This essay recounts the early history of the development of Chinese studies in the United States undertaken by the American Council of Learned Societies, starting in 1928 under the leadership of its newly appointed Assistant Secretary, Mortimer Graves, in collaboration with key members of the American Oriental Society. Through planning conferences, surveys, and reports, he ascertained the needs of the field and secured funding to meet them. These included seed money for faculty positions, fellowships for graduate students and scholars, programs (...) to spark interest in Asian studies curricula, the creation of bibliographical and journal resources and a new scholarly society, and the development of intensive language training methods. Subsequent philanthropic and government support continued this trajectory, but Graves’s thirty-year campaign succeeded in laying the foundation for the field as we know it today. (shrink)

As a comparative study of the virtue ethics of Aristotle and Confucius, this book explores how they each reflect upon human good and virtue out of their respective cultural assumptions, conceptual frameworks, and philosophical perspectives. It does not simply take one side as a framework to understand the other; rather, it takes them as mirrors for each other and seeks to develop new readings and perspectives of both ethics that would be unattainable if each were studied on its own.

The historical development of debates about reduction testifies to us that reductionism in biology must proceed by providing a precise and complete causal explanation for every biological phenomenon at the level of molecules. An intertheoretical reduction model was proposed in biology but proved unsuccessful due to its inability to accommodate and explain the success of molecular biology. Ever since the molecular structure of the gene was discovered, actual biological research has successfully generated explanations for complex biological facts in terms of (...) the predicates of molecular biology. Biological phenomena, which classical functional biology explains only with limited powers, are more accurately described and comprehensively explained as the reduction processes advance with molecular biology. It is clear that the reductionist research program of molecular biology is the best account of success and progress in biology. (shrink)

This book examines the hypothesis of "direct compositionality", which requires that semantic interpretation proceed in tandem with syntactic combination. Although associated with the dominant view in formal semantics of the 1970s and 1980s, the feasibility of direct compositionality remained unsettled, and more recently the discussion as to whether or not this view can be maintained has receded. The syntax-semantics interaction is now often seen as a process in which the syntax builds representations which, at the abstract level of logical form, (...) are sent for interpretation to the semantics component of the language faculty. In the first extended discussion of the hypothesis of direct compositionality for twenty years, this book considers whether its abandonment might have been premature and whether in fact direct compositionality is not after all a simpler and more effective conception of the grammar than the conventional account of the syntax-semantics interface in generative grammar. It contains contributions from both sides of the debate, locates the debate in the setting of a variety of formal theories, and draws on examples from a range of languages and a range of empirical phenomena. (shrink)

Intensive research is carried out to develop a disease-modifying drug for Alzheimer’s disease. The development of drug candidates that reduce Aß or tau in the brain seems particularly promising. However, these drugs target people at risk for AD, who must be identified before they have any, or only moderate, symptoms associated with the disease. There are different strategies that may be used to identify these individuals. Each of these strategies raises different ethical challenges. In this paper, we analyse these challenges (...) in relation to the risk stratification for AD necessary for using these drugs. We conclude that the new drugs must generate large health benefits for people at risk of developing AD to justify the ethical costs associated with current risk stratification methods, benefits much larger than current drug candidates have. This conclusion raises a new set of ethical questions that should be further discussed. No data are available. (shrink)

