Background: High ethical sensitivity positively affects the quality of nursing care; nevertheless, Chinese nurses’ ethical sensitivity and the factors influencing it have not been described. Research objectives: The purpose of this study was to describe ethical sensitivity and to explore factors influencing it among Chinese-registered nurses, to help nursing administrators improve nurses’ ethical sensitivity, build harmony between nurses and patients, and promote the patients’ health. Research design: This was a descriptive, cross-sectional study. Participants and research context: We recruited 500 nurses (...) from several departments in three tertiary hospitals. The Chinese Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire–Revised version and the Jefferson Scale of Empathy-Health Professionals were used to assess the nurses’ ethical sensitivity and empathy ability, respectively. Fifteen sociodemographic variables were included in the questionnaires. Ethical considerations: Informed consent was obtained from the participants regarding participation and data storage and handling. This program has been examined and supported by the research center of medical ethics and professional ethics of Guilin Medical University. The Approval No. was 2016RWYB04. The whole research process is conducted strictly according to ethical requirements. Results: The valid response rate was 84.40%. The total score of Chinese Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire–Revised was 35.82 ± 8.17. The subscale scores of moral responsibility and strength and sense of moral burden were 21.50 ± 4.91 and 14.33 ± 3.98, respectively. Significant differences were found among age groups, gender, years of working, category of profession, and quality of family communication regarding nurses’ ethical sensitivity. Regression analysis showed that the main factors influencing nurses’ ethical sensitivity were gender, years of working, quality of family communication, career satisfaction, and empathic ability. Discussion: Our findings suggest that Chinese nurses’ ethical sensitivity in tertiary hospitals in Guilin is at a medium level. Conclusion: The director of nursing schools and hospitals in China should pay attention to nurses’ ethical sensitivity and should intensify education and training to improve nurses’ ethical sensitivity. Further studies should focus on interventions aimed at improving Chinese nurses’ ethical sensitivity. (shrink)

Glowacki offers many new directions for understanding and even eliminating the problem of war, especially creating positive interdependencies with out-group members. We develop Glowacki's intriguing proposition that in-group dynamics provide a route to peace by describing a prosocial motivational system, the caregiving system, that aligns individual interests and eliminates the need to use coercion to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes.

Recent studies of the rubber hand illusion (RHI) have shown that the sense of body ownership is constrained by several factors and yet is still very flexible. However, exactly how flexible is our sense of body ownership? In this study, we address this issue by investigating the following question: is it possible that one may have the illusory experience of owning four hands? Under visual manipulation, the participant adopted the experimenter’s first-person perspective (1PP) as if it was his/her own. Sitting (...) face to face, the participant saw four hands—the experimenter’s two hands from the adopted 1PP together with the subject’s own two hands from the adopted third-person perspective (3PP). We found that: (1) the four-hand illusion did not occur in the passive four-hand condition. (2) In the active four-hand condition, the participants tapped their index fingers, imitated by the experimenter. When tactile stimulations were not provided, the key illusion was not induced, either. (3) Strikingly, once all four hands began to act with the same pattern and received synchronous tactile stimulations at the same time, many participants felt as if they had two more hands. These results show that the sense of body ownership is much more flexible than most researchers have suggested. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic is a global crisis which has witnessed consumers experiencing significant anxiety provoked by the threats to their health and even lives. Meanwhile, consumers have been observed to make more ethical purchases since the start of the pandemic. Drawing on literature on terror management and negotiable fate, this research employs a moderated moderating model to investigate how consumers’ perception of the pandemic severity leads to ethical consumption as a defensive mechanism against death-related anxiety, as well as the differential (...) role of consumers’ belief in negotiable fate in moderating this pandemic impact across tight and loose cultures. We conducted two cross-cultural studies with 592 and 423 respondents, respectively, at different times during the pandemic. Results consistently show that perceived pandemic severity increases consumers’ intention to consume ethically. Consumers’ belief in negotiable fate directly enhances ethical consumption, but it alleviates the effect of pandemic severity on ethical consumption among consumers who live in a tight culture. Our findings reveal the existential meaning of ethical consumption as a buffer against pandemic-triggered mortality salience, identify the positive psychological functions of negotiable fate in promoting ethical consumption but mitigating consumers’ need to buffer death-related concerns, and advances the importance of investigating the cultural variances in the terror management process toward ethical consumption. The findings offer insights for marketers and policy makers to develop effective strategies to support consumers’ ethical coping during societal crises. (shrink)

