The concept of brain death as equivalent to cardiopulmonary death was initially conceived following developments in neuroscience, critical care, and transplant technology. It is now a routine part of medicine in Western countries, including the United States. In contrast, Eastern countries have been reluctant to incorporate brain death into legislation and medical practice. Several countries, most notably China, still lack laws recognizing brain death and national medical standards for making the diagnosis. The perception is that Asians are less likely to (...) approve of brain death or organ transplant from brain dead donors. Cultural and religious traditions have been referenced to explain this apparent difference. In the West, the status of the brain as home to the soul in Enlightenment philosophy, combined with pragmatism and utilitarianism, supports the concept of brain death. In the East, the integration of body with spirit and nature in Buddhist and folk beliefs, along with the Confucian social structure that builds upon interpersonal relationships, argues against brain death. However, it is unclear whether these reasoning strategies are explicitly used when families and medical providers are faced with acknowledging brain death. Their decisions are more likely to involve a prioritization of values and a rationalization of intuitive responses. Why and whether there might be differences between East and West in the acceptance of the brain death concept requires further empirical testing, which would help inform policy-making and facilitate communication between providers and patients from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds. (shrink)

Grit, as an important positive psychological quality, has rarely been studied for its role involved in the mechanism between stress and psychological security. This article explores the moderating and mediating role of grit in the relationship between interpersonal stress and psychological security of freshmen through two studies. In study 1, freshmen from several Chinese universities were recruited to complete a battery of questionnaire, including assessments about interpersonal stress, grit, and psychological security. The moderating effect analysis showed that grit moderated the (...) relationship between interpersonal stress and psychological security. Specifically, grit buffered the negative effects of interpersonal stress on freshmen’s psychological security, but this effect was obvious only when the level of interpersonal stress was relatively low, and decreased when the level of interpersonal stress was high. In study 2, college freshmen from another university apart from above ones were recruited, and we verified the results of study 1 and further explored the mediating role of grit in the relationship between interpersonal stress and security. The moderating effect analysis of study 2 also verified that of study 1. The mediating effect analysis showed that interpersonal stress not only negatively predicted psychological security, but also affected psychological security through the mediation of grit. In general, grit played a mediating and moderating role in the relationship between interpersonal stress and psychological security. This study provides first-hand evidence to explain the multiple roles of grit in the relationship between interpersonal stress and psychological security. (shrink)

Conservative agriculture practice adoption literature advocates that adoption is caused by many factors comprising cognitive, social, economic, personal, and CAP-related factors. Evaluating the adoption of CAPs as the outcome is complex and challenging with regression-based models as the systemic interdependencies of the factors offer diverse or varying results. Farmer production and environmental orientations as cognitive stances are notable interpreters of CAP adoption. The appetite level for risk-taking, innovativeness, and trust facilitates the adoption of CAPs. However, a causal-predictive technique should be (...) used to investigate the adoption of CAP. Hence, this study engages in a configuration approach using a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to analyze the patterns of different types of farmers' orientations, personal level of trust on extension services, and innovativeness risk-taking attitude on the intention to adopt CAPs. The analysis is based on the 155-farmer data collected employing a structured interview from Pakistan. The results suggest that a higher level of environment orientation and innovativeness is sufficient to increase the intention to adopt CAPs. Moreover, a higher intention to adopt CAPs is achieved with a lower production orientation, a higher personal level of innovativeness, and a risk-taking attitude of the farmer. The innovativeness can help to develop the intention to adopt the CAPs among the environment and production-oriented farmers. Causal solutions offer a unique understanding that the farmers' environment and production orientation can combine to suggest inclined to adopt CAPs by having an attitude of innovativeness and risk-taking. The causal solutions achieved significant predictive validity in the holdout samples. Policy and farmer-level suggestions were made to raise the intention to adopt CAPs among the farmers. (shrink)

The study examined the effect of celebrity attractiveness, celebrity trustworthiness, and celebrity cause fit on the attitude toward green cosmetics. This was followed by the effect of brand awareness, brand associations, brand loyalty, perceived quality, brand credibility on brand equity, including the impact of attitude toward green cosmetics and brand equity on the willingness to purchase green cosmetics among of young Chinese consumers. This study adopted a cross-sectional design and collected quantitative data from 301 respondents using a structured questionnaire, which (...) was distributed online using various social media platforms. It was found that celebrity attractiveness, celebrity trustworthiness, and celebrity cause-fit had a significant impact on the attitudes toward green cosmetic, while brand loyalty, perceived quality, and brand credibility substantially affected brand equity. Moreover, the attitudes toward green cosmetics and brand equity had a strong impact on the willingness to purchase green cosmetics. To increase the sales for green cosmetics, the advertisements for it should have appeal, trustworthiness, and cause-fit celebrities to improve consumers’ attitudes and willingness to purchase green cosmetics. Finding of this study provide a guideline for green cosmetic manufacturers, to direct their resources to enhance brand loyalty, credibility, and perceived quality of the product they produce by highlighting the difference between conventional and green cosmetics. (shrink)

