Harry Frankfurt had insightfully pointed out that an agent acts freely when he acts in accord with the mental states with which he identifies. The concept of identification rightly captures the ownership condition (something being one’s really own), which plays a significant role in the issues of freedom and moral responsibility. For Frankfurt, identification consists of one’s forming second-order volitions, endorsing first-order desires, and issuing in his actions wholeheartedly. An agent not only wants to φ but also fully embraces his (...) desire to φ (and φ). Frankfurt’s official theory above encounters some serious problems, especially since it is believed that his concept of wholehearted identification is too strong to be necessary for freedom. In this paper, I propose that we can uncouple identification from wholeheartedness and thus get two different senses of identification: weak identification and strong identification. Then, I argue that this distinction does a better job than Frankfurt’s official theory. On the one hand, weak identification is enough for ownership and freedom and thus more promising than strong identification; on the other hand, this distinction has an attractive implication that it fits well with our intuition about the degree of freedom and responsibility. (shrink)

Over the past generation, the rise of East Asia and especially China, has brought about a sea change in the economic and political world order. At the same time, global warming, environmental degradation, food and water shortages, population explosion, and income inequities have created a perfect storm that threatens the very survival of humanity. It is clear now that the Westphalian model of individual sovereign states seeking their own self-interest will not be able to respond effectively to this win-win or (...) lose-lose crisis. In this volume, a cadre of distinguished scholars comes together to reflect on Confucianism and Deweyan pragmatism as possible resources for a new geopolitics that begins from an ontology of interdependence and recognizes the irreducibly ecological nature of the human experience at every level. Both Confucian and Deweyan traditions emphasize the primacy of experience, the importance of vital relationality, and the moral roots of good governance. The potential benefits of conceptually blending the two are many. Indeed, the contemporary Chinese philosopher Tang Junyi provides us with a cosmological understanding of the "idea" of Confucianism that, in parallel to Dewey's "idea" of democracy, can enable us to anticipate the core values, if not the specific contours, of a "Confucian democracy." Just as Dewey's "idea" of democracy is his vision of the flourishing communal life made possible by the contributions of the uniquely distinguished persons that constitute it, Tang Junyi's Confucianism is a pragmatic naturalism directed at achieving the most highly integrated cultural, moral, and spiritual growth for the individual-in-community. In both, we find an affirmation of communal harmony as a process "starting here and going there" through which those involved learn together to do ordinary things in extraordinary ways. Just such a cosmological understanding of democracy is one way of describing what will be needed to address the many predicaments characterizing the environmental, cultural, socioeconomic, and political dynamics of the twenty-first century. (shrink)

本书主要内容包括:超越西方哲学传统;反基础主义纲领;心理学唯名论;行为主义知识论;没有世界的真理观;后哲学文化;无本体论的伦理学等.

COVID-19 often manifests with different outcomes in different patients, highlighting the complexity of the host-pathogen interactions involved in manifestations of the disease at the molecular and cellular levels. In this paper, we propose a set of postulates and a framework for systematically understanding complex molecular host-pathogen interaction networks. Specifically, we first propose four host-pathogen interaction (HPI) postulates as the basis for understanding molecular and cellular host-pathogen interactions and their relations to disease outcomes. These four postulates cover the evolutionary dispositions involved (...) in HPIs, the dynamic nature of HPI outcomes, roles that HPI components may occupy leading to such outcomes, and HPI checkpoints that are critical for specific disease outcomes. Based on these postulates, an HPI Postulate and Ontology (HPIPO) framework is proposed to apply interoperable ontologies to systematically model and represent various granular details and knowledge within the scope of the HPI postulates, in a way that will support AI-ready data standardization, sharing, integration, and analysis. As a demonstration, the HPI postulates and the HPIPO framework were applied to study COVID-19 with the Coronavirus Infectious Disease Ontology (CIDO), leading to a novel approach to rational design of drug/vaccine cocktails aimed at interrupting processes occurring at critical host-coronavirus interaction checkpoints. Furthermore, the host-coronavirus protein-protein interactions (PPIs) relevant to COVID-19 were predicted and evaluated based on prior knowledge of curated PPIs and domain-domain interactions, and how such studies can be further explored with the HPI postulates and the HPIPO framework is discussed. (shrink)

