This article argues that observing natural laws is crucial for preserving peace in nations across the world. Traditional natural law theories are, however, flawed and outdated. To truly modernize natural law, we propose a new concept, “political natural law” (PNL), which has the capacity of curing these flaws. We then substantiate the PNL s from the result of analyzing the institutional causes of civil wars since 1800, and link them to human dignity. Drawing partly on the Confucian scholarship on natural (...) law and human dignity, we argue that the mutual respect of human dignity is essential to building and sustaining global peace. (shrink)

Visually impaired people have unique perceptions of and usage requirements for various urban spaces. Therefore, understanding these perceptions can help create reasonable layouts and construct urban infrastructure. This study recruited 26 visually impaired volunteers to evaluate 24 sound environments regarding clarity, comfort, safety, vitality, and depression. This data was collected in seven different types of urban spaces. An independent sample non-parametric test was used to determine the significance of the differences between environmental evaluation results for each evaluation dimension and to (...) summarize the compositions of sound and space elements in the positive and negative influence spaces. The results suggested that visually impaired people (1) feel comfort, safety, and clarity in parks, residential communities, and shopping streets; (2) have negative perceptions of vegetable markets, bus stops, hospitals, and urban departments; (3) feel anxious when traffic sounds, horn sounds, manhole cover sounds, and construction sounds occur; and (4) prefer spaces away from traffic, with fewer and slower vehicles, with a suitable space scale, and moderate crowd density. These results provide a reference for the future design of activity venues (i.e., residential communities, vegetable markets, bus stops, parks, shopping streets, hospitals, and urban functional departments) and the planning of accessibility systems for visually impaired urban residents. (shrink)

Objective Diabetes is a global public health concern. Management of diabetes depends on successful implementation of strategies to alleviate decline in executive functions (EFs), a characteristic of diabetes progression. In this review, we describe recent research on the relationship between diabetes and EF, summarize the existing evidence, and put forward future research directions and applications. Methods Herein, we provide an overview of recent studies, to elucidate the relationship between DM and EF. We identified new screening objectives, management tools, and intervention (...) targets for diabetes management. We also discuss the implications for clinical practice. Results In both types 1 and 2 diabetes mellitus (DM), hyperglycemia substantially impairs EF in people of all age groups and ethnicities. Hypoglycemia can similarly impair EF. Interestingly, a decline in EF contributes to DM progression. Glucose dysregulation and EF decline exacerbate each other in a vicious cycle: poor blood glucose control, impaired EF, diabetes management task failure, then back to poor blood glucose control. Many pathophysiological indexes (e.g., obesity, metabolic index, inflammatory and immune factors), neuropsychological indexes (e.g., compliance, eating habits, physical exercise, sleep, and depression), and genetic factors are changed by this pathological interaction between DM and EF. These changes can provide insight into the pathophysiological mechanisms of diabetes-related EF decline. Conclusion Further studies, including large-scale prospective and randomized controlled trials, are needed to elucidate the mechanism of the interaction between diabetes and EF and to develop novel strategies for breaking this cycle. (shrink)

In the Original publication of the article the revised date was erroneously published as: 20 August 2017 the correct date is: 20 August 2020.

Children bring intuitive arithmetic knowledge to the classroom before formal instruction in mathematics begins. For example, children can use their number sense to add, subtract, compare ratios, and even perform scaling operations that increase or decrease a set of dots by a factor of 2 or 4. However, it is currently unknown whether children can engage in a true division operation before formal mathematical instruction. Here we examined the ability of 6- to 9-year-old children and college students to perform symbolic (...) and non-symbolic approximate division. Subjects were presented with non-symbolic or symbolic dividends ranging from 32 to 185, and non-symbolic divisors ranging from 2 to 8. Subjects compared their imagined quotient to a visible target quantity. Both children and adults were successful at the approximate division tasks in both dots and numeral formats. This was true even among the subset of children that could not recognize the division symbol or solve simple division equations, suggesting intuitive division ability precedes formal division instruction. For both children and adults, the ability to divide non-symbolically mediated the relation between Approximate Number System acuity and symbolic math performance, suggesting that the ability to calculate non-symbolically may be a mechanism of the relation between ANS acuity and symbolic math. Our findings highlight the intuitive arithmetic abilities children possess before formal math instruction. (shrink)

