In this paper, according to the perspective of customers and products, by using clustering analysis and association rule technology, this paper proposes a cross-marketing model based on an improved sequential pattern mining algorithm, where an improved algorithm AP is applied. The algorithm can reduce the time cost of constructing a projection database and the influence of the increase of support on the algorithm efficiency. The improved idea is that when the first partition is used to generate the projection database, the (...) number of itemsets in the projection database is sorted from small to large, and when the second partition is used, the sequence patterns are generated directly from the mined sequence patterns, so as to reduce the construction of the database. The experimental results show that this method can quickly mine the effective information in complex data sets, improve the accuracy and efficiency of data mining, and occupy less memory consumption, which has good theoretical value and application value. (shrink)

Objective Cluster randomised trial (CRT) investigators face challenges in seeking informed consent from individual patients (cluster members). This study examined associations between reporting of patient consent in healthcare CRTs and characteristics of these trials. Study design Consent practices and study characteristics were abstracted from a random sample of 160 CRTs performed in primary or hospital care settings that were published from 2000 to 2008. Multivariable logistic regression was used to examine associations between reporting of patient consent and methodological characteristics, as (...) well as publication features such as date and journal of publication. Results 82 (53.8%) of 160 studies reported obtaining informed consent from individual patients. Reporting of patient consent was independently and positively associated with: smaller cluster size, the evaluation of experimental interventions targeted at patients, data collection from individual patients, publication later than 2004 and publication in higher-impact journals. Conclusions Reporting of consent practices in published CRTs should be improved. Consent practices in published CRTs appear to be related to the type of interventions under study, as well as journal impact and trends in research ethics practices. These findings will inform best practices in trial conduct and ethics review, remediation of errors in consent practices and ethics review and the development of regulatory guidance for CRTs. (shrink)

Our prominent definitions of cognition are too vague and lack empirical grounding. They have not kept up with recent developments, and cannot bear the weight placed on them across many different debates. I here articulate and defend a more adequate theory. On this theory, behaviors under the control of cognition tend to display a cluster of characteristic properties, a cluster which tends to be absent from behaviors produced by non-cognitive processes. This cluster is reverse-engineered from the empirical tests that comparative (...) psychologists use to determine whether a behavior was generated by a cognitive or a non-cognitive process. Cognition should be understood as the natural kind of psychological process that non-accidentally exhibits the properties assessed by these tests (as well as others we have not yet discovered). Finally, I review two plausible neural accounts of cognition's underlying mechanisms?one based in localization of function to particular brain regions and another based in the more recent distributed networks approach to neuroscience?which would explain why these properties non-accidentally cluster. While this notion of cognition may be useful for a number of debates, I here focus on its application to a recent crisis over the distinction between cognition and association in comparative psychology. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: The cluster theory of names is generally thought to have been to have been utterly discredited by the objections raised against it by Kripke in Naming and Necessity. In this paper, I develop a new version of the cluster theory in which the role played by clusters of associated descriptions is occupied by teams of cognitive relations. And I argue that these teams of relations find a home in an account of the meanings of expressions in epistemic sentence (...) frames, and in a more general theory of the reference of proper names. RÉSUMÉ: La théorie des faisceaux de noms est généralement considérée sans fondement depuis les objections soulevées par Kripke dans Naming and Necessity. Nous proposons une nouvelle version de la théorie des faisceaux dans laquelle le rôle joué par les faisceaux de descriptions associées est pris en charge par des équipes de relations cognitives. Ces équipes de relations trouvent leur place au sein de l’explication de la signification des expressions dans le cadre de phrases épistémologiques et, plus généralement, dans celui d’une théorie de la référence des noms propres. (shrink)

The gain of a selective advantage in cancer as well as the establishment of complex traits during evolution require multiple genetic alterations, but how these mutations accumulate over time is currently unclear. There is increasing evidence that a mutator phenotype perpetuates the development of many human cancers. While in some cases the increased mutation rate is the result of a genetic disruption of DNA repair and replication or environmental exposures, other evidence suggests that endogenous DNA damage induced by AID/APOBEC cytidine (...) deaminases can result in transient localized hypermutation generating simultaneous, closely spaced (i.e. “clustered”) multiple mutations. Here, we discuss mechanisms that lead to mutation cluster formation, the biological consequences of their formation in cancer and evidence suggesting that APOBEC mutagenesis can also occur genome‐wide. This raises the possibility that dysregulation of these enzymes may enable rapid malignant transformation by increasing mutation rates without the loss of fitness associated with permanent mutators. (shrink)

