Après avoir appartenu au monde sinisé pendant deux mille ans, le Vietnam, conquis par la France en 1858, est entré dans une nouvelle ère. Les intellectuels vietnamiens, surtout ceux issus des écoles franco-indigènes et parlant bien le français, commencent à faire connaître les idées et les penseurs occidentaux à leurs concitoyens. C’est grâce à eux que Tolstoï devient alors célèbre à travers le pays. Dans cet article, nous tentons de donner un aperçu général de la réception de Tolstoï au Vietnam (...) dans la première moitié du XXe siècle. Nous analysons en particulier la biographie de Tolstoï publiée en 1939 et considérée comme l’une des biographies modernes les plus réussies. Conçue et rédigée par Nguyen Phi Hoanh qui souhaitait donner aux lecteurs une compréhension complète de la vie, de l’œuvre, mais aussi des idées de Tolstoï, cette biographie interroge également la pertinence de la philosophie du romancier russe, en particulier sa doctrine de la non-violence dans un contexte colonial. (shrink)

This study is an attempt to construct a quantitative link for international regimes with global leadership. The country's willingness to lead in solving global issues as the first mover in the formation of an international regime is measured and characterized by analyzing their ratification behavior in multilateral conventions deposited to the United Nations which shape of the global community. For this purpose, a set of quantitative indicators, the Index of Global Leadership Willingness and the Global Support Index, was defined and (...) calculated for each country based on its actual ratification year data for 120 multilateral conventions covering global issues such as peace and security, environment, commerce, communication, intellectual property protection, human rights, and labor. By proposing a framework of global leadership analysis, the study seeks to provide an empirical testing of the transformation of global governance towards cooperation without hegemony paradigm. The paper analyses changes in the leadership willingness indices of selected country groups, such as the G3, G7/8, and G20, over the century and finds that the will to drive the international agenda of these groups of leaders is in decline. Moreover, our study provides evidence to argue that our current world is actually without consistent global leadership across domains of the world affairs. Although several countries still show visible leadership in specific policy domains, such as environment and intellectual property, neither the G7/8 nor the G20 was playing a comparable role to those performed by the G3 a hundred years ago. (shrink)

The paper attempts to construct a global model of a social contract using well-known metaphors of two great philosophers: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Locke. By modelling a global social contract, I mean the formulation of a social contract using two sets of data: one is global citizens' preferences about values and norms while the other is sovereign states' participation in multilateral treaties. Both Rousseau and Locke formulate their versions of social contract theories in the national context of eighteenth-century Europe. This (...) paper tries my hands on extending their theories to the global context. This paper attempts to link empirically the relationship between global citizens' preferences as gauged by the World Values Survey and sovereign states' participation in 120 multilateral treaties deposited to the United Nations. To see the link between citizens and treaties (quasi-legislative outcomes, sort of), dimensional similarities of the cosmos of citizens' preference and the cosmos of sovereign states' willingness to join multilateral treaties are examined. Once done, all the sovereign states are located in each of the two cosmoses, citizens and states, and the correlation coefficients between them are measured. Based on these empirical results, the nature of the global quasi-legislative process is clarified. Conclusions and implications are drawn. (shrink)

Today, many people have realized that the climate change and biodiversity loss issues lie in how and to what extent humans consume products for their lives in the Anthropocene era. Consumerism has pushed natural resource exploitation to its peak, and the depletion of resources is becoming increasingly prevalent. The beauty and personal care industry has a large market and high profits, especially in the high-income segment. However, this advantage also carries the risk of facing scrutiny, investigations, and criticism from civil (...) society organizations, environmental activists, and consumers. More than anyone else, the industry is vulnerable to the perils of unfavourable societal assessments, particularly the repercussions of consumer-led boycott actions. In this discourse, we suggest that, given the current circumstances, it is imperative for multinational beauty corporations to take a proactive role in allocating resources towards the development of sustainable agriculture practices. This entails not only advocating for the widespread adoption of environmentally conscious production methods but also dedicating efforts towards conducting research and innovation in the area of nature-friendly manufacturing techniques. Doing so will help demonstrate their commitment to the environment and actively provide convincing evidence to consumers of their social responsibility through emission reduction and biodiversity conservation activities. (shrink)

Purpose This study aims to ascertain the impact of data collecting awareness on perceived information security concerns and information-sharing behavior on social networking sites. Design/methodology/approach Based on communication privacy management theory, the study forecasted the relationship between information-sharing behavior and awareness of data collecting purposes, data collection tactics and perceived security risk using structural equation modeling analysis and one-way ANOVA. The sample size of 521 young social media users in Vietnam, ages 18 to 34, was made up of 26.7% men (...) and 73.3% women. When constructing the questionnaire survey method with lone source respondents, the individual’s unique awareness and experiences with using online social networks (OSNs) were taken into account. Findings The results of the investigation demonstrate a significant relationship between information-sharing and awareness of data collecting, perceptions of information security threats and behavior. Social media users have used OSN privacy settings and paid attention to the sharing restriction because they are concerned about data harvesting. Research limitations/implications This study was conducted among young Vietnamese social media users, reflecting specific characteristics prevalent in the Vietnamese environment, and hence may be invalid in other nations’ circumstances. Practical implications Social media platform providers should improve user connectivity by implementing transparent privacy policies that allow users to choose how their data are used; have clear privacy statements and specific policies governing the use of social media users’ data that respect users’ consent to use their data; and thoroughly communicate how they collect and use user data while promptly detecting any potential vulnerabilities within their systems. Originality/value The authors ascertain that the material presented in this manuscript will not infringe upon any statutory copyright and that the manuscript will not be submitted elsewhere while under Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society review. (shrink)