Building on the human resource management behavioral and organizational climate literature, this study explores the linkage between socially responsible HRM and employee support for perceived external corporate social responsibility and the underlying social and psychological process. Multilevel analysis of data gathered over two separate periods confirmed that the relationship between SRHRM and employee support for external CSR initiatives of the employing organization is mediated by the organizational CSR climate. Moreover, the indirect effect is contingent on perceived internal CSR. This study (...) extends CSR research into the HRM domain and develops a better understanding of the micro-foundations of CSR by integrating the micro- and macro-perspectives of CSR. Based on the study findings, this paper also discusses theoretical contributions and future research directions. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is becoming increasingly important in China. This paper investigates the implementation of instruments for dimensions of CSR that are relevant for the Chinese context and the challenges that Chinese companies face. Based on a survey among 109 Chinese companies, we find that formal instruments to implement CSR are rather common. Companies spend most effort in improving the economic aspects of CSR, such as competitiveness, product innovation and process innovation. Only a small minority of the companies set (...) concrete targets and report the realization of these targets for social and environmental goals. This indicates that the attention to social and environmental aspects of CSR is still rather loose. The most important challenges for improving CSR are strong competitive pressure, insufficient support from the government and/or nongovernmental organizations and high costs of CSR implementation. Multiple regression analysis shows that the use of instruments is positively related to company size and foreign ownership and negatively related to lack of resources and support for CSR by investors and consumers. (shrink)

This study examines why and when negative workplace gossip promotes self-serving behaviors by the employees being targeted. Using conservation of resources theory, we find that targets tend to increase their political acts as a result of ego depletion triggered by negative gossip. We also show that sensitivity to interpersonal mistreatment and moral disengagement moderate this process. Specifically, we demonstrate that targets with high levels of sensitivity to interpersonal mistreatment are more likely to experience ego depletion, and that targets with high (...) levels of moral disengagement will find it easier to persuade themselves to engage in political acts. We conducted a three-wave time-lagged survey of 265 employees in Guangdong, China, to test our hypotheses. The results support our theoretical model and indicate that COR theory can be used to explain the impacts of negative workplace gossip. Alongside our important and timely theoretical contributions, we provide new perspectives on how managers can avoid or mitigate these political acts. (shrink)

While previous studies have examined front-line teachers’ written feedback practices in second language (L2) writing classrooms, such studies tend to not take teachers’ language and sociocultural backgrounds into consideration, which may mediate their performance in written feedback provision. Therefore, much remains to be known about how L2 writing teachers with different first languages (L1) enact written feedback. To fill this gap, we designed an exploratory study to examine native English-speaking (NES) and non-native English-speaking (NNES) (i.e., Chinese L1) teachers’ written feedback (...) practices in the Chinese tertiary context. Our study collected 80 English as a foreign language (EFL) students’ writing samples with teacher written feedback and analyzed them from three aspects: Feedback scope, feedback focus, and feedback strategy. The findings of our study revealed that the two groups of teachers shared similar practices regarding feedback scope and feedback strategies. Both NES and NNES EFL teachers used a comprehensive approach to feedback provision, although NNES teachers provided significantly more feedback points than their NES peers and they delivered their feedback directly and indirectly. However, their practices differed greatly with regard to feedback focus. Specifically, when responding to EFL students’ writing, NES teachers showed more concern with global issues (i.e., content and organization), whereas NNES teachers paid more attention to linguistic errors. With a surge in the recruitment of expatriate NES and local NNES English teachers in China and other EFL countries, our study is expected to make a contribution to a better understanding of the two groups of EFL teachers’ pedagogical practices in written feedback provision and generate important implications for their feedback provision. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was twofold: to validate the College Teachers’ Academic Frustration Tolerance Questionnaire and the College Teachers’ Academic Performance Questionnaire and to explore the relationship between frustration tolerance and academic performance among college teachers. A total of 25 experts were recruited to modify and validate both questionnaires, and the results showed that the questionnaires had good content validity. Exploratory factor analysis provided further evidence supporting the reliability of the CTAFT and the CTAP, suggesting that the instruments are (...) reliable and valid. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that frustration tolerance affected academic performance, which could best be modeled in the three dimensions of Affect, Preferred Difficulties, and Action. A total of 450 college teachers from each faculty of both universities were then recruited to explore the significant positive correlation between academic frustration tolerance and academic performance. The results from the structural equation model suggested that AC and PD combined significantly predicted academic performance. To our knowledge, this is the first study to explore the relationship between college teachers’ academic frustration tolerance and academic performance in China. (shrink)