Our prominent definitions of cognition are too vague and lack empirical grounding. They have not kept up with recent developments, and cannot bear the weight placed on them across many different debates. I here articulate and defend a more adequate theory. On this theory, behaviors under the control of cognition tend to display a cluster of characteristic properties, a cluster which tends to be absent from behaviors produced by non-cognitive processes. This cluster is reverse-engineered from the empirical tests that comparative (...) psychologists use to determine whether a behavior was generated by a cognitive or a non-cognitive process. Cognition should be understood as the natural kind of psychological process that non-accidentally exhibits the properties assessed by these tests (as well as others we have not yet discovered). Finally, I review two plausible neural accounts of cognition's underlying mechanisms—one based in localization of function to particular brain regions and another based in the more recent distributed networks approach to neuroscience—which would explain why these properties non-accidentally cluster. While this notion of cognition may be useful for a number of debates, I here focus on its application to a recent crisis over the distinction between cognition and association in comparative psychology. (shrink)

This article starts from the observation that practices of ‘algorithmic governmentality’ or ‘governance by data’ are reconfiguring modes of social relationality and collectivity. By building, first, on an empirical exploration of digital bordering practices, we qualify these emergent algorithmic categories as ‘clusters’—pulsing patterns distilled from disaggregated data. As fluid, modular, and ever-emergent forms of association, these ‘clusters’ defy stable expressions of collective representation and social recognition. Second, we observe that this empirical analysis resonates with accounts that diagnosed algorithmic (...) governance as a threat to legal subjectivity and socio-political cohesion, and called for a reinvigoration of democratic values and their re-alignment with new ‘infrastructural publics’. Against this backdrop, however, we explore alternatives avenues of legal imagination by pushing in a different (somewhat opposite) direction. Against the re-inscription of liberal categories, we linger with the promise and prospect of illegibility as resistance against the foreclosure of future potentialities in algorithmic forms of subject-making. Instead of falling back on the projection of autonomous human agency and liberal subjectivity to counteract the ‘cluster’, we imagine emancipatory expressions of resistance that are enacted through fugitive, opaque, and experimental collectivities. (shrink)

This paper explores the intersection between three processes associated with globalisation. First, the rise of emerging economies like China, Brazil and India, the so-called ‘Rising Powers’, and their potential to define the contours of globalisation, global production arrangements and global governance in the twenty-first century. Second, the importance of corporate social responsibility goals in the shaping of global trade rules and industrial practices. Third, the significance of small firm clusters as critical sites of industrial competitiveness. Some of the most (...) significant examples of successful, innovative and internationally competitive small firm clusters from the developing world are located in the ‘Rising Powers’ and cluster promotion is a core element of national industrial policy in some of these countries. There is also evidence of engagement by clustered actors with corporate social responsibility goals around labour and environmental impacts. While these three processes have been separately studied there has been no attempt to explore their intersections. This paper addresses this gap through a comparative analysis of secondary data, and a detailed reading of the literature, on CSR and clusters in Brazil, China and India. It assesses the evidence on small firm clusters in the Rising Power economies and considers how these Rising Power clusters engage with CSR goals pertaining to labour, social and environmental standards. It argues for a greater focus on the formal and informal institutional context, termed the ‘social contract’, in explaining divergent experiences and practices observed across these countries. This raises important questions for future academic and policy research on clusters, CSR and the Rising Powers. The paper concludes by outlining a research agenda to explore the local and global consequences of the relationship between Rising Power clusters and international labour and environmental standards. (shrink)

Recent studies of semantic memory have investigated two theories of optimal search adopted from the animal foraging literature: Lévy flights and marginal value theorem. Each theory makes different simplifying assumptions and addresses different findings in search behaviors. In this study, an experiment is conducted to test whether clustering in semantic memory may play a role in evidence for both theories. Labeled magnets and a whiteboard were used to elicit spatial representations of semantic knowledge about animals. Category recall sequences from a (...) separate experiment were used to trace search paths over the spatial representations of animal knowledge. Results showed that spatial distances between animal names arranged on the whiteboard were correlated with inter-response intervals during category recall, and distributions of both dependent measures approximated inverse power laws associated with Lévy flights. In addition, IRIs were relatively shorter when paths first entered animal clusters, and longer when they exited clusters, which is consistent with marginal value theorem. In conclusion, area-restricted searches over clustered semantic spaces may account for two different patterns of results interpreted as supporting two different theories of optimal memory foraging. (shrink)