Objectives: The official implementation of clinical pharmacy in Vietnam has arrived relatively late, resulting in various stressors. This study aims to evaluate job stress level and suggest viable solutions.Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted on clinical pharmacists in 128 hospitals in Ho Chi Minh City. Job stress questions were derived from the Healthcare Profession Stress Inventory.Results: A total of 197 CPs participated, giving a response rate of 82.4%. Participants were found to have moderate job stress with an overall mean stress (...) score of 1.5 and stress rate of 52.8%. The sample size was statistically adequate and the HPSI was valid and reliable. Patient care responsibility was the main stressor, especially in public hospitals, followed by job conflicts. Lack of experience, low income, and inability to participate in clinical ward rounds caused significant stress to CPs regarding job recognition and job uncertainty. More practice-oriented training programs in bachelor curricula and clinical practice should be applied to help CPs gain more experience, self-confidence, and diminish job stress.Conclusion: CPs in HCMC have moderate stress. More practice-oriented training programs should be prioritized to lessen stress for CPs. (shrink)

IntroductionThis study aimed to explore the mental wellbeing profiles and their related factors among urban young adults in Vietnam.MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted in Hanoi, which is the capital of Vietnam. There were 356 Vietnamese who completed the Mental Health Inventory-5 questionnaire. The Latent Profile Analysis was used to identify the subgroups of mental wellbeing through five items of the MHI-5 scale as the continuous variable. Multinomial logistic regression was used to determine factors related to subgroups.ResultsThree classes represented three levels (...) of MHI-5 score, which included “Poor mental health,” “Fair mental health,” and “Good mental health,” were, respectively, 14.3, 46.6, and 39.0%. Compared to a low household economy, participants with an average household economy had 2.11 and 4.79 times higher odds of being in a good mental health class relative to fair and poor mental health classes. Respondents with more than two acute symptoms had 3.85 times higher odds of being in a good mental health class relative to a poor mental health class, as compared to those without acute symptoms. Regarding the measurement of the Perceived Social Support Scale, people having support from their family had 1.80 and 2.23 times higher odds of being in classes of fair and good mental health relative to the poor mental health class; and participants having friend support also had 1.87 times higher odds of being in a good mental health class compared with the fair mental health class, as the MSPSS score increased by 1 unit. People with Rosenberg’s self-esteem scale increased by 1 score, those who had 1.17, 1.26, and 1.47 times higher odds of being in a good compared to fair mental health class, fair compared to poor mental health class, and good compared to poor mental health class, respectively.ConclusionOur findings were given to promote a new classification method for mental health screening among the general population. The current findings could be used as evidence to develop policies and plans that focus on encouraging early screening for mental health problems among the general young population in the future. (shrink)

The annotated dataset is an essential requirement to develop an artificial intelligence system effectively and expect the generalization of the predictive models and to avoid overfitting. Lack of the training data is a big barrier so that AI systems can broaden in several domains which have no or missing training data. Building these datasets is a tedious and expensive task and depends on the domains and languages. This is especially a big challenge for low-resource languages. In this paper, we experiment (...) and evaluate many various approaches on sentiment analysis problems so that they can still obtain high performances under limited training data. This paper uses the preprocessing techniques to clean and normalize the data and generate the new samples from the limited training dataset based on many text augmentation techniques such as lexicon substitution, sentence shuffling, back translation, syntax-tree transformation, and embedding mixup. Several experiments have been performed for both well-known machine learning-based classifiers and deep learning models. We compare, analyze, and evaluate the results to indicate the advantage and disadvantage points of the techniques for each approach. The experimental results show that the data augmentation techniques enhance the accuracy of the predictive models; this promises that smart systems can be applied widely in several domains under limited training data. (shrink)

Effective stakeholder engagement and inclusive governance are essential for effective and equitable ocean management. However, few cross-national studies have been conducted to examine how stakeholders’ economic and cultural benefit perceptions influence their support level for policies focused on ocean preservation. The current study aims to fill this gap by employing the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics on a dataset of 709 stakeholders from 42 countries, a part of the MaCoBioS project funded by the European Commission H2020. We found that economic (...) and cultural benefit perceptions are generally negatively associated with the policy support level. Regarding economic aspects, stakeholders considering transportation and shipping, renewable energy generation, and oil and gas provision as the most crucial benefits their countries’ oceans provide tend to obtain less support for policies focusing on ocean preservation. Meanwhile, for cultural aspects, perceiving recreation and tourism, aesthetic pleasure, mental health and well-being support, and sense of identity provision as the most important benefits provided by the country’s ocean are negatively associated with the policy support level. The perceived economic, cultural, and environmental tradeoffs when supporting policies focused on ocean preservation were discussed. Recommendations for improving the effective management of multi-use marine space are also provided to reduce the perceived competing interests among stakeholders. (shrink)