Entrepreneurship is a sustainable development tool that supports the alleviation of poverty and unemployment. Focusing on the promotion of entrepreneurial intention under the background of entrepreneurship education, this study used a structural equation model to examine the role of entrepreneurship policy, entrepreneurial practice, and entrepreneurial spirit on the EI of 384 college students from 22 universities in Guangdong Province. The test results show that there are significant positive correlations between EPo and EI; EPo and EPr; EPo and ES; and EPr (...) and EI. They also support the hypothesis that EPr enhances the positive effect that EPo has on EI. This study puts forth measures to improve EI and makes contributions to future research on EE. (shrink)

Although death statutes permitting physicians to declare brain death are relatively uniform throughout the United States, academic debate persists over the equivalency of human death and brain death. Alan Shewmon showed that the formerly accepted integration rationale was conceptually incomplete by showing that brain-dead patients demonstrated a degree of integration. We provide a more complete rationale for the equivalency of human death and brain death by defending a deeper understanding of the organism as a whole and by using a novel (...) strategy with shared objectives to justify death determination criteria. Our OaaW account describes different types of OaaW, defining human death as the loss of status as a human OaaW. We defend human death as similar to nonhuman death in terms of wakefulness, but also distinct in terms of the sui generis properties, particularly conscious awareness. We thereby defend the equivalency of brain death and human death using a resulting neurocentric rationale. (shrink)

In the literature on expert trust, it is often assumed that track records are the gold standard for evaluating expertise, and the difficulty of expert identification arises from either the lack of access to track records, or the inability to assess them. I show, using a computational model, that even in an idealized environment where agents have a God’s eye view on track records, they may fail to identify experts. Under plausible conditions, selecting testimony based on track records ends up (...) reducing overall accuracy, and preventing the community from identifying the real experts. (shrink)

As patient autonomy expands, a highly controversial issue has emerged. Should the advance directives of refusing life-saving treatments or requesting euthanasia of persons with dementia who express changed minds or are often in a happy state be fulfilled? There are two autonomy-related positions. The mainstream position in philosophical discussions supports the priority of ADs based on precedent autonomy. Buchanan and Brock, and Dworkin represent this view. The other position supports the priority of PWDs’ current wishes based on minimal autonomy represented (...) by Jaworska. By rethinking the theoretical and practical challenges of the two positions and their arguments respectively, the paper concludes that in such a scenario, the priority of ADs is morally indefensible, and it is also challenging to establish minimal autonomy defend the moral priority of PWDs’ current wishes. For PWDs whose past values, beliefs, and preferences fade away but who retain apparent intrinsic sentience of well-being, a modified defined quality-of-life approach serves as another reasonable basis in their medical decision-making, and the ADs and the QoL should be further merged to reduce the uncertainty of the grey zone. (shrink)

Social media users have increased rapidly in recent years; however, most are “silent users” who rarely share information online. To maintain social media companies’ stable operation and development, this research explored the effects of flow experience and identity formation on users’ intrinsic motivation to facilitate aggressive, spontaneous, and habitual participation in virtual communities. A total of 487 valid questionnaires were collected and underwent regression analysis. The results revealed that all three intrinsic motivations had a significant impact on social media participation, (...) with social interaction exerting the strongest influence. Flow experience and identification had significant, partial mediating effects on the relationship between motivation and participation. Several suggestions were provided based on the results to help social media enterprises increase user participation. It is hoped that this research could facilitate in transforming users into habitual participants to keep the operations of the virtual community stable and enduring. (shrink)