Traditional document clustering algorithms consider text-based features such as unique word count, concept count, etc. to cluster documents. Meanwhile, event mining is the extraction of specific events, their related sub-events, and the associated semantic relations from documents. This work discusses an approach to event mining through clustering. The Universal Networking Language -based subgraph, a semantic representation of the document, is used as the input for clustering. Our research focuses on exploring the use of three different feature sets for event clustering (...) and comparing the approaches used for specific event mining. In our previous work, the clustering algorithm used UNL-based event semantics to represent event context for clustering. However, this approach resulted in different events with similar semantics being clustered together. Hence, instead of considering only UNL event semantics, we considered assigning additional weights to similarity between event contexts with event-related attributes such as time, place, and persons. Although we get specific events in a single cluster, sub-events related to the specific events are not necessarily in a single cluster. Therefore, to improve our cluster efficiency, connective terms between two sentences and their representation as UNL subgraphs were also considered for similarity determination. By combining UNL semantics, event-specific arguments similarity, and connective term concepts between sentences, we were able to obtain clusters for specific events and their sub-events. We have used 112 000 Tamil documents from the Forum for Information Retrieval Evaluation data corpus and achieved good results. We have also compared our approach with the previous state-of-the-art approach for Router-RCV1 corpus and achieved 30% improvements in precision. (shrink)

ObjectiveTo examine body image perception and the associations of body dissatisfaction with socio-demographic and lifestyle factors among Saudi women attending fitness centers in Riyadh.MethodsSaudi females aged 16 years and older were recruited from 12 randomly selected fitness centers in Riyadh, using stratified clustered sampling technique. Height and weight were measured to calculate actual body mass index. A previously validated instrument was used to collect socio-demographic and lifestyle variables including physical activity, sedentary behaviors, sleep and dietary habits. Stunkard Figure Rating Scale (...) silhouettes were used to assess perceived and desired body shape.ResultsThe participants had a mean age of 29.2. The majority were not married, with no children and had college degrees. While 63% were overweight or obese, nearly 40% of women underestimated their perceived body shape. The majority of respondents were dissatisfied with their body shape including 68% of normal weight women. Females who had BD were significantly older, had higher BMI, reported more weight loss attempt and had expended less time in vigorous and total PA than those who were satisfied with their body shape. However, when adjusting for socio-demographic variables, logistic regression analysis revealed significant associations of BD with higher BMI, shorter membership duration of fitness club, and reduced dairy products and energy drinks consumption.ConclusionExcept for BMI and decreased dairy products and energy drinks consumption, many lifestyle behaviors did not associate with BD among Saudi females attending fitness centers. The findings can inform healthcare providers when intervention strategy is implicated for females with BD. Future studies should compare the associations of BD with lifestyle behaviors between males and females attending fitness centers and seeking weight loss. (shrink)

I raise a puzzle case for “cluster” accounts of natural kinds—the homeostatic property cluster and stable property cluster accounts, especially—on the basis of their expected treatment of the metaphysics of certain disease kinds. Some kinds, I argue, fail to exhibit the co-instantiated property clusters these cluster views take to be constitutive of natural kinds. Some genetic diseases, for example, have archetypical instances with few or none of the pathological processes or symptoms associated with the kind: their instances are typified (...) by a single dispositional property. I dub such kinds ‘amorphic’, owing to their limited morphology, and try out a number of ways in which these kinds might be treated in terms of property clusters, adapting responses cluster theorists have offered to the problem of polymorphic species. Finding these responses wanting, I conclude that cluster accounts are unlikely to be the best account of the metaphysics of amorphic kinds. (shrink)

This article puts forth a novel framework for understanding conceptions of disability using six models of disability: the “Social,” “Medical,” “Tragedy,” “Affirmative,” “Minority” and “Universal” models. It analyzes these models as three opposed pairs, each pertaining to a distinct aspect of the multifaceted experience of disability: (1) the cause of disabled people’s social disadvantage and exclusion; (2) the effect of impairment on individuals’ quality of life and well-being; (3) the dichotomy or lack thereof between disabled and nondisabled people. The article (...) argues that although each model is incompatible with its opposed pair, it is compatible with the remaining four models, in the sense that there is no contradiction in holding the views associated with these models at the same time. It therefore concludes that conceptions of disability are best understood as clusters of views on disability that are associated with compatible models. (shrink)

This article puts forth a novel framework for understanding conceptions of disability using six models of disability: the “Social,” “Medical,” “Tragedy,” “Affirmative,” “Minority” and “Universal” models. It analyzes these models as three opposed pairs, each pertaining to a distinct aspect of the multifaceted experience of disability: (1) the cause of disabled people’s social disadvantage and exclusion; (2) the effect of impairment on individuals’ quality of life and well-being; (3) the dichotomy or lack thereof between disabled and nondisabled people. The article (...) argues that although each model is incompatible with its opposed pair, it is compatible with the remaining four models, in the sense that there is no contradiction in holding the views associated with these models at the same time. It therefore concludes that conceptions of disability are best understood as clusters of views on disability that are associated with compatible models. (shrink)