Background: This study examined the cyberbullying experience and coping manners of adolescents in urban Vietnam and explored the mediating effect of different support to the associations between cyberbullying and mental health issues.Methods: A cross-sectional study was performed on 484 students at four secondary schools. Cyberbullying experience, coping strategies, psychological problems, and family, peer, and teacher support were obtained. Structural equation modeling was utilized to determine the mediating effects of different support on associations between cyberbullying and psychological problems.Results: There were 11.6 (...) and 28.3% of students who reported that they experienced and observed at least one cyberbullying act in the last 3 months, respectively. Among the victims, only 48.2% tried to stop the perpetrators. Meanwhile, the majority of observers belonged to the “Intervene” group who tried to report cyberbullying acts or help victims. Family support was found to partially mediate associations between cyberbullying experience and observation with levels of psychological problems among adolescents.Conclusion: The 3-month rate of cyberbullying experience and observation among urban adolescents aged 11–14 was low. However, current coping strategies against cyberbullying were not sufficient. Family support is an important factor that should be considered for designing interventions to mitigating the impacts of cyberbullying on the mental health of adolescents. (shrink)

Patient data is used to drive an ecosystem of advanced digital tools in health care, like predictive models or artificial intelligence‐based decision support. Patients themselves, however, receive little information about these technologies or how they affect their care. This raises important questions about patient trust and continued engagement in a health care system that extracts their data but does not treat them as key stakeholders. This essay explores these tensions and provides steps forward for health systems as they design advanced (...) health information‐technology (IT) policies and practices. It centers patients, their concerns, and the ways they perceive trustworthiness to reframe advanced health IT in service of patient interests. (shrink)

This study applied a method of assisted introspection to investigate the phenomenology of mathematical intuition arousal. The aim was to propose an essential structure for the intuitive experience of mathematics. To achieve an intersubjective comparison of different experiences, several contemporary mathematicians were interviewed in accordance with the elicitation interview method in order to collect pinpoint experiential descriptions. Data collection and analysis was then performed using steps similar to those outlined in the descriptive phenomenological method that led to a generic structure (...) that accounts for the intuition surge in the experience of mathematics which was found to have four irreducible structural moments. The interdependence of these moments shows that a perceptualist view of intuition in mathematics, as defended by Chudnoff, is relevant to the characterization of mathematical intuition. The philosophical consequences of this generic structure and its essential features are discussed in accordance with Husserl’s philosophy of ideal objects and theory of intuition. (shrink)

The COVID-19 epidemic in the early 2020s is making a big difference for educators around the world. For the past 2 years, the curriculum and working patterns have been overturned in response to this epidemic, which has brought unprecedented challenges and physical and mental stress to preschool teachers. This situation can have a drastic impact on the acquisition of job well-being for preschool teachers. During this special time, the leader’s management style will also influence the psychological feelings of the organization’s (...) staff. For example, empowering leadership is an important management function that empowers subordinates, emphasizes the meaning of work, promotes participation in decision-making, and expresses confidence. Therefore, in the current COVID-19 pandemic context, it is worthwhile to explore the topic of empowering leadership to ensure preschool teachers’ well-being, by balancing work demands and work resources in a way that facilitates a sense of organizational support and reduces job stress, while relatively fewer studies have been conducted on the relationship between preschool teachers’ job well-being in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on this, this study proposed a research model from the theoretical perspective of the Job Demands-Resources Model to explore the influence of empowering leadership, sense of organizational support, and job stress on preschool teachers’ job well-being in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. To achieve the purpose of this study, a convenience sampling method was used to invite 500 preschool teachers in China to complete a questionnaire survey, and after removing invalid samples and data with incomplete answers, reliability and validity analyses and model fit tests were conducted, followed by a structural equation modeling method for path analysis. The results of the study showed that in the kindergarten work context, empowering leadership showed a significant negative effect on job stress, but a significant positive effect on job well-being and a significant positive effect on sense of organizational support. Sense of organizational support had a significant negative effect on job stress but a significant positive effect on preschool teachers’ job well-being. Preschool teachers’ job stress and job well-being showed a significant negative effect. The contribution of this study was to explore the relationship between understanding leadership empowerment and preschool teachers’ job well-being in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic based on the Job Demands-Resources Model, which will facilitate educational organizational contexts to empower preschool teachers to work harder to reduce their job stress as well as enhance their sense of organizational support and promote the acquisition of job well-being. (shrink)

In a recent article I detailed at length the methodology employed to explore the reflective and pre-reflective contents of singular intuitive experiences in contemporary mathematics in order to propose an essential structure of intuition arousal in mathematics. In this paper I present the phenomenological assessment of the essential structure according to the three formal structures as proposed by Sokolowski's scheme and show their relevance in the description of the intuitive experience in mathematics. I also show that this essential structure acknowledges (...) the perceptualist view of intuition, as proposed by Chudnoff, and discuss the analogy that is often proposed and argued between mathematical intuition and ordinary perceptive intuition. (shrink)

Since 2013, Vietnam has implemented a plan to reform the whole education sector. However, there is little understanding on the status of educational research in Vietnam, which may lay the foundation for such plan. Thus, this research aims to analyze the whole picture of educational research from Vietnam, as seen from the Clarivate Web of Science (WOS) database: 215 publications were recorded, ranging from 1991 to 2018. These 215 publications were further analyzed from five perspectives: 1) number of publications by (...) year; 2) research fields and levels of education; 3) top institutions with the highest number of publications; 4) international collaboration; and 5) quality. Some of the most notable results are: 1) the educational sciences in Vietnam have been still under-developed until recently; 2) among different research topics research among educational sciences, some (e.g., Vocational Education and Training or Early Childhood Education) seemed to be overlooked whereas others (e.g., Higher Education and Teaching and Learning) seemed to receive more attention from educational scholars; 3) all the most major education – specialized universities did not appear among the top five institutions with highest number of publications; 4) Australia, Thailand, the USA, New Zealand and China were the countries with the highest number of co-publications with Vietnamese researchers; and 5) The majority of publications belonged to low-ranked journals. Implications would be withdrawn for Vietnamese policymakers, education leaders, educational researchers and teachers in order to adjust their policies and/or action plans; thus, enhancing the performance and impacts of educational research in the future. (shrink)

