Background: The school meals program has multiple objectives of education, nutrition, and value transfer. To ensure achieving the goal, total quality management (TQM) is implemented in the school meals program. Supply chain issues pose significant challenges to TQM implementation in the program execution. Aim: This study aims to examine national and international capacities in supply chain management by analyzing the variety of food items delivered through the school meals program. Methods: The Bayesian Mindsponge Framework, combining the reasoning strengths of Mindsponge (...) Theory and inference advantages of Bayesian analysis, was employed on a dataset of 126 government representatives who manage large-scale school meal programs in 126 different countries. Results: Findings showed that the method of obtaining supplies, whether through in-kind donations from local, regional, national sources, or national food reserves and purchasing from neighboring or distant countries, had a significant positive association with the variety of food items included in school meals or snacks. Conversely, obtaining supplies in-kind from neighboring or distant countries had a significant negative association with the food variety. Additionally, purchasing supplies from local, regional, or national food reserves had an unclear association with the food variety. Conclusions: Findings underscore the importance of supporting the World Bank and World Food Programme’s recommendation to rely more on local resources and capacities. Enhancing supply chain management at the national level is crucial for developing a long-term and sustainable school meals program. (shrink)

: This is a study of the Confucian ideal of harmony and harmonization (he 和). First, through an investigation of the early development of he in ancient China, the meaning of this concept is explored. Second, a philosophical analysis of he and a discussion of the relation between harmony, sameness, and strife are offered. Also offered are reasons why this notion is so important to Confucian philosophy. Finally, on the basis of value pluralism, a case is made for the Confucian (...) approach of he to the politics of today's world culture. (shrink)

We present a theoretical rationale and supporting studies revealing how unethical leader behavior fosters an unethical climate within workgroups that increases member turnover intentions and malfeasance. Drawing on the attraction–selection–attrition model of organizational behavior, we propose a selective attrition effect whereby unethical leader behavior results in the retention of group members who are more comfortable with dishonesty and, consequently, more likely to engage in unethical behavior toward their group. In two experiments, exposure to unethical leader behavior increased group members’ likelihood (...) of choosing to leave the group. Members who chose to remain in a group with an unethical leader were more likely than those who chose to leave to cheat their group in a subsequent task. A two time-period survey replicated these findings and identified psychological distress as the mechanism driving group members’ turnover intentions. This research extends our understanding of the complex relationships between unethical leadership and follower turnover intentions, psychological distress, and malfeasance. We contribute to the behavioral ethics literature by identifying a previously underappreciated form of selective attrition that produces internal costs to groups and organizations, independent of reputational consequences and whether the unethicality is publicized. (shrink)

Capitalist reforms usually drive outmigration of peasants to cities, while elders, children, and women responsible for their care are “left behind” in the countryside. The plight of these “left behind” populations is a major focus of recent agrarian studies in China. However, rural women are not merely passive victims of these transformations. Building on ethnographic research in Guangxi and Henan provinces from 2013 to 2017, and drawing on critical gender studies and feminist political ecology, I show how the food safety (...) crisis in China creates conditions for peasant women to increase control and income from organic food production, often establishing alternative food networks with the support of female scholars and NGO organizers. Thus, I shift focus of scholarship on rural women from “left behind” to leaders in struggles for justice and food sovereignty. (shrink)

Humans can learn complex functional relationships between variables from small amounts of data. In doing so, they draw on prior expectations about the form of these relationships. In three experiments, we show that people learn to adjust these expectations through experience, learning about the likely forms of the functions they will encounter. Previous work has used Gaussian processes—a statistical framework that extends Bayesian nonparametric approaches to regression—to model human function learning. We build on this work, modeling the process of learning (...) to learn functions as a form of hierarchical Bayesian inference about the Gaussian process hyperparameters. (shrink)

Previous studies argue that religious firms are more ethical and thus engage less in accrual earnings management. At odds with the ethical view, we use a sample of Chinese listed firms and show that firms in religious regions use more real earnings management. We postulate that besides ethics, religion also proxies for risk aversion, which motivates firms to substitute accrual earnings management with real earnings management. Consistent with this view, we show that the positive association between religiosity and real earnings (...) management is more pronounced for firms with lower litigation risk and for firms with less reputable auditors. In addition, we use a mediation model introduced by Baron and Kenny :1173–1182, 1986) to show that religiosity affects earnings management through the channel of risk aversion. We conclude that firms choose real earnings management over accrual-based earnings management because of risk aversion, rather than ethical reasons. (shrink)

