare system, where the two key medical services, that is, egg retrieval (...) and transplantation, are assigned to accomplish in the general hospital, while the routine medical tests are assigned into the community hospital. Based on continuous-time Markov procedure, a dynamic large-scale server scheduling problem in this complicated service network is modeled with consideration of different arrival rates of multiple type of patients and different service capacities of multiple servers that can be defined as doctors of the general hospital. To solve this model, a reinforcement learning algorithm is proposed, where the reward functions are designed for four conflicting subcosts: setup cost, patient waiting cost, penalty cost for unsatisfied patient personal preferences, and medical cost of patient. The experimental results show that the optimal service rule of each server’s queue obtained by the RL method is significantly superior to the traditional service rule. (shrink)

In the complex environment, the suddenly changing structural parameters and abrupt actuator failures are often encountered, and the negligence or unproper handling method may induce undesired or unacceptable results. In this paper, taking the suddenly changing structural parameters and abrupt actuator failures into consideration, we focus on the robust adaptive control design for a class of heterogeneous Takagi–Sugeno fuzzy nonlinear systems subjected to discontinuous multiple uncertainties. The key point is that the switch modes not only vary with the system time (...) but also vary with the system states, and the intrinsic heterogeneous characteristics make it difficult to design stable controllers. Firstly, the concepts of differential inclusion are introduced to describe the heterogeneous fuzzy systems. Meanwhile, a fundamental lemma is provided to demonstrate the criteria of the boundness for a Filippov solution. Then, by using the set-valued Lie derivative of the Lyapunov function and introducing a vector of specific continuous functions, the closed-loop T-S fuzzy differential inclusion systems are proved to be ultimately bounded. The sufficient conditions for system stability are derived in term of linear matrix inequalities, which can be solved directly. Finally, a numerical example is provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed control algorithm. (shrink)

The neural crest is a transient population of multipotent progenitors arising at the lateral edge of the neural plate in vertebrate embryos. After delamination and migration from the neuroepithelium, these cells contribute to a diverse array of tissues including neurons, smooth muscle, craniofacial cartilage, bone cells, endocrine cells and pigment cells. Considerable progress in recent years has furthered our understanding at a molecular level of how this important group of cells is generated and how they are assigned to specific lineages. (...) Here we review a number of recent studies supporting a role for Wnt signaling in neural crest induction, differentiation, and apoptosis. We also summarize the timing of expression of a number of Wnt ligands and receptors with respect to neural crest induction. BioEssays 25:317–325, 2003. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

This essay presents an in-depth interpretation of the controversial dialogue in Analects 13.18 through careful and critical investigation of its historical background and philosophical significations. With a clarification of the multifaceted connotations of the word zhi (?, upright, forthright), my study brings out the play of irony in Confucius's words in Analects 13.18. According to my interpretation, not only is Confucius's reaction not inappropriate but it also demonstrates the art of early Confucian moral discretion that was informed by the teaching (...) of quan (? moral discretion). Accordingly, Confucius's judgment of the case embodied a high and bright middle way of moral choice originating in the openness and sincerity of heart. It epitomized a singular moment of deliberation and decision that was responsible for a sinuous opening of piety and individuality within the interplay of conflicting conditions and requisitions. (shrink)

Twenty-five years ago, when I went down to the countryside to live and work in a production team, I took a few books with me, one of which was Ovid's Metamorphoses. The people in our team looked through it many times, read and reread it, until it was as ragged as a roll of dried seaweed. Then people from other teams borrowed it, and I spotted it in several different places, looking more and more dilapidated. I believe that in the (...) end the book was read to death. Even now I still can't forget what a sorry state it was in. Life in the team was very hard—We didn't have enough to eat, we couldn't get used to the climate, and many people got sick; but the worst hardship of all was that there were no books to read. If we had had a lot of books to read, Metamorphoses would not have disappeared so tragically. On top of this, we never had the pleasure of thought. I do not believe I was alone in this experience: As you sat lonely and forlorn under the eaves in the twilight, and watched the sky slowly darken, you felt that you'd been deprived of your life. I was young then, but I was scared of having to go on living like that, of growing old like that. To my mind, that would be even more frightening than death. (shrink)

