Background:Collaboration between physicians and nurses is key to improving patient care. We know very little about collaboration and interdisciplinary practice in African healthcare settings.Research question/aim:The purpose of this study was to explore the ethical challenges of interdisciplinary collaboration in clinical practice and education in Botswana Participants and research context: This qualitative descriptive study was conducted with 39 participants (20 physicians and 19 nurses) who participated in semi-structured interviews at public hospitals purposely selected to represent the three levels of hospitals in (...) Botswana (referral, district, and primary).Ethical considerations:Following Institutional Review Board Approval at the University of Pennsylvania and the Ministry of Health in Botswana, participants’ written informed consent was obtained.Findings:Respondents’ ages ranged from 23 to 60 years, and their duration of work experience ranged from 0.5 to 32 years. Major qualitative themes that emerged from the data centered on the nature of the work environment, values regarding nurse–doctor collaboration, the nature of such collaboration, resources available for supporting collaboration and the smooth flow of work, and participants’ views about how their work experiences could be improved.Discussion:Participants expressed concerns that their work environment compromised their ability to provide high-quality and safe care to their patients. The physician staffing structure was described as consisting of a few specialists at the top, a vacuum in the middle that should be occupied by senior doctors, and junior doctors at the bottom—and not a sufficient number of nursing staff.Conclusion:Collaboration between physicians and nurses is critical to optimizing patients’ health outcomes. This is true not only in the United States but also in developing countries, such as Botswana, where health care professionals reported that their ethical challenges arose from resource shortages, differing professional attitudes, and a stressful work environment. (shrink)

How should automated vehicles react in emergency circumstances? Most research projects and scientific literature deal with this question from a moral perspective. In particular, it is customary to treat emergencies involving AVs as instances of moral dilemmas and to use the trolley problem as a framework to address such alleged dilemmas. Some critics have pointed out some shortcomings of this strategy and have urged to focus on mundane traffic situations instead of trolley cases involving AVs. Besides, these authors rightly point (...) out the political nature of the most interesting debates involving AVs. However, in our view, they do not offer an adequate account of the distinction between ethics and politics and still see their proposals as contributions to the ethics of AVs. We argue that many of the interesting questions about how AVs should behave, both in emergency and other situations, are of political, and not moral, nature. This view is based on a conception of politics and political normativity that we have developed elsewhere and that we call “political minimalism.” Additionally, we show that this proposed perspective has significant consequences for the design, management, and regulation of transport systems. (shrink)

What critical characteristics do firms have that determine the scale and scope of corporate social responsibility activities they undertake? This paper examines two disparate predictors of corporate social performance. First, using the lens of the resource-based view, we examine the role of alliance network centrality on corporate social performance. We find that centrality enhances corporate social performance. Second, we investigate how board composition affects corporate social performance. Specifically, drawing on stakeholder theory, we find that the percentage of female directors predicts (...) greater corporate social performance. In addition, we look at the influence of outside directors on this relationship. Our findings show that the presence of more outside directors positively moderates the relationship between female directors and corporate social performance. (shrink)

The category \(\mathbb {DRDL}{'}\), whose objects are c-differential residuated distributive lattices satisfying the condition \(\textbf{CK}\), is the image of the category \(\mathbb {RDL}\), whose objects are residuated distributive lattices, under the categorical equivalence \(\textbf{K}\) that is constructed in Castiglioni et al. (Stud Log 90:93–124, 2008). In this paper, we introduce weak monadic residuated lattices and study some of their subvarieties. In particular, we use the functor \(\textbf{K}\) to relate the category \(\mathbb {WMRDL}\), whose objects are weak monadic residuated distributive lattices, (...) and the category \(\mathbb {WMDRDL}{'}\), whose objects are pairs formed by an object of \(\mathbb {DRDL}{'}\) and a center weak universal quantifier. (shrink)