Smart homes represent an effective approach to improve one’s quality of life. Developing user interfaces that are both comfortable and understandable can assist users, particularly the elderly, embrace smart home technologies. It’s critical to concentrate on the characteristics of smart home interface design and their impact on people of various ages. Since sliders are one of the most common components utilized in the smart home user interface, this article aimed to investigate the effects of slider design characteristics on user performance (...) and preference. Thirty-four participants were recruited for the experiment. Our results revealed that both groups had shorter task completion time, less fixation time, and saccades on horizontal sliding orientation and larger buttons, which means better user performance. For the older group, the slider with color gradient track led to better user performance, while the track color only had less effect on the performance of the younger group. In terms of user preference, the results and performance of the older group were basically consistent, while the younger group had no significant difference in sliding orientation and track color. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has seriously disrupted the individual buying habits along with their consumption patterns. Previous studies indicated that anxiety and depression were related to impulse buying. However, no research has explored the mechanism possibly underlying the association between anxiety, depression, and impulse buying. Based on the regulatory focus theory and the emotion-cognition-behavior loop, this study aimed to examine the impacts of negative emotions on impulse buying and the mediating role of cognitive characteristics during the COVID-19 pandemic. In April 2021, (...) 734 Chinese undergraduates were recruited by cluster sampling and they completed self-report measures of anxiety, depression, intolerance of uncertainty, cognitive flexibility, and impulse buying. Results showed that impulse buying was positively associated with anxiety, depression, and intolerance of uncertainty, while it was negatively associated with cognitive flexibility. Cognitive flexibility fully mediated the effects of anxiety and depression on cognitive facet of impulse buying. Meanwhile, intolerance of uncertainty fully mediated the effects of anxiety and depression on affective facet of impulse buying. Overall, this study shows that different pathways can explain how anxiety and depression exacerbate two aspects of impulse buying, and it highlights the importance of cognitive characteristics for the link between negative emotions and impulse buying. Intervention programs should focus on increasing cognitive flexibility and tolerance to uncertainty of high-risk individuals, so as to strengthen their adaptive purchase behaviors. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that the consensus around normative standards for the ethics of research in clinical trials, strongly influenced by the Declaration of Helsinki, is perceived from various quarters as too conservative and potentially restrictive of research that is seen as urgent and necessary. We examine this problem from the perspective of various challengers who argue for alternative approaches to what ought or ought not to be permitted. Key themes within this analysis will examine these claims and argue (...) they have implications for the interests of the research subject, research governance and regulation. Using our work with TREAT-NMD, the neuromuscular clinical trials network, we posit that there is a place for advancing the discourse of moral rights and moral duties in the context of research, especially from the perspective of patients and their families, and for including the politics of patient activism and empowerment. At the same time we remain vigilant to the danger that the therapeutic misconception and other serious vulnerabilities for the patient population in clinical trials, are at risk of being overlooked. (shrink)

This paper explores the linkage between electoral systems and candidate selection methods by analyzing two innovations of CSMs in Taiwan and Japan: polling primary and kobo, respectively. With an assumption that partiesno-finding’ conclusion in some previous large-N studies on the linkage between electoral systems and choices of CSMs. Additionally, our findings highlight the importance of institutional factors, such as electoral systems, in explaining CSM reforms in a comparative perspective.

Although the structure of nation-states increasingly decline, but it is in the organization of economic globalization, political globalization and the emerging global civil society, still occupies the first position. Not in the demise of the nation-state, but is being re-imagined, re-design, re-adjust direction in response to a series of challenges. Accordingly, the country's research in the present era is still important in the context of globalization, global capital, global civil society, global governance and the relationship between the nation-state study of (...) the theory constitutes a new form of state. The nation-state has been eroded, but it still takes a pride of place on organizing global economy, global politics, global civil society which is coming into being. The nation-state is not vanished, but re-imagined, re-designed, re-adjusted to response to a series of challenges. Accordingly, under the context of globalization, the research of the state still has an important meaning, and the relations between global capital, global civil society, global governance arid the nation-state constitute the new forms of state theory. (shrink)

We examine the influence of inferring interlocutors' referential intentions from their body movements at the early stage of lexical acquisition. By testing human participants and comparing their performances in different learning conditions, we find that those embodied intentions facilitate both word discovery and word‐meaning association. In light of empirical findings, the main part of this article presents a computational model that can identify the sound patterns of individual words from continuous speech, using nonlinguistic contextual information, and employ body movements as (...) deictic references to discover word‐meaning associations. To our knowledge, this work is the first model of word learning that not only learns lexical items from raw multisensory signals to closely resemble infant language development from natural environments, but also explores the computational role of social cognitive skills in lexical acquisition. (shrink)

Ever since its first documented live birth in 2014, the use of uterine transplantation (UTx) for the treatment of absolute uterine factor infertility (UFI) has seen major clinical advances, which include the use of alternative surgical approaches, different donor states, and diverse patient populations. In addition to the thorough research programs that developed the technique, this accomplishment has occurred in large part following a number of ethical frameworks, such as the Montreal Criteria and the Indianapolis Consensus, which paved the way (...) to transition from experimental animal trials to human ones. To date, over 60 uterine transplants have been performed in the world, and at least 18 births have been thus far confirmed. While the procedure remains experimental, the vast knowledge and procedural experience amassed over the last 20 years of rigorous research have hinted at the next step of discovery. In particular, advancing social circumstances have prompted the question regarding the use of this technology in transgender individuals. Though the potential use of uterine transplants in the transgender population has been hypothesized, no in‐depth ethical framework has been developed towards this purpose. Herein, we explore the ethical issues revolving around the use of this technology in this patient population and provide key insights that may advance this cause. (shrink)