In this paper, I provide policymakers, who rely on science to address their missions, with two arguments for improving science for social benefits. I argue for a refined concept of social robustness that can distinguish socially appropriate cases of political reliance on science from inappropriate ones. Both of the constituents are essential for evaluating the social suitability of science-relevant policy or action. Using four cases of population control, I show that socially inappropriate political reliance on science can make science epistemically (...) and socially harmful. Moreover, I argue that such an evaluation process should be supported by a political culture of mutual criticism within science and society. This demands freedom of expression and critical examination of science-relevant policy consequences in view of a sufficiently wide range of social value commitments. This paper suggests that the same considerations of social robustness and political culture of mutual criticism should be of general relevance for policymakers engaging in debates about science and values such as those regarding climate change. (shrink)

In light of the dramatic growth of Chinese learners worldwide and a need for cross-linguistic research on Chinese literacy development, this study drew upon theories of visual complexity effect (Su & Samuels, 2010) and dual-coding processing (Sadoski & Paivio, 2013) and investigated a) the effects of character properties (i.e., visual complexity and radical presence) on character acquisition and b) the relationship between individual learner differences in radical awareness and character acquisition. Participants included adolescent English-speaking beginning learners of Chinese in the (...) U.S. Following Kuo et al. (2014), a novel character acquisition task was used to investigate the process of acquiring the meaning of new characters. Results showed that a) characters with radicals and with less visual complexity were easier to acquire than characters without radicals and with greater visual complexity; and b) individual differences in radical awareness were associated with the acquisition of all types of characters, but the association was more pronounced with the acquisition of characters with radicals. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings were discussed. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence systems have been widely applied to various contexts, including high-stake decision processes in healthcare, banking, and judicial systems. Some developed AI models fail to offer a fair output for specific minority groups, sparking comprehensive discussions about AI fairness. We argue that the development of AI systems is marked by a central paradox: the less participation one stakeholder has within the AI system’s life cycle, the more influence they have over the way the system will function. This means that (...) the impact on the fairness of the system is in the hands of those who are less impacted by it. However, most of the existing works ignore how different aspects of AI fairness are dynamically and adaptively affected by different stages of AI system development. To this end, we present a use case to discuss fairness in the development of corporate wellness programs using smart wearables and AI algorithms to analyze data. The four key stakeholders throughout this type of AI system development process are presented. These stakeholders are called service designer, algorithm designer, system deployer, and end-user. We identify three core aspects of AI fairness, namely, contextual fairness, model fairness, and device fairness. We propose a relative contribution of the four stakeholders to the three aspects of fairness. Furthermore, we propose the boundaries and interactions between the four roles, from which we make our conclusion about the possible unfairness in such an AI developing process. (shrink)

This paper investigates the relationships among board gender diversity, firm performance, and firm size. Our paper provides new insights into the relationship between board gender diversity and firm performance by examining whether firm size alters the impact of board gender diversity on firm performance. We use a panel data from A‐share‐listed non‐financial firms in China to examine the relationship during the period of 2007–2012. Our finding demonstrates that the gender diversity on the board has a positive impact on firm performance (...) if and only if the value of firm size is less than some critical value. In addition, we also find that firm size may undermine the positive impact of board gender diversity on firm performance. This paper contributes to the literature by offering a contingency approach to examine the relationship between board gender diversity and firm performance as well as shedding light on the relationship in the context of a developing economy. (shrink)

A set of sentential revision operations can be generated in a select-direct way within a new framework for belief change named descriptor revision firstly introduced in Hansson [8]. In this paper, we adopt another constructive approach to these operations, based on a relation \ on sentences named believability relation. Intuitively, \ means that the subject is at least as prone to believe or accept \ as to believe or accept \. We demonstrate that so called H-believability relations and basic believability (...) relations, the second of which the is axiomatically characterized with a set of weak postulates, are faithful alternative models for two typical select-direct sentential revision operations. Then we investigate additional postulates on believability relations that correlate with properties of the generated revision operations. Finally, we show that traditional AGM revision operations can be reconstructed from a strengthened variant of the basic believability relation and there is a close connection between this relation and the standard epistemic entrenchment relation. (shrink)

