We study degree-theoretic properties of reals that are not random with respect to any continuous probability measure (NCR). To this end, we introduce a family of generalized Hausdorff measures based on the iterates of the “dissipation” function of a continuous measure and study the effective nullsets given by the corresponding Solovay tests. We introduce two constructions that preserve non-randomness with respect to a given continuous measure. This enables us to prove the existence of NCR reals in a number of Turing (...) degrees. In particular, we show that every $\Delta ^0_2$ -degree contains an NCR element. (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)

The Chinese Aesthetic Tradition touches on all areas of artistic activity, including poetry, painting, calligraphy, architecture, and the "art of living." Right government, the ideal human being, and the path to spiritual transcendence all come under the provenance of aesthetic thought. According to Li this was the case from early Confucian explanations of poetry as that which gives expression to intent, through Zhuangzi’s artistic depictions of the ideal personality who discerns the natural way of things and lives according to it, (...) to Chan Buddhist-inspired notions that nature and words can come together to yield insight and enlightenment. In this enduring and stimulating work, Li demonstrates conclusively the fundamental role of aesthetics in the development of the cultural and psychological structures in Chinese culture that define "humanity.". (shrink)

Translated, with a philosophical introduction.

The last two decades have witnessed the rising prevalence of both co-publishing and retraction. Focusing on research collaboration, this paper utilizes a unique dataset to investigate factors contributing to retraction probability and elapsed time between publication and retraction. Data analysis reveals that the majority of retracted papers are multi-authored and that repeat offenders are collaboration prone. Yet, all things being equal, collaboration, in and of itself, does not increase the likelihood of producing flawed or fraudulent research, at least in the (...) form of retraction. That holds for all retractions and also retractions due to falsification, fabrication, and plagiarism. The research also finds that publications with authors from elite universities are less likely to be retracted, which is particularly true for retractions due to FFP. China stands out with the fastest retracting speed compared to other countries. Possible explanations, limitations, and policy implications are also discussed. (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)

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)

Creativity is an essential factor in ensuring the sustainable development of a society. Improving students’ creativity has gained much attention in education, especially in Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics education. In a quasi-experimental design, this study examines the effectiveness of a project-based STEAM program on the development of creativity in Chinese elementary school science education. We selected two fourth-graders classes. One received a project-based STEAM program, and the other received a conventional science teaching over 6 weeks. Students’ creativity was (...) assessed before and after the intervention using a multi-method approach, including a test of divergent thinking, a story completion through the Consensus Assessment Technique, a creative self-efficacy measure, and a group-based creative project. Moreover, all students received a test of their science knowledge after the intervention. The results showed that compared with the control group, the creativity of the experimental group students improved significantly for 6 weeks at both individual and group level, even though their knowledge in science were comparable. This result confirmed the effectiveness of a project-based STEAM educational program improving elementary school students’ creativity. Implications are discussed. (shrink)

This essay explores a tragic event that happened in China, which garnered much attention, the Li case: a young woman who was nine months pregnant and her baby died as a result of the failure to receive a medically necessary c-section due to the hospital having failed to secure her family's consent for the c-section. Differing from some critiques, this essay argues that the Li case should not be used to blame the Confucian family-determination model that has been applied in (...) Chinese society for thousands of years. Based on summarizing the reasons supporting the model, this essay indicates that it is an integral part of the model that, in emergency or special cases, the physician must take medical action to save the patient, without the need to secure the consent of a family member. In order to prevent tragic cases like the Li case from happening, we recommend that relevant Chinese laws be further developed and specified and that, most importantly, Chinese physicians must cultivate the Confucian virtue of benevolence in their practice of taking care of patients in a virtuous way, along with patients’ families. (shrink)

Active reciprocity is a process of human harmonious development, which is based on reciprocity. Reciprocity is the result of trichotomy and the expression of golden mean; Active reciprocity is the expression of active golden mean, which discards the passive part of reciprocity. Active reciprocity is a form of rational collectivism which, generally speaking, has two rules for individual communication behavior, namely mutually benefiting and mutually tolerating. It also has three rules for individual behavior, namely benefiting the others without harming oneself, (...) benefiting both oneself and others, benefiting oneself without harming others. It has, through norms, incorporated values and ideas such as fairness, reason, democracy, philanthropism, freedom, harmony, as well as right, responsibility, respect, tolerance, trust, sustainable development. However, it has to be pointed out that active reciprocity should oriented towards altruism, with the minimum requirement of doing no harm to others. Otherwise it will result in moral relativism. (shrink)