In this paper I am discussing the concept of “objective world”, its hope and aim as vigorously presented in Husserl’s famous discourse of the Fifth Meditation. In this manner, the first part of my work focuses on Husserl’s intentionality as knowledge of the “I” or “my ego” as my primordial identity, in relation to “my culturalcommunity” as its primordial one, too. The thesis will then develop into “intersubjectivity” in which “the other” and his “cultural community” as primordially constituted are objective (...) to be fully understood in terms of synthetic knowledge; namely through psychological, cultural, historical and social forms and contents. The second part of my paper takes off from where transcendental phenomenology is grounded to look into the problem of Globalization and questions of value. If the first part followed Husserlian theoretical investigations, sometimes called interpretive philosophy to hopefully acquire universal principles, the second onecan be called practical doctrine, which studies cases presented by a number of specialists who focus on praxis and consequences of Globalization – a theme for economic concerns, but inherently it affects the stability of the community of mankind. This new world order overtly and covertly critiques traditional concepts of nation and culture as it redefines democratic concept, coming home to human rights. Its challenge has been already about the doubts and contradictoriness of “values” in broadest and “reduction” sense. OBJECTIVITY as a noun, and OBJECTIVE, an adjective and noun are terminologies of extremely complicated shades of meaning in Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations, particularly in the fifth one where such terms are used interchangeably to fit the concept of intersubjective Nature; which I will explore and further put it in current economic and political drive to Globalization. In this regard my theme will deal simultaneously with both the critique of Husserlian thought and neo-liberalism (liberal democracy), a twist of democracy for preserving capitalism in what is called a new world order by ordinance and defense of Imperialism as well as the states that so desire to join the world market. (shrink)

The preschool education profession often faces many challenges and preschool teachers, as important members of the preschool education profession must respond to a variety of emergencies with young children, which also leads to high levels of job stress and can have a negative impact on their ongoing well-being. Past research has pointed out that a healthy lifestyle is one of the key factors in enhancing sustainable well-being in high-stress work situations and many studies have found that good leisure activity engagement (...) as a healthy lifestyle is associated with higher levels of well-being. However, the relationship between preschool teachers’ leisure engagement and sustainable well-being has been less explored. Therefore, this study proposed seven research hypotheses based on the engagement theory proposed by Fredricks et al. and developed a research model to explore the relationship between three types of leisure engagement, including behavioral, affective and cognitive, and preschool teachers’ job stress and sustainable well-being, using age as a control variable. This study used a cross-sectional web-based questionnaire with a convenience sample of 500 preschool teachers in China. The collected data were analyzed for reliability and validity, model fit testing and structural equation modeling for model validation after removing invalid data and incomplete responses. The results of the study showed that behavioral engagement was not related with either the job stress or sustainable well-being of preschool teachers; Emotional and cognitive engagement were negatively related to job stress but positively related to the sustainable well-being of preschool teachers; and Job stress was negatively related to the sustainable well-being of preschool teachers; Age is an effective control variable. From the above results, it is clear that not all three types of leisure engagement are effective in terms of reducing the work stress of preschool teachers. As well as being related to the sustainable well-being of preschool teachers emotional and cognitive engagement contributed more to sustainable well-being acquisition. (shrink)

Teacher education students, as an important reserve in the field of education, their growth and development are related to the future of science, economy, sustainable development of education. Through participation in the educational practice of STEAM, which integrates science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics is more beneficial for them to acquire 21st century skills like communication, collaboration, learning innovation and critical thinking. However, little has been seen about the use and effectiveness of short videos in STEAM education activities and how (...) they can be used to support and promote teacher education students STEAM learning performance and sustainable inquiry behaviors. Therefore, this study combines the framework of triadic reciprocity determinism theory and technology acceptance theory to propose six research hypotheses and develop a research model to explore the relationship between collaborative self-efficacy, perceived usefulness of short videos, perceived ease of use, STEAM learning performance and teacher education students’ sustainable inquiry behavior. To achieve the purpose of this study, this study used purposive sampling and invited teacher education students from five classes of preschool education at a university in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China, to participate in this study. A total of 8 h of instructional guidance was provided over a four-week period, in which participants used short videos for collaborative group learning and independent inquiry and applied STEAM concepts to kindergarten science activities. Participants’ STEAM performance was measured and surveyed during the fourth week. The results of the study validation showed that teacher education students CS-E had a positive effect on the PU and PEOU of short videos; Teacher’s education students PEOU of short videos had a positive effect on usefulness; Teacher’s education students PU and PEOU of short videos had a positive effect on STEAM learning performance; Teacher’s education students’ STEAM learning performance had a positive effect on sustainable inquiry behavior. (shrink)