The novel coronavirus disease that emerged at the end of 2019 began threatening the health and lives of millions of people after a few weeks. However, social and economic problems derived from COVID-19 have changed the development of individuals and the whole country. This study examines the work conditions of Taiwanese versus mainland China employees, and evaluates the relationship between support mechanisms and subjective wellbeing from a social cognitive career theory perspective. In this study, a total of 623 Taiwanese questionnaires (...) and 513 mainland China questionnaires were collected to compare the two sample groups in terms of the development of employees’ subjective wellbeing. The results show that the Taiwanese sample had more significant development paths compared to mainland China employees in terms of prior knowledge, perceived organizational support, self-efficacy, employee employability, subjective wellbeing, and job performance. Finally, based on the conclusions, this study proposes some specific suggestions on theoretical mode for future studies. (shrink)

Efficient knowledge sharing is an important support for the continuous innovation and sustainable development of scientific research teams. However, in realistic management situations, the knowledge sharing of scientific research teams always appears to be unsustainable, and the reasons for this are the subject of considerable debate. In this study, an attempt was made to explore the interactive mechanism of knowledge hiding behaviors in scientific research teams between individual and collective knowledge hiding behaviors and its impact on knowledge sharing by adopting (...) grounded theory to comprehensively understand this situation. The results show that knowledge hiding behavior in the scientific research team is a two-phase interactive process and is capable of affecting sustainable knowledge sharing by reducing the supply of knowledge, creating a poor knowledge sharing atmosphere, and forming an interpersonal distrust relationship. This research may provide a strong basis for a deeper understanding of the interaction mechanism of knowledge hiding behavior and its impact on knowledge sharing. (shrink)

This paper proposes a new robotic fish which avoids the complex mechanical structure and reduces the model complexity comparing to the existing bioinspired robotic fish, giving rise to a semibiomimetic robotic fish. The generalized Lagrange equation is adopted to establish the dynamic model of the robotic fish. The controllability of the system is analyzed, upon which a trajectory tracking control algorithm is designed by using the feedback linearization technique. The simulation results show that the dynamic model adopted in this paper (...) can achieve better control performance. (shrink)

Parallel attribute reduction is one of the most important topics in current research on rough set theory. Although some parallel algorithms were well documented, most of them are still faced with some challenges for effectively dealing with the complex heterogeneous data including categorical and numerical attributes. Aiming at this problem, a novel attribute reduction algorithm based on neighborhood multigranulation rough sets was developed to process the massive heterogeneous data in the parallel way. The MapReduce-based parallelization method for attribute reduction was (...) proposed in the framework of neighborhood multigranulation rough sets. To improve the reduction efficiency, the hashing Map/Reduce functions were designed to speed up the positive region calculation. Thereafter, a quick parallel attribute reduction algorithm using MapReduce was developed. The effectiveness and superiority of this parallel algorithm were demonstrated by theoretical analysis and comparison experiments. (shrink)

In 2015, the Chinese pharmacologist, Tu Youyou, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of artemisinin. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) was the source of inspiration for Tu's discovery and provides an opportunity for the world to know more about TCM as a source of medical knowledge and practice. In this article, the value of TCM is evaluated from an ethical perspective. The characteristics of ‘jian, bian, yan, lian’ are explored in the way they promote accessibility (...) and economic efficiency for TCM. The article also examines how the increased use and prevalence of TCM reflects the scientific, cultural, and ethical values of TCM and their increasing attraction in meeting major challenges to medicine and health systems currently and in the future. The article discusses safety issues within TCM, which is a controversial area, and also comments on some shortcomings and challenges which pose difficulties for more widespread and greater uptake of TCM‐derived clinical or therapeutic interventions. The article concludes that TCM is generally safe if it is used according to TCM theory and where such applications are cognizant of the strengths and weaknesses of TCM. TCM has important bioethical values which may inform potential measures for meeting challenges facing global health care systems and the article argues that it can have an increasing role in improving human health. (shrink)