I raise a puzzle case for “cluster” accounts of natural kinds—the homeostatic property cluster and stable property cluster accounts, especially—on the basis of their expected treatment of the metaphysics of certain disease kinds. Some kinds, I argue, fail to exhibit the co-instantiated property clusters these cluster views take to be constitutive of natural kinds. Some genetic diseases, for example, have archetypical instances with few or none of the pathological processes or symptoms associated with the kind: their instances are typified (...) by a single dispositional property. I dub such kinds ‘amorphic’, owing to their limited morphology, and try out a number of ways in which these kinds might be treated in terms of property clusters, adapting responses cluster theorists have offered to the problem of polymorphic species. Finding these responses wanting, I conclude that cluster accounts are unlikely to be the best account of the metaphysics of amorphic kinds. (shrink)

Familial clustering of a disease is defined as the occurrence of the disease within some families in excess of what would be expected from the occurrence in the population. It has been demonstrated for several cancer types, ranging from rare cancers as the adenomatosis-coli-associated colon cancer or the Li-Fraumeni syndrome to more common cancers as breast cancer and colon cancer. Familial clustering, however, is merely an epidemiological pattern, and it does not tell whether genetic or environmental causes or both in (...) combination are responsible for the familial clustering. Familial clustering may be due to genetic predisposition to the disease, but exposure to environmental factors — shared by members of some families, but not by members of other families — may also cause familial clustering and hence mimic genetic inheritance in the study of nuclear families. Based on assumptions regarding the individual steps in the biological process starting with exposure to carcinogens and ending with death from disseminated cancer we suggest that genetic and environmental factors may both be involved in most of these steps. The present paper focuses on research methodologies necessary to discriminate between the effect of genes and family environment in the development of cancer. (shrink)

This paper compares the associative system of early-learned verbs and body parts in Hebrew with previously published data on American English (Maouene, Josita, Shohei Hidaka & Linda B. Smith. 2008. Body parts and early-learned verbs. Cognitive Science 32(7). 1200–1216). Following the methodology of the former study, 51 Hebrew-speaking college students gave the first body part that came to mind for each of 103 early-learned Hebrew verbs, 81 of which were translational equivalents. Rate of convergence and divergence and underlying patterns (...) were used to make inferences about the constraints at work. Overall convergence (92.3% of the Hebrew data and 93.7% of the English data) reveal similar entropy levels, comparable semantic field shapes of verbs organized by body parts and similar general cluster patterns of verbs by body parts. Most divergence lies in the infrequent responses (offered fewer than 1% of the time) which arise around body parts that are internal, very detailed, very general categorically, used in figurative language, uniquely provided and tend to be subject to cultural taboos. This is a new contribution, as previous work has not quantified the relative proportion of convergent to divergent associations. We discuss how these findings support neural and developmental continuity and stability in the verbal system with respect to the categorization of verbs by body parts cross-culturally. (shrink)

Background: Alexithymia is a personality trait which is characterized by an inability to identify and describe conscious emotions of oneself and others.Aim: The present study aimed to determine whether various measures of mental health, interoception, psychological flexibility, and self-as-context, predicted through linear associations alexithymia as an outcome. This also included relevant mediators and non-linear predictors identified for particular sub-groups of participants through cluster analyses of an Artificial Neural Network output.Methodology: Two hundred and thirty participants completed an online survey which included (...) the following questionnaires: Toronto alexithymia scale; Acceptance and Action Questionnaire 2 ; Positive and Negative Affect Scale, Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale 21 ; Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness ; and the Self-as-Context scale. A stepwise backwards linear regression and mediation analysis were performed, as well as a cluster analysis of the non-linear ANN upper hidden layer output.Results: Higher levels of alexithymia were associated with increased psychological inflexibility, lower positive affect scores, and lower interoception for the subscales of “not distracting” and “attention regulation.” SAC mediated the relation between emotional regulation and total alexithymia. The ANNs accounted for more of the variance than the linear regressions, and were able to identify complex and varied patterns within the participant subgroupings.Conclusion: The findings were discussed within the context of developing a SAC processed-based therapeutic model for alexithymia, where it is suggested that alexithymia is a complex and multi-faceted condition, which requires a similarly complex, and process-based approach to accurately diagnose and treat this condition. (shrink)

Languages use predicates and arguments to express events and event participants. In order to establish generalizations concerning the variety languages show regarding the strategies for discerning some arguments from the others, the concept of roles—and, particularly, macroroles, mesoroles, and microroles—associated with participants provides a widely studied starting point. In this article, the formal properties in the arguments of a set of 14 verb meanings in Spanish Sign Language have been analyzed. Arguments have been studied by considering their microroles, and a (...) quantitative method for measuring distances from a plurality of properties has been adopted. The novelty of this analysis is that it focuses on how arguments group in terms of these properties. Subsequently, some generalizations justifying why some verb meanings have a tendency to associate with certain forms of argument expression are highlighted in this study. (shrink)