This paper presents a novel improved firefly algorithm (IFA) to deal the problem of the optimal operation of thermal generating units (OOTGU) with the purpose of reducing the total electricity generation fuel cost. The proposed IFA is developed based on combining three improvements. The first is to be based on the radius between two solutions, the second is updated step size for each considered solution based on different new equations, and the third is to slightly modify a formula producing new (...) solutions by using normally distributed random numbers and canceling uniform random numbers of conventional firefly algorithm (FA). The effect of each proposed improvement on IFA is investigated by executing five benchmark functions and two different systems. The performance of IFA is investigated on six other study cases consisting of different types of objective function and complex level of constraints. The objective function considers single fuel with quadratic form and nonconvex form, and multifuels with the sum of several quadratic and nonconvex functions while a set of constraints taken into account are power loss, prohibited zone, ramp rate limit, spinning reserve, and all constraints in transmission power networks. The obtained results indicate the proposed improvements in terms of high optimal solution quality, stabilization of search ability, and fast convergence compared with FA. In addition, the comparisons with other methods also lead to a conclusion that the proposed method is a very promising optimization tool for systems with quadratic fuel cost function and with complicated constraints. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose an understanding of philosophy of education as cultural and intercultural work and philosophers of education as cultural and intercultural workers. In our view, the discipline of philosophy of education in North America is currently suffering from measures of insularity and singularity. It is vital that we justly and respectfully engage with and expand our knowledge and understanding of sets of conceptual and life-practice resources, and honor and learn from diverse histories, cultures, and traditions. Such honoring (...) provides responsive conditions for our coming together in and across differences in order that we may productively and creatively address and overturn grammars of violence, destruction, and dis-ease in these complexly troubled times. Committing ourselves to deconstructing historical and contemporary beliefs, values, and practices that are compromising human and planetary flourishing, we undertake responsibilities to go cross-cultural and intercultural. (shrink)

Radical personal and systemic social transformation is urgently needed to address world-wide violence and inequality, pervasive moral confusion and corruption, and the rapid, unprecedented global destruction of our environment. Recent years have seen an embrace of intersubjectivity within discourse on educational transformation within academia and the public sphere. As well, there has been a turn toward contemplative education initiatives within North American schools, colleges and universities. This article contends that these turns might benefit from openness to the ontologies, epistemologies, and (...) ethics of the ‘wisdom traditions’ from which many contemplative practices are drawn. To illustrate this point, we discuss the value of intercultural philosophy of education, and introduce Eastern philosophical ideas, specifically, the Shambhala Buddhist notion of the nondual ground and wisdom of basic goodness and related teachings. We detail how awareness of basic goodness and its holistic expression in the ground, path, and fruition of Shambhala teachings can open vital questions regarding intersubjectivity, challenge and reinvigorate aspects of current engagements with contemplative practices, and provide significant insights and educational paths for transformational endeavours in neoliberal times. Informed by our learning from Shambhala, we conclude with a deepened understanding of intercultural philosophy of education. (shrink)

This paper aims to uncover the underlying metaphorical expressions regarding the importance of love to human life in English and Vietnamese poetry based on Conceptual Metaphor Theory, which suggests that metaphor is based on human thought as well as on language. For metaphor identification, the authors use a five-step procedure based on Pragglejaz Group’s method for metaphorical expressions and a self-proposed three-step procedure for conceptual metaphors. The findings reveal that love is metaphorically expressed to have a considerable influence on both (...) the physical and mental aspects of human life. This paper is also a comparative investigation showing both similarities and differences in the love-life metaphorical expressions between the two languages. The similarities are explained by the same grounding of metaphor-embodiment and the universality of conceptual metaphors. The differences are attributed to cultural distinction. (shrink)

This study investigates the influence of old directors on corporate social responsibility (CSR) using roughly 25,000 firm-year observations from 2001 to 2015 in the United States. We employ the widely used selection, optimization, and compensation (SOC) model from psychology to explain the CSR decisions of old directors. Our results indicate that firms with a higher percentage of old directors tend to have lower engagement in CSR activities. To address endogeneity, we adopt the difference-in-differences method and use the event of sudden (...) deaths and unexpected retirements of old directors and find that our results remain robust. Our analysis also reveals that the negative impact of old directors on CSR is more significant in firms where directors receive fewer reputational spillover benefits from CSR initiatives and/or firms exhibiting poor corporate governance. In addition, this adverse impact of old directors comes from two effects: a reduction in efforts to enhance CSR strengths and an increase in inaction to address CSR concerns. Overall, these findings suggest that the CSR decision-making process of old directors involves assessing the costs and benefits of CSR engagements, consistent with our hypothesis derived from the SOC model. (shrink)

The sizes of individual data files have steadily increased along with rising demand for customized services, leading to issues such as low efficiency of web-based geographical information system -based data compression, transmission, and rendering for rich Internet applications in complicated visualization systems. In this article, a WebGIS-based technical solution for the efficient transmission and visualization of meteorological big data is proposed. Based on open-source technology such as HTML5 and Mapbox GL, the proposed scheme considers distributed data compression and transmission on (...) the server side as well as distributed requests and page rendering on the browser side. A high-low 8-bit compression method is developed for compressing a 100 megabyte file into a megabyte-scale file, with a compression ratio of approximately 90%, and the recovered data are accurate to two decimal places. Another part of the scheme combines pyramid tile cutting, concurrent domain name request processing, and texture rendering. Experimental results indicate that with this scheme, grid files of up to 100 MB can be transferred and displayed in milliseconds, and multiterminal service applications can be supported by building a grid data visualization mode for big data and technology centers, which may serve as a reference for other industries. (shrink)