Background: The concept of digital twins has great potential for transforming the existing health care system by making it more personalized. As a convergence of health care, artificial intelligence, and information and communication technologies, personalized health care services that are developed under the concept of digital twins raise a myriad of ethical issues. Although some of the ethical issues are known to researchers working on digital health and personalized medicine, currently, there is no comprehensive review that maps the major ethical (...) risks of digital twins for personalized health care services. Objective: This study aims to fill the research gap by identifying the major ethical risks of digital twins for personalized health care services. We first propose a working definition for digital twins for personalized health care services to facilitate future discussions on the ethical issues related to these emerging digital health services. We then develop a process-oriented ethical map to identify the major ethical risks in each of the different data processing phases. Methods: We resorted to the literature on eHealth, personalized medicine, precision medicine, and information engineering to identify potential issues and developed a process-oriented ethical map to structure the inquiry in a more systematic way. The ethical map allows us to see how each of the major ethical concerns emerges during the process of transforming raw data into valuable information. Developers of a digital twin for personalized health care service may use this map to identify ethical risks during the development stage in a more systematic way and can proactively address them. Results: This paper provides a working definition of digital twins for personalized health care services by identifying 3 features that distinguish the new application from other eHealth services. On the basis of the working definition, this paper further layouts 10 major operational problems and the corresponding ethical risks. Conclusions: It is challenging to address all the major ethical risks that a digital twin for a personalized health care service might encounter proactively without a conceptual map at hand. The process-oriented ethical map we propose here can assist the developers of digital twins for personalized health care services in analyzing ethical risks in a more systematic manner. (shrink)

Background Moral courage is a recognized virtue. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the master’s students of nursing (MSNs) in China have shown tenacious moral courage. Objective This study elaborates on the moral courage of Chinese MSNs through their experiences of volunteering during the pandemic. Research Design Descriptive qualitative, interview-based. Participants and Research Context Participants were nursing postgraduate students who participated in the prevention and control of the COVID-19 pandemic selected by purposeful sampling. The sample size was determined by (...) data saturation, which was reached with 10 participants. Data were analyzed using a deductive method of content analysis. Because of the isolation policy, telephone interviews were adopted. Ethical considerations After obtaining the approval of the ethical institution of the author’s school (No. 138, 30 August 2021), verbal consent was obtained before the interview with the participants. All data were processed anonymously and confidentially. In addition, we recruited participants through MSNs’ counselors, and obtained their phone numbers with their permission. Results Data analysis resulted in 15 subcategories that were subsequently grouped into 3 major categories including proceed without hesitation, the outcome of practicing moral courage, and develop and maintain moral courage. Conclusion This qualitative study is based on the special background of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the MSNs in China have shown tenacious moral courage in the work of epidemic prevention and control. Five factors led them to take action without hesitation, and six possible outcomes followed. Lastly, this study provides some suggestions for nurses and nursing students to enhance their moral courage. To better develop and support moral courage in the future, it is necessary to use different methods and multidisciplinary approaches to study moral courage. (shrink)

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)

The philosophy of language in the Gongsun Longzi 公孫龍子 has been a hot topic since the 20th century, but there is still controversy about what point Gongsun Long 公孫龍 is making. This article reviews representative studies of the philosophy of language in the Gongsun Longzi in Sinophone academia since 2000. Some studies (especially in journal articles) conceive that one or two of the discourses are on the philosophy of language, while the other discourses concern ontology, epistemology, semiotics, or logic. In (...) contrast, certain scholars read the whole book as being about the philosophy of language. The divergence lies in whether the common thread is linguistic meaning or concept, and whether Gongsun Long’s doctrine is unveiled by one or several theories. These differences lead to a wide variation in their interpretation of the key terms and claims in the Gongsun Longzi. It is found that there is no theoretical framework that can perfectly interpret the book without incurring any criticism, and more efforts are needed to elucidate the philosophy of language in the Gongsun Longzi. (shrink)

I have been developing an ethics that I initially identified in the text of the Zhuangzi and which I have characterized in different ways under different names. First, in contrast to the moral Golden Rule, which asks us to do unto others as we would like to have done unto us, I call it the moral Copper Rule: do unto others as they would like to have done unto them. Second, in contrast to the ethics of commonality, I call it (...) ethics of difference. Ethics of Commonality is a general term I use to include the moral Golden Rule, Kantian ethics, and even Rorty’s anti-Kantian ethics... (shrink)