Objective: Cognitive impairment is a common neurological complication in patients with end-stage renal disease undergoing maintenance hemodialysis. Brain network analysis based on graph theory is a promising tool for studying CI. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to analyze the changes of functional brain networks in patients on MHD with and without CI by using graph theory and further explore the underlying neuropathological mechanism of CI in these patients.Methods: A total of 39 patients on MHD and 25 healthy controls (...) matched for age, sex, and years of education were enrolled in the study. Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging and T1-weighted high-resolution anatomical data were obtained, and functional brain networks for each subject were constructed. The brain network parameters at the global and regional levels were calculated, and a one-way analysis of covariance was used to compare the differences across the three groups. The associations between the changed graph-theory parameters and cognitive function scores in patients on MHD were evaluated using Spearman correlation analysis.Results: Compared with HCs, the global parameters [sigma, gamma, and local efficiency ] in both patient groups decreased significantly. The clustering coefficient in patients with CI was significantly lower than that in the other two groups. The regional parameters were significantly lower in the right superior frontal gyrus, dorsolateral and gyrus rectus of patients with CI than those of patients without CI; however the nodal local efficiency in the left amygdala was significantly increased. The global Cp and regional parameters in the three brain regions were significantly correlated with the cognitive function scores.Conclusion: This study confirmed that the topology of the functional brain network was disrupted in patients on MHD with and without CI and the disruption of brain network was more severe in patients with CI. The abnormal brain network parameters are closely related to cognitive function in patients on MHD. (shrink)

Searching through semantic memory may involve the use of several retrieval cues. In a verbal fluency task, the set of available cues is limited and every candidate word is a target. Individuals exhibit clustering behavior as predicted by optimal foraging theory. In another semantic search task, the remote associates task, three cues are presented and a single target word has to be found. Whereas the task has been widely studied as a task of creativity or insight problem solving, in this (...) article, the RAT is treated as a semantic retrieval task and assessed from the perspective of information foraging theory. Experiments are presented that address the superadditive combination of cues and the anti-clustering behavior in the recall sequence. A new type of search behavior in the RAT is put forward that involves maximizing the difference in activation between target and distractors. This type of search is advantageous when the target is weak and cue patches are contaminated with strong competitors. (shrink)

ObjectivesAlthough socioeconomic status has been shown to be an important determinant of physical activity in adults, the association in children and adolescents remains less consistent based on evidence from western developed countries. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to investigate associations between SES and PA among Chinese children and adolescents.MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted with a self-reported questionnaire in China. The multi-stage stratified cluster sampling method was used, and 2,955 children and adolescents were enrolled in this study. SES was (...) assessed by measuring parental education levels, perceived family wealth, and Family Affluence Scale II. PA was assessed by reliable and valid items from the Health Behavior School-aged Children Surveillance questionnaires. Descriptive statistics were used to report sample characteristics, including demographic characteristics, levels of PA, and SES. The Chi-square test was applied to analyze the differences of PA in gender and school period. Binary logistic regression was used to analyze the association between SES and PA among children and adolescents.ResultsOverall, 10.4% of children and adolescents accumulated moderate-to-vigorous physical activity at least 60 min per day. Boys were more physically active than girls. Higher socioeconomic status was positively associated with higher physical activity levels among children and adolescents, especially using FAS and mother education level as SES measures. The association between SES and PA varied by gender and grade group, and the effects of SES are also different on weekdays and weekends.ConclusionThis study found socioeconomic disparities in PA among Chinese children and adolescents, and showed the importance of targeting children and adolescents with low SES intervention priority. Based on these research findings, it is suggested that SES, especially for FAS and mother education level, should be considered when designing and implementing the promotion of regular PA in children and adolescents. Health policymakers may use this information to develop interventions to reduce health inequalities among children and adolescents in the future. (shrink)

BackgroundPrevious studies have focused on the opposite relation between muscle strength, obesity, and depression in adults. Moreover, the evidence has indicated that obesity and depression in adults might be significantly decreased with Muscle Strength Exercise albeit it might be insufficient. Therefore, the current study aimed to investigate the association between MSE, adiposity, and depression among United States adolescents.Materials and methodsThis cross-sectional study used the Youth Risk Behavioral Survey data. In YRBS, a cluster sample was used, and the investigation was divided (...) into three stages. The study surveyed 13,677 high school students and conducted self-reported questionnaires on sex, grade, race/ethnicity, MSE days, overweight, obesity, and depressive symptoms. The study got the nationally representative population of American students in Grade 9 to 12.ResultsA total of 13,677 participants were included in the final analysis. The participants meeting the guidelines’ requirements seemed more likely to be obese than those not meeting. There was no statistical significance in the relations between the MSE guidelines and overweight and depression. For all the participants, the prevalence of those conforming to MSE was 30.1%. One-fifth of the participants reported no MSE per week, 7.8% reported 3 days of MSE per week, and 7.7% reported 7 days.ConclusionThe main finding of this study indicated a positive relationship between the normative MSE required in guidelines and low-level obesity. Beyond that, the evidence was insufficient to confirm the positive links between MSE and depression among American adolescents. Our study could offer evidence for future MSE interventions in adolescents. (shrink)

