This research was undertaken to explore audience members learning ethics from two national museum exhibitions: The Return of Sherlock Holmes (RSH) and Human Body Exploration (HBE) in Taiwan. Based on literature review of ethics for museums, there are four dimensions related to exhibition ethics: environment, marketing, education, and services. Therefore, the purpose of this research was to examine the relationships within the dimensions of environment, marketing, education, and services of exhibition ethics and to understand the differences in exhibition ethics between (...) RSH and HBE. The total number of valid questionnaires was 191 for RSH and 152 for HBE. The research method analysis of variance was applied to examine whether there were significant differences between individual's basic data and four different dimensions of exhibition ethics in museums. As survey data revealed, exhibition ethics had significant relationships with four dimensions (serviceability, education, environment, and marketing) and significant differences to the demographic variable, such as age. We suggest that exhibition agents should emphasize exhibition contents more than relative commodities, thereby possibly attracting audiences to visit the museum exhibitions. In addition, the exhibitions that were related to sensible issues should be divided into different levels regulated in terms of audience age and the degree to which parents, teachers, or narrators at the museum could negatively influence a younger visitor's perception of an exhibition and thereby museums. Finally, during busy periods, the museums should control visitor numbers to maintain visiting quality. Therefore, the museums should be able to create added value to attract more audience members to visit the exhibition. (shrink)

The practice of respecting patients’ autonomy is rooted in the healthcare professionals’ empathy for patients’ situations, without which appropriate supports to the patients during the informed consent process may be remarkably moderated. The purpose of this study was to explore elective surgery patients’ experiences during their decision-making process. This research was conducted using a phenomenological approach, and the data analysis was guided by Colaizzi’s method. A total of 17 participants were recruited from a hospital in southern Taiwan. Two major themes (...) emerged from the analyses: (a) a voluntary yet necessary alternative—to undergo a surgery and (b) alternatives compelled by the unalterable decision—the surgery. It was concluded that unless healthcare professionals can empathize with the distressed situation of their patients who are facing elective surgery, the practice of informed consent may become merely a routine. Nurses can be the best advocates for patients and facilitators to enhance communication between patients and healthcare personnel. (shrink)

Students often face difficulties and experience negative emotions toward second language learning. The affective tutoring system is a next-generation learning approach that can detect the affective status of learning to increase performance. Therefore, for the purposes of this study, an innovative affective mobile language tutoring system was designed to support Japanese language learning. The effects of AMLTS, along with asynchronous discussion, that were intended to improve performance, were examined using a triangulation method. To investigate the effect on emotion, the proposed (...) AMLTS provides a virtual emotion agent that can interact with users and record emotional events, learning assessments, and the results of the interaction into a database. Learning effectiveness evaluations were conducted via two experiments: prototype evaluation and final evaluation. Sixty-three students, all beginners, were invited to use the AMLTS to learn Japanese. The research results show that the proposed AMLTS affective interaction design significantly improves learner engagement and performance. In the emotion feedback analysis and learning process, AMLTS helped students deepen their understanding of the content, enabled them to clearly understand the content, and to engage in peer interaction and experience positive emotions. In the evaluation of system usability, AMLTS reveals good usability for foreign language acquisition. (shrink)

Loving-kindness meditation was first practiced by Buddhists and then developed by clinical psychologist. Previous studies on LKM have mainly focused on the impact of real person-guided meditation on depression, anxiety, and other negative psychology. During the COVID-19 pandemic, this study explored the effect and mechanism of media-guided LKM on the improvement of social presence, mindfulness, spirituality, and subjective wellbeing. From the viewpoint of positive psychology, this study compared the different media effects of animated pedagogical agent -guided LKM and audio-guided LKM. (...) A total of 82 flight attendants were recruited from airlines; then, they were randomly assigned to two groups: APA group and audio group, which both underwent an 8-week LKM training intervention. The aforementioned four main variables were measured pre and post the meditation experiment. The results indicated that both APA-guided meditation and audio-guided meditation significantly improved subjects’ spirituality and SWB. Compared with audio-guided meditation, APA-guided meditation significantly improved the subjects’ spirituality, SWB, and social presence. Audio-guided meditation has no significant effect on social presence. This study highlights APA-guided meditation has a positive effect on spirituality, SWB, and social presence, which may provide individuals with a simple and easy method to improve their mental health. (shrink)