For a long time now there have been different interpretations of the philosophical category "one divides into two." The debate that took place in scholarly circles in 1964 over "one divides into two" and "two combine into one" began with the question of how to interpret this category. At first this was a very lively and widespread scholarly debate. But later, because those "authorities on theory" who had at that time taken over the reigns of intellectual leadership within the Party (...) created contemporary superstitions that inhibited thought, the tone and boundaries of this debate became arbitrarily fixed and circumscribed so that this scholarly question became a political issue resulting in the criticism and trial of comrades such as Yang Xianzhen and the premature death of this debate. Today, in accordance with the spirit of the Third Session of the Eleventh Congress of the Central Committee of the Party, with an attitude of really searching for the truth, we must undertake a new and correct evaluation of this debate. Politically, we must overturn the false charges which were wrongly leveled at Comrade Yang Xianzhen and others, and intellectually, we must uphold the policy of "let a hundred schools contend, let a hundred flowers bloom." We must encourage the free discussion of different points of view, and we must avoid issuing hasty conclusions. All of us comrades who participated in this debate should accept the valuable experience and lessons learned from it. We want the debate on this question to truly become a widespread intellectual debate which will once again develop and move forward healthily. In this article I would simply like to talk about a few of my own views concerning the problem of how to correctly interpret "one divides into two.". (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to analyse the effects of personal demographic factors on Chinese university students’ values and perceptions of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) issues, and to identify the link between personal values and perceptions of CSR. The quantitative data consisted of 980 Chinese university students, and were collected by using a structured self-completion questionnaire. This study found that: 1) the importance of values education should be stressed, because we found that altruistic values associate negatively with perception of (...) CSR, in contrast, egoistic values associate positively; 2) a CSR education programme should be designed accordingly to fit different student characteristics and needs such as gender and major differences; 3) values should be used as criteria for education and recruitment purposes, e.g., we found that female students represent more ethical values than male students, and have a more negative perception of the CSR performance; 4) the importance of environment performance should be recognised by Chinese corporations and policy-makers, because we found that Chinese corporations perform better in economic and social responsibilities than environmental responsibility. It provides an insight of the value structures of Chinese university students and the forces that shape ethical perceptions. It offers a comprehensive study of Chinese companies’ CSR performance, and the results improve the awareness of scholars and managers in solving the current problems and developing their CSR performances further. (shrink)

Disjunctivism is the view that perceptual experience is either constituted by fact in the world or mere appearance. This view is said to be able to guarantee our cognitive contact with the world, and thus remove a crucial “prop” upon which skepticism depends. This paper has two aims. First, it aims to show that disjunctivism is a solution to Cartesian skepticism. Cartesian skepticism is an epistemological thesis, not an ontological one. Therefore, if there is an external world, we may well (...) undergo a veridical experience, and thus we can take advantage of disjunctivism to adopt an anti-evidential-skepticism strategy to counter Cartesian skepticism. Second, this paper argues that disjunctivism fails to solve Pyrrhonian skepticism. To counter Pyrrhonian skepticism, one has to give reasons both for his belief and for his believing. But disjunctivism can only account the former, that is, the reason for the content of perceptual belief. Given that one’s experience in good case and bad case is subjectively indistinguishable, one cannot just use his experience to justify his believing. This shows that disjunctivism cannot meet the requirement to provide an adequate account for reflective knowledge. (shrink)

Through a Confucian critique of modern colonial politics and the failure of Western conscience in a number of historical and literary settings (including the Opium Wars, the Holocaust and the modern slavery), the article criticizes the illusory foundation and inexorable predicaments of modern imperialism. The goal of my investigation is to break open the normative authority of modern Western ideologies so as to initiate a new horizon for the hermeneutics of Confucianism and to suggest an alternative vision of humanity and (...) cosmopolitanism in Confucianism. (shrink)