Technological products such as computer, communication, and consumer electronic products, apps, smart wearables, and streaming services have become inseparable from people’s lives. In technological fields of practice, imagination, creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship may influence one another. A vivid imagination can generate creativity and trigger the entrepreneurial intention to “bring new things to the market.” This study aims to understand the formation of internet entrepreneurial intention to use technology products. Drawing on social cognitive theory, this study explores and empirically tests how (...) technology product imagination disposition and social support impact internet entrepreneurial intention to use technology products. Drawing from self-determination theory, this study proposes and examines the mediating role of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in the relationship between technology product imagination disposition and internet entrepreneurial intention, as well as the relationship between social support and internet entrepreneurial intention. We conducted a survey of 568 adults in Taiwan and used partial least squares to test our hypotheses. The results show the following: Technology product imagination disposition is positively associated with challenge, enjoyment, compensation, and outward motivation. Social support is positively associated with challenge, enjoyment, compensation, and outward motivation. Challenge, enjoyment, and outward motivation are positively associated with internet entrepreneurial intention to use technology products. Technology product imagination disposition intensifies internet entrepreneurial intention to use technology products by strengthening challenge, enjoyment, and outward motivation. Social support intensifies internet entrepreneurial intention by increasing challenge, enjoyment, and outward motivation. The partial mediation model represents a significant improvement in the total effect over the direct effect. We discuss the implications of these results for research and internet entrepreneurship practices. (shrink)

Individuals’ unverified information sharing on social media, namely, sharing information without verification, is a major cause of the widespread misinformation amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The association between perceived information overload and unverified information sharing has been well documented in the cognitive overload approach. However, little is known about the underlying mechanism of this process. This study aims to explore the mediating role of anxiety and the moderating role of perceived herd between perceived information overload and unverified information sharing on WeChat. (...) Anxiety demonstrates people’s emotional response to the pandemic, whereas perceived herd describes a willingness to share certain information if it has been shared by many. The results of an online survey in China showed that perceived information overload was positively associated with unverified information sharing. In addition, this relationship was partially mediated by anxiety. Moreover, perceived herd positively moderated the link between anxiety and unverified information sharing, such that the indirect effect of perceived information overload on unverified information sharing via anxiety was significant in conditions where the level of perceived herd was high, whereas the indirect effect was not significant in conditions where the level of perceived herd was low. The moderated mediation model extends the cognitive overload approach and indicates that unverified information sharing is not only an individual strategy to cope with information overload but also a herding behavior to manage anxiety. Practical implications for curbing people’s tendencies toward unverified information sharing on social media are discussed. (shrink)

This study examined how self-worth of students mediated and moderated their perceived positive teacher-student relationships and student engagement among middle-school students from rural China. Eighth graders completed surveys measuring their perceived relationships with teachers, their self-worth, and engagement. Statistical analyses revealed significant correlations among all three variables, with the strongest being between teacher-student relationships and student engagement. The structural equation modeling indicated that self-worth partially mediated the effect of teacher-student relationships on student engagement; however, positive teacher-student relationships were a stronger (...) predictor. Multigroup analyses identified self-worth as a moderator, whereby students with lower self-worth were more reliant on positive teacher-student relationships to enhance their engagement. This study provides insights into how self-worth of students and their perceived positive teacher-student relationships influence their academic engagement in disadvantaged rural areas of China. (shrink)

Extensive empirical work has examined ethical perceptions of different occupational groups in marketing. Additionally, researchers have explored ethical apperceptions of industrial customers and retail consumers. Minimal effort, though, has been directed at investigating differences in ethical perceptions between buyers and sellers, notwithstanding considerable theoretical arguments for doing so. This paper reports the results of a study that focused on differences between retail customers’ and retail salespeople’s perceptions of questionable buying and selling behaviors. Findings indicate that the two groups differ in (...) some respect depending on which group is engaging in the questionable conduct. Managerial and future research implications are provided. (shrink)

