The significance of horizontal gene transfer (HGT) in eukaryotic evolution remains controversial. Although many eukaryotic genes are of bacterial origin, they are often interpreted as being derived from mitochondria or plastids. Because of their fixed gene pool and gene loss, however, mitochondria and plastids alone cannot adequately explain the presence of all, or even the majority, of bacterial genes in eukaryotes. Available data indicate that no insurmountable barrier to HGT exists, even in complex multicellular eukaryotes. In addition, the discovery of (...) both recent and ancient HGT events in all major eukaryotic groups suggests that HGT has been a regular occurrence throughout the history of eukaryotic evolution. A model of HGT is proposed that suggests both unicellular and early developmental stages as likely entry points for foreign genes into multicellular eukaryotes. (shrink)

The concept of integrity appears in many arguments and theories in business ethics and organizational behavior where it plays multiple roles. It has been shown to have desirable organizational outcomes and is held as important by the academic and practitioner alike. Yet despite its prominence there are a variety of approaches to defining and conceptualizing it and little existent theory to explain its nature. We offer integrative social contracts theory (ISCT) as a framework that can anchor integrity in ethical theory (...) and also encompass aspects of integrity such as wholeness, consistency, and authenticity. In addition we show how ISCT can resolve some of the challenges to definitions of integrity that have been raised in the literature and hence we provide some suggestions for future academic research and suggestions for the practitioner. (shrink)

Although death statutes permitting physicians to declare brain death are relatively uniform throughout the United States, academic debate persists over the equivalency of human death and brain death. Alan Shewmon showed that the formerly accepted integration rationale was conceptually incomplete by showing that brain-dead patients demonstrated a degree of integration. We provide a more complete rationale for the equivalency of human death and brain death by defending a deeper understanding of the organism as a whole and by using a novel (...) strategy with shared objectives to justify death determination criteria. Our OaaW account describes different types of OaaW, defining human death as the loss of status as a human OaaW. We defend human death as similar to nonhuman death in terms of wakefulness, but also distinct in terms of the sui generis properties, particularly conscious awareness. We thereby defend the equivalency of brain death and human death using a resulting neurocentric rationale. (shrink)

This is a premature baby. I have decided to submit this rather immature essay to the circle of scholarship mainly because of two considerations, each of which, I must admit, carries with it some deeper concerns.

This paper reconstructs Sartre’s account of the “circuit of ipseity” as an integral theory of the experiential, agentive and normative aspects of self-consciousness. At the core of this theory is a conception of human (self-)consciousness as lacking, and the correlation between lacking and ideal. In Section 1, I show how this theory manages to satisfy the apparently incompatible requirements generated by the idea of a pre-reflective cogito. Section 2 discusses practical self-consciousness, in particular the agent’s consciousness of herself as self-determined (...) in the projection and pursuit of ends, and how this is accounted for in Sartre’s theory by the correlation of lack and ideal. Section 3 first clarifies the Sartrean conception of the ideal by comparing it with Korsgaard’s, and then reconstructs Sartre’s account of practical normativity by showing how it can be read as emerging from a critical engagement with Heidegger. (shrink)

Controversies surrounding social media platforms have provided opportunities for institutional reflexivity amongst users and regulators on how to understand and govern platforms. Amidst contestation, platform companies have continued to enact projects that draw upon existing modes of privatized governance. We investigate how social media companies have attempted to achieve closure by continuing to set the terms around platform governance. We investigate two projects implemented by Facebook (Meta)—authenticity regulation and privacy controls—in response to the Russian Interference and Cambridge Analytica controversies surrounding (...) the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election. Drawing on Goffman’s metaphor of stage management, we analyze the techniques deployed by Facebook to reinforce a division between what is visible and invisible to the user experience. These platform governance projects propose to act upon _front-stage data relations:_ information that users can see from other users—whether that is content that users can see from “bad actors”, or information that other users can see about oneself. At the same time, these projects relegate _back-stage data relations_—information flows between users constituted by recommendation and targeted advertising systems—to invisibility and inaction. As such, Facebook renders the user experience actionable for governance, while foreclosing governance of back-stage data relations central to the economic value of the platform. As social media companies continue to perform platform governance projects following controversies, our paper invites reflection on the politics of these projects. By destabilizing the boundaries drawn by platform companies, we open space for continuous reflexivity on how platforms should be understood and governed. (shrink)