The newest innovation in assisted reproduction is oocyte cryopreservation, more commonly known as egg freezing, which has been developed as a method of fertility preservation. Studies emerging from around the world show that highly educated professional women are turning to egg freezing in their late thirties to early forties, because they are still searching for a male partner with whom to have children. For these women, egg freezing may be a new “hope technology” for future romance; but it may also (...) be a “technology of despair,” as women navigate the ends of a failing relationship. Based on the largest ethnographic study to date, undertaken with 150 women who froze their eggs for nonmedical reasons in the United States and Israel, we examine egg freezing at the end of romance. Relationship dissolution—involving divorce, separation, broken engagements, and relationship breakups from men who are unfaithful, controlling, rejecting, uncommitted, or unready for fatherhood—is one of the major pathways to egg freezing. When such relationship dissolution ruptures a woman’s reproductive life course, egg freezing may become a “technology of repair,” allowing women to find new strengths and opportunities as well as new visions for the future. (shrink)

This study aims to contribute to the research on spatial metaphors for morality from the perspective of Chinese. It outlines the linguistic patterns in Chinese that manifest the putative underlying spatial subsystem of moral metaphors, which can be summarized by a central metaphor “MORALITY IS SPATIALITY.” In doing so, it focuses on 17 spatial words that instantiate in real-life discourses five pairs of moral–spatial metaphors in their positive and negative valence. The total of 10 metaphors under study forms a cluster (...) as the spatial metaphor subsystem operating in conjunction and connection with other metaphor subsystems in our moral cognition. It is suggested that the 10 conceptual metaphors emerge from four image schemas: UP-DOWN, BALANCE, PATH, and OBJECT. A unified schematic configuration is proposed to lay out the spatial elements and relations represented by the four image schemas in a single diagram. Based on its linguistic analysis, the study also provides a list of prototypical target as... (shrink)

Though more connected today than ever before, the Far East and the West are still divided by an issue which first arose more than 400 years ago: the complaint of the West that its ideology has never been fully adopted by China. To provide a useful conceptual framework for a discussion of this intriguing situation, this essay invokes the instructive give-and-take of market exchange on the famed Silk Road in the long ancient past and takes a careful and close look (...) at the analogous enactment of the same principle in the quiet but consequential transplantation of Chinese horticultural and related philosophical ideas to England and continental Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and in the initially skeptical but eventually appreciative reception of many Western political and technological ideas in China in the last two centuries. (shrink)

We define DNA sequence by a bottom-up approach, starting with a real sequence from an actual biological sample. By providing axioms for notions of string, substring and strand, we formally define a DNA sequence, and a DNA molecule as composed of two antiparallel strands. We note that a sequence is a kind of group in which each member stands a certain relation to every other. The spatial aspects of a DNA sequence are also described.

Atomic-scale computer simulation has been used to study the thermally activated atomic transport of self-interstitial atoms in the form of planar clusters in pure Cu and f -Fe. There is strong evidence that such clusters are commonly formed in metals during irradiation with high-energy particles and play an important role in accumulation and spatial distribution of surviving defects. An extensive study of the mobility of SIA clusters containing two to 331 interstitials has been carried out using the molecular dynamics simulation (...) technique for the temperature range from 180 to 1200 K. The results obtained show that clusters larger than three to four SIAs are one-dimensionally mobile in both Cu and Fe. Large clusters of more than 100 SIAs in Cu and 300 SIAs in Fe have significantly reduced mobility. The problem of describing one-dimensional motion in three-dimensional space is discussed. An attempt is made to describe the mobility of SIA clusters within the approximation of 1D diffusion. For clusters in both metals the effective migration energy of 1D diffusion as estimated via the jump frequency of the cluster centre of mass is found to be independent of the number of SIAs in the clusters, although the cluster jump frequency decreases with increasing cluster size. Mechanisms of 1D mobility of interstitial clusters are discussed. (shrink)

フレーゲ、ラッセル、クリプキ以後の名前の意味論。固有名、確定記述から日本語名詞へと広がる言語哲学の最前線。.