The present study aimed to delineate the characteristics of empathy and mental health in preschool teachers and examine the role of empathy in preschool teachers’ mental health. The sample in this study consisted of 4348 preschool teachers, who were divided into 4 groups according to their years of teaching experience (less than 2 years, 2 to 5 years, 5 to 10 years, and more than 10 years). The Chinese version of the Symptom Checklist 90 was used to measure the mental (...) health symptoms of the participants, and the Chinese version of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index was employed to assess various aspects of the participants’ empathy. The results indicated that preschool teachers scored higher than the controls for most mental symptoms, and most symptoms increased as teaching experience increased, independent of the effect of age. The study also found that the four dimensions of empathy showed different trends across the four teaching experience groups: fantasy remained stable, empathic concerns and perspective taking showed decreasing trends, and personal distress showed an increasing trend. Moreover, the present research found a relatively complex relationship between empathy and mental health in preschool teachers: while fantasy and personal distress positively predicted mental health symptoms in preschool teachers, perspective taking and empathic concern negatively correlated with most of the symptoms. It seems that empathy contains both risky and protective factors for individuals’ mental health, and these factors are affected by years of teaching experience. (shrink)

In this study, we investigated explicit and implicit endorsement of prescriptive age stereotypes. To achieve that, we captured endorsement of a wide range of prescriptive expectations targeting both younger and older people. Younger and older adults participated in the study. We assessed implicit endorsement of prescriptive age stereotypes with the Propositional Evaluation Paradigm and used a direct measure to assess explicit endorsement. In general, we found strong support for age-specificity in both explicit and implicit endorsement of prescriptive age stereotypes: Sentences (...) ascribing expectations for young/old to the respective age group were endorsed much more strongly than sentences in which expectations for young/old were ascribed to the other age group. Age group differences in the endorsement of prescriptive age stereotypes were found. Compared to younger participants, older participants showed stronger endorsement for prescriptive beliefs targeting both younger and older targets. Explicit and implicit endorsement of prescriptive age stereotypes did not correlate with one another, thus revealing they might assess independent belief systems with different predictive potential. (shrink)

In pursuit of sustainable living, ethics researchers as well as consumers themselves have challenged the status quo of consumption as an institution. Fueled by global economic, environmental, and societal concerns, responsible consumption has become an integral part of the sustainability and consumption ethics literature. One movement toward sustainability consists of confining living space into a smaller ecological footprint. Although motivations for such a lifestyle have been examined, little research has investigated the process of how members of the tiny house movement (...) reconfigure learned consumption practices. This study investigates tiny house dwellers’ transformational experiences through the theoretical lens of contemporary institutional change. Qualitative analysis reveals that these challengers of the status quo face significant normative, regulatory, and cognitive hurdles. However, by engaging in sensemaking, validation, and change agency practices, tiny house dwellers have attempted to legitimize a new way of sustainable living that can be in conflict with existing institutions. Implications and future research are discussed in terms of how examining institutional change processes can be a vital part of ethics and sustainability research. Implications are also provided for how marketing organizations can consider modifying their market offerings to capitalize on this segment of society. (shrink)

I challenge the idea by Glowacki that “strong sanctions” such as fines, physical punishment, or execution are more effective in promoting peace than “weak punishments” like social rejection. Reviewing evidence that social rejection can have significant social and psychological costs for norm violators, I propose that social rejection can serve as a powerful reputational sanction in fostering peace in society.

This article grounds the morality of secession on two forms of collective self-determination: one manifests the communal goods of secessionists and the other the value of shared political institutions. Secession is morally valuable when the two are incompatible such that the claimant confronts persistent alienation. For remedial rights theories, only ‘strict violations’ permit secession. For primary rights theories, ‘broad violations’ grant secession as a last resort, and so this thesis, ‘collective self-determination as nonalienation’, should be accepted regardless. First, as the (...) two collective forms of self-determination develop two forms of territorial rights, it supplements cogent accounts of territorial justification for, and claims to, secession. Second, as persistent alienation can have both strict and broad interpretations, it also provides moral grounds shared by remedial and primary rights theories if they concede the value of collective self-determination. The strict sense refers to persistent coercion that violates personal autonomy and nullifies state legitimacy. The broad interpretation denotes long-term political frustration caused by unreasonable prevention of greater collective autonomy that even legitimate states may achieve. Third, to verify whether this amounts to long-term political frustration and to address persistent alienation, secession should be regarded as a last resort, despite its support from the primary rights account. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that a liberal state has a general duty to protect its people from undue health risks. However, the unprecedented emergent measures against the COVID-19 pandemic taken by governments worldwide give rise to questions regarding the extent to which this duty may be used to justify suspending a vaccine rollout on marginal safety grounds. -/- In this chapter, I use the case of vaccination to argue that while a liberal state has a general duty to protect its (...) people’s health, there is a limit to the measures this duty can be used to justify. First, I argue that since every available option involves different risks and benefits, the incommensurability of the involved risks and benefits forbids the prioritisation of a particular vaccine. Second, I argue that given epistemic limitations and uncertainty, policies that favour certain vaccines are not only epistemically ill-founded but also morally unacceptable. I conclude that in a highly uncertain situation such as the unfolding pandemic, the duty a liberal state ought to uphold is to properly communicate the knowns and unknowns to the general public and help people decide which option to choose for themselves. I call this duty the duty to facilitate risk-taking. (shrink)