Some institutional investors are exposed to social norms and public scrutiny. Prior research indicates that these norm-constrained institutions engage in negative screening and invest less in firms operating in ‘sin’ industries. We examine whether social norms also motivate these institutions to engage in positive screening—where they invest more in firms with better corporate social responsibility performance—and CSR-related activism—where they promote improvements in the CSR of existing investees. We find that firms with superior CSR performance have greater ownership by norm-constrained institutions, (...) consistent with positive screening, and we use a natural experiment to establish causality. We also find that increases in the shareholdings of norm-constrained institutions are associated with subsequent improvements in CSR, consistent with activism. Further, we rule out an alternative explanation for our results where the positive screening and activism are ‘profit-driven’ rather than driven by social pressure. Thus, our results suggest that the influence of social norms on stock markets is more pervasive than documented in the prior literature. (shrink)

Nowadays, depression is the world’s major health concern and economic burden worldwide. However, due to the limitations of current methods for depression diagnosis, a pervasive and objective approach is essential. In the present study, a psychophysiological database, containing 213 subjects, was constructed. The electroencephalogram signals of all participants under resting state and sound stimulation were collected using a pervasive prefrontal-lobe three-electrode EEG system at Fp1, Fp2, and Fpz electrode sites. After denoising using the Finite Impulse Response filter combining the Kalman (...) derivation formula, Discrete Wavelet Transformation, and an Adaptive Predictor Filter, a total of 270 linear and nonlinear features were extracted. Then, the minimal-redundancy-maximal-relevance feature selection technique reduced the dimensionality of the feature space. Four classification methods distinguished the depressed participants from normal controls. The classifiers’ performances were evaluated using 10-fold cross-validation. The results showed thatK-Nearest Neighbor had the highest accuracy of 79.27%. The result also suggested that the absolute power of the theta wave might be a valid characteristic for discriminating depression. This study proves the feasibility of a pervasive three-electrode EEG acquisition system for depression diagnosis. (shrink)

On the fundamentals of Buddhist doctrines; including explation of the karmic law of cause and effect with stories.

In "Formations of World Literature and Shaw's The Man of Destiny in Chinese and Japanese Translation" Shunqing Cao and Xin Chen expand Franco Moretti's dictum that "world literature is not an object, it's a problem" to elaborate that the concept of world literature is in some sense a problematic one, which is itself under a process of problematization. Cao and Chen discuss how variation and heterogeneity contribute to a more in-depth understanding of formations of world literature. Taking the (...) Bernar Shaw's The Man of Destiny they discuss the writer's presence in world literature from a bi-lateral perspective: Shaw's work in the English-speaking West and Shaw in Asia. For the former, Shaw stands in a specific place in recent postcolonial Irish Studies and thus raise problems for their research paradigm. For the latter, Cao and Chen present an analytical comparison between a Chinese and a Japanese translation of The Man of Destiny. Cao and Chen argue that by such a bilateral approach we may recognize the importance of heterogeneity so as to obtain further reflections on present discussions of world literature. (shrink)

Experiments in animal models have shown that running increases neuronal activity in early visual areas in light as well as in darkness. This suggests that visual processing is influenced by locomotion independent of visual input. Combining mobile electroencephalography, motion- and eye-tracking, we investigated the influence of overground free walking on cortical alpha activity and eye movements in healthy humans. Alpha activity has been considered a valuable marker of inhibition of sensory processing and shown to negatively correlate with neuronal firing rates. (...) We found that walking led to a decrease in alpha activity over occipital cortex compared to standing. This decrease was present during walking in darkness as well as during light. Importantly, eye movements could not explain the change in alpha activity. Nevertheless, we found that walking and eye related movements were linked. While the blink rate increased with increasing walking speed independent of light or darkness, saccade rate was only significantly linked to walking speed in the light. Pupil size, on the other hand, was larger during darkness than during light, but only showed a modulation by walking in darkness. Analyzing the effect of walking with respect to the stride cycle, we further found that blinks and saccades preferentially occurred during the double support phase of walking. Alpha power, as shown previously, was lower during the swing phase than during the double support phase. We however could exclude the possibility that the alpha modulation was introduced by a walking movement induced change in electrode impedance. Overall, our work indicates that the human visual system is influenced by the current locomotion state of the body. This influence affects eye movement pattern as well as neuronal activity in sensory areas and might form part of an implicit strategy to optimally extract sensory information during locomotion. (shrink)

Recently implemented Chinese health insurance schemes have failed to achieve a Chinese health care system that is family-oriented, family-based, family-friendly, or even financially sustainable. With this diagnosis in hand, the authors argue that a financially and morally sustainable Chinese health care system should have as its core family health savings accounts supplemented by appropriate health insurance plans. This essay’s arguments are set in the context of Confucian moral commitments that still shape the background culture of contemporary China.

This study examines the relation between firms' corporate philanthropic giving and their performance in three other social domains - employee relations, environmental issues, and product safety. Based on a sample of 384 U.S. companies and using data pooled from 1998 through 2000, we find that worse performers in the other social areas are both more likely to make charitable contributions and that the extent of their giving is larger than for better performers. Analyses of each separate area of social performance, (...) however, indicate that the relation between giving and negative social performance only holds for the environmental issues and product safety areas. We find no significant association between corporate philanthropy and employee relations concerns. In general, these findings suggest that corporate philanthropy may be more a tool of legitimization than a measure of corporate social responsibility. (shrink)

Perceptual tasks such as object matching, mammogram interpretation, mental rotation, and satellite imagery change detection often require the assignment of correspondences to fuse information across views. We apply techniques developed for machine translation to the gaze data recorded from a complex perceptual matching task modeled after fingerprint examinations. The gaze data provide temporal sequences that the machine translation algorithm uses to estimate the subjects' assumptions of corresponding regions. Our results show that experts and novices have similar surface behavior, such as (...) the number of fixations made or the duration of fixations. However, the approach applied to data from experts is able to identify more corresponding areas between two prints. The fixations that are associated with clusters that map with high probability to corresponding locations on the other print are likely to have greater utility in a visual matching task. These techniques address a fundamental problem in eye tracking research with perceptual matching tasks: Given that the eyes always point somewhere, which fixations are the most informative and therefore are likely to be relevant for the comparison task? (shrink)

We give the first systematic study of strong isomorphism reductions, a notion of reduction more appropriate than polynomial time reduction when, for example, comparing the computational complexity of the isomorphim problem for different classes of structures. We show that the partial ordering of its degrees is quite rich. We analyze its relationship to a further type of reduction between classes of structures based on purely comparing for every n the number of nonisomorphic structures of cardinality at most n in both (...) classes. Furthermore, in a more general setting we address the question of the existence of a maximal element in the partial ordering of the degrees. (shrink)

In this study, we tested a possible mechanism of the association between math anxiety and math achievement: the mediating role of math-specific grit. In Study 1, a sample of 10th grade students completed a battery of personality and attitude questionnaires, and math achievement was indexed by curriculum-based examination scores. Mediation analyses indicated that math-specific grit, but not domain-general grit, mediated the relationship between math anxiety and math achievement. In Study 2, we replicated and extended the above findings with another sample (...) of 11th grade students. Mediation analyses indicated that math-specific grit and math-specific procrastination played sequential mediating roles in the relationship between math anxiety and math achievement. That is, individuals with higher math anxiety were less gritty in math learning, possibly further leading them to be more procrastinated in performing math work, which may finally result in worse math achievement. In summary, the current study provides the first evidence that math-specific grit may mediate the relationship between math anxiety and math achievement. Furthermore, it also demonstrated the value of math-specific grit over domain-general grit in predicting math success, which invites a broader investigation on subject-specific grit. (shrink)

The bulletin board system (BBS) significantly changed the production and transmission of knowledge in China’s information technology (IT). Launched in 1991, Chinese FidoNet (CFido) provided a virtual space for hobbyists to explore technology-for-fun and aggregated many future Chinese digital entrepreneurs, enabling them to experiment with business models and pursue open-source software with Chinese characters. CFido’s short history (1991–1998) also encapsulates the fast-changing dynamic between knowledge and its social context. CFido participants first perceived the BBS as a utopian “pure land” where (...) grassroots intellectuals could develop software and digital technologies, free from outside interests and interventions. Yet the beginning of government control of cyberspace, the boom of the IT industry and e-commerce, and the transition from the dial-up BBS to the Internet led the CFidoers to diverging positions about amateurs and ultimately brought CFido to an end. (shrink)

Despite mounting evidence that abusive supervision triggers interpersonal aggression, much remains unknown regarding the underlying causal mechanisms within this relationship. We explore the role of turnover intentions as a mediator in the relationship between abusive supervision and subsequent supervisor-rated interpersonal aggression. We use a sample of 324 supervisor–subordinate dyads from nine organizations and find support for this mediation effect. Furthermore, we find that power-distance orientation and perceived human resource support climate, as important boundary conditions, independently interact with abusive supervision to (...) weaken this positive impact on turnover intentions, thereby reducing interpersonal aggression. We also find via turnover intentions that abusive supervision intensifies interpersonal aggression among high power-distance-oriented individuals when the HR support climate is perceived to be low. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

Among the most influential and well-known experiments of the 19th century was the generation and detection of electromagnetic radiation by Heinrich Hertz in 1887–1888, work that bears favorable comparison for experimental ingenuity and influence with that by Michael Faraday in the 1830s and 1840s. In what follows, we pursue issues raised by what Hertz did in his experimental space to produce and to detect what proved to be an extraordinarily subtle effect. Though he did provide evidence for the existence of (...) such radiation that other investigators found compelling, nevertheless Hertz’s data and the conclusions he drew from it ran counter to the claim of Maxwell’s electrodynamics that electric waves in air and wires travel at the same speed. Since subsequent experiments eventually suggested otherwise, the question arises of just what took place in Hertz’s. The difficulties attendant on designing, deploying, and interpreting novel apparatus go far in explaining his results, which were nevertheless sufficiently convincing that other investigators, and Hertz himself, soon took up the challenge of further investigation based on his initial designs. (shrink)

Many natural computational problems have input consisting of two or more parts, one of which may be considered a parameter. For example, there are many problems for which the input consists of a graph and a positive integer. A number of results are presented concerning parameterized problems that can be solved in complexity classes below P, given a single word of advice for each parameter value. Different ways in which the word of advice can be employed are considered, and it (...) is shown that the class FPT of tractable parameterized problems has interesting and natural internal structure. (shrink)

Magnetoencephalography is increasingly used for presurgical planning in people with medically refractory focal epilepsy. Localization of interictal epileptiform activity, a surrogate for the seizure onset zone whose removal may prevent seizures, is challenging and depends on the use of multiple complementary techniques. Accurate and reliable localization of epileptiform activity from spontaneous MEG data has been an elusive goal. One approach toward this goal is to use a novel Bayesian inference algorithm—the Champagne algorithm with noise learning—which has shown tremendous success in (...) source reconstruction, especially for focal brain sources. In this study, we localized sources of manually identified MEG spikes using the Champagne algorithm in a cohort of 16 patients with medically refractory epilepsy collected in two consecutive series. To evaluate the reliability of this approach, we compared the performance to equivalent current dipole modeling, a conventional source localization technique that is commonly used in clinical practice. Results suggest that Champagne may be a robust, automated, alternative to manual parametric dipole fitting methods for localization of interictal MEG spikes, in addition to its previously described clinical and research applications. (shrink)

A completeness theory for parameterized computational complexity has been studied in a series of recent papers, and has been shown to have many applications in diverse problem domains including familiar graph-theoretic problems, VLSI layout, games, computational biology, cryptography, and computational learning [ADF,BDHW,BFH, DEF,DF1-7,FHW,FK]. We here study the parameterized complexity of two kinds of problems: (1) problems concerning parameterized computations of Turing machines, such as determining whether a nondeterministic machine can reach an accept state in \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} (...) \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document} $k$\end{document} steps (the Short TM Computation Problem), and (2) problems concerning derivations and factorizations, such as determining whether a word \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document} $x$\end{document} can be derived in a grammar \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document} $G$\end{document} in \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document} $k$\end{document} steps, or whether a permutation has a factorization of length \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document} $k$\end{document} over a given set of generators. We show hardness and completeness for these problems for various levels of the \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document} $W$\end{document} hierarchy. In particular, we show that Short TM Computation is complete for \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document} $W[1]$\end{document}. This gives a new and useful characterization of the most important of the apparently intractable parameterized complexity classes. (shrink)

Studies have revealed that emotion-based learning outcomes are scarce when teachers’ competence and creative performance are neglected, further university performance in relation to teachers’ emotion-based learning outcomes is disregarded in literature so far. Based on the Attributional theory of achievement motivation and emotion, the purpose of this empirical study is to investigate the effects of Emotional Intelligence on learning outcomes of academicians in Pakistan’s higher education institutions. This study also examines the mediating role of teacher competence and creative performance in (...) a relationship between EI and learning outcomes. Furthermore, this study ascertained the relationship between learning outcomes and organizational performance of HEIs. This study used a sample frame of 237 academic professionals from Pakistani HEIs, the hypothesized associations were ascertained using the partial least squares structural equation modeling method. The findings disclose that EI has a positive and significant influence on learning outcomes. Furthermore, an indirect relation between EI and learning outcomes is established through teacher competence and creative performance while the relationship between learning outcomes and OP is established also. Results of the considered study reinforce the academic understanding of EI and propose how academicians of HEIs can value their competence and creative performance which in turn enhances learning outcomes and OP. There is a lack of studies in HEIs that investigate the relationship between EI, teacher competence, creative performance, learning outcomes, and OP. This is one of the initial researches that not only empirically examine the interface of EI, learning outcomes, and OP of HEIs’ academicians but also enlightens comprehensions into the prevailing literature by immediate investigation of the mediating role of teacher competence and creative performance in fundamental association. (shrink)

Many scholars have investigated education management. Scholars in the education field have made significant achievements in contributing to multiple educational reform policies, while other scholars discuss teacher-related issues from the perspective of organizational behavior. The teaching innovation of high school teachers plays a critical role in students’ learning attitude and motivation, especially in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Teachers need to utilize more diversified teaching methods to enable students to carry out effective learning. In order to examine teachers’ teaching (...) innovation, this study explores teaching innovation intentions and performance from the perspective of individual and social factors in combination with goal-oriented behavior and social identity theory. This study conducts questionnaires with a sample of Chinese coastal high school teachers, and obtains a total of 475 responses. The research results show that innovation attitude, positive anticipated emotion, group norms and social identity positively affect teachers’ teaching innovation intention; furthermore, teachers’ teaching innovation intention also positively affects their teaching innovation performance. Based on the comprehensive research findings, this research proposes corresponding theoretical and practical implications. (shrink)

The N-Queens problem plays an important role in academic research and practical application. Heuristic algorithm is often used to solve variant 2 of the N-Queens problem. In the process of solving, evaluation of the candidate solution, namely, fitness function, often occupies the vast majority of running time and becomes the key to improve speed. In this paper, three parallel schemes based on CPU and four parallel schemes based on GPU are proposed, and a serial scheme is implemented at the baseline. (...) The experimental results show that, for a large-scale N-Queens problem, the coarse-grained GPU scheme achieved a maximum 307-fold speedup over a single-threaded CPU counterpart in evaluating a candidate solution. When the coarse-grained GPU scheme is applied to simulated annealing in solving N-Queens problem variant 2 with a problem size no more than 3000, the speedup is up to 9.3. (shrink)

As the first stage of the formation of a collaborative new product innovation team, member selection is crucial for the effective operation of the CNPI team and the achievement of new product innovation goals. Considering comprehensively the individual and collaborative attributions, the individual knowledge competence, knowledge complementarity, and collaborative performance among candidates are chosen as the criteria to select CNPI team members in this paper. Moreover, using the fuzzy set and social network analysis method, the quantitative methods of the above (...) criteria are proposed correspondingly. Then, by integrating the above criteria, a novel multiobjective decision model for member selection of the CNPI team is built from the view of individual and collaborative attributions. Since the proposed model is NP-hard, a double-population adaptive genetic algorithm is further developed to solve it. Finally, a real case is provided to illustrate the application and effectiveness of the proposed model and method in this paper. (shrink)

Background: Contact heat evoked potentials is used to diagnose small fiber neuropathy. We established the normal values of CHEPs parameters in Chinese adults, optimized the test technique, and determined its reproducibility.Methods: We recruited 151 healthy adults. CHEPs was performed on the right forearm to determine the optimal number of stimuli, and then conducted at different sites to establish normal values, determine the effects of demographic characteristics and baseline temperature, and assess the short- and long-term reproducibility. N2 latency/height varied with age (...) and sex, while P2 latency/height and N2–P2 amplitude varied with age. The optimal number of stimuli was three.Results: N2 latency/height and P2 latency/height decreased and N2–P2 amplitude and visual analog scale score increased with increased baseline temperature. CHEPs parameters did not differ with time.Conclusion: We established normal CHEPs values in Chinese adults. We found that CHEPs parameters changed with baseline temperature and that the short- and long-term test reproducibility were satisfactory. (shrink)

New energy vehicle policies have greatly promoted the growth of the NEV industry in China, while also attracting a lot of investor attention. Using Chinese NEV concept stocks and related industrial policies, including purchase tax incentives and promotion and application policies, issued from 2011 to 2020 as the research setting, this paper adopts a panel data model to examine the impact of policy announcement on the volatility of NEV concept stocks, as well as the mediating role of investor attention in (...) transmitting the impact. We find that NEV P&A policies have a significant and positive impact on NEV concept stock volatility, while PTI policies do not have a significant impact. Moreover, investor attention plays a partial mediating role in transmitting the impact of P&A policies on NEV stock market by increasing the stock volatility risk. Furthermore, there is heterogeneous effect of equity ownership in the relationship between policy announcement and investor attention on the volatility of NEV concept stocks; non-state-owned firms are more sensitive to the NEV P&A policies than state-owned firms. By analyzing the relationship between policy announcement and concept stock volatility, this paper enriches the research on NEV concept stocks and provides policy implications for the NEV industry. (shrink)

The emergence of the incorporation of culture into EFL education is a growing trend in Taiwan. The purpose of the study was to examine: the effects of the ethnographic interview project on Taiwanese students' cognitive development in understanding native English speakers and their cultures; changes in students' self‐awareness and understanding of both the target culture and their own; and students' perceptions of the ethnographic interview project employed in EFL college classes. Data were collected through pre–post questionnaires, oral and written reports, (...) classroom observation and interviews. Results indicated that participation in the ethnographic interview project helped facilitate the development of cross‐cultural awareness and communication skills by providing opportunities for students to gain insight into the values of target language countries, learn to view their own culture in new ways, increase their confidence in using English to communicate and view authentic communication as the goal of EFL learning. The majority of the participants saw the ethnographic interview project as an effective means of facilitating intercultural/interpersonal communication and understanding. (shrink)

Ataxia is a kind of external characteristics when the human body has poor coordination and balance disorder, it often indicates diseases in certain parts of the body. Many internal factors may causing ataxia; currently, observed external characteristics, combined with Doctor’s personal clinical experience play main roles in diagnosing ataxia. In this situation, different kinds of diseases may be confused, leading to the delay in treatment and recovery. Modern high precision medical instruments would provide better accuracy but the economic cost is (...) a non-negligible factor. In this paper, novel non-contact sensing technique is used to detect and distinguish sensory ataxia and cerebellar ataxia. Firstly, Romberg’s test and gait analysis data are collected by the microwave sensing platform; then, after some preprocessing, some machine learning approaches have been applied to train the models. For Romberg’s test, time domain features are considered, the accuracy of all the three algorithms are higher than 96%; for gait detection, Principal Component Analysis is used for dimensionality reduction, and the accuracies of Back Propagation neural Network, Support Vector Machine, and Random Forest are 97.8, 98.9, and 91.1%, respectively. (shrink)

Packed with ideas designed to help children learn to sing, this booklet offers criteria for selecting songs, strategies to bring out the best in children's voices, and suggestions for games, ideas, and resources.

Previous research suggests that mastering languages with distinct rather than similar rhythmic properties enhances musical rhythmic perception. This study investigates whether learning a second language (L2) enhances the perception of musical rhythmic variation in general, regardless of first and second languages’ rhythmic properties. Additionally, we investigated whether this perceptual enhancement could be alternatively explained by exposure to musical rhythmic complexity, such as the use of compound meter in Turkish music. Finally, it investigates if an enhancement of musical rhythmic perception could (...) be observed among L2 learners whose first language relies heavily on pitch information, as is the case with tonal languages. Therefore, we tested Turkish, Dutch and Mandarin L2 learners of English and Turkish monolinguals on their ability to perceive musical rhythmic variation. Participants’ phonological and working memory capacities, melodic aptitude, years of formal musical training and daily exposure to music were assessed to account for cultural and individual differences which could impact their rhythmic ability. Our results suggest that mastering a second language rather than exposure to musical rhythmic complexity could explain individuals’ enhanced perception of musical rhythmic variation. An even stronger enhancement of musical rhythmic perception was observed for L2 learners whose first and second languages differ regarding their rhythmic properties, as enhanced performance of Mandarin and Turkish in comparison with Dutch L2 learners of English seem to suggest. Our findings provide further support for a cognitive transfer between the language and music domain, which may find its grounds on a common evolutionary basis. (shrink)

Commentary on Yon tan rin po cheʼi mdzod text of ʼJigs-med-gliṅ-pa Raṅ-byuṅ-rdo-rje, 1729 or 30-1798, dealing on Rdzogs-chen doctrine of Rñiṅ-ma-pa sect.