BackgroundProfessional ethics is the regulation and discipline of nurses’ daily nursing work. Nurses often encounter various ethical challenges and problems in their clinical work, but there are fe...

BackgroundThe brain death standard allowing a declaration of death based on neurological criteria is legally endorsed and routinely practiced in the West but not in Asia. In China, attempts to legalize the brain death standard have occurred several times without success. Cultural, religious, and philosophical factors have been proposed to explain this difference, but there is a lack of empirical studies to support this hypothesis.Methods476 medical providers from three academic hospitals in Hunan, China, completed a selfadministered survey including a 12-question (...) brain death clinical knowledge assessment and hypothetical vignettes describing brain dead patients.ResultsThe response rate was 95.2 %. Almost all of the providers had heard of the term “brain death.” More than half have encountered presumed brain dead patients. Two-thirds accepted brain death as an ethical standard to determine human death. The mean knowledge score was 8.50 ± 1.83 out of 12. When given the description of a brain dead patient, 50.7 % considered the patient dead, 51.9 % would withdraw life support, and 40.6 % would allow organ procurement. Both provider and patient characteristics contributed to the providers’ decisions. Ethical acceptance was the most important independent predictor for brain death acknowledgement, followed by high knowledge scores, and the belief that the soul lives in the brain. Religious faith and associated beliefs did not have a significant effect.ConclusionsNotwithstanding scarce official accounts, recognition of the brain death standard is not uncommon in China. Chinese medical providers can adequately define the medical characteristics of brain death and accept it in theory, but hesitate to apply it to practice in the vignettes. Legalization is paramount in providing the protection providers need to comfortably declare brain death. However the medical decision-making surrounding brain death is complex and the provider's past experiences and emotions may also influence the process. (shrink)

The global progress empowers the development of new business and expansion of existing business. The availability of sufficient accounting professional are necessary to manage and document the business activities. However, youth are less inclined to purse accounting as profession to keep the progress of global and local economic development. The current study aimed to explore the formation of the intention to pursue Certified Professional Accountancy Qualification with factor of capabilities, career opportunities, job security with respect to the extended theory of (...) planned behavior, i.e., attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control. The study adopted a cross-sectional design and collected quantitative data from a total of 339 accounting students from Malaysia using an online survey. The finding revealed that capabilities and career opportunities influenced the students’ intention to pursue CPAQ. Meanwhile, perceived behavioral control had significantly affect the students’ decision to pursue CPAQ, which is in line with the TPB. The study concentrated on the importance of these factors in influencing the students’ intention and decision to pursue CPAQ. The study offered vital implications for accounting educators and educational institutions to promote the accounting profession as choice and students engage in pursuing CPAQ. The Malaysian government should encourage and support accounting students financially for pursuing CPAQ by providing job security and enhancing subjective norms that may enable these students to complete the required professional qualifications. The study’s limitations and future research opportunities are documented at the end of this article. (shrink)

As global warming has received widespread attention, the disclosure of firms’ carbon information has been expected by increasing stakeholders. This study extends the previous literature on the determinants of firms’ carbon information disclosure by examining the influence of academic independent directors and Confucianism on the quality of carbon information disclosure. Using a sample of Chinese listed firms in the CSI 300 Index during the period of 2012–2018, our empirical results show that academic independent directors have a significantly positive association with (...) the quality of carbon information disclosure. The results also reveal that Confucianism positively affects the quality of carbon information disclosure. Moreover, Confucianism positively moderates the relationship between academic independent directors and the quality of carbon information disclosure. The results imply that Confucianism, as an informal system, can promote the governance effect of academic independent directors on firms’ carbon information disclosure behaviour. Our findings offer shareholders, regulators, and other stakeholders an integrating perspective on motivating firms to disclose high quality carbon information. (shrink)

本书内容按中国美学发展的时代先后编写,从先秦到近现代共分六篇,每一篇包括原文和提要两部分。.