As one of the key technologies for accelerating the construction of the ubiquitous Internet of Things, demand response not only guides users to participate in power market operations but also increases the randomness of grid operations and the difficulty of load forecasting. In order to solve the problem of rough feature engineering processing and low prediction accuracy, a short-term load forecasting model of LSTM neural network considering demand response is proposed. First of all, in view of the strong randomness and (...) complexity of input features, the weighted method is used to process multiple input features to strengthen the contribution of effective features and tap the potential value of features. Secondly, an improved genetic algorithm is used to obtain the best LSTM parameters; finally, the special gate structure of the LSTM model is used to selectively control the influence of input variables on the model parameters and perform load forecasting. The experimental results show that the research has high prediction accuracy and application value and provides a new way for the development of power load forecasting. (shrink)

The relationship between urban expansion and population density changes is complex and plays a fundamental role in urban sustainable development research. This relationship has been studied in multiple large cities. However, there is no report of the relationship of the two factors mentioned above in urban agglomeration in a particular region of China. Ten cities located in the central-southern region of Liaoning province are selected as research samples in this study. The spatial growth rate and urban compactness index of the (...) sample cities were calculated using the land use and population data of these cities in three time phases: 1995, 2005, and 2015. Then, the geographical growth features, the population density changes, and the link between these two in the sample cities were investigated at these three periods. Our results revealed that the studied cities of central-southern Liaoning province expanded at the three time phases under the driver of positive population density growth, but the effects of urban population change on urbanization growth modes across time were uneven across different periods. Our study showed a trend that active transition of different urbanization growth modes was associated with decreased population density. (shrink)

The current discussions of conceptual schemes and related topics are misguided; for they are based on a tacit assumption that the difference between two schemes consists in the different distributions in truth-values. I argue that what should concern us, in the discussions of conceptual schemes and related issues, is not truth-values of assertions, but rather the truth-value-status of the sentences used to make the assertions. This is because the genuine conceptual innovation between alternative theories or languages does not lie in (...) differences in determining truth-values of their sentences, but turns on whether these sentences have truth-values when considered within the context of a competing one. This new interpretation of the notion of conceptual schemes, which I refer to as presuppositional languages, is not only good in itself—for establishing the intelligibility and tenability of the notion—but quite beneficial in its effect on other related issues. (shrink)

To grasp the truth in traditional Chinese classics, we need to uncover the long obscured "xiang" 象 (image) thinking, which has long been overshadowed by Occidentalism, "xiang thinking" is the most fundamental thought of human beings. The logic of linguistics all comes from "xiang thinking". Through conceptual thinking, people can understand Western classics on metaphysics, yet they may not completely understand the various schools of Chinese classics. The difference between Chinese and Western ways of thinking originated in the difference of (...) the basic views developed in the "Axial period". Since Aristotle, Western metaphysical ideas have all been manifested in substantiality, objectivity, and being ready-made, whereas Chinese Taiji, Dao, Xin-xing, and Zen were manifested in the non-substantiality, non-objectivity, and non-ready-made-ness of a dynamic whole. To grasp substance, rational and logical thinking such as definition, judgment, and reasoning is necessary. On the other hand, to grasp Taiji, Dao, etc., which is a dynamic whole or non-substances, "xiang thinking", which is related to perception and rich in poetic association, is essential. History has taught us a lesson, i.e., when we opened the window to logical thought, we closed that of "xiang thinking". We should remember the words of Xu Guangqi, i.e., "To mingle harmoniously and understand thoroughly so as to excel". /// 重新打开被西方中心论长期遮蔽的 "象思维" 是把握中国传统经典本真的 需要。"象思维" 是人类最本原的思维。语言逻辑部经过 "象思维" 孕育而产生。 用概念思维可以透彻解读西方形上学经典，却未必能透彻解读中国诸家经典。中西 两种思维的不同，源于在 "轴心时期" 产生的基本理念的不同。西方形上学理念从 亚里士多德以降均为不同实体，显示为实体性、对象性、现成性。而中国的太极、 道、心性、禅则显示为动态整体的非实体性、非对象性、非现成性。把握实体，需 要用理性的、逻辑的概念思维，如定义、判断、推理等。而把握动态整体或非实体 的太极、道等，则需要用悟性的、诗意联想的 "象思维"。历史的经验教训是:在我 们打开逻辑概念思维这扇窗户时，却错误地关闭了 "象思维" 这扇窗户。我们应记 住徐光启的箴言 "会通以超胜"。. (shrink)