Medical professionals, including mental health professionals, largely agree that moral judgment should be kept out of clinical settings. The rationale is simple: moral judgment has the capacity to impair clinical judgment in ways that could harm the patient. However, when the patient is suffering from a "Cluster B" personality disorder, keeping moral judgment out of the clinic might appear impossible, not only in practice but also in theory. For the diagnostic criteria associated with these particular disorders (Antisocial, Borderline, Histrionic, Narcissistic) (...) are expressed in overtly moral language. I consider three proposals for dealing with this problem. The first is to eliminate the Cluster B disorders from the DSM on the grounds that they are moral, rather than mental, disorders. The second is to replace the morally laden language of the diagnostic criteria with morally neutral language. The third is to disambiguate the notion of moral judgment so as to respect the distinction between having morally disvalued traits and having moral responsibility for those traits. Sensitivity to this distinction enables the clinician, at least in theory, to employ morally laden diagnostic criteria without adopting the sort of morally judgmental (and potentially harmful) attitude that results from the tacit presumption of moral responsibility. I argue against the first two proposals and in favor of the third. In doing so, I appeal to Grice's distinction between conventional and conversational implicature. I close with a few brief remarks on the irony of retaining overtly moral language in an ostensibly medical manual for the diagnosis of mental disorders. (shrink)

This study analyzes the logic behind the development of environmental responsiveness in companies that are located in geographical clusters. Drawing on previous research, we contend that competitiveness and legitimation are important sources of variation in these companies’ environmental responses. In particular, the companies’ perceived rivalry, competition tracking capabilities, interaction with industry associations and network embeddedness influence their competitiveness and legitimation motivations for environmental responsiveness. We used structural equation modeling to test these hypotheses on a sample of 251-clustered agricultural firms (...) in Spain. The results support the hypotheses and provide a number of insights about the underlying motivations behind going green in geographical clusters. (shrink)

This paper investigates force shift, a phenomenon in which the canonical discourse conventions, or force, associated with a clause type can be overridden to yield polar questions with the help of additional force-indicating devices. Previous studies attribute force shift to the presence of a complex question force component operating on semantic content. Based on utterance particles and particle clusters in Cantonese, we analyze force shift as resulting from compositional operations on force-bearing expressions. We propose that a simplex force, such (...) as assertion or question, denotes unanchored sentence acts, while a force-shifting particle like Cantonese _ho2_ is an anchoring function anchoring a sentence act to the speaker while querying whether or not the addressee can perform the sentence act. The proposed semantics makes predictions about _ho2_’s interactions with addressee-changing operations and imperatives, as well as about a larger family of force shift phenomena. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to analyze the association between physical activity and eating habits during the COVID-19 pandemic among Brazilian adults. A sample of 1,929 participants answered an online survey, however 1,874 were included in the analysis. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on eating habits was assessed inquiring about participants' intake of fruits, vegetables, fried foods, and sweets during the pandemic. Physical activity was assessed by asking participants about their weekly frequency, intensity and number of minutes/hours engaging (...) in structured physical activities per week. Participants were then stratified into categories based on moderate-to-vigorous intensity and into active or inactive. Increased sweets consumption was the most commonly reported change to eating habits, followed by an increase in the consumption of vegetables, fruits, and fried foods. Physical activity practice was related to lower consumption of fried foods and sweets. A cluster analysis revealed subjects with higher the level of physical activity was more likely to follow a healthy diet. Thus, physical activity was positively associated with healthier eating habits. Health authorities must recommend regular physical as a strategy to improve overall health during the COVID-19 pandemic. Future studies should address the physical activity interventions to improve health status during a pandemic. (shrink)

This article delves into a potential mindset that may be responsible for the recent financial meltdown. Research relating to this mindset from different perspectives is reviewed. The findings from this literature review are used to create a conceptual framework for the empirical, ethical, and corporate social responsibility study of financial professionals. Data were collected from a survey of the professional membership of a large national association of financial professionals. This article reports the results of the analysis of data relative to (...) the relationships among the four constructs—financial professionals' perceived organizational value clusters, ethics, corporate social responsibility, and corporate performance. The findings indicate that organizational core values significantly affect corporate ethics, social responsibility, and financial performance. We propose that organizations in the financial industry can move toward being more ethical and socially responsible by adopting organic core values (e.g., democratic, open, trusting, enterprising, creative, stimulating) and moving away from mechanistic values (e.g., structured, regulated, procedural, authoritarian, closed, callous). We also found the adaptation of organic core values does not require the organization to suffer a loss in financial performance. (shrink)