Balancing a hermeneutic of trust with a hermeneutic of suspicion, this article develops a phenomenological description of imagination that highlights its alethic ambiguity. Imagination is an act of disclosure, without which the world of fiction and pure possibility cannot be constituted. Imagination is also an act of self-indulgence and narcissism, the source of much concealment and untruth. It is not the one or the other, but both at the same time, essentially ambiguous because of its phenomenological constitution. In this article, (...) I will take some steps towards clarifying this essential ambiguity of the imagination by drawing on the insights of Husserl and Sartre. Beginning with Husserl’s parallel treatment of imagination and perception as intuitive, objectifying acts, I will argue, drawing on insights from Sartre, that there is an important discrepancy between them with respect to the role of desire. While the constitution of perceptual presence is inseparable from a desire for truth, the desire involved in the constitution of imaginary presence has an ambiguous character, both epistemic and magical. This duplicity of desire partly accounts for the ambiguity of imagination, which is all the more pronounced the more the imagination demands the full emotional involvement of the imagining subject. (shrink)

As the essence of livestream e-commerce is social commerce, building a livestream brand community and attracting brand followers are the key aspects to achieving sustained revenue. For many companies, inviting celebrities has become a shortcut to attract new followers. Considering the unsustainability and high cost of the celebrity host mode, some companies switched to using their own branded broadcasters to attract followers. However, as branded broadcasters lack a fan base, choosing the suitable broadcaster type has become a challenge in livestream (...) e-commerce. The motivation of consumers to follow brand livestream accounts is mainly to obtain potential value by embedding them in social networks. Therefore, based on motive theory, this research explores how different broadcaster types affect consumer’s intention to follow a livestream brand community. Results from the analysis of secondary data from livestream platforms and two laboratory experiments reveal that celebrities contribute more to consumer’s intention to follow than branded broadcasters, and utilitarian products can strengthen the effect of branded broadcasters on attracting potential followers. Moreover, branded broadcasters can promote consumer’s intention to follow a livestream brand community by satisfying consumer’s need for informational value during utilitarian product evaluation. This research analyzes the differential effects of different types of broadcasters on livestream brand community building. The findings can deepen the understanding of the consumer’s behavior of following brand livestream communities and provide companies with suggestions on broadcaster selection in livestream e-commerce. (shrink)

Normative notions are central to Husserl’s account of intentionality: intending an object is a normative achievement, essentially admitting of fulfillment or disappointment. So is teleology: intentional conscious life is inseparable from a horizontal orientation toward “ideas in the Kantian sense.” How are they related? Is teleology essential for intentionality as a normative achievement? Or, in Husserl’s way of putting it, do relative truths “demand” ideal truths? This article explores some reasons for agreeing with Husserl that this is indeed the case. (...) In Sec. 2, I will identify a “normative turn” in Husserl’s account of the basic structure of perceptual intentionality and spell out the teleological character of this normative account. This sense of teleology is a minimal one. A more robust teleology, in the sense of an orientation toward infinite ideality, is then justified in Sec. 3 by virtue of its function in the constitution of genuine objectivity. In Sec. 4, I will turn to the noetic, especially the ego-oriented side of Husserl’s analysis, in order to clarify the normative force of infinite telos. All in all, I will argue that the normative and the teleological sides of the story are inextricably intertwined in Husserl’s account of intentional conscious life. (shrink)

Background: The concept of digital twins has great potential for transforming the existing health care system by making it more personalized. As a convergence of health care, artificial intelligence, and information and communication technologies, personalized health care services that are developed under the concept of digital twins raise a myriad of ethical issues. Although some of the ethical issues are known to researchers working on digital health and personalized medicine, currently, there is no comprehensive review that maps the major ethical (...) risks of digital twins for personalized health care services. Objective: This study aims to fill the research gap by identifying the major ethical risks of digital twins for personalized health care services. We first propose a working definition for digital twins for personalized health care services to facilitate future discussions on the ethical issues related to these emerging digital health services. We then develop a process-oriented ethical map to identify the major ethical risks in each of the different data processing phases. Methods: We resorted to the literature on eHealth, personalized medicine, precision medicine, and information engineering to identify potential issues and developed a process-oriented ethical map to structure the inquiry in a more systematic way. The ethical map allows us to see how each of the major ethical concerns emerges during the process of transforming raw data into valuable information. Developers of a digital twin for personalized health care service may use this map to identify ethical risks during the development stage in a more systematic way and can proactively address them. Results: This paper provides a working definition of digital twins for personalized health care services by identifying 3 features that distinguish the new application from other eHealth services. On the basis of the working definition, this paper further layouts 10 major operational problems and the corresponding ethical risks. Conclusions: It is challenging to address all the major ethical risks that a digital twin for a personalized health care service might encounter proactively without a conceptual map at hand. The process-oriented ethical map we propose here can assist the developers of digital twins for personalized health care services in analyzing ethical risks in a more systematic manner. (shrink)