It is a truism that there are erroneous convictions in criminal trials. Recent legal findings show that 3.3% to 5%of all convictions in capital rape-murder cases in the U.S. in the 1980s were erroneous convictions. Given this fact, what normative conclusions can be drawn? First, the article argues that a moderately revised version of Scanlon’ s contractualism offers an attractive moral vision that is different from utilitarianism or other consequentialist theories, or from purely deontological theories. It then brings this version (...) of Scanlonian contractualism to bear on the question of whether the death penalty, life imprisonment, long sentences, or shorter sentences can be justified, given that there is a non-negligible rate of erroneous conviction. Contractualism holds that a permissible act must be justifiable to everyone affected by it. Yet, given the non-negligible rate of erroneous conviction, it is unjustifiable to mete out the death penalty, because such a punishment is not justifiable to innocent murder convicts. It is further argued that life imprisonment will probably not be justified (unless lowering the sentence to a long sentence will drastically increase the murder rate). However, whether this line of argument could be further extended would depend on the impact of lowering sentences on communal security. (shrink)

The present paper provides a critical edition of basic verses of Madhyamakāvatāra chapter 6. The verses are extracted from the Sanskrit manuscript of the Madhyamakāvatārabhāṣya preserved at Potala Palace. The Madhyamakāvatāra is one of Candrakīrti’s major works and clearly establishes his own doctrinal position. Chapter 6 contains most important doctrinal discussions of the work.

In recent years, many studies have been done to identify the factors that affect teacher emotions at schools. However, the empirical evidence on how teachers’ emotions influence students’ outcomes and performance is not extensive. Against this background, this study explored the correlation between teacher EI and student academic achievement and possible mechanisms may lie in this relationship. A sample of 365 Chinese teachers from 25 public middle schools participated in this study by completing measurements of teacher EI, teacher work engagement, (...) and teacher self-efficacy. The student academic achievement was assessed by the grades of the previous term reported by the students. The results indicated that teacher work engagement partially mediated the path from teacher EI and student academic achievement. Moderated mediation further showed that teachers with high self-efficacy had a more significant positive impact on the relationship between teacher work engagement and student academic achievement than teachers with low self-efficacy. The limitations of this study were also discussed. (shrink)

As human consumption is one of the key contributors to environmental problems, it is increasingly urgent to promote sustainable consumption. Drawing on the agentic-communal model of power, this research explores how the psychological feeling of power influences consumers’ preference for green products. We show that low power increases consumers’ preference for green products compared to high power. Importantly, we identify two factors moderating the main effect of power on green consumption. Specifically, we find that the effect of power on green (...) consumption is more salient among those with high green consumption values. In addition, the effects of power are dynamic as a function of power distance belief, such that low power promotes green consumption in the low-PDB context while high power promotes green consumption in the high-PDB context. Taken together, these findings provide novel insights into understanding green consumption from the perspectives of social power, green values, and PDB. Besides contributing to the literature, the findings have significant implications for marketers and policy-makers in promoting green campaigns, bridging the attitude-behavior gap, and building a more sustainable society. (shrink)

The inference systems proposed for solving SAT are unsound for solving MaxSAT and MinSAT, because they preserve satisfiability but not the minimum and maximum number of clauses that can be falsified, respectively. To address this problem, we first define a clause tableau calculus for MaxSAT and prove its soundness and completeness. We then define a clause tableau calculus for MinSAT and also prove its soundness and completeness. Finally, we define a complete clause tableau calculus for solving both MaxSAT and MinSAT, (...) in that the minimum number of generated empty clauses provides an optimal MaxSAT solution and the maximum number provides an optimal MinSAT solution. (shrink)