Experts play a crucial role in underpinning decision-making in most management situations. While recent studies have disclosed the impacts of individuals’ inherent cognition and the external environment on expert performance, these two-dimensional mechanisms remain poorly understood. In this study, we identified 14 factors that influence expert performance in a bid evaluation and applied cross-impact matrix multiplication to examine the interdependence of the factors. The results indicate that the two dimension-related factors affect each other within a person–environment system, and a poor (...) situation perception gives rise to the deviation of expert performance. Expert performance can be improved if external supervision and expertise are strengthened through deliberate practices. The study proposes a new expert performance research tool, elucidates its mechanism in bid evaluation from a cognitive psychology perspective, and provides guidelines for its improvement in workplace contexts. (shrink)

As a generalization of both single-valued neutrosophic element and hesitant fuzzy element, single-valued neutrosophic hesitant fuzzy element is an efficient tool for describing uncertain and imprecise information. Thus, it is of great significance to deal with single-valued neutrosophic hesitant fuzzy information for many practical problems. In this paper, we study the aggregation of SVNHFEs based on some normalized operations from geometric viewpoint. Firstly, two normalized operations are defined for processing SVNHFEs. Then, a series of normalized aggregation operators which fulfill some (...) basic conditions of a valid aggregation operator are proposed. Additionally, a decision-making method is developed for resolving multiattribute decision-making problems based on the proposed operators. Finally, a numerical example is provided to illustrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the method. (shrink)

The online creativity generation research is a new field of creativity research. However, very little is known about the specific psychological processes of online idea generation. Against this background, this study explored the correlation between student intrinsic motivation and online creativity and possible mechanisms that may lie within this relationship. A sample of 423 Chinese students from three public universities participated in this study by completing measurements of intrinsic motivation, online learning engagement, creativity, and perceived teacher emotional support. The results (...) indicated that student online learning engagement partially mediates the positive association between student intrinsic motivation and their online creativity. Teacher emotional support moderates the positive relationship between student intrinsic motivation and online learning engagement. Our findings suggested that student online creativity benefited from their intrinsic motivation in an online environment. The limitations of this study were also discussed. (shrink)

During the COVID-19 pandemic, questions have been raised about the impact of face masks on communication in classroom settings. However, it is unclear to what extent visual obstruction of the speaker’s mouth or changes to the acoustic signal lead to speech processing difficulties, and whether these effects can be mitigated by semantic predictability, i.e., the availability of contextual information. The present study investigated the acoustic and visual effects of face masks on speech intelligibility and processing speed under varying semantic predictability. (...) Twenty-six children and twenty-six adults performed an internet-based cued shadowing task, in which they had to repeat aloud the last word of sentences presented in audio-visual format. The results showed that children and adults made more mistakes and responded more slowly when listening to face mask speech compared to speech produced without a face mask. Adults were only significantly affected by face mask speech when both the acoustic and the visual signal were degraded. While acoustic mask effects were similar for children, removal of visual speech cues through the face mask affected children to a lesser degree. However, high semantic predictability reduced audio-visual mask effects, leading to full compensation of the acoustically degraded mask speech in the adult group. Even though children did not fully compensate for face mask speech with high semantic predictability, overall, they still profited from semantic cues in all conditions. Therefore, in classroom settings, strategies that increase contextual information such as building on students’ prior knowledge, using keywords, and providing visual aids, are likely to help overcome any adverse face mask effects. (shrink)

Historical progress is a core belief of the Enlightenment and modernity, also a spiritual catalyst of human emancipation in the past centuries. However, due to the naive understanding of scholars and its misuse by political power, the idea of progress has fallen from a realistic political belief in the pursuit of liberty and democracy to a metaphysical faith and a one-sided ideology. Instead of abandoning the concept itself, this paper will provide a new version for progress. In this version, supported (...) theoretically with ideas from a Marxian critique of the paradox of progress in capitalist society and a Habermasian reconstruction of social evolution and progress, progress shall not be understood as an intrinsic trend of history itself, but a “historical-practical project” of humanity. The intent of rewriting progress is to transcend the dilemma between progressivism and catastrophism while at the same time preserving its positive meaning. (shrink)

Contemporary global justice theories could be introduced and reduced to three kinds: the deontological approach, the theory of obligation, and the theory of self-interest. Our analysis finds that only the theory of obligation and the theory of self-interest provide strong enough justifications for developed states and their people to assist underdeveloped states and their people. However, the theory of obligation requires some special preconditions, and the theory of self-interest cannot proceed in the name of justice, so we conclude that contemporary (...) global justice theories are not tenable. (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)

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)

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)

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)