Twenty classes in ten schools with 627 sixth?grade students in five cities in Taiwan participated in this study. The research provides information on the performance differences among written computation, pictorial representation, symbolic representation and number sense. The results of One?way ANOVA analysis indicate that significant difference was found among WCT, PRT, SRT and NST tests, with F=536.327, p=0.000. The a posteriori comparisons show for each pair (WCT vs PRT, WCT vs SRT, WCT vs NST, PRT vs SRT and SRT vs (...) NST) significant difference at the 0.001 level (p=0.000), except for the pair comparison between PRT and NST. This implies that these Taiwanese students were highly skilled in written computation but their written skills were not equally transferred to use of non?computational paths that depended on symbolic representation, pictorial representation and number sense to solve similar problems. (shrink)

In the literature on expert trust, it is often assumed that track records are the gold standard for evaluating expertise, and the difficulty of expert identification arises from either the lack of access to track records, or the inability to assess them. I show, using a computational model, that even in an idealized environment where agents have a God’s eye view on track records, they may fail to identify experts. Under plausible conditions, selecting testimony based on track records ends up (...) reducing overall accuracy, and preventing the community from identifying the real experts. (shrink)

Two types of formal models - landscape search tasks and two-armed bandit models - are often used to study the effects that various social factors have on epistemic performance. I argue that they can be understood within a single framework. In this unified framework, I develop a model that may be used to understand the effects of functional and demographic diversity and their interaction. Using the unified model, I find that the benefit of demographic diversity is most pronounced in a (...) functionally homogeneous group, and decreases with the increase of functional diversity. (shrink)

This commentary places Jussim in dialogue with sociological perspectives on social reality and the political-academic nature of scientific paradigms. Specifically, we highlight how institutions, observers, and what is being observed intersect, and discuss the implications of this intersection on measurement within the social world. We then identify similarities between Jussim's specific narrative regarding social perception research, with noted patterns of scientific change.

This study attempts to investigate the relationships among the ethical beliefs of Chinese consumers and orientations based on attitudinal attributes: materialism and moral philosophies (idealism and relativism). In addition, this study examines Chinese consumers' ethical beliefs in relation to five selected demographic characteristics (gender, age, religion, family income and education). Based on this exploratory study of 284 Chinese consumers, the following statistically significant findings were discovered. First, Chinese consumers regard that a passively benefiting activity is more ethical, but actively benefiting (...) from an illegal or a questionable activity is unacceptable. Second, the two dimensions of passively benefiting and no harm/no foul can be used to distinguish the consumers who endorse higher levels of idealism or relativism. Third, Chinese consumers with a high level of materialism are more likely to actively benefit from illegal and questionable activities, and the passively benefiting actions. Finally, the more ethical Chinese consumers seem to be younger, be religious, and have a lower family income. (shrink)

This study examined how self-worth of students mediated and moderated their perceived positive teacher-student relationships and student engagement among middle-school students from rural China. Eighth graders completed surveys measuring their perceived relationships with teachers, their self-worth, and engagement. Statistical analyses revealed significant correlations among all three variables, with the strongest being between teacher-student relationships and student engagement. The structural equation modeling indicated that self-worth partially mediated the effect of teacher-student relationships on student engagement; however, positive teacher-student relationships were a stronger (...) predictor. Multigroup analyses identified self-worth as a moderator, whereby students with lower self-worth were more reliant on positive teacher-student relationships to enhance their engagement. This study provides insights into how self-worth of students and their perceived positive teacher-student relationships influence their academic engagement in disadvantaged rural areas of China. (shrink)

This paper explores how contemporary discussions of conceptual engineering can benefit from Richard Rorty's approach by outlining Rortian conceptual engineering. Three perspectives on Rortian conceptual engineering are discussed. First, Rortian conceptual engineering represents a form of radical conceptual engineering that dismisses the role of folk intuitions and views philosophical progress as the replacement of old problems with new ones. More specifically, Rortian conceptual engineering sees conceptual revolution as a process in which new metaphors replace old literal meanings. Second, Rorty's metaphilosophical (...) distinction between epistemological and conversational philosophy is more profound than the distinctions between conceptual analysis and conceptual engineering, or between functional and nonfunctional approaches, thus enhancing our understanding of two types of contemporary conceptual engineering: epistemological and conversational. Third, Rorty argues that choosing concepts should take into account not only the competing concepts but also the conceptual schemes in which these concepts are situated. (shrink)