This study explored the effect of attitude towards entrepreneurship, need for achievement, risk-taking propensity, proactive personality, self-efficacy, opportunity recognition competency, entrepreneurship education, uncertainty avoidance, and entrepreneurial knowledge on entrepreneurial intention among university students in Malaysia. This quantitative study had adopted the cross-sectional design approach and involved 391 university students in Malaysia via the online survey. The study outcomes revealed that the NFA, PRP, and SLE significantly affect students’ attitudes towards entrepreneurship. Moreover, entrepreneurship education and UNA significantly affect ORC. Finally, ATE (...) has a positive and significant effect on ENIN among university students in Malaysia. As entrepreneurship offers an alternative career path for people seeking economic prosperity and addressing social issues, including unemployment, the government should formulate effective policies and regulations that support entrepreneurship activities. Universities and other institutions should play a pivotal role in providing the proper exposure via entrepreneurship education while honing the essential traits for a career in entrepreneurship. (shrink)

Due to the NP-hard nature, the permutation flowshop scheduling problem is a fundamental issue for Industry 4.0, especially under higher productivity, efficiency, and self-managing systems. This paper proposes an improved genetic-shuffled frog-leaping algorithm to solve the permutation flowshop scheduling problem. In the proposed IGSFLA, the optimal initial frog in the initialized group is generated according to the heuristic optimal-insert method with fitness constrain. The crossover mechanism is applied to both the subgroup and the global group to avoid the local optimal (...) solutions and accelerate the evolution. To evolve the frogs with the same optimal fitness more outstanding, the disturbance mechanism is applied to obtain the optimal frog of the whole group at the initialization step and the optimal frog of the subgroup at the searching step. The mathematical model of PFSSP is established with the minimum production cycle as the objective function, the fitness of frog is given, and the IGSFLA-based PFSSP is proposed. Experimental results have been given and analyzed, showing that IGSFLA not only provides the optimal scheduling performance but also converges effectively. (shrink)

Objective: To systematically analyze the effects of art therapy on the levels of depression, anxiety, blood glucose, and glycated hemoglobin in diabetic patients.Methods: We searched Cochrane Library, PubMed, Embase, and ClinicalTrials.gov databases from inception to January 24, 2021. The language of publication was limited to English. Randomized controlled trials that used art therapy to improve mental disorders in diabetic patients were involved. After selection of eligible studies, data were extracted, including the first author's full-name, year of publication, the first author's (...) country of residence, number of intervention and control groups, the mean age of participants, method of intervention, duration of follow-up, and outcome measures. Assessment of quality of the included studies and data extraction were independently carried out by two researchers. RevMan 5.3 software was used to perform statistical analysis.Results: A total of 396 samples from five studies were included, and the eligible studies were RCTs with a parallel design. Methods of art therapy included music therapy and painting therapy. The results showed that compared with the control group, art therapy could positively affect the levels of depression [standardized mean difference, −1.36; 95% confidence interval, ; P < 0.00001] and blood glucose in diabetic patients [mean difference, −0.90; 95% CI, ; P < 0.0001], while it had no influence on the levels of anxiety [SMD, −0.31; 95% CI, ; P = 0.32] and glycated hemoglobin [MD, 0.22; 95% CI, ; P = 0.07].Conclusion: Art therapy may have significant effects on the levels of depression and blood glucose for diabetic patients. (shrink)

In "Canonization and Variations of Shakespeare's Work in China," Qing Yang discusses the role of cross-linguistic and inter-cultural variations with regard to William Shakespeare's intercultural travel and canonization in China. In the context of globalization, Shakespeare's texts outside Western cultures undergo cross-national, cross-linguistic and inter-cultural variations in the process of translation. From a symbol of Western powers and cultures to a bearer of Confucianism, a fighter for the survival of the nation during the anti-Japanese struggle, and to a literary master (...) with abundant possibilities of interpretation and adaption today, Shakespeares change and vary in modern and contemporary China. The inter-cultural communication of Shakespeare with clear markings of Chinese culture and history progresses through variation. Yang argues that it is the paradigm of Shunqing Cao’s variation theory central to the formations of world literature that has facilitated the canonization of Shakespeare’s work in China. (shrink)