Dujiangyan irrigation system of more than 2000 years history is a symbol of originality of Chinese ancestors both in its conception and project mode. It is still working well and benefit Chengdu Plain nowadays while other comparable water conservancy projects of the same or later age have vanished and been forgotten. More than just a world-famous cultural heritage, it shows the harmonious relationship between man and nature. And it also reveals us how to solve problems in the era of economic (...) globalization, such as the constantly silt up of the dams, the exhaustion of the energy and the crisis of the deterioration of ecosystem. The inspirations it gives us range from technology to humanities, from economy to various aspects in social life. In a word, Dujiangyan irrigation system demonstrates the wisdom and creativity of Chinese people and has a universal significance despite the change of time and space. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Pharmacogenetics is a rapidly expanding area of research exploring the relationship between inter‐individual genetic variation and drug response, with the goal of developing genetically optimised therapies. Slippery slope arguments claim that a particular action should be rejected (or supported) because it might be the first step onto a slippery slope leading to undesirable (or desirable) consequences. In this article, several slippery slope arguments relevant to the context of pharmacogenetics are evaluated under consideration of underlying reasons for their popularity. The (...) author concludes that although the examined arguments are unconvincing as slippery slope arguments, they do matter in this context. While positive slippery slope arguments serve as a driving force to fuel the development of pharmacogenetics, their negative counterparts play an important role to sensitise policy makers and the public to potential problems. (shrink)

Inventory prediction and management is a key issue in a retail store. There are a number of inventory prediction techniques. However, it is difficult to identify a time series prediction model for inventory forecasting that provides uniformly good results for all the products in a store. This paper uses data from a small retail store to demonstrate the variability of results for different modeling techniques and different products. We demonstrate inadequacy of a generic inventory model. Stability and seasonality analysis of (...) the time series is used to identify groups of products exhibiting similar sales patterns. Different clustering techniques are applied to determine reasonable local groups. With the help of Mean absolute percentage error, the effectiveness of dataset partitioning for better inventory management is demonstrated. Appropriate inventory management strategies are proposed based on the stability and seasonality analysis. (shrink)

Este artigo apresenta um projeto de pesquisa clínica qualitativa, que busca compreender a função da família, seu caráter de transmissão, no que se refere à constituição subjetiva da criança, considerando as profundas transformações contemporâneas das instituições, inclusive da família. Propomos uma discussão sobre a temática em articulação com a educação, abordando-a no contexto social e avançando para perspectiva psicanalítica. Notamos que a noção de função da psicanálise pode nos fazer avançar teórica e clinicamente na tentativa de superar modelos parentais ou (...) de comportamentos que supostamente pudessem garantir um desenvolvimento adequado à criança, permitindo a problematização dos ideais de família marcantes em nosso imaginário social e a reflexão sobre seus possíveis impactos na saúde mental dos aprendentes, familiares e educadores nos contextos educativos. (shrink)

Lifelong premature ejaculation (LPE) is a common male sexual dysfunction. Lack of active control for rapid ejaculation brought great distress to sexual harmony, and even fertility. Previous neurophysiology studies revealed an ejaculation-related control mechanism in the brain. However, it remains unclear whether this inhibitory network is altered in LPE patients. The present study investigated the central inhibitory network function of LPE patients by using stop signal task-related functional magnetic resonance imaging and resting-state functional connectivity analysis. The results showed no difference (...) in task-related behavioral performance or neural activation during response inhibition between LPE patients and controls. However, LPE patients showed a significantly different correlation pattern between the stop signal reaction time (SSRT) and left inferior frontal gyrus activation during successful inhibition, in which a typical negative correlation between SSRT and the activation was completely disappeared in patients. In addition, using the left inferior frontal gyrus as a seed, patients showed weaker functional connectivity between the seed and two areas (left dental nucleus and right frontal pole) compared with controls. These data suggest that LPE patients have an abnormal brain control network, which may contribute to the reduced central control of rapid ejaculation. This study provides new insights into the neural mechanism of LPE involving the central inhibitory network, which may offer an underlying intervention target for future treatment. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become a much-discussed subject in the business world. The Internet has become one of the main tools for CSR information disclosure, allowing companies to publicise more information less expensively and faster than ever before. As a result, corporations are increasingly concerned with communicating ethically and responsibly to the diversity of stakeholders through the web. This paper addresses the main question as whether CSR information disclosure on corporate websites is influenced by country of origin and/or industry (...) sector. Analysing the websites of 127 corporations from emerging countries, such as Brazil, Chile, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Thailand and South Africa, it becomes evident that both country of origin and industry sector have a significant influence over CSR information disclosure on the web (CSRIDOW). Based on the data studied, country of origin has a stronger influence over CSRIDOW than industry sector. (shrink)