BackgroundPrevious studies have not investigated the role of resilience and coping style on the association between maladaptive perfectionism and academic procrastination among nursing undergraduates. However, how to mobilize the learning enthusiasm of nursing students and reduce the incidence of academic procrastination is an important factor to reduce nursing loss and improve nursing quality.ObjectivesTo investigate the influence of maladaptive perfectionism, resilience and coping style on academic procrastination among Chinese undergraduate nursing students.MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted. A convenience sampling method was used (...) to select 665 nursing undergraduates from March to May 2022 in China. Maladaptive perfectionism, coping style, resilience, and academic procrastination were measured using questionnaires. The descriptive analysis, Pearson’s correlation analysis and the Hayes’ PROCESS Macro in SPSS 25.0 were used to test the model.ResultsThe results showed that nursing undergraduates’ maladaptive perfectionism, resilience, positive coping style and academic procrastination were significantly correlated between every two variables, with coefficients ranging between −0.290 and 0.584. In addition, resilience played a partial mediating role in maladaptive perfectionism and academic procrastination, accounting for 15.70% of the total effect; in the meantime, this process was moderated by positive coping style.ConclusionMaladaptive perfectionism positively predicted nursing undergraduates’ academic procrastination; as a mediating mechanism with moderating, resilience and positive coping style further explained how maladaptive perfectionism promoted the academic procrastination of nursing undergraduates. Understanding this mechanism is of great significance for nursing educators to reduce the risk of academic procrastination in nursing undergraduates. (shrink)

Although big data analytics capability leads to competitive performance, the mechanism of the relationship is still unclear. To narrow the research gap, this paper investigates the mediating roles of two forms of resource integration in the relationship between two forms of BDAC [big data analytics management capability and BDA technology capability] and competitive performance. Supported by Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Modeling and the cross-sectional survey data from 219 Chinese enterprises, the results show that the resource bricolage plays a significantly mediating (...) role in the relationships between BDA management capability and competitive performance as well as in the relationship between BDA technology capability and competitive performance. Furthermore, the mediating effect in the former relationship is stronger than that in the latter relationship. Additionally, BDA technology capability only has a direct effect on resource bricolage, while BDA management capability has a stronger effect on resource optimization than that on resource bricolage. Finally, resource bricolage has a stronger impact on competitive performance than resource optimization. These findings contribute to understanding how enterprises could apply different forms of BDAC to other kinds of resource integration to achieve outstanding competitive performance. (shrink)