Over the span of nearly 10 years, the social work labor force grew from 0.2 million to approximately 1.2 million in China. Despite these increases, studies have shown social workers in China are also experiencing equally high burnout rates. For this analysis, we collected data from 537 social workers based in Guangzhou, China. We used the job demands and resources theory, to examine the relations between JD-R and burnout and whether mindfulness practice could reduce any such burnout. Our results suggest (...) JD-R affects social workers’ burnout through both health and motivation impairment. High job demands were linked to high burnout while high job resources were linked to a reduction in burnout. Formal and informal MP were associated with low burnout amongst social workers. The significant interaction between JD and MP also suggests that MP can reduce burnout for social workers with high JD. The findings call for using MP to be used to shield social workers from the effects of increasing JD and to prevent an increase of burnout amongst Chinese social workers. (shrink)

In this study, we explore the psychological mechanisms underlying the relation between college students’ post-traumatic growth and their entrepreneurial intentions in the post-COVID-19 era. Using the post-traumatic growth, entrepreneurial self-efficacy, prosocial tendency, and entrepreneurial intention scales, we tested 690 valid samples of Chinese undergraduates. The results revealed that post-traumatic growth of college students in the post-COVID-19 era will have a significant and positive effect on their entrepreneurial intentions. Additionally, the results indicated that students’ entrepreneurial self-efficacy and prosocial tendencies play a (...) partial mediation role between post-traumatic growth and entrepreneurial intentions in the post-COVID-19 era and that there is a chain mediating effect between students’ entrepreneurial self-efficacy and prosocial tendencies. This study provides valuable insights into the influence of post-traumatic growth on entrepreneurial intentions among college students in the post-COVID-19 era and suggests that colleges and universities can improve students’ entrepreneurial intentions by adopting measures to foster their post-traumatic growth, entrepreneurial self-efficacy, and prosocial tendencies. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 2, Page 22-24, February 2012.

This article grounds the morality of secession on two forms of collective self-determination: one manifests the communal goods of secessionists and the other the value of shared political institutions. Secession is morally valuable when the two are incompatible such that the claimant confronts persistent alienation. For remedial rights theories, only ‘strict violations’ permit secession. For primary rights theories, ‘broad violations’ grant secession as a last resort, and so this thesis, ‘collective self-determination as nonalienation’, should be accepted regardless. First, as the (...) two collective forms of self-determination develop two forms of territorial rights, it supplements cogent accounts of territorial justification for, and claims to, secession. Second, as persistent alienation can have both strict and broad interpretations, it also provides moral grounds shared by remedial and primary rights theories if they concede the value of collective self-determination. The strict sense refers to persistent coercion that violates personal autonomy and nullifies state legitimacy. The broad interpretation denotes long-term political frustration caused by unreasonable prevention of greater collective autonomy that even legitimate states may achieve. Third, to verify whether this amounts to long-term political frustration and to address persistent alienation, secession should be regarded as a last resort, despite its support from the primary rights account. (shrink)

I challenge the idea by Glowacki that “strong sanctions” such as fines, physical punishment, or execution are more effective in promoting peace than “weak punishments” like social rejection. Reviewing evidence that social rejection can have significant social and psychological costs for norm violators, I propose that social rejection can serve as a powerful reputational sanction in fostering peace in society.

Apoptosis proteins have a central role in the development and homeostasis of an organism. These proteins are very important for understanding the mechanism of programmed cell death, and their function is related to their types. According to the classification scheme by Zhou and Doctor (2003), the apoptosis proteins are categorized into the following four types: (1) cytoplasmic protein; (2) plasma membrane-bound protein; (3) mitochondrial inner and outer proteins; (4) other proteins. A powerful learning machine, the Support Vector Machine, is applied (...) for predicting the type of a given apoptosis protein by incorporating the sqrt-amino acid composition effect. High success rates were obtained by the re-substitute test (98/98 = 100 %) and the jackknife test (89/98 = 90.8%). (shrink)