Traffic congestion is a common problem in many countries, especially in big cities. At present, China’s urban road traffic accidents occur frequently, the occurrence frequency is high, the accident causes traffic congestion, and accidents cause traffic congestion and vice versa. The occurrence of traffic accidents usually leads to the reduction of road traffic capacity and the formation of traffic bottlenecks, causing the traffic congestion. In this paper, the formation and propagation of traffic congestion are simulated by using the improved medium (...) traffic model, and the control strategy of congestion dissipation is studied. From the point of view of quantitative traffic congestion, the paper provides the fact that the simulation platform of urban traffic integration is constructed, and a feasible data analysis, learning, and parameter calibration method based on RBF neural network is proposed, which is used to determine the corresponding decision support system. The simulation results prove that the control strategy proposed in this paper is effective and feasible. According to the temporal and spatial evolution of the paper, we can see that the network has been improved on the whole. (shrink)

Objective wealth plays an important role in social interaction and economic decision making. Previous studies indicate that objective wealth of others may influence the way we participate in resources allocation. However, the effect of objective wealth on responses to fairness-related resource distribution is far from clear, as are the underlying neural processes. To address this issue, we dynamically manipulated proposers’ objective wealth and analyzed participants’ behavior as responders in a modified Ultimatum Game, during which event-related potentials were recorded. Behavioral results (...) showed that participants were prone to reject unfair proposals although that rejection would reduce their own benefit. Importantly, participants were more likely to accept unfair offers from proposers with low objective wealth than from proposers with high objective wealth, with a drastic increase in acceptance rates of unfair offers from 32.79 to 50.59%. Further electrophysiological results showed that there was significantly enhanced feedback-related negativity amplitude toward proposers with high objective wealth for unfair offers. Furthermore, the late frontal negativity amplitude was larger for all the conditions which are not high-fair, which might be the only option that did not elicit any ambiguity. These findings suggest a strong role of proposers’ objective wealth in modulating responders’ behavioral and neural responses to fairness. (shrink)

AimsA negative association between the lower level of psychological resilience and increased risk of compassion fatigue and higher Coronavirus disease 2019 stress has been revealed. However, bibliometric studies have not been performed to comprehensively investigate this topic. This study aimed to identify the status and trends in the CF and PR field from 2008 to 2021 and during the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodsWe identified relevant literature from the Web of Science Core Collection® database using “resilience” and “compassion fatigue” on September 30, 2021. (...) All search results were exported in plain text format for collaboration network analysis, reference-based co-citation analysis, analysis of journals, and keywords-based co-occurrence analysis, which were performed using Citespace® 5.8.R1.ResultsA total of 388 publications were identified finally, and there has been an increasing trend in the annual number of publications with light fluctuations. The analysis of journals and keywords indicated that nurses and social workers are the main research targets, and their mental problems are the main research topics. The turnover intention of health care providers has been a research focus, particularly during the COVID-19.ConclusionThe results of the present study help us understand the status of the CF and PR field and its recent developments. (shrink)

This paper is devoted to introduce a novel fourth-order hyperchaotic system. The hyperchaotic system is constructed by adding a linear feedback control level based on a modified Lorenz-like chaotic circuit with reduced number of amplifiers. The local dynamical entities, such as the basic dynamical behavior, the divergence, the eigenvalue, and the Lyapunov exponents of the new hyperchaotic system, are all investigated analytically and numerically. Then, an active control method is derived to achieve global chaotic synchronization of the novel hyperchaotic system (...) through making the synchronization error system asymptotically stable at the origin based on Lyapunov stability theory. Next, the proposed novel hyperchaotic system is applied to construct another new hyperchaotic system with circuit deformation and design a new hyperchaotic secure communication circuit. Furthermore, the implementation of two novel electronic circuits of the proposed hyperchaotic systems is presented, examined, and realized using physical components. A good qualitative agreement is shown between the simulations and the experimental results around 500 kHz and below 1 MHz. (shrink)

