: The Confucian relational concept of the person has been proposed as an epistemically more cogent and ethically more attractive alternative to that of liberal individualism. Two arguments (...) class='Hi'> are raised against this proposal without defending liberal individualism. Ethically, Confucianism is vitiated by certain unattractive features that cannot be removed without reducing the Confucian relational concept of the person to an abstract and not very helpful notion of human relatedness. Epistemically, Confucianism commits the essentialist fallacy of treating its own concept of human relations as reflecting the nature of things. In view of these limitations, the Confucian relational concept of the person does not provide a viable framework for dealing with social issues including bioethics. (shrink)
Industrial ecology is an advanced form and ideal model of modern industrial development, in which the industrial ecosystem is the core. Based on the PSR model, this (...) paper builds a comprehensive evaluation index system for urban industrial ecosystem development and selects 14 prefecture-level cities in Liaoning Province of the traditional industrial area in Northeastern China as cases to calculate the development level of its industrial ecosystem during 2000–2018 using an improved Topsis method and then to conduct a spatial visualization analysis. Finally, based on the “stress-state-response” subsystem, this paper diagnoses the constraints for industrial ecosystem development, which can provide a reference basis for decision-making in industrial ecology of traditional industrial area represented by those in Northeast China. The results show the following: From 2000 to 2018, the industrial ecology of the 14 cities in Liaoning Province was at a medium level. Except for Shenyang and Dalian with the rapid development, the difference of industrial ecosystem development for other cities was relatively small. From 2000 to 2018, the industrial ecosystem development of each city was in a status of “either increasing, or decreasing, or fluctuating,” which generally raised first and then decreased. Regarding spatial difference, the development exhibited a “center-periphery” pattern, with Shenyang and Dalian as the “dual-core” that were increasingly strengthened with significantly high-level industrial ecology. At system level, PSR constraint grades for the industrial ecosystem development in the 14 cities of Liaoning Province were different. Constraint grades in the pressure subsystem, the state subsystem, and the response subsystem for the industrial ecosystem of Liaoning were 45.73%, 20.01%, and 34.34%, respectively, indicating that the lack of human response to the ecological environment and the pressure of human activities on the ecological environment during the industrial economy development were the main constraints affecting the process of industrial ecology in these cities. Due to the differences in geographical environments, economic bases, industrial structures, and local development contexts, the major constraint factors of industrial ecosystem development in different cities are significantly different and complicated; however, there are five factors that are generally considered as major constraint factors in all cities, i.e., regional GDP, number of labor force employed in the secondary industrial sector, gross investment in fixed assets, amount of industrial sulfur dioxide removal, and production value from “three-wastes” comprehensive utilization. At last, this paper puts forward some recommendations and suggestions for providing scientific support for industrial ecosystem construction in the traditional industrial area of Northeastern China. (shrink)
In order to reduce the damage of apple harvesting robot to fruits and achieve compliant picking, an adaptive variable parameter impedance control method for apple harvesting robot (...) compliant picking is proposed in this paper. Firstly, the Burgers viscoelastic model is used to characterize the rheological properties of apples and study the variation of mechanical properties of apple grasping at different speeds. Then, a force-based impedance control system is designed. On this basis, aiming at the influence of impedance controller parameters on contact force, three impedance parameters self-tuning functions are constructed to complete the design of an improved force-based impedance control system based on the hyperbolic secant function. The simulation and experimental results show that the proposed control makes the desired force smoother, and its overshoot is about 2.3%. The response speed is faster, and the adjustment time of contact force is shorter of about 0.48 s. The contact force overshoot is about 2%, which is 37.5% less than that of the traditional force-based impedance control. This research improves the control performance for apple harvesting robot compliant picking. (shrink)
The digital transformation of the innovation ecosystem is not only an inevitable direction of innovation activities in the era of digital economy but also a highly complex (...) and uncertain process. The way to facilitate transformation with policies has become a topic of common concern of academia and policymakers. This paper builds a multiagent model and studies the impacts of supply-side policies, demand-side policies, and environmental policies on enterprises’ transformation willingness, digital level, and income level as well as the proportion of enterprises that carry out transformation in the whole innovation ecosystem and innovation network structure by numerical experiments. According to research findings, supply-side policies play the biggest role in the facilitation of transformation, demand-side policies are second important to them, and environmental policies have comparatively weak impacts. (shrink)