Abusive supervision negatively affects its direct victims. However, recent studies have begun to explore how abusive supervision affects third parties. We use the emotion-based process model of schadenfreude as a basis to suggest that third parties will experience schadenfreude and increase their work engagement as a response to peer abusive supervision. Furthermore, we suggest that the context of competitive goal interdependence facilitates the indirect relationship between PAS and third parties’ work engagement on schadenfreude. We use a mixed-method approach to test (...) our hypotheses. Data from an experimental study conducted by facial expression analysis technology and a multi‐wave field study generally support our hypotheses. Overall, our study extends PAS literature and meaningfully informs practitioners who aim to promote ethical workplace environments. (shrink)

The unsafe behavior of construction workers is one of the most important and direct causes of safety accidents. Managers usually develop effective incentives aimed at regulating worker safety behavior. Due to the large number of workers in construction projects, there are multiple differences in fairness preference, risk preference and ability level, which will lead to the complex effect of the traditional mechanism to regulate workers’ safety behavior. In order to improve the effectiveness of incentive measures for worker safety behavior, this (...) paper takes into account the multiple differences of individual workers’ fairness preference, risk preference and ability level, based on the tournament mechanism to construct a competition incentive model. By designing a tournament reward and salary distribution for heterogeneous workers, the occurrence of unsafe behaviors can be reduced. The study found that in terms of the optimal level of safety investment, workers with risk aversion attitude generally invest higher than that of workers with risk preference, no matter whether they have a strong fairness preference or not; In terms of the distribution of tournament rewards, workers with a risk aversion attitude and a higher level of fairness preference need to be given higher incentives. (shrink)

Heidegger maintains that the root of modern technology, like that of all other technologies, lies in technē. However, because the art dimension of technē is suppressed in modern technology, the essence of this technology becomes a Gestell that enforces product-making, and thus drives technology beyond the control of human beings. The more fundamental reason underlying this “frame-becoming” nature is “the mathematical” that emerges in ancient Greece, which, through the Cartesian subject-object dichotomy, turns the world into the images represented by the (...) subject, and things into definite objects. To escape the dictatorship of the Gestell, it is necessary to re-realize the art-dimension of technē in modern technology, i. e. to let the gentle granting nature of the enowning re-master technology. In this respect, both Heidegger and Heisenberg were inspired by or at least resonated with Lao Zi or Zhuang Zi’s Dao. Confucians will greatly appreciate the critique of modern technology by Heidegger, and especially his view of returning “home” to overcome the possible dangers brought about by technology. However, from the perspective of Confucianism, Heidegger’s critique contains some shortcomings: for example, his ignorance of the individualistic impact in the Gestell and his unidirectional “ontological difference,” which leads him to a view of “home” that lacks “family” and therefore renders his solution loose and rootless. Only an organic community originated in the family, be it Confucian or Amish, can effectively reduce the control of modern technology over the human being. (shrink)

Although the neural systems that underlie spoken language are well-known, how they adapt to evolving social cues during natural conversations remains an unanswered question. In this work we investigate the neural correlates of face-to-face conversations between two individuals using functional near infrared spectroscopy and acoustical analyses of concurrent audio recordings. Nineteen pairs of healthy adults engaged in live discussions on two controversial topics where their opinions were either in agreement or disagreement. Participants were matched according to their a priori opinions (...) on these topics as assessed by questionnaire. Acoustic measures of the recorded speech including the fundamental frequency range, median fundamental frequency, syllable rate, and acoustic energy were elevated during disagreement relative to agreement. Consistent with both the a priori opinion ratings and the acoustic findings, neural activity associated with long-range functional networks, rather than the canonical language areas, was also differentiated by the two conditions. Specifically, the frontoparietal system including bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, left supramarginal gyrus, angular gyrus, and superior temporal gyrus showed increased activity while talking during disagreement. In contrast, talking during agreement was characterized by increased activity in a social and attention network including right supramarginal gyrus, bilateral frontal eye-fields, and left frontopolar regions. Further, these social and visual attention networks were more synchronous across brains during agreement than disagreement. Rather than localized modulation of the canonical language system, these findings are most consistent with a model of distributed and adaptive language-related processes including cross-brain neural coupling that serves dynamic verbal exchanges. (shrink)