Till now, comprehensive and quantitatively meaningful analyses of stock market participation outcomes of retail investors have been limited by data sources in developing countries. This article devised a special questionnaire related to stock investment to measure the financial literacy and stock investment return for the subjects with stockownership in China and to theoretically and empirically study the effects of objective FL, self-assessed FL, and their composite FL on SIR. The results of the comparative analysis showed that self-assessed FL has a (...) greater effect on SIR than objective FL, and the effect is mediated by risk preference. In addition, we found that competent and overconfident respondents have higher SIR, while under confident respondents cannot gain from the stock market. We also found that risk preference has a positive mediating effect in the relationship between competence and overconfidence and SIR, and a negative mediating effect in the relationship between under confidence and SIR. We thus concluded that confident investors can gain more stockholding returns via taking more risks regardless of the level of their actual financial knowledge. Our findings would be a meaningful complement to the studies of stock market participation. (shrink)

Although China’s wind industry has made great progress in recent years, the wind abandonment phenomenon caused by the unbalanced development of regional wind power is still prominent. It is particularly important for the scientific development of wind power to accurately measure the utilization efficiency of wind power and understand its regional differences in China. This study establishes the improved super-efficiency slack-based measure model and long short-term memory network models, systematically and comprehensively measures and predicts the wind power utilization efficiency of (...) 30 regions in China from 2013 to 2020, and explores regional differences in wind power utilization efficiency. Our results show the following: China’s overall wind power utilization efficiency is relatively low but has been on a steady upward trend since 2013. Regional differences are obvious, showing that the spatial distribution pattern of wind power utilization efficiency is greatest in Northeast China, followed by North China, East China, South China, Northwest China, and Central China. The “Three-North” region with abundant wind energy resources has relatively high wind power utilization efficiency and exhibits a good development trend. East China, South China, and Central China, where wind energy resources are relatively poor, have low wind power utilization efficiency, and their development trends are not stable and are more prone to change. The utilization efficiency of wind power in coastal areas is generally better than that in inland areas. There are also differences among the thirty Chinese regions studied. Inner Mongolia and Shandong have achieved real efficiency in wind power utilization efficiency, with optimal allocation of input and output, and a good development trend. The other 28 regions have varying degrees of inefficiency, and there is still room for improvement. (shrink)

Pinch force sense plays an important role in the performance of daily finger movements, including tip, key, palmar pinch. The present study investigated the roles of pinch type in the sensation of pinch force among healthy participants in the ipsilateral force reproduction trial. This study instructed forty healthy adult subjects (20 women and 20 men) in producing reference forces at different levels [10, 30, 50% maximal voluntary isometric contraction (MVIC)] by adopting 3 pinch types (tip, key, and palmar pinches) and (...) in reproducing the above force levels with the identical hand. Our study revealed that subjects are significantly more sensitive detecting alterations of pinching forces with tip pinch but not key or palmar pinch under high forces (30 and 50% MVIC) but not at lower force levels (10% MVIC). (shrink)