This paper argues that the value of openness to epistemic plurality and the value of social responsiveness are essential for epistemic agents such as scientists who are expected to carry out non-epistemic missions. My chief philosophical claim is that the two values should play a joint role in their communication about earthquake-related damages when their knowledge claims are advisory. That said, I try to defend a minimal normative account of science in the context of communication. I show that these epistemic (...) agents when acting as communicators may encounter various epistemic and practical uncertainties in making their knowledge claims. Using four vignettes, I show that the value of openness to epistemic plurality and the value of social responsiveness may best serve their epistemic and practical purposes across different contexts by reducing their epistemic and practical risks associated with the knowledge claims they communicated. The former may reduce the risks of prematurely excluding epistemic alternatives and is conducive to two types of epistemic plurality; the latter is supposed to reduce the risks of making self-defeating advisory claims and harmful wishful speaking by minimizing the values in tension that can be embedded in the social roles the epistemic agents play. (shrink)

Affect plays an important role in the consumer decision-making process and there is growing interest in the development of new technologies and computational approaches that can interpret and recognize the affects of consumers, with benefits for marketing described in relation to both academia and industry. From an interdisciplinary perspective, this paper aims to review past studies focused on electroencephalography (EEG)-based affective computing (AC) in marketing, which provides a promising avenue for studying the mechanisms underlying affective states and developing recognition computational (...) models to predict the psychological responses of customers. This review offers an introduction to EEG technology and an overview of EEG-based AC; provides a snapshot of the current state of the literature. It briefly presents the themes, challenges, and trends in studies of affect evaluation, recognition, and classification; and further proposes potential guidelines for researchers and marketers. (shrink)

The paper attends to the increasingly heated debate on the local, the global versus the glocal approaches in transcultural brand communication with an examination of how Disneyland performs emotional branding on social media across US to Hong Kong and Shanghai. Integrating insights from brand communication with linguistics, the present study develops a framework to examine how Disneyland builds emotional attachment of the public to the brand via brand personality appeals and use of interactional features. It is found that on a (...) global-local continuum, brand personality traits exhibit strong globalization propensity whereas interactional features demonstrate strong localization tendency in Hong Kong and Shanghai. Variations also exist in the means of emotional branding between Hong Kong and Shanghai. Finally, the paper provides an account for the differences between Hong Kong and Shanghai and concludes that neither the local approach nor the global approach but the glocal approach can tackle the challenge of transcultural brand communication and that future studies in this area should be oriented further to uncovering the global-local nexus in the process. (shrink)

Bowers et al. propose to use controlled behavioral experiments when evaluating deep neural networks as models of biological vision. We agree with the sentiment and draw parallels to the notion that “neuroscience needs behavior.” As a promising path forward, we suggest complementing image recognition tasks with increasingly realistic and well-controlled task environments that engage real-world object recognition behavior.

We give a survey of the study of nonstandard models in recursion theory and reverse mathematics. We discuss the key notions and techniques in effective computability in nonstandard models. and their applications to problems concerning combinatorial principles in subsystems of second order arithmetic. Particular attention is given to principles related to Ramsey's Theorem for Pairs.

In this paper, we study the estimation of motion direction prediction for fast motion and propose a threshold-based human target detection algorithm using motion vectors and other data as human target feature information. The motion vectors are partitioned into regions by normalization to form a motion vector field, which is then preprocessed, and then the human body target is detected through its motion vector region block-temporal correlation to detect the human body motion target. The experimental results show that the algorithm (...) is effective in detecting human motion targets in videos with the camera relatively stationary. The algorithm predicts the human body position in the reference frame of the current frame in the video by forward mapping the motion vector of the current frame, then uses the motion vector direction angle histogram as a matching feature, and combines it with a region matching strategy to track the human body target in the predicted region, thus realizing the human body target tracking effect. The algorithm is experimentally proven to effectively track human motion targets in videos with relatively static backgrounds. To address the problem of sample diversity and lack of quantity in a multitarget tracking environment, a generative model based on the conditional variational self-encoder conditional generation of adversarial networks is proposed, and the performance of the generative model is verified using pedestrian reidentification and other datasets, and the experimental results show that the method can take advantage of the advantages of both models to improve the quality of the generated results. (shrink)