Creativity is so important for social and technological development that people are eager to find an easy way to enhance it. Previous studies have shown that mindfulness has significant effects on positive affect, working memory capacity, cognitive flexibility and many other aspects, which are the key to promoting creativity. However, there are few studies on the relationship between mindfulness and creativity. The mechanism between mindfulness and creativity is still uncertain. Meditation is an important method of mindfulness training, but for most (...) people who do not have the basic training, it’s difficult to master how to get into a state of mindfulness. Animation has been shown by many studies to help improve cognition and is often used as a guiding tool. Using animation as the guiding carrier of meditation is more convenient and easier to accept. Therefore, this study adopted the intervention method of animation-guided meditation, aiming to explore: the effect of animation-guided meditation on enhancing creativity; the role of flow and emotion in the influence of mindfulness on creativity. We advertised recruitment through the internal network of a creative industrial park, and the final 95 eligible participants were divided into two groups: animation and audio guided meditation. The animation group was given an animated meditation intervention, and the audio group was given an audio meditation intervention, both interventions were performed 3 times a week and last for 8 weeks. Results: Animation-guided meditation significantly increased participants’ mindfulness and creativity levels; Significantly reduced their cognitive load compared to audio-guided meditation. Mindfulness has a significant direct effect on creativity, and significant indirect effects on creativity; Flow and PA act as the mediating variable. Conclusion: Mindfulness, flow, and PA all helped to improve the subjects’ work creativity. In addition to the direct positive impact of mindfulness on creativity, mindfulness can also have an indirect positive impact on creativity through flow and PA. Compared with audio, animation can significantly reduce cognitive load and help improve users’ cognitive ability, which is more suitable for the guidance materials of mindfulness meditation to enhance the effect of meditation. (shrink)

BackgroundBilateral cerebral palsy is the most common type of CP in children and is often accompanied by different degrees of communication impairment. Several studies have attempted to identify children at high risk for communication impairment. However, most prediction factors are qualitative and subjective and may be influenced by rater bias. Individualized objective diagnostic and/or prediction methods are still lacking, and an effective method is urgently needed to guide clinical diagnosis and treatment. The aim of this study is to develop and (...) validate an objective, individual-based model for the prediction of communication impairment in children with BCP by the time they enter school.MethodsA multicenter prospective cohort study will be conducted in four Chinese hospitals. A total of 178 children with BCP will undergo advanced brain magnetic resonance imaging at baseline. At school entry, communication performance will be assessed by a communication function classification system. Three-quarters of children with BCP will be allocated as a training cohort, whereas the remaining children will be allocated as a test cohort. Multivariate lesion- and connectome-based approaches, which have shown good predictive ability of language performance in stroke patients, will be applied to extract features from MR images for each child with BCP. Multiple machine learning models using extracted features to predict communication impairment for each child with BCP will be constructed using data from the training cohort and externally validated using data from the test cohort. Prediction accuracy across models in the test cohort will be statistically compared.DiscussionThe findings of the study may lead to the development of several translational tools that can individually predict communication impairment in children newly diagnosed with BCP to ensure that these children receive early, targeted therapeutic intervention before they begin school.Trial registrationThe study has been registered with the Chinese Clinical Trial Registry. (shrink)

This article assumes that a profession is a number of individuals in the same occupation voluntarily organized to earn a living by openly serving a moral ideal in a morally-permissible way beyond what law, market, morality, and public opinion would otherwise require. Our question is whether the concept of profession may have a far wider range than the term, so that, for example, pointing out that a certain language lacks a word for “profession” in our sense, is not enough to (...) show that those who speak the language also lack the concept. We believe the survey of 71 Chinese reported here begins to answer that question. This article has four parts. The first describes who was interviewed, how, when, and so on. The second describes some important features of the survey’s questions, explaining how the questions track the concept of profession. The third part reports and interprets the results relevant to our question. The forth defends a tentative answer to the question with which we began—arguing the survey supports the claim that China has a profession of engineering. This article should serve as a “proof of concept”, that is, a model for similar studies around the world both of engineering and of other occupations thought to be professions. (shrink)

Laozi zhe xue -- Zhuangzi zhe xue za lun -- Xian Qin zhu zi yan jiu wen xian mu lu.