Societal attitude acceptance can influence the digital transformation in agriculture. Digital technologies, such as robots in dairy farming, can lead to more sustainable, animal welfare-friendly and consumer-oriented milk production. This study used the example of the milking and feeding robots to investigate whether society accepts the use of robots in dairy farming and whether there are differences in society based on perceived risks and opportunities of digitalization in dairy farming and acceptance. To this end, an online-based study was conducted with (...) a total of 1007 citizens in Germany. Overall, the respondents in this study suspect that the use of robots in dairy farming is associated with various risks but also with opportunities for society and for farmers in particular. However, these attitudes are quite heterogeneous. Four clusters could be identified: “proponents of robots”, “indifferent citizens”, “skeptical citizens”, and “critical supporters of robots”. Proponents of robots see only opportunities and little risks, whereas the critical citizens perceive not only opportunities but also many risks of using robots in dairy farming. The indifferent citizens show a rather indifferent attitude, in contrast to the skeptical citizens, who reject the opportunities at the societal level, while they agree with the opportunities of robots for farmers. This research contributes to understanding societal attitudinal acceptance and highlights differences in society that can help inform future decisions about the development and adoption of robots in dairy farming. (shrink)

Many clusters of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Less Developed Countries (LDC) are counteracting the “race to the bottom” by becoming competitive while at the same time “socially upgrading” in order to successfully improve their innovation capacity, social, environmental and labor standards, and health-and-safety issues. There is significant literature on the competitiveness of clusters and SMEs, but little research about how and why competitive small firms in LDCs are socially upgrading. Issues such as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) (...) and public policies have influenced the initiatives for cluster social upgrading. The objective of this article is to discuss a conceptual framework to understand what factors may lead SMEs to organize themselves to overcome obstacles to collective action for social upgrading.The traditional cluster literature relies on the internal dynamics of the clusters for upgrading. Through interaction among cluster members (firms, supporting organizations, etc.), firms would learn from each other. This would help firms to innovate and develop new products, processes, functions and markets. Besides this literature, three other basic frameworks that explain the way firms can upgrade have been developed recently in the literature: upgrading through markets, through CSR and through better enforcement of regulation. Those frameworks can bring certain insights to a better understanding of social upgrading. (shrink)

This thesis addresses the tension in pragmatic cluster-randomized trials between their social value and the requirement to respect the autonomy of research participants. Pragmatic trials are designed to evaluate the effectiveness of treatments in real-world settings to inform clinical decision-making and promote cost-efficient care. These trials are often embedded into clinical settings and ideally include all patients who would receive the treatments under investigation as a part of routine care. Trialists increasingly adopt cluster-randomized designs—in which intact groups, such as hospitals (...) or clinics, are allocated randomly to study interventions—to simplify the inclusion of all patients. But including all-comers conflicts with the requirement to obtain written informed consent from research participants. Since informed consent is central to respecting patient autonomy, the question arises: how can the ends of autonomy and pragmatism be served simultaneously? Some philosophers argue that patients have an obligation to participate in clinical research and that this may negate consent requirements. I argue that while there may be grounds for a prima facie obligation for patients to participate in clinical research, no compelling argument has demonstrated that the obligation is enforceable. Others assert that broad application of a waiver of consent will facilitate the conduct of pragmatic cluster-randomized trials. I demonstrate that this proposal sharply conflicts with the historical origins of the waiver. I articulate a novel moral foundation for the use of a waiver of consent and show that when trials evaluate treatments delivered directly to patients, the autonomy interests at stake for participants are too substantial to permit its use. My solution draws a distinction between consent requirements in existing policy and consent as an autonomous authorization. As many pragmatic cluster-randomized trials are conducted in primary care settings with no research staff, I argue that patient autonomy can be promoted and protected using clinical-style consent, in which health providers seek verbal informed consent from patients and document it in the electronic health record. This approach has been associated with high rates of recruitment and, thus, may satisfy both requirements for social value and respect for autonomy. (shrink)