In this article, we present an attempt to reconcile intellectualism and the anti-intellectualist ability account of knowledge-how by reducing “S knows how to F” to, roughly speaking, “S knows that she has the ability to F demonstrated by a concrete way w.” More precisely, “S has a certain ability” is further formalized as the proposition that S can guarantee a certain goal by a concrete way w of some method under some precondition. Having the knowledge of our own ability, we (...) can plan our future actions accordingly, which would not be possible by merely having the ability without knowing it, and this pinpoints the crucial difference between knowledge-how and ability. Our semi-formal account avoids most of the objections to both intellectualism and the anti-intellectualist ability account, and provides a multistage learning process of knowledge-how, which reveals various subtleties. (shrink)

What I relate is the history of the next two centuries. I describe what is coming, what can no longer come differently: the advent of nihilism. This history can be related even now; for necessity i...

In order to solve the problem of unsmooth and inefficient human-computer interaction process in the information age, a method for human-computer interaction intention prediction based on electroencephalograph signals and eye movement signals is proposed. This approach is different from previous methods where researchers predict using data from human-computer interaction and a single physiological signal. This method uses the eye movements and EEG signals that clearly characterized the interaction intention as the prediction basis. In addition, this approach is not only tested (...) with multiple human-computer interaction intentions, but also takes into account the operator in different cognitive states. The experimental results show that this method has some advantages over the methods proposed by other researchers. In Experiment 1, using the eye movement signal fixation point abscissa Position X, fixation point ordinate Position Y, and saccade amplitude to judge the interaction intention, the accuracy reached 92%, In experiment 2, only relying on the pupil diameter, pupil size and fixed time, fixed time of eye movement signals can not achieve higher accuracy of the operator’s cognitive state, so EEG signals are added. The cognitive state was identified separately by combining the screened EEG parameters Rα/β with the eye movement signal pupil diameter and fixation time, with an accuracy of 91.67%. The experimental combination of eye movement and EEG signal features can be used to predict the operator’s interaction intention and cognitive state. (shrink)

Dialetheism is the view that there are true contradictions. Classical dialetheism holds further the view that the law of excluded middle is indeed a logical law. Most famous dialetheists, such as G. Priest and J. Beall, are classical dialetheists; they take classical dialetheism to be the only plausible solution to the semantic paradoxes. The main contention of the paper is, however, that their views should be rejected. Based on inspecting Priest’s and Beall’s dialetheist theories from a special perspective, this paper (...) contends that classical dialetheism has no natural and plausible way to assign truth values to various truth-ineliminable sentences, i.e., sentences whose truth-conditions essentially involve the property of being true . Several examples of such truth-ineliminable sentences are given in the paper, and two classical dialetheist strategies for assigning them truth values are inspected. This paper argues that none of these strategies is successful. (shrink)

Yin Haiguang’s investigation and pursuit of the idea of “Man” reflect not merely a limited historical or parochial academic interest, but indeed address an ultimate concern of humanity which transcends any spatio-temporal limitations. In criticizing “modern man” for its faceless and non-self-identical figure, Yin Haiguang brings the conditions, purposes and noble values of humanity to light. His work has extraordinary significance for the highest aims of humanity and civilization.

Grammatical gender agreement has been well addressed in language comprehension but less so in language production. The present article discusses the arguments derived from the most prominent language production models on the representation and processing of the grammatical gender of nouns in language production and then reviews recent empirical studies that provide some answers to these arguments.

In this note we shall describe the lattice of the congruences on a balanced Ockham algebra with the pseudocomplementation whose quotient algebras are boolean. This is an extension of the result obtained by Rodrigues and Silva who gave a description of the lattice of congruences on an Ockham algebra whose quotient algebras are boolean.