Riassunto: L’antico teatro della Casa Ufficiale è un antico teatro esistente nell’area Montuosa del Taihang nella Provincia dell’Henan Settentrionale, il quale nacque nel periodo centrale della Dinastia Qing. L’aspetto dell’antico teatro della Casa Ufficiale è legato all’ambiente naturale locale, alla cultura popolare e alla produttività agricola. Ci sono otto antiche fasi della casa ufficiale nell’area Montuosa del Taihang nella Provincia dell’Henan Settentrionale, che forniscono prove fisiche per lo studio del dramma teatrale popolare nell’area Montuosa del Taihang durante la dinastia Qing. (...) Le iscrizioni sulle stele e sul palcoscenico dell’opera tradizionale cinese riflettono alcune caratteristiche del dramma teatrale rappresentato dai funzionari fin dalla dinastia Qing in Cina. I tipi di opere eseguite sono opere locali, le quali rappresentano dei preziosi materiali per lo studio storico. In una certa misura, è possibile ricostruire il percorso lo sviluppo regionale della società, della cultura e della vita quotidiana locale. (shrink)

This book brings together leading scholars and practitioners from the United States, Europe, and Asia. The contributors come from different disciplines, including medicine, criminology, sociology, psychology, forensic sciences, and law. As a group, they have the background to discuss and conduct research in the area and to propose and critique theories and typologies of animal cruelty. In addition, they have the expertise to evaluate policy issues and to recommend best practices for protecting animals and intervening with those who abuse or (...) neglect them. (shrink)

Studying the neural correlates of conscious awareness depends on a reliable comparison between activations associated with awareness and unawareness. One particularly difficult confound to remove is task performance capacity, i.e. the difference in performance between the conditions of interest. While ideally task performance capacity should be matched across different conditions, this is difficult to achieve experimentally. However, differences in performance could theoretically be corrected for mathematically. One such proposal is found in a recent paper by Lamy, Salti and Bar-Haim [Lamy (...) D, Salti M, Bar-Haim Y. Neural correlates of subjective awareness and unconscious processing: an ERP study. J Cognitive Neurosci 2009,21:1435-46], who put forward a corrective method for an electroencephalography experiment. We argue that their analysis is essentially grounded in a version of High Threshold Theory, which has been shown to be inferior in general to Signal Detection Theory. We show through a series of computer simulations that their correction method only partially removes the influence of perfor- mance capacity, which can yield misleading results. We present a mathematical correction method based on Signal Detection Theory that is theoretically capable of removing performance capacity confounds. We discuss the limitations of mathemati- cally correcting for performance capacity confounds in imaging studies and its impact for theories about consciousness. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to report the results of therapy sessions conducted with survivors of an earthquake that struck Luku Township in Nantou County, central Taiwan, in September 1999. The sessions explored survivors’ feelings, interactions, and interpretations of the crisis, as well as their roles in post-earthquake relief efforts. The participants were teachers and administrators from four primary schools. The results indicated three distinct forms of caring, namely: encumbered caring, connected caring, and reflected caring. The findings were used (...) to construct a framework for caregiver self-monitoring. They also suggest that therapy groups provide an inner space that self-regulates the frustrations arising from this type of experience, for both caregivers and survivors. The intrasubjective and intersubjective dialogues within the groups are essentially reflective practices for improving services and generating new knowledge about medical ethics. (shrink)

With the assistance of the corpus analysis tool Wmatrix 4.0, this paper analyzes the semantic categories of the top 10 commercial banks of China and the United States to figure out their social-cultural behavior in the Internet business context. It is discovered that both common and distinctive identities were constructed: the common identities include the professional financial service provider, responsible corporation for employees, and relevant communities with environmental and social consciousness, while the distinctive identities are manifested in the communication strategy, (...) style, and persuasion mode: The Chinese Commercial Banks adopted the proactive strategy for corporate identity construction, are prone to take hierarchical and impersonal communication style, and more focused on the “credibility appeal” and “rational appeal” in persuasion mode; the commercial banks of the United States are more reactive in the communication strategy, position themselves in short distance with the putative audience in communication style, and conform to the typical “affective appeal” regarding the persuasion mode. From the intercultural perspective, the distinctions are the representation of the peculiar high-context culture and low-context culture based on Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory. Chinese banks should try to shorten the cultural gap by adopting communication strategy in conformity with the local cultural when going global rather than sticking to the domestic communication strategy. (shrink)