This study investigated the impact of value consonance on employee-based brand equity through the mediating role of teachers' self-efficacy and belongingness. For this purpose, a deductive approach was followed, and data were collected under a cross-sectional research design from academia through a questionnaire. Prior approval from the administration was sought before administrating the questionnaire on a large scale and a sample of 520 teachers was approached in the first phase. At this stage, 418 answered questionnaires were received, while in the (...) second wave, questions related to the teacher's self-efficacy and employee-based brand equity were asked from the respondents. Out of these 418 re-distributed questionnaires, 387 were received back and after discarding the partially filled and incomplete questionnaires, the useable sample size was left as 372. Data have been analyzed by using the structural equation modeling technique, which was assessed through measurement and structural model. Results indicate that value consonance can promote positive behaviors in the workplace. Moreover, teachers with high self-efficacy can develop based on brand equity. Similarly, employees with high-value consonance develop a sense of belongingness with their academic institutes. Limitations and future directions are also discussed. (shrink)

Causal mediation analysis is complicated with multiple effect definitions that require different sets of assumptions for identification. This article provides a systematic explanation of such assumptions. We define five potential outcome types whose means are involved in various effect definitions. We tackle their mean/distribution’s identification, starting with the one that requires the weakest assumptions and gradually building up to the one that requires the strongest assumptions. This presentation shows clearly why an assumption is required for one estimand and not another, (...) and provides a succinct table from which an applied researcher could pick out the assumptions required for identifying the causal effects they target. Using a running example, the article illustrates the assembling and consideration of identifying assumptions for a range of causal contrasts. For several that are commonly encountered in the literature, this exercise clarifies that identification requires weaker assumptions than those often stated in the literature. This attention to the details also draws attention to the differences in the positivity assumption for different estimands, with practical implications. Clarity on the identifying assumptions of these various estimands will help researchers conduct appropriate mediation analyses and interpret the results with appropriate caution given the plausibility of the assumptions. (shrink)

BackgroundExtremely violent events such as terrorist attacks and mass shootings form a severe risk for the health and wellbeing of affected individuals. In this study based on a public health monitor, we focus on the health impact of the Utrecht tram shooting, which took place in the morning of March 18th 2019. A lone gunman opened fire on passengers within a moving tram. Four people died, and six people were injured in this attack. The attack resulted in nationwide (...) commotion and drew much media attention. Aim of this study was to increase insight into the health effects for the survivors, and whether they received the needed care and support.MethodsSemi-structured interviews with accompanying questionnaires were conducted at six and 18 months post-attack. Overall, 21 survivors participated in the first series of interviews, 15 in the second series. Qualitative data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis, quantitative data was only described because of the low sample size.ResultsAt both six and 18 months after the attack many survivors had been able to resume daily life, and most rated their overall health as good or excellent. At the same time, a substantial portion suffered from health problems such as posttraumatic stress symptoms and other complaints, and needed professional care. Furthermore, those in need did not always find their own way to appropriate care through the existing health system: half of the survivors still needed support in finding the right care 18 months later.ConclusionAlthough the design and implementation of this public health monitor were accompanied by multiple challenges, it was possible to track a portion of the survivors and gain insight in the considerable health burden of the attack. Also, it is clear in this study that the health impact of terrorism affects survivors in the long run and requires attention from health authorities and professionals, as survivors were not able to find the right care by themselves. (shrink)

This article examines different ways agrarian thought has been interpreted and employed by ancient Chinese and early modern Japanese philosophers to criticize and attempt to limit the state’s power, and, in at least one case, to try to strengthen it. It analyzes the manner in which arguably the most fundamental human activities of farming, weaving, and governing have been conceptualized in a normative way, and the extent to which thinkers and statesmen in these East Asian historical contexts debated their correct (...) interrelation. The state’s critics were deeply concerned about the tragic occurrence of death by starvation during their ages, and by the conditions that allowed it to happen. They identified and advocated certain ethical values and political measures they believed would mitigate and help prevent this avoidable circumstance. Conversely, the state’s supporters appropriated agrarian thinking to demonstrate how the sovereign’s control of the realm and its subjects could be significantly enhanced by strategically apportioning the land in a particular way. Lastly, both groups of thinkers sought unity, ethically or geopolitically, but they conceived of this ideal in contrasting ways. (shrink)

A controversy of the Perception is focused on the Mind-Nature relation by Confucian Scholars in 18th century Joseon Dynasty. Chang-Hyup Kim [金昌協], especially, asserted that the Perception should be the unique side of Mind, because the Wise [智: the Mind of Judgment, remarkably about the righteous or not] is one aspect of the Nature. He needs to define the category of Wise and Perception, because the existing definition of Wise as an unprocurable activity of Mind. That might bring a confusion (...) of concepts though The Mind and Nature, in his view. More over he added the essential aspect of Perception to real activity of Perception, and in this point of view, the position of Mind is important to the process of consolidating into Nature. Therefore he asserted that we should perceive the Nature, the essence, in the side of Mind [卽心指性]. This vision of the aim to Nature in the point of Mind, which was reinvestigation of Neo-Confucianism and this was succeeded to the general with academic traditional of Nak School [洛學]. (shrink)

Objective Analyze racial differences in comfort with medical research using an alternative to the traditional approach that treats white people as a raceless norm.Methods Quantitative analysis of survey responses (n = 1,570) from Black and white residents of the US to identify relationships between perceptions of research as a right or a risk, and comfort participating in medical research.Results A lower proportion of white respondents reported that medical experimentation occurred without patient consent (p < 0.001) and a higher proportion of (...) white respondents reported that it should be their right to participate in medical research (p = 0.02). Belief in one’s right to participate was significantly predictive of comfort (b = 0.37, p < 0.001). Belief in experimentation without consent was significantly predictive of comfort for white respondents but not for Black respondents in multivariable analysis.Conclusions A rights-based orientation and less concern about the risks of medical research among white respondents demonstrate comparative advantage. Efforts to diversify medical research may perpetuate structural racism if they do not (1) critically engage with whiteness and its role in comfort with participation, and (2) identify and respond specifically to the needs of Black patients. (shrink)

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion.