Based on the assumption that the long-term value of a venture capital satisfies the algebraic Brownian motion, we develop a continuous-time exit model of venture capital under different exit modes, namely, initial public offering and mergers and acquisitions. The employee incentive problem is analyzed jointly with the exit decision of the firm in terms of the exit timing and the exit mode. Further, the problem of capital exit is considered from two perspectives, namely, optimal venture capital and social welfare maximization, (...) and the differences between these exit decisions are compared. Our model predicts that the timing of an IPO, the purpose of which is to maximize the utility of the capitalists, lags behind the exit timing, whose purpose is to maximize social welfare. Using a numerical analysis, this paper also proves that increasing the production efficiency, lowering the interest rates, and improving risk management can make the exit decision of venture capitalists converge with that of maximizing social welfare. (shrink)

This paper argues that Hans Blumenberg’s theory illuminates a novel interpretation of the phenomenological concept of the lifeworld—as a world sustained by myths and their receptions. This paper combines two central themes in Blumenberg’s philosophy: his interpretation of Edmund Husserl and his aesthetics, especially his theory of the novel and of myth. My claim to originality is to offer a mythology of the lifeworld with the help of one of Blumenberg’s less-known texts, “Wirklichkeitsbegriff und Wirkungspotential des Mythos.” In the first (...) part, I will examine a crucial aspect in Blumenberg’s reading of Husserl’s notion of the lifeworld, namely the unorthodox view that the lifeworld, as the foundation for sciences and their logos, itself has no need to resort to language. To put it mythically: the lifeworld is an expressionless state of naivety. To support this deconstructive reading, I will then turn to Blumenberg’s theory of the novel. As has been noticed by Blumenberg and his colleagues, the underlying meaning structure of the novel, or its “concept of reality,” has a typically modern character, and largely overlaps with the phenomenological idea of the world and lifeworld. However, in the second part, I will radicalize Blumenberg’s discussions about reality, and show that the novelistic reality can never fully supersede that of myth. Mythology has a persistent existence, and, in Blumenberg’s argument, the history of mythical reception reveals a perpetual movement of human struggle against terror. In this Blumenbergian philosophy of mythology, a new image of the lifeworld presents itself, a world made by the myth-telling humans, by their active and aesthetic use of words, instead of slumbers of naivety. (shrink)

As an industrial science, vaccinology is susceptible to changing social, economic and political frameworks. This article reconstructs the history of the birth of the Sabin strains-derived inactivated polio vaccine (sIPV) in China. The development of this nascent vaccine can be attributed first and foremost to the circulation of knowledge and technology in the global polio research network of the 1980s, before the privatization of vaccine manufacturing and the escalation of intellectual-property protections. Tracing correspondence between Jonas Salk and a Chinese scientist, (...) Jiang Shude, and his colleagues, we chart how institutional efforts in search of a profitable product and scientists’ motives in pursuing personal careers in the post-socialist reform era led to collaboration on many levels, centered around polio vaccines. In response to recent polio history research, we also emphasize the impact of multiple temporalities of polio dramaturgy on the vaccine manufacturer, as this article demonstrates how the confluence of shifting global polio eradication agendas and contingencies in complex vaccinology undertakings ironically helped to materialize the idea of the sIPV. Finally, stories of vaccines and scientists in China add compelling subplots to the global polio history, which reveals the need to reconsider the politicization of imported technology in broader socialist contexts.A letter dated ‘3 June 1986’ was mailed from Jonas Salk to Jiang Shude (姜述德). Jiang had been an unknown vaccinologist working at the Institute of Medical Biology (IMB) in Flower Red Cave in the Western Hills of Kunming, in south-western China. Salk had visited two years earlier to discuss the feasibility of the IMB's proposal to manufacture inactivated polio vaccine (IPV). The initial collaborative plan had come to a halt by the time Salk wrote the letter to Jiang; still, he kindly offered Jiang an opportunity to travel to Bilthoven and then Lyon to learn IPV-related technology with a generous $10,000 grant for his one-year stay in Europe.1. (shrink)