Virtue ethics has become an important rival to deontology and consequentialism, the two dominant moral theories in modern Western philosophy. What unites various forms of virtue ethics and distinguishes virtue ethics from its rivals is its emphasis on the primacy of virtue. In this article, I start with an explanation of the primacy of virtue in virtue ethics and two dilemmas, detected by Gary Watson, that virtue ethics faces: (1) virtue ethics may maintain the primacy of virtue and thus leave (...) virtue non-explanatory, or it may attempt to explain virtue in terms of something else and thus render virtue secondary at most; (2) the explanation of virtue may be objective and thus become morally indeterminate, or it may be normative and thus lack objectivity, merely re-expressing the virtue it intends to explain (Section II). After showing the failure of both classical Aristotelian and contemporary neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics to escape these dilemmas, I turn to the ethical theory of Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200)—the greatest synthesizer of neo-Confucianism, whose place in Confucianism is comparable to that of Thomas Aquinas in the Christian tradition—to show how it can successfully avoid both dilemmas. (shrink)

This study seeks to clarify the nature of linguistic synesthesia using a lexical-conceptual account. Based on a lexical analysis of Mandarin synesthetic usages, we find that linguistic synesthesia maps the metaphorical meaning between two domains; and linguistic synesthetic mappings and conceptual metaphoric mappings have similar behaviors when sense modalities are treated as conceptual domains that contain a set of mappings constrained by Mapping Principles. This lexical-conceptual account is designed to capture the fact that linguistic synesthesia involves mapping between lexicalized concepts (...) of sensory properties, instead of the real-time sensory input that is processed in neurological synesthesia. The incorporation of a lexical semantic view with the framework of Conceptual Metaphor Theory not only offers a coherent and comprehensive account for the nature of linguistic synesthesia, but also handles aspects of linguistic synesthesia previously only accounted for by non-metaphorical accounts. These design features make this proposal the most comprehensive account to fit the current data. Furthermore, by showing linguistic synesthesia as a type of metaphor, our study strengthens the role of conceptual metaphors as the link between the perceived world and our conceptualization of that world. (shrink)

本书阐述了清朝早期的主要学术氛围以及当时清朝政府统治下的政治、文化特色. 黄教授生动描述了本书中心人物李绂与其侍奉过的三代帝王--康熙、雍正、乾隆. 李绂出身贫苦, 考中状元, 成为一名杰出的官方学者, 并创作了数部重要哲学论著. 他还曾卷入如朝廷与少数民族之间复杂的政治纠纷中. 李绂与中国历史上三位重要帝王之间的复杂关系导致了他屡遭贬黜, 甚至判处死刑, 只是在临刑前才得以幸免.

《老子汇校新解》以《四部丛刊》影汉河上公章句《老子道德经》宋刻本为底本，以光绪浙江书局重刻明华亭张子象本王弼《老子道德经注》、明正统《道藏》本傅奕校定《道德经古本》、马王堆帛书《老子》、郭店楚简《老子 》、唐景龙二年易州龙兴观道德经碑5种版本为主要参校本。通过对《老子》原文的重新校勘和注训，一方面尽可能的恢复其文本的旧貌，一方面大限度的揭示其文辞的本义，从而更好地去发现其所蕴含的哲学思想。.

本书内容包括:传统逻辑在知识创新中的作用、数理逻辑在知识创新中的作用、哲学逻辑在知识创新中的作用等。.

Cet article vise à réintégrer la question du langage intérieur dans les idées linguistiques de l’énonciation, notamment celles sur le mode de signifiance et l’opération énonciative. En nous référant aux études de Benveniste, de Merleau-Ponty et de Culioli, nous examinons dans quelle mesure le langage intérieur se distingue du monologue intérieur au sens de se parler à soi-même : ce langage intérieur en tant qu’expression pure et naturelle du sens général, implique une réflexivité non consciente et non verbale, dans la (...) genèse du sens ainsi que dans la construction dynamique des formes discursives. Eu égard à ces valeurs, nous procédons à l’analyse énonciative du discours littéraire de la conscience. Plusieurs faits de discours, liés à la non-coïncidence entre le mot et la chose vécue dans la conscience, tels que la nomination, l’indéfinition, la négation, manifestent les traces du langage intérieur global, non construit, inconscient et silencieux, qui mobilise le langage extériorisé. (shrink)