In the era of precision medicine and expanding health information technologies, large representative datasets are considered necessary for addressing health inequities. Partially in response to gro...

Developing World Bioethics, Volume 22, Issue 1, Page 44-52, March 2022.

Games may seem like a waste of time, where we struggle under artificial rules for arbitrary goals. The author suggests that the rules and goals of games are not arbitrary at all. They are a way of specifying particular modes of agency. This is what make games a distinctive art form. Game designers designate goals and abilities for the player; they shape the agential skeleton which the player will inhabit during the game. Game designers work in the medium of agency. (...) Game-playing, then, illuminates a distinctive human capacity. We can take on ends temporarily for the sake of the experience of pursuing them. Game play shows that our agency is significantly more modular and more fluid than we might have thought. It also demonstrates our capacity to take on an inverted motivational structure. Sometimes we can take on an end for the sake of the activity of pursuing that end. (shrink)

Value capture occurs when an agent’s values are rich and subtle; they enter a social environment that presents simplified — typically quantified — versions of those values; and those simplified articulations come to dominate their practical reasoning. Examples include becoming motivated by FitBit’s step counts, Twitter Likes and Re-tweets, citation rates, ranked lists of best schools, and Grade Point Averages. We are vulnerable to value capture because of the competitive advantage that such crisp and clear expressions of value have in (...) our private reasoning and our public justification. There is, however, a price. In value capture, we take a central component of our autonomy — our ongoing deliberation over the exact articulation of our values — and we outsource it. And the metrics to which we outsource usually engineered for the interests of some external force, like a large-scale institution’s interest in cross-contextual comprehensibility and quick aggregability. That outsourcing cuts off one of the key benefits to personal deliberation. In value capture, we no longer adjust our values and their articulations in light of own rich experience of the world. Our values should often be carefully tailored to our particular selves or our small-scale communities, but in value capture, we buy our values off the rack. In some cases – like decreasing CO2 emissions – the costs of non-tailored values are outweighed by the benefit of precise collective coordination. In other cases, like in our aesthetic lives, they are not. This suggests that we should want different values suited to different scales. We should want value federalism. Some values are perhaps best pursued at the largest-scale level, others at smaller scales. The problem occurs when we exhibit an excess preference for the largest-scale values – when we consistently let the universal metrics swamp our quieter interests. (shrink)

There seems to be a deep tension between two aspects of aesthetic appreciation. On the one hand, we care about getting things right. On the other hand, we demand autonomy. We want appreciators to arrive at their aesthetic judgments through their own cognitive efforts, rather than deferring to experts. These two demands seem to be in tension; after all, if we want to get the right judgments, we should defer to the judgments of experts. The best explanation, I suggest, is (...) that aesthetic appreciation is something like a game. When we play a game, we try to win. But often, winning isn’t the point; playing is. Aesthetic appreciation involves the same flipped motivational structure: we aim at the goal of correctness, but having correct judgments isn’t the point. The point is the engaged process of interpreting, investigating, and exploring the aesthetic object. Deferring to aesthetic testimony, then, makes the same mistake as looking up the answer to a puzzle, rather than solving it for oneself. The shortcut defeats the whole point. This suggests a new account of aesthetic value: the engagement account. The primary value of the activity of aesthetic appreciation lies in the process of trying to generate correct judgments, and not in having correct judgments. -/- *There is an audio version available: look for the Soundcloud link, below.*. (shrink)

I propose to study one problem for epistemic dependence on experts: how to locate experts on what I will call cognitive islands. Cognitive islands are those domains for knowledge in which expertise is required to evaluate other experts. They exist under two conditions: first, that there is no test for expertise available to the inexpert; and second, that the domain is not linked to another domain with such a test. Cognitive islands are the places where we have the fewest resources (...) for evaluating experts, which makes our expert dependences particularly risky. -/- Some have argued that cognitive islands lead to the complete unusability of expert testimony: that anybody who needs expert advice on a cognitive island will be entirely unable to find it. I argue against this radical form of pessimism, but propose a more moderate alternative. I demonstrate that we have some resources for finding experts on cognitive islands, but that cognitive islands leave us vulnerable to an epistemic trap which I will call runaway echo chambers. In a runaway echo chamber, our inexpertise may lead us to pick out bad experts, which will simply reinforce our mistaken beliefs and sensibilities. (shrink)