BackgroundThe cognitive level of post-stroke aphasia patients is generally lower than non-aphasia patients, and cognitive impairment affects the outcome of stroke. However, for different types of PSA, what kind of cognitive assessment methods to choose is not completely clear. We investigated the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, the Mini-Mental State Examination, and the Non-language-based Cognitive Assessment to observe the evaluation effect of CI in patients with fluent aphasia and non-fluent aphasia.Methods92 stroke patients were included in this study. Demographic and clinical data of (...) the stroke group were documented. The language and cognition were evaluated by Western Aphasia Battery, MoCA, MMSE, and NLCA. PSA were divided into FA and NFA according to the Chinese aphasia fluency characteristic scale. Pearson’s product–moment correlation coefficient test and multiple linear regression analysis were performed to explore the relationship between the sub-items of WAB and cognitive scores. The classification rate of CI was tested by Pearson’s Chi-square test or Fisher’s exact test.ResultsThe scores of aphasia quotient, MoCA, MMSE, and NLCA in NFA were lower than FA. AQ was positively correlated with MoCA, MMSE, and NLCA scores. Stepwise multiple linear regression analysis suggested that naming explained 70.7% of variance of MoCA and 79.9% of variance of MMSE; comprehension explained 46.7% of variance of NLCA. In the same type of PSA, there was no significant difference in the classification rate. The classification rate of CI in NFA by MoCA and MMSE was higher than that in FA. There was no significant difference in the classification rate of CI between FA and NFA by NLCA.ConclusionMoCA, MMSE, and NLCA can be applied in FA. NLCA is recommended for NFA. (shrink)

The existence of the Dao 道(the Way), according to the Yizhuan 易传 (the Commentary), is something intangible. The connotation of the Dao is the law of change caused by the interaction between yin and yang. The main functions of the Dao are "to change" and "to generate". The intangible refers to the law of change caused by the interaction between yin and yang, and the law is expressed by the divinatory symbolic system (卦爻符号, the trigrams or hexagrams). It is through (...) the unique permutation of yin and yang lines of a trigram or hexagram that the law of change is explained as a universal model uniting celestial, terrestrial and human laws. The symbolic system is used to express the universal nature of continual generation of life. (shrink)

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the physical and mental health of older adults has been threatened. Promoting physical and mental health through physical activity has therefore become a strategy for healthy aging. In order to better understand the impact of the participation of older adults in physical activity, this paper selects different types of physical activity, and examines the relationship between them and subjective well-being through the analysis of the mediation effect of outdoor exercise environment and the regulating (...) effect of exercise form. In this cross-sectional study, a questionnaire survey was conducted in mainland China. The main data come from 903 older adults in five urban areas in Chengdu, Sichuan Province. The surveys were carried out using the Physical Activity Rating Scale, Newfoundland Subjective Well-Being Scale, Exercise Environment Scale, and Exercise Form Scale. SPSS was used for statistical analysis, linear regression analysis was adopted for processing data, and AMOS was used to establish a mediation model. The mediating variable is the outdoor exercise environment, and the moderating variable is exercise form; gender, age, education level, and monthly income were used as control variables. The study results showed that different physical activities were significantly, positively correlated with the subjective well-being of older adults ; among the activities, tai chi had the strongest effect on the subjective well-being of older adults. Outdoor exercise environment played a mediating role between different physical activity types and subjective well-being of older adults [tai chi: β = 0.030, 95% CI ; health qigong: β = 0.018, 95% CI ; walking and jogging: β = 0.034, 95% CI ]. Exercise form moderated the subjective well-being of older adults in different physical activities. The results of this study demonstrate that the outdoor exercise environment plays a mediating role between different physical activities and the subjective well-being of older adults, and the form of exercise can also moderate the impact of different physical activities on the subjective well-being of older adults. This study has enlightening significance for psychological intervention with older adults facing stress, anxiety and depression. (shrink)

Along with urban development globally, the NIMBY crisis has been a complex social problem, which requires urgent remedial action. The inevitable management of Municipal Solid Waste has been one of the toughest risk management tasks in the worldwide modernization process. At present, certain fuzzy and unstructured results and methods have been formed for MSW-NIMBY crisis response, mainly focusing on the sociology and politics which scatter in complex and sensitive reports and news. Aiming at enhancing the effectiveness of data mining from (...) specific sparse text of MSW-NIMBY crisis, an improved knowledge extraction method is developed. Through rule-based text mining and complex network analysis, the Entity Relationship network of MSW-NIMBY crisis is reconstructed. Meanwhile, a novel transitivity for relationship between entities in semantic analysis is proposed to improve the feasibility and accuracy of information extraction. Characteristics and regularity of MSW-NIMBY crisis evolution and experience of crisis governance could be identified effectively. Results show that knowledge integration and ER transitivity can enhance knowledge recognition and major other factors, which could help formulate the governance strategies of NIMBY crisis from academic texts. (shrink)