Schizophrenia is a serious mental illness characterized by a disconnection between brain regions. Transcranial magnetic stimulation is a non-invasive brain intervention technique that can be used as a new and safe treatment option for patients with schizophrenia with drug-refractory symptoms, such as negative symptoms and cognitive impairment. However, the therapeutic effects of transcranial magnetic stimulation remain unclear and would be investigated using non-invasive tools, such as functional connectivity. A longitudinal design was adopted to investigate the alteration in FC dynamics using (...) a dynamic functional connectivity approach in patients with schizophrenia following high-frequency repeated transcranial magnetic stimulation with the target at the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Two groups of schizophrenia inpatients were recruited. One group received a 4-week high-frequency rTMS together with antipsychotic drugs, while the other group only received antipsychotic drugs. Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging and psychiatric symptoms were obtained from the patients with schizophrenia twice at baseline and after 4-week treatment. The dynamics was evaluated using voxel- and region-wise FC temporal variability resulting from fMRI data. The pattern classification technique was used to verify the clinical application value of FC temporal variability. For the voxel-wise FC temporary variability, the repeated measures ANCOVA analysis showed significant treatment × time interaction effects on the FC temporary variability between the left DLPFC and several regions, including the thalamus, cerebellum, precuneus, and precentral gyrus, which are mainly located within the cortico-thalamo-cerebellar circuit. For the ROI-wise FC temporary variability, our results found a significant interaction effect on the FC among CTCC. rTMS intervention led to a reduced FC temporary variability. In addition, higher alteration in FC temporal variability between left DLPFC and right posterior parietal thalamus predicted a higher remission ratio of negative symptom scores, indicating that the decrease of FC temporal variability between the brain regions was associated with the remission of schizophrenia severity. The support vector regression results suggested that the baseline pattern of FC temporary variability between the regions in CTCC could predict the efficacy of high-frequency rTMS intervention on negative symptoms in schizophrenia. These findings confirm the potential relationship between the reduction in whole-brain functional dynamics induced by high-frequency rTMS and the improvement in psychiatric scores, suggesting that high-frequency rTMS affects psychiatric symptoms by coordinating the heterogeneity of activity between the brain regions. Future studies would examine the clinical utility of using functional dynamics patterns between specific brain regions as a biomarker to predict the treatment response of high-frequency rTMS. (shrink)

Prior research on workplace ostracism and helping behavior has yielded mixed results. This study integrates social learning theory and social role theory by constructing a multilevel model to examine the relationship between supervisor ostracism and helping behavior that focuses on the mediating role of coworker ostracism and the moderating role of subordinate gender. Using a two-wave, multisource approach, data were collected from 382 employees and 43 immediate team leaders in four business corporations in Guangxi Province, China. The results of path (...) analysis reveal that supervisor ostracism has a cross-level effect on helping behavior through the mediating role of coworker ostracism. Furthermore, the positive direct effect of supervisor ostracism on coworker ostracism and the negative cross-level indirect effect of supervisor ostracism on helping behavior via coworker ostracism was stronger for men than women. These findings expand and deepen our understanding of the ostracism field. (shrink)

Robert Sparrow recently argues that state-driven moral bioenhancement is morally problematic because it inevitably invites moral perfectionism. While sharing Sparrow’s worry about state-driven moral bioenhancement, I argue that his anti-perfectionism argument is too strong to offer useful normative guidance. That is, if we reject state-driven moral bioenhancement because it cannot remain neutral between different conceptions of the good, we might have to conclude that all forms of moral enhancement program ought not be made compulsory, including the least controversial and most (...) popular state-driven program: compulsory (moral) education. -/- In this paper, I argue that instead, the spirit of Sparrow’s worry should be recast in the language of the capability approach – an approach that strives to enhance people’s capabilities to develop their own conceptions of the good by restricting itself from endorsing thick conceptions of the good. The distinction made regarding thick and thin conceptions of the good helps better capture sentiments against state-driven bioenhancement programs without falling prey to the issues I raise against Sparrow’s anti-perfectionist arguments. (shrink)

Toleration has been almost universally regarded as an indispensable virtue one ought to have when encountering people of races, religions, languages, cultures, genders, and sexual orientations different from one’s own. This is unfortunate, however, because toleration includes objection as one of its necessary components: to tolerate an object means to have objection to it though without interfering with it. However, it is wrong to think we have, and it is wrong for us to have, objection to people simply because of (...) their races, religions, languages, cultures, genders, and sextual orientations different from us. The proper virtue we ought to cultivate in this context is respect as advocated in the Zhuangzi, which is fundamentally different from respect that has sometimes been associated with the very conception of toleration. (shrink)

Although a sizable number of works on analytic philosophy are published in non-Western languages, the literature continues to be written mainly in Western languages, especially English and German. This article makes a case for discussing analytic philosophy in Chinese and argues that it entails a dilemma: it can fulfill either the audience-service or knowledge-service functions but not both at the same time. This is problematic because a standard original or critical philosophical article should fulfill both functions. Then, to challenge the (...) validity of this dilemma, I pose the hypothetical scenario of Jake, who writes a marvelous, purely original publication on analytic philosophy in Chinese. This article posits