In her BBC Reith Lectures on Trust, Onora O’Neill offers a short, but biting, criticism of transparency. People think that trust and transparency go together but in reality, says O'Neill, they are deeply opposed. Transparency forces people to conceal their actual reasons for action and invent different ones for public consumption. Transparency forces deception. I work out the details of her argument and worsen her conclusion. I focus on public transparency – that is, transparency to the public over expert domains. (...) I offer two versions of the criticism. First, the epistemic intrusion argument: The drive to transparency forces experts to explain their reasoning to non-experts. But expert reasons are, by their nature, often inaccessible to non-experts. So the demand for transparency can pressure experts to act only in those ways for which they can offer public justification. Second, the intimate reasons argument: In many cases of practical deliberation, the relevant reasons are intimate to a community and not easily explicable to those who lack a particular shared background. The demand for transparency, then, pressures community members to abandon the special understanding and sensitivity that arises from their particular experiences. Transparency, it turns out, is a form of surveillance. By forcing reasoning into the explicit and public sphere, transparency roots out corruption — but it also inhibits the full application of expert skill, sensitivity, and subtle shared understandings. The difficulty here arises from the basic fact that human knowledge vastly outstrips any individual’s capacities. We all depend on experts, which makes us vulnerable to their biases and corruption. But if we try to wholly secure our trust — if we leash groups of experts to pursuing only the goals and taking only the actions that can be justified to the non-expert public — then we will undermine their expertise. We need both trust and transparency, but they are in essential tension. This is a deep practical dilemma; it admits of no neat resolution, but only painful compromise. (shrink)

What is a game? What are we doing when we play a game? What is the value of playing games? Several different philosophical subdisciplines have attempted to answer these questions using very distinctive frameworks. Some have approached games as something like a text, deploying theoretical frameworks from the study of narrative, fiction, and rhetoric to interrogate games for their representational content. Others have approached games as artworks and asked questions about the authorship of games, about the ontology of the work (...) and its performance. Yet others, from the philosophy of sport, have focused on normative issues of fairness, rule application, and competition. The primary purpose of this article is to provide an overview of several different philosophical approaches to games and, hopefully, demonstrate the relevance and value of the different approaches to each other. Early academic attempts to cope with games tried to treat games as a subtype of narrative and to interpret games exactly as one might interpret a static, linear narrative. A faction of game studies, self-described as “ludologists,” argued that games were a substantially novel form and could not be treated with traditional tools for narrative analysis. In traditional narrative, an audience is told and interprets the story, where in a game, the player enacts and creates the story. Since that early debate, theorists have attempted to offer more nuanced accounts of how games might achieve similar ends to more traditional texts. For example, games might be seen as a novel type of fiction, which uses interactive techniques to achieve immersion in a fictional world. Alternately, games might be seen as a new way to represent causal systems, and so a new way to criticize social and political entities. Work from contemporary analytic philosophy of art has, on the other hand, asked questions whether games could be artworks and, if so, what kind. Much of this debate has concerned the precise nature of the artwork, and the relationship between the artist and the audience. Some have claimed that the audience is a cocreator of the artwork, and so games are a uniquely unfinished and cooperative art form. Others have claimed that, instead, the audience does not help create the artwork; rather, interacting with the artwork is how an audience member appreciates the artist's finished production. Other streams of work have focused less on the game as a text or work, and more on game play as a kind of activity. One common view is that game play occurs in a “magic circle.” Inside the magic circle, players take on new roles, follow different rules, and actions have different meanings. Actions inside the magic circle do not have their usual consequences for the rest of life. Enemies of the magic circle view have claimed that the view ignores the deep integration of game life from ordinary life and point to gambling, gold farming, and the status effects of sports. Philosophers of sport, on the other hand, have approached games with an entirely different framework. This has lead into investigations about the normative nature of games—what guides the applications of rules and how those rules might be applied, interpreted, or even changed. Furthermore, they have investigated games as social practices and as forms of life. (shrink)

We offer an account of the generic use of the term “porn”, as seen in recent usages such as “food porn” and “real estate porn”. We offer a definition adapted from earlier accounts of sexual pornography. On our account, a representation is used as generic porn when it is engaged with primarily for the sake of a gratifying reaction, freed from the usual costs and consequences of engaging with the represented content. We demonstrate the usefulness of the concept of generic (...) porn by using it to isolate a new type of such porn: moral outrage porn. Moral outrage porn is representations of moral outrage, engaged with primarily for the sake of the resulting gratification, freed from the usual costs and consequences of engaging with morally outrageous content. Moral outrage porn is dangerous because it encourages the instrumentalization of one’s empirical and moral beliefs, manipulating their content for the sake of gratification. Finally, we suggest that when using porn is wrong, it is often wrong because it instrumentalizes what ought not to be instrumentalized. (shrink)

As innovations in the field of vascular composite allotransplantation (VCA) progress, whole-eye transplantation (WET) is poised to transition from non-human mammalian models to living human recipients. Present treatment options for vision loss are generally considered suboptimal, and attendant concerns ranging from aesthetics and prosthesis maintenance to social stigma may be mitigated by WET. Potential benefits to WET recipients may also include partial vision restoration, psychosocial benefits related to identity and social integration, improvements in physical comfort and function, and reduced surgical (...) risk associated with a biologic eye compared to a prosthesis. Perioperative and postoperative risks of WET are expected to be comparable to those of facial transplantation (FT), and may be similarly mitigated by immunosuppressive protocols, adequate psychosocial support, and a thorough selection process for both the recipient and donor. To minimize the risks associated with immunosuppressive medications, the first attempts in human recipients will likely be performed in conjunction with a FT. If first-in-human attempts at combined FT-WET prove successful and the biologic eye survives, this opens the door for further advancement in the field of vision restoration by means of a viable surgical option. This analysis integrates recent innovations in WET research with the existing discourse on the ethics of surgical innovation and offers preliminary guidance to VCA programs considering undertaking WET in human recipients. (shrink)