Tyler Burge's theory of proper names is being revived with the help of Generative Grammar. The complex syntax of DPs appears to encourage the Burgean analysis of proper names which attributes complex semantic structures to the uses of proper names. I will argue, however, that the Millian view of proper names which hypothesizes simple semantics for names is also compatible with the complex syntactic structures. In order to defend this thesis, I will show that Paul Elbourne's implementation of Burge's insight (...) is no better than the Millian semantics of proper names. (shrink)

In this study, I examined what channels of socialization influence the moral behavior of cadets. We conducted a regression analysis of the effects of parents' attitudes to moral education, the standard and potential curriculum of schools, peer groups, and communication media on individual ethics and discipline using 399 sample participants. The participants were recruited through a questionnaire survey on cadets from academy of military, naval, and air force, and four-year based students from R.O.C. National Defense University. The analysis results showed (...) that the cultivation of morality among cadets was directly influenced by the school's potential curriculum (i.e., intern cadres and officers in company) and their parents' attitudes to moral education during early childhood. The results also indicated that the influence of teaching by example was more significant than that of teaching by precept. (shrink)

Concepts of L1 space, integrable functions and integrals are formalized in weak subsystems of second order arithmetic. They are discussed especially in relation with the combinatorial principle WWKL (weak-weak König's lemma and arithmetical comprehension. Lebesgue dominated convergence theorem is proved to be equivalent to arithmetical comprehension. A weak version of Lebesgue monotone convergence theorem is proved to be equivalent to weak-weak König's lemma.

There is no absolute essence in world (esp. it refers to the cosmos of modern hunman beings) The origin of world is also indefinite, which existing everying is possible. When it comes to our modern humancosmos material and spirit of place not two have a cent, constituted the basic antinomy of this world. Material and spirit can’t be separated with each other. In the layer after layer negation of whole have delicate born. Material and spirit are different he essence of (...) the material is an objective system, the essence of the spirit is freely objective; The system is The system is a collection of the unity of opposites of materials the freedom is opposite to he appearance of system. The dialectics is a theory which can be applied to explain everything in the world. However, we should consider itself dialectly, and evolve a multiple and stereoscopic but not flexible philopsophical theory. (shrink)

Globalization and informatization are reshaping human life and social behaviors. The purpose is to explore the worldwide strategies to cultivate international talents with a global vision. As a global language with the largest population, English, and especially its learning effect, have always been the major concerns of scholars and educators. This work innovatively studies the combination of immersion-based English teaching with virtual reality technology. Then, based on the experimental design mode, 106 students from a Chinese school were selected for a (...) quasi-experimental study for 16 weeks. The collected data were analyzed by computer statistical software, and hypotheses are verified. The results showed that there is a significantly positive correlation between VR and immersion-based language teaching. There is a significantly positive correlation between immersion-based language teaching and academic achievement, and VR is positively correlated with learning outcome. Compared with other state-of-art research methods, this work modifies the students’ oral test through the analysis and comparison with the system database, and the students’ learning effect is greatly improved. Finally, some suggestions are put forward according to the research results to provide an experimental reference for English teachers and future linguistics teaching. (shrink)

PurposeTo explore the changes of cerebral blood flow and fractional anisotropy in stroke patients with motor dysfunction after repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation treatment, and to better understand the role of rTMS on motor rehabilitation of subcortical stroke patients from the perfusion and structural level.Materials and MethodsIn total, 23 first-episode acute ischemic stroke patients and sixteen healthy controls were included. The patients were divided into the rTMS and sham group. The rehabilitation assessments and examination of perfusion and structural MRI were performed (...) before and after rTMS therapy for each patient. Voxel-based analysis was used to detect the difference in CBF and FA among all three groups. The Pearson correlation analysis was conducted to evaluate the relationship between the CBF/FA value and the motor scales.ResultsAfter rTMS, significantly increased CBF was found in the ipsilesional supplementary motor area, postcentral gyrus, precentral gyrus, pons, medulla oblongata, contralesional midbrain, superior cerebellar peduncle, and middle cerebellar peduncle compared to that during the prestimulation and in the sham group, these fasciculi comprise the cortex-pontine-cerebellum-cortex loop. Besides, altered CBF in the ipsilesional precentral gyrus, postcentral gyrus, and pons was positively associated with the improved Fugl-Meyer assessment scores. Significantly decreased FA was found in the contralesional precentral gyrus, increased FA was found in the ipsilesional postcentral gyrus, precentral gyrus, contralesional supplementary motor area, and bilateral cerebellum, these fasciculi comprise the corticospinal tract. The change of FMA score was positively correlated with altered FA value in the ipsilesional postcentral gyrus and negatively correlated with altered FA value in the contralesional precentral gyrus.ConclusionOur results suggested that rTMS could facilitate the motor recovery of stroke patients. High frequency could promote the improvement of functional activity of ipsilesional CPC loop and the recovery of the microstructure of CST. (shrink)