In many countries where human embryo commercialization is banned, and no profit is allowed to be made directly from the transaction of frozen embryos between donor and recipient, there is still considerable opportunity for profiteering in medical fees arising from laboratory and clinical services rendered to the recipient. It is easy to disguise the 'sale' of altruistically donated human embryos through substantially increased medical fees, particularly in a private practice setting. The pertinent question that arises is what would constitute a (...) fair and honest profit margin for the medical professional and health institution in question? A suitable benchmark would obviously be the level of medical fees normally charged to patients for a self-freeze/thaw embryo transfer cycle, after initial failure at their first attempt in ART. This is because the level of medical expertise, clinical and laboratory services required for a donor- and self-freeze/thaw embryo transfer cycle should, in theory, be about the same, although slight variation in treatment can be expected owing to patients' respective medical histories, which results in varying predisposition to medical complications. In any case, the health authority should ensure that there is no gross disparity in the medical fees for both donor- and self-freeze/thaw embryo transfer cycle, as this could mask opportunistic profiteering by medical professionals and, in fact, be a covert form of embryo commercialization. (shrink)

The study investigates the conceptualizations and ideologies concerning family destruction metaphors in same-sex marriage debates. With data from the official websites of two opposing camps in Taiwan, we explore the ways conceptual metaphors can be adopted along with other linguistic resources to shape, redefine and negotiate new meanings of family. Drawing concepts from critical metaphor analysis (CMA), this study shows that the same conceptual metaphor can be used in different contexts to construct and promote seemingly binary ideologies. The adoption of (...) family destruction metaphor suggests that family, ideally a complete, stable, and wholesome environment, is commonly accepted by campaigners as a destructible object worthy of protection. However, the different contextual use of this metaphor showed ideological differences in the ideal membership for marriage, the attackers and protectors of family, the victims of family destruction, and the causes and consequences of family destruction. By inviting the audience to make their own evaluation and interpretation of the metaphor, sensitive arguments can be made in a less direct but emotional manner to achieve the purpose of persuasion. Our results illustrate that conceptual metaphors can be used to reinforce conventional beliefs or introduce new values within a socially accepted frame. (shrink)

Safeguarding GenAI models against threats and aligning them with security requirements is imperative yet challenging. This chapter provides an overview of the security landscape for generative models. It begins by elucidating common vulnerabilities and attack vectors, including adversarial attacks, model inversion, backdoors, data extraction, and algorithmic bias. The practical implications of these threats are discussed, spanning domains like finance, healthcare, and content creation. The narrative then shifts to exploring mitigation strategies and innovative security paradigms. Differential privacy, blockchain-based provenance, quantum-resistant algorithms, (...) and human-guided reinforcement learning are analyzed as potential techniques to harden generative models. Broader ethical concerns surrounding transparency, accountability, deepfakes, and model interpretability are also addressed. The chapter aims to establish a conceptual foundation encompassing both the technical and ethical dimensions of security for generative AI. It highlights open challenges and lays the groundwork for developing robust, trustworthy, and human-centric solutions. The multifaceted perspective spanning vulnerabilities, implications, and solutions is intended to further discourse on securing society’s growing reliance on generative models. Frontier model security is discussed using Anthropic proposed approach. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Lévinas's Phenomenology Horizon of Ontology Implications of the Instant Phenomenology of the Sensible and Time Lévinas's Early Thought and Chan Buddhism Endnotes.

本書從具體的、個別的問題為起始點，出入於文史經典之間； 在上友古人的筆端，投注現代人的情感與關懷。 本書選輯了十七篇論文，是作者張亨教授長期讀書和思考的累積。諸篇各自獨立，互不相屬，亦非一時之作，探討的問題雖然分散，但有以下三個基調：（一）大多試從具體的、個別的問題出發，思考其蘊涵的根源性的或思想史 的意義。（二）儘可能依據原典或文本作直接的詮釋。（三）這些詮釋是在一個現代人的存在情境之下、無可解免的前理解中進行的。這必然會有個人理解上的限制，卻也寓寄自我傾注的關懷。 本書用思想史的研究方式，對選擇的論題作追根究柢、溯其淵源的了解。多篇是從較可信的文本中的一兩句話追問起，由微而顯，以期增加理解的深度，而不像一般哲學史或觀念史作周延的概括性的論述。 本書討論較多的是儒家思想，道家的比較少。多篇是從較可信的文本中的一兩句話追問起，由微而顯，以期增加理解的深度，並期使文本脫離異化，而不陷入論辯的泥沼。作者藉助於現代詮釋的觀念，探索所謂文本裡沒有說出的 意義。〈說道家〉與〈說儒家〉兩篇尤多用之。另值得注意的是，作者在討論道家時對於神話的重視，焦點放在莊子、老子如何運用神話；或者他們採取了神話中的那些意義而加以轉化。.