It has been a growing trend in Chinese universities to shift from English for general purposes to English for specific purposes teaching. Against this background, large groups of teachers previously engaged in teaching EGP have become or are becoming ESP teachers, which means a complex process of learning for subject-specific information, transforming teaching practices and constructing new identities. Despite this, very little has been written about the ESP teacher cognition of language teaching or the factors influencing this shift in teaching. (...) This study involved English for Medical Purposes teachers in Chinese universities as participants, and a scale of EMP TC with 31 items was developed on the basis of questionnaire results. Data from exploratory factor analysis revealed six dimensions of the scale, namely, teacher attitude, teacher belief, teacher learning, teacher support, role identification, and teacher practice—that combine to constitute and influence EMP TC. While the identity factor has attracted wide attention in ESP teacher research, other factors have largely been neglected. Thus, this research highlights the importance of more factors in shaping and changing the language teaching cognition of EMP or ESP teachers in large, especially the teacher belief factor. In addition, results of independent samples t-tests indicated significant difference in EMP teacher learning in terms of gender, differences in EMP teacher attitude and teacher support in terms of EMP teaching experience. Suggestions for enhancing EMP TC are offered on the basis of the conclusions of this research. (shrink)

BackgroundPsychological distress is common among infertility patients. Total scale scores are often used to represent the severity of anxiety, depression, or stress, which ignores important differences between specific symptoms, and relationships between symptoms. This study aimed to identify patterns of psychological distress experienced by infertility patients and to identify the most central symptoms of anxiety, depression, and stress.MethodFrom June to September 2016, 740 infertility patients were included in this cross-sectional study. Infertility patients were asked to complete the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7, (...) Patients Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), and Fertility Problem Inventory. Network analysis was used to examine the patterns of psychological distress in infertility patients and to test the most central symptoms of anxiety, depression, and stress.ResultsRestlessness was the most central symptom in infertility patients. “Feelings of guilt” had the highest strength among PHQ-9 symptoms. “Relationship concern stress” and “sexual concern stress” had the strongest connections in the network. Stability estimation indicated that the order of node strength centrality was more stable than the order of closeness and betweenness (the CS-coefficients were 0.75, 0.13, and 0.67, respectively). In addition, network structure and global strength were invariant across gender.LimitationsThe cross-sectional design did not permit identification of causal relationships. Patients in this study were recruited from one reproductive hospital; especially, most patients had low socioeconomic status, which limits generalizability of the findings.ConclusionThis study reinforces the need to better understand the underlying causes of psychological distress in infertile patients. A more detailed investigation of the relationship between these symptoms could provide information for psychosocial interventions aimed beyond “alleviating psychological distress.” We should consider the individual psychological symptom pattern and its potential causes in infertility patients instead of assuming a consistent psychological distress structure. (shrink)

The importance of work stress on newcomers’ organizational socialization has been a topic of substantial interest. However, the impact mechanism of different stressors on newcomers’ organizational socialization is still in the early stages of theory development. This study, based on the theory of the dual work stress model, explored how to challenge stressors and hindrance stressors impact newcomers’ organizational socialization via the mediation of job crafting. Based on the empirical data from 247 newcomers, we found that challenge stressors positively affected (...) newcomers’ organizational socialization; on the contrary, hindrance stressors would result in negative influences. In addition, leader-member exchange enhanced the positive effect of challenge stressors on newcomers’ job crafting and further moderated the indirect influence of challenge stressors on newcomers’ organizational socialization via job crafting. These findings provide a practical guide for organizations to apply stress management and promote newcomers’ socialization. (shrink)

Differential leadership as a localized leadership style gradually developed on the basis of the Pattern of Differential Sequence. It plays a dual role in stimulating “insider subordinates” and “outsider subordinates” through the dynamic transformation of the roles. Using the process of game reasoning, the study identifies the differing principles used by insider subordinates and outsider subordinates in implementing deviant innovative behaviors. The simulation graph presents the perceived benefits of employees performing or not performing deviant innovative behaviors as clues during the (...) reasoning process, and implements deviant innovative behaviors for the high risk-taking trait of insider subordinates and the high internal control personality of outsider subordinates who implement deviant innovation. The theoretical derivation of behavior provides relevant references, and provides counter measures for effectively promoting employees’ deviant innovative behavior in the context of differential leadership. (shrink)