Objective: To investigate the correlation between preoperative response to the L-dopa challenge test and efficacy of deep brain stimulation (DBS) on motor function in Parkinson’s disease (PD).Methods: We retrospectively reviewed the data of 38 patients with idiopathic PD who underwent DBS surgery with a median follow-up duration of 7 months. Twenty underwent bilateral globus pallidus interna (GPi) DBS, and 18 underwent bilateral subthalamic nucleus (STN) DBS. The Movement Disorder Society Unified Parkinson Disease Rating Scale-Motor Part (MDS UPDRS-III) was assessed before (...) surgery and at the last follow-up in different medication and stimulation conditions, respectively.Results: Pearson’s correlation analysis revealed a positive correlation between preoperative L-dopa challenge responsiveness and GPi-DBS responsiveness on the total score (R2 = 0.283, p = 0.016) but not on the non-tremor total score (R2 = 0.158, p = 0.083) of MDS UPDRS-III. Such correlation remained significant (R2′ = 0.332, p = 0.010) after controlling for age at the time of surgery as confounding factor by partial correlation analysis. The preoperative L-dopa challenge responsiveness was significantly correlated with the tremor-controlling outcome of GPi-DBS (R2 = 0.390, p = 0.003). In contrast, we found a positive correlation between preoperative L-dopa challenge responsiveness and STN-DBS responsiveness on the non-tremor total score (R2 = 0.290, p = 0.021), but not on the total score (R2 = 0.130, p = 0.141) of MDS UPDRS-III. The partial correlation analysis further demonstrated that the predictive value of preoperative L-dopa challenge responsiveness on the non-tremor motor outcome of STN-DBS was eliminated (R2′ = 0.120, p = 0.174) after controlling for age at the time of surgery as confounding factor.Interpretation: The short-term predictive value of preoperative response to the L-dopa challenge test for the motor outcome of GPi-DBS in PD was systematically described. Our findings suggest: (1) a solid therapeutic effect of GPi-DBS in treating L-dopa-responsive tremors; (2) a negative effect of age at the time of surgery on motor outcomes of STN-DBS, (3) a possible preference of STN- to GPi-DBS in L-dopa-resistant tremor control, and (4) a possible preference of GPi- to STN-DBS in elderly PD patients who have a satisfactory dopamine response. (shrink)

The prevalence of fear of movement in persistent pain ranges from 50 to 70%, and it may hinder the subsequent rehabilitation interventions. Therefore, the evaluation of fear of movement/injury plays a crucial role in making clinical treatment decisions conducive to the promotion of rehabilitation and prognosis. In the decision-making process of pain treatment, the assessment of fear of movement/injury is mainly completed by scale/questionnaire. Scale/questionnaire is the most widely used instrument for measuring fear of movement/injury in the decision-making process of (...) pain treatment. At present, the most commonly used scale/questionnaire are the Tampa Scale for Kinesiophobia, the Fear-Avoidance Beliefs Questionnaire, the Kinesiophobia Causes Scale, the Athlete Fear-Avoidance Questionnaire, and the Fear-Avoidance Components Scale. In order to provide necessary tools and references for related research and rehabilitation treatment, this descriptive review is designed as an introduction to the background and content, score system, available language versions, variants of the original questionnaire, and psychometric properties of these scales/questionnaries. (shrink)

Accurate and rapid defect identification based on pulsed eddy current testing plays an important role in the structural integrity and health monitoring of in-service equipment in the renewable energy system. However, in conventional data-driven defect identification methods, the signal feature extraction is time consuming and requires expert experience. To avoid the difficulty of manual feature extraction and overcome the shortcomings of the classic deep convolutional network, such as large memory and high computational cost, an intelligent defect recognition pipeline based on (...) the general Warblet transform method and optimized two-dimensional DCNN is proposed. The GWT method is used to convert the one-dimensional PECT signal to a 2D grayscale image used as the input of 2D DCNN. A compound method is proposed to optimize the baseline VGG16, a well-known DCNN, from four aspects including reducing the input size, adding batch normalization layer after every convolutional layer and fully connection layer, simplifying the FCs, and removing unimportant filters in Convs so as to reduce memory and computational costs while improving accuracy. Through a pulsed eddy current testing experiment considering interference factors including liftoff and noise, the following conclusion can be obtained. The time-frequency representation obtained by the GWT method not only has excellent ability in terms of the transient component analysis but also is less affected by the reduction of image size; the proposed optimized DCNN can accurately identify defect types without manual feature extraction. And compared to the baseline VGG16, the accuracy obtained by the optimized DCNN is improved by 7%, to about 99.58%, and the memory and computational cost are reduced by 98%. Moreover, compared with other well-known DCNNs, such as GoogLeNet, Inception V3, ResNet50, and AlexNet, the optimized network has significant advantages in terms of accuracy and computational cost, too. (shrink)