借助“從后思索”和“宏大敘事”兩大方法，通過對經典文本的整體性研讀，我們不難發現：馬克思完成了對經院哲學、思辨哲學和感性哲學的全面批判。從批判理論的演進脈絡來看，經典作家展示了宗教批判—政治批判—哲學 批判—經濟學批判—人類學批判的邏輯進路，經歷了從抽象批判到現實批判，再從現實批判回到抽象批判的“否定之否定”的心路歷程。《南華大學學術文庫：馬克思批判理論的邏輯進路》包括八個部分。 第一部分，馬克思早年的哲學立場——辯證法的嫻熟運用。受青年黑格爾派的影響，柏林大學學習期間馬克思對問題的理解雖然沒有超出思辨唯心主義境域，但他還是通過對黑格爾辯證法的嫻熟運用和自我意識能動原則的強調， 表明了哲學應該積極干預生活的基本立場。第二部分，馬克思的宗教批判——把人從神的束縛下解放出來。馬克思不僅依據費爾巴哈的宗教理論展開了對黑格爾宗教觀的批判，而且他還進一步指出費爾巴哈脫離現實、忽視政治， 這正是他對宗教批判的致命缺陷。第三部分，馬克思的政治批判——指出國家和法淪為私人利益的工具。 青年馬克思在對黑格爾國家觀進行批判之后，又聯系德國的社會現實進一步論述了宗教解放和政治解放的關系，深刻批判了政治解放的局限性，肯定人類解放是人的徹底解放。第四部分，馬克思的哲學批判——以實踐為基礎的唯 物史觀的創立。通過對以往哲學信仰的清算，馬克思立足于實踐創立了唯物史觀，從而實現了哲學史上的深刻變革。 第五部分，馬克思的經濟學批判——探討資本主義產生、發展和滅亡的規律。與《手稿》經濟學初次批判有所不同，《資本論》是馬克思經濟學批判的全面展開，通過對科學方法論和唯物史觀一般原理的運用，馬克思從關系存在 出發對勞動、商品和資本等范疇進行了闡述。第六部分，馬克思的人類學批判——強調人的解放和個性的自由全面發展。即便到了晚年，馬克思不僅對自己所創立的哲學進行了經濟學驗證，而且還根據當時涌現的新經驗和新材料 ，對人類學進行了批判性研究，并以當時俄國社會為考察對象，極為謹慎地提出了跨越“卡夫丁峽谷”的設想，從而體現了他對人類解放的關注。第七部分，馬克思批判理論的思維范式變革——關系思維、圓融思維和生成思維的 確立。從解決問題的方式來看，馬克思批判理論是通過思維范式的革命性變革來否定傳統哲學立論的根本原則，其思維范式的革命性變革主要表現在三個方面：從實體思維到關系思維；從二分思維到圓融思維；從預成思維到生成 思維。第八部分，馬克思批判理論的終極關懷——無法消解的形而上學情結。馬克思批判理論并不意味著整個形而上學歷史的終結。 相反，馬克思又一次成就了形而上學，究其根本原因在于馬克思本體論批判彰顯了對“現實的人”的關注、對人的生存境域的關心和對人的生存本性的合理理解。正因如此，馬克思哲學在當代現代化進程中具有重要意義。.

By creating a two-way dialogue between philosophers specializing in Chinese philosophy and Michael Slote, a central thinker from the Anglo-American tradition, this volume brings cross-cultural philosophy to life. From his early contributions in ethics, metaethics, philosophy of mind, moral psychology and epistemology to his recent investigations into the relationship between Western philosophy and Chinese philosophy, an international team of scholars of Chinese philosophy cover Slote's sentimentalism, his understanding of Chinese concepts Yin and Yang and explores the role Early Confucianism and (...) Neo-Confucianism can play in his work. (shrink)

Biobanks are vital for advancing medical research, and public participation is a crucial determinant of their success. This study uses a survey to assess the awareness, attitudes, and motivation of the public in China with regard to participating in biobanks. We conducted an online survey that yielded 616 responses from participants with diverse demographic backgrounds. The survey included questions on the respondents’ awareness of biobanks, their attitudes toward them, their preferences with regard to consent, and their concerns. The results of (...) the survey revealed that 57.95% of the respondents were aware of biobanks. Altruism was the respondents’ primary motivation for participation in biobanks. Their preferences for models of consent varied. The respondents raised concerns about the commercialization of biobanks (56.66%) and data privacy (55.84%). Notably, only 37.01% of the respondents were concerned about the risk of discrimination in biobanks, where this was lower compared with the results for populations in Western countries. This study provides valuable insights into the Chinese public’s awareness of and attitudes toward biobanks. To foster public trust and enhance participation, biobanks should prioritize transparent and continual communication to ensure that the participants are well informed about the use and protection of the samples that they have donated. Future research should explore the influence of cultural nuances to develop strategies that address specific concerns and ethical challenges in the context of public participation in biobanks. (shrink)