Online research in philosophy

A brief review of the social and educational context of Hong Kong shows that the publication of the General guidelines on moral education in schools in 1981, by the Hong Kong Education Department, marked a milestone in the development of moral education. The Guidelines explicitly asserted moral education as one function of schooling, whilst also formally recognizing the home and the community as two main influences. This paper narrates how three moral sources of influence ? namely Confucian?parental, Christian?religious and liberal?civic (...) ? have shaped the development of moral education in Hong Kong from 1973 to 2003. It then examines in more detail: parental influence at home ? the Confucian moral source in Chinese family; schooling influenced by religious sources ? taking Christian schools as an example; and the Independent Commission Against Corruption as an official agency for moral education ? a liberal source calling for civic morality. In conclusion, the post?colonial emergence of nationalistic influence in the recently constituted Chinese Special Administrative Region, advocating national identity as the new core value, is traced and the implications for future moral education in Hong Kong are considered. (shrink)

Numerical simulations examining chemical interactions of water molecules with forsterite grains have demonstrated the efficacy of nebular gas adsorption as a viable mechanism for water delivery to the terrestrial planets. Nevertheless, a comprehensive picture detailing the water-adsorption mechanisms on forsterite is not yet available. Towards this end, using accurate first-principles density functional theory, we examine the adsorption mechanisms of water on the (001), (100), (010) and (110) surfaces of forsterite. While dissociative adsorption is found to be the most energetically favourable (...) process, two stable associative adsorption configurations are also identified. In dual-site adsorption, the water molecule interacts strongly with surface magnesium and oxygen atoms, whereas single-site adsorption occurs only through the interaction with a surface Mg atom. This results in dual-site adsorption being more stable than single-site adsorption. (shrink)