Success in online and blended courses requires engaging in self-regulated learning, especially for challenging STEM disciplines, such as physics. This involves students planning how they will navigate course assignments and activities, setting goals for completion, monitoring their progress and content understanding, and reflecting on how they completed each assignment. Based on Winne & Hadwin’s COPES model, SRL is a series of events that temporally unfold during learning, impacted by changing internal and external factors, such as goal orientation and content difficulty. (...) Thus, as goal orientation and content difficulty change throughout a course, so might students’ use of SRL processes. This paper studies how students’ SRL behavior and achievement goal orientation change over time in a large college introductory level physics course taught online. Students’ achievement goal orientation was measured by repeated administration of the achievement goals questionnaire-revised. Students’ SRL behavior was measured by analyzing their clickstream event traces interacting with online learning modules via a combination of trace clustering and process mining. Event traces were first divided into groups similar in nature using agglomerative clustering, with similarity between traces determined based on a set of derived characteristics most reflective of students’ SRL processes. We then generated causal nets for each cluster of traces via process mining and interpreted the underlying behavior and strategy of each causal net according to the COPES SRL framework. We then measured the frequency at which students adopted each causal net and assessed whether the adoption of different causal nets was associated with responses to the AGQ-R. By repeating the analysis for three sets of online learning modules assigned at the beginning, middle, and end of the semester, we examined how the frequency of each causal net changed over time, and how the change correlated with changes to the AGQ-R responses. Results have implications for measuring the temporal nature of SRL during online learning, as well as the factors impacting the use of SRL processes in an online physics course. Results also provide guidance for developing online instructional materials that foster effective SRL for students with different motivational profiles. (shrink)

We compared the ability of three different contextual models of lexical semantic memory and of a simple associative model to predict the properties of semantic networks derived from word association norms. None of the semantic models were able to accurately predict all of the network properties. All three contextual models over-predicted clustering in the norms, whereas the associative model under-predicted clustering. Only a hybrid model that assumed that some of the responses were based on a contextual model and (...) others on an associative network successfully predicted all of the network properties and predicted a word's top five associates as well as or better than the better of the two constituent models. The results suggest that participants switch between a contextual representation and an associative network when generating free associations. We discuss the role that each of these representations may play in lexical semantic memory. Concordant with recent multicomponent theories of semantic memory, the associative network may encode coordinate relations between concepts, and contextual representations may be used to process information about more abstract concepts. (shrink)

BackgroundElectronic patient record (EPR) technology is a key enabler for improvements to healthcare service and management. To ensure these improvements and the means to achieve them are socially and ethically desirable, careful consideration of the ethical implications of EPRs is indicated. The purpose of this scoping review was to map the literature related to the ethics of EPR technology. The literature review was conducted to catalogue the prevalent ethical terms, to describe the associated ethical challenges and opportunities, and to identify (...) the actors involved. By doing so, it aimed to support the future development of ethics guidance in the EPR domain.MethodsTo identify journal articles debating the ethics of EPRs, Scopus, Web of Science, and PubMed academic databases were queried and yielded 123 eligible articles. The following inclusion criteria were applied: articles need to be in the English language; present normative arguments and not solely empirical research; include an abstract for software analysis; and discuss EPR technology.ResultsThe medical specialty, type of information captured and stored in EPRs, their use and functionality varied widely across the included articles. Ethical terms extracted were categorised into clusters ‘privacy’, ‘autonomy’, ‘risk/benefit’, ‘human relationships’, and ‘responsibility’. The literature shows that EPR-related ethical concerns can have both positive and negative implications, and that a wide variety of actors with rights and/or responsibilities regarding the safe and ethical adoption of the technology are involved.ConclusionsWhile there is considerable consensus in the literature regarding EPR-related ethical principles, some of the associated challenges and opportunities remain underdiscussed. For example, much of the debate is presented in a manner more in keeping with a traditional model of healthcare and fails to take account of the multidimensional ensemble of factors at play in the EPR era and the consequent need to redefine/modify ethical norms to align with a digitally-enabled health service. Similarly, the academic discussion focuses predominantly on bioethical values. However, approaches from digital ethics may also be helpful to identify and deliberate about current and emerging EPR-related ethical concerns. (shrink)

Information management systems improve the retention of information in large collections. As such they act as memory prostheses, implying an ideal basis in human memory models. Since humans process information by association, and situate it in the context of space and time, systems should maximize their effectiveness by mimicking these functions. Since human attentional capacity is limited, systems should scaffold cognitive efforts in a comprehensible manner. We propose the Principles of Mnemonic Associative Knowledge (P-MAK), which describes a framework for (...) semantically identifying, organizing, and retrieving information, and for encoding episodic events by time and stimuli. Inspired by prominent human memory models, we propose associative networks as a preferred representation. Networks are ideal for their parsimony, flexibility, and ease of inspection. Networks also possess topological properties—such as clusters, hubs, and the small world—that aid analysis and navigation in an information space. Our cognitive perspective addresses fundamental problems faced by information management systems, in particular the retrieval of related items and the representation of context. We present evidence from neuroscience and memory research in support of this approach, and discuss the implications of systems design within the constraints of P-MAK’s principles, using text documents as an illustrative semantic domain. (shrink)