Sill emplacement mechanisms are very complex, diverse, and regional, and insights from sill reflections are helpful for understanding the emplacement process of magma in the Tarim Basin. (...) This study takes advantage of high-quality 2D seismic data, which are rarely used to study sills in the Tarim Basin, to analyze the sills’ geometric characteristics, plan-view distributions, emplacement timing, and emplacement mechanisms with unconformity surfaces. In the seismic-reflection profiles of the middle-upper Ordovician in the North depression and the southern part of the Tabei uplift in the Tarim Basin, sills with strong positive polarity reflections appear, and they are closely distributed near the Tg52 unconformity surface, which represents the interface between Middle Ordovician limestone and Upper Ordovician mudstone. According to the vertical position of the sills relative to the unconformity, we can divide the sills into saucer-shaped or quasi-saucer-shaped sills above the unconformity surface, sill complexes and saucer-shaped sills on the unconformity surface, and saucer-shaped sills below the unconformity surface. Potential hydrothermal vents and peripheral faults associated with sill intrusion terminate upward in the Middle Permian strata, suggesting that these sills formed in the Middle Permian. Sills with inner flat sheets on the Tg52 unconformity surface formed when the magma ascended and encountered an abrupt change in the fracture toughness and tensile strength between the two adjacent host rock layers. The sills above and on the Tg52 unconformity surface overlap or are vertically linked; therefore, the sills above the Tg52 unconformity surface are the result of the continuous upward expansion of the sills on the unconformity surface, forming sill complexes. Our findings further confirm that unconformities are important interfaces that affect the emplacement of sills. (shrink)
Air quality in China is characterized by significant spatial and temporal differences, which are directly related to local meteorological conditions. This study used air quality monitoring data, (...) namely, the air pollution index and air quality index between 2005 and 2018, together with meteorological data and identified key meteorological factors that affected the spatial and temporal variation of air quality using a random forest algorithm. The spatial and temporal differences in the threshold values of different meteorological factors affecting the concentrations of PM2.5, PM10, SO2, CO, NO2, and O3 were identified. The AQI has the advantages of facilitating higher index values than the API. The air quality showed an improvement from 2005 to 2018. Wind direction and precipitation were the most important meteorological factors affecting the air quality in northern and southern China, respectively, which to some extent reflected the causes and degradation mechanisms of air pollution in the two regions. There were significant spatial and temporal differences in the effects of meteorological factors on the concentrations of different pollutants. The influence of atmospheric pressure on pollutant concentration differed between the east and west. Precipitation and relative humidity in most cities had significant impacts on PM2.5 and PM10. The influence of relative humidity was most significant for SO2 and it also had a great influence on O3, while wind speed had a great influence on NO2. The results of the study confirm the meteorological sensitivity of air quality and provide support for the implementation of regional air pollution prevention and control initiatives. (shrink)
The South-to-North Water Diversion Project consists of long-distance water delivery channels and a complicated geological environment along the way. To deal with the operation safety (...) of the water conveyance channels in the middle route of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project, this study analyzes six failure modes: structural cracks, poor water delivery during ice periods, instability of canal slopes, material aging, abnormal leakage, and foundation defects. Based on FMEA, a multigranularity language evaluation method that can be converted into interval intuitionistic fuzzy numbers is used to evaluate the severity, occurrence, and detection difficulty of the six failure modes. Interval intuitionistic fuzzy entropy is used to calculate the weights of the risk factors. Finally, a ranking model of each failure mode is built based on the TODIM method. The final ranking results show that the risk of abnormal leakage is the largest, and the risk of poor water delivery during ice periods is the smallest. The feasibility and validity of the calculation results are verified by comparing them with the ranking results of the traditional RPN and TOPSIS methods. The TODIM-FMEA risk assessment model offers a new solution to the problem of risk assessment for water transfer projects. (shrink)