Member selection to form an effective collaboration new product development team is crucial for a successful NPD. Existing researches on member selection mostly focus on the individual attributes of candidates. However, under the background of collaboration, knowledge complementarity and collaboration performance among candidates are important but overlooked. In this paper, we propose a multi-objective optimization model for member selection of a Co-NPD team, considering comprehensively the individual knowledge competence, knowledge complementarity, and collaboration performance. Then, to solve the model, an improved (...) adaptive genetic algorithm is developed. Finally, a real case is provided to illustrate the application of the model, and the IAGA is implemented to select the desired team members for optimal team composition. Additionally, the standard generic algorithm and particle swarm optimization are used to compare with the IAGA to further verify the effectiveness of the IAGA. (shrink)

The Affymetrix GeneChip is a popular microarray platform for genome‐wide expression profiling and has been widely used in functional genomics especially in the classification of cancers. Due to the updating of genome data, much of the genome information with which the chips were designed is out‐of‐date and it has been reported that many of the genes/transcripts on the chips differ from their original definition when mapping the probes to the new genome information. Dai et al. have reported that the updated (...) definition can cause as much as 30–50% discrepancy in the genes selected as differentially expressed on a heart tissue expression profiling dataset. Understanding the nature of this difference is therefore very important for the utilization of the data. In this work, with a large cancer dataset as an example, we compared two major definitions and investigated their effects on classification, clustering, discovery of differentially expressed genes and gene‐set‐based analysis. Results show that the two definitions agree well on clustering and classification results but genes and gene sets discovered as differentially expressed or enriched can be very different. Discoveries based on the Affymetrix definition can cover most of those based on the new definition, but tend to have more false positives. BioEssays 28: 739–746, 2006. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

We show that there is a $$ \varvec{\Sigma }_4^0$$ ideal such that it’s neither extendable to any $$ \varvec{\Pi }_3^0$$ ideal nor above the ideal $$ \textrm{Fin}\times \textrm{Fin} $$ in the sense of Katětov order, answering a question from M. Hrušák.

BackgroundCompassion fatigue is often associated with moral distress in the nursing practice among registered nurses. Moral resilience is an important ability to maintain, restore, or promote their physical and mental health in response to ethical dilemmas in nursing. Moral resilience can be utilized as a potential solution to aid registered nurses in effectively managing compassion fatigue.AimTo identify latent profiles of moral resilience among registered nurses and to explore the relationships of these profiles with compassion fatigue.Research designFrom August 2022 to December (...) 2022, 569 nurses were recruited in two general hospitals, in China. A Rushton Moral Resilience Scale and the Chinese version of Compassion Fatigue—Short Scale were given to the participants. A latent profile analysis was conducted to explore moral resilience latent profiles. Predictors of profiles membership was evaluated using multinomial logistic regression analysis, and the compassion fatigue scores of each latent profile were compared using a one-way analysis of variance.Ethical considerationsWe obtained ethical approval from the Institution Review Board of Xiangya School of Nursing, Central South University (IRB No. E202293, approved 15/July/2022).ResultsA four-profile moral resilience model best fit the data. Different levels and shapes differentiated the four profiles: high moral resilience (28.7%), moderate moral resilience (52.3%), low responses and high efficacy (16.2%), and low moral resilience (2.8%). Nurses with bachelor’s degrees were more likely to belong to the high moral resilience ( OR = 0.118, p =.038) and moderate moral resilience ( OR = 0.248, p =.045); Nurses who were divorced or separated ( OR = 11.746, p =.025) and very dissatisfied with their work ( OR = 0.001, p =.049) were more probably belonging to low moral resilience. Nurses who had received ethical training in the hospital were more likely involved in high moral resilience ( OR = 5.129, p =.003) and low responses and high efficacy ( OR = 5.129, p =.003). In each profile of moral resilience, compassion fatigue was experienced differently by the participants ( F = 13.05, p <.001).ConclusionsDeveloping and implementing interventions tailored to each nurse’s moral resilience profile would maximize interventions’ effectiveness and reduce nurses’ compassion fatigue. (shrink)

Motivated by the ethical dilemma in managerial financial reporting decisions, we explore and reveal an unintended “crash” consequence following accelerated patenting information dissemination. Employing the American Inventor’s Protection Act (AIPA) that accelerated the publication of patent applications, we find that accelerated dissemination of patenting information increases stock price crash risk. This effect is stronger when treated firms are technologically closer to their rival firms and more concerned about proprietary costs. Further analyses indicate that, the heightened crash risk following the AIPA (...) is attributable to managers shifting towards less timely bad news disclosures. Overall, our study documents that accelerated dissemination of patenting information induces managers to strategically withhold negative information, which adds to the comprehension of what and how (un)ethical decisions are undertaken by managers. (shrink)