This study takes the mountainous villages in central Shandong as the research object, which becomes the entry point for studying the concepts of cultural landscape and revitalization. This study examines some villages with special cultural landscapes due to their unique physical space. Later, due to industrialization, they suffered a cultural crisis and then revitalized after restoration, and then reused it to generate value. It explores the interdependent relationship between the natural environment, people, and society in the mountainous area, including the (...) spatial production and value reuse of the village cultural landscape. Through this study, not only the theoretical connotation of concepts such as cultural landscape and spatial production is enriched, but also the intrinsic connection between the characteristics of village cultural landscape and revitalization is revealed. At the same time, the study also proposed new knowledge about value reuse and revitalization, that is, things in the past can not only retain their old value in the present but also generate new value. This study will further enrich the content of the theoretical research on cultural landscape and revitalization and help to understand the revitalized villages worldwide. (shrink)

The perception of modern environmental ethics in China has been greatly influenced by two factors: scholarship of environmental ethics in Europe and the United States on the one hand, and ideological resources from traditional Chinese culture on the other. In practice, while Chinese governmental agencies, enterprises, and social organizations are paying more and more attention to the perspective of environmental ethics in technology assessment and social governance, they are still faced with the challenge of a large number of realistic problems. (...) Behind these intellectual features, there is the potential impact of cultural back­grounds, including traditional views of nature, epistemology, methodology, and axiology in China. Modern environmental ethics in China is growing into a kind of environmental ethics with the characteristics of the philosophy of organism, which can meet the requirements of sustainable development and responsible innovation, so that it may play its unique role in the era of globalization. (shrink)

Choice revision is a sort of non-prioritized multiple revision, in which the agent partially accepts the new information represented by a set of sentences. We investigate the construction of choice revision based on a new approach to belief change called descriptor revision. We prove that each of two variants of choice revision based on such construction is axiomatically characterized with a set of plausible postulates, assuming that the object language is finite. Furthermore, we introduce an alternative modelling for choice revision, (...) which is based on a type of relation on sets of sentences, named multiple believability relation. We show without assuming a finite language that choice revision constructed from such relations is axiomatically characterized with the same sets of postulates that we proposed for the choice revision based on descriptor revision, whenever the relations satisfy certain rationality conditions. (shrink)

As professional football stadiums continue to grow in popularity worldwide, fans are able to watch the game in closer proximity, but the design of professional football stadiums to shorten the distance between fans and the playing field also exacerbates the impact of the home advantage on the referee’s decision to call a penalty. Studies have confirmed the existence of the home advantage and found that experienced referees can reduce the impact of this interference, but the neural mechanisms behind this phenomenon (...) have not been adequately investigated. In this study, we designed a soccer referee decision making task based on a home field effect scenario in a real soccer game, and used event-related potentials to compare the decision making and EEG differences between individuals with different experience levels when faced with foul actions under spectator noise interference. The experiments showed that individuals with different experience levels triggered a significant ERN EEG component when performing the penalty decision task under the home field effect factor, suggesting that the interference of the home field effect may lead referees to correct their previous decision-making behavior patterns in the penalty decision and reduce unfavorable calls against the home team. In contrast, referees with officiating experience elicited smaller ERN amplitudes compared to other subjects, suggesting that experience factors may inhibit this tendency to change behavioral patterns. This study suggests that in response to the increasing trend of professional football stadiums, policy makers should place more emphasis on enhancing the experience level of referees in the training of referees to ensure the fairness of the game. (shrink)

Lithium-ion batteries have been widely used as energy storage systems and in electric vehicles due to their desirable balance of both energy and power densities as well as continual falling price. Accurate estimation of the state-of-charge of a battery pack is important in managing the health and safety of battery packs. This paper proposes a compact radial basis function neural model to estimate the state-of-charge of lithium battery packs. Firstly, a suitable input set strongly correlated with the package SOC is (...) identified from directly measured voltage, current, and temperature signals by a fast recursive algorithm. Secondly, a RBF neural model for battery pack SOC estimation is constructed using the FRA strategy to prune redundant hidden layer neurons. Then, the particle swarm optimization algorithm is used to optimize the kernel parameters. Finally, a conventional RBF neural network model, an improved RBF neural model using the two stage method, and a least squares support vector machine model are also used to estimate the battery SOC as a comparative study. Simulation results show that generalization error of SOC estimation using the novel RBF neural network model is less than half of that using other methods. Furthermore, the model training time is much less than the LSSVM method and the improved RBF neural model using the two-stage method. (shrink)