Xiu zhen xu yu (wai pian) -- Tan Lao sui gan -- Yin shi yang zhen.

The author examines some Confucian-trained Tokugawa Japanese scholars who were concerned about the deleterious impact of Buddhism on native Shinto thought and practice. Several leading Confucian-trained scholars appealed to Zhu Xi’s thought in various ways to reinforce and preserve Shintoism and its original spirit.

Aristotle’s Prior Analytics is probably the earliest existing systematic philosophical writing on a syllogistic system and theory of logic. In this work, Aristotle introduces the categorical syllogistic, consisting of three figures and fourteen valid moods. This paper proposes that Aristotle distinguishes a general notion of syllogisms from a more technical notion of syllogisms. Syllogisms that belong to the categorical syllogistic fall under Aristotle’s technical notion of syllogisms that must satisfy two conditions: (1) a conclusion follows necessarily from the premises, and (...) (2) the premises derive a conclusion that necessarily follows from them in regard to attributing the major extreme to the minor. (shrink)

The “Chu shuo” 儲說 chapters of the Hanfeizi 韓非 子, attributed to Han Fei 韓非, encompass an extensive collection of anecdotes. The jing 經 sections of these chapters are traditionally understood to be a set of “canonical” teachings, to be explicated by the anecdotes in the shuo 說 sections. Eschewing this assumption, my analysis substantiates an alternative hypothesis that sees many of the jing texts as later superimpositions intended to serve as paratexts to existing anecdotal collections. By interpreting the jing (...) and shuo sections as paratexts and main texts, respectively, this study reveals how early compilers sought to organize and inventory information, as well as to guide future users’ understanding and memorization of the anecdotal materials. This approach not only facilitates the reconstruction of early frameworks of information management and knowledge acquisition, but also places the “Chu shuo” chapters in a comparative context. It also proffers new answers to several long-standing philological debates, such as the meaning and function of the label yi yue 一曰. In its conclusion, this study draws attention to potential continuities between the pre-imperial and imperial periods’ textual and bibliographical practices. (shrink)

如果孔孟生活在我們的時代， 他們對21世紀的重大問題與挑戰，會提出什麼看法？ 孔孟對變動劇烈恍如漩渦的21世紀， 特別是處於新冠病毒肆虐的現代人， 會以何種倡議，讓人的「自我」能夠安身立命， 在黯兮慘悴中仍能持守「不動心」的境界？ 孔孟思想是中華文化的主流思想，也是我們現代人從事各種思考，包括政治、社會、經濟、文化、個人生命等面向的重要文化資源。中國與亞洲的崛起，對世界局勢影響深遠，是本世紀最重要的劃時代事件之一，孔孟思想也重新 獲得世界各國知識界的重視。歐美學界都在爭取儒學的發言權，儼然已成為國際學術界的新趨勢。 《深叩孔孟》並不是傳統的、以背誦為主的經典研讀；而是從21世紀出發為思考，與孔孟進行心靈的對話，厚植我們在現世參與文明對話的本土思想資源。 本書是黃俊傑教授在臺灣大學講授「深叩孔孟」通識課程的講稿，一共分為十二講，每講均附閱讀作業、延伸閱讀、思考問題、關鍵詞、本講內容架構圖，方便讀者自學參考。.

Controversies surrounding social media platforms have provided opportunities for institutional reflexivity amongst users and regulators on how to understand and govern platforms. Amidst contestation, platform companies have continued to enact projects that draw upon existing modes of privatized governance. We investigate how social media companies have attempted to achieve closure by continuing to set the terms around platform governance. We investigate two projects implemented by Facebook (Meta)—authenticity regulation and privacy controls—in response to the Russian Interference and Cambridge Analytica controversies surrounding (...) the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election. Drawing on Goffman’s metaphor of stage management, we analyze the techniques deployed by Facebook to reinforce a division between what is visible and invisible to the user experience. These platform governance projects propose to act upon _front-stage data relations:_ information that users can see from other users—whether that is content that users can see from “bad actors”, or information that other users can see about oneself. At the same time, these projects relegate _back-stage data relations_—information flows between users constituted by recommendation and targeted advertising systems—to invisibility and inaction. As such, Facebook renders the user experience actionable for governance, while foreclosing governance of back-stage data relations central to the economic value of the platform. As social media companies continue to perform platform governance projects following controversies, our paper invites reflection on the politics of these projects. By destabilizing the boundaries drawn by platform companies, we open space for continuous reflexivity on how platforms should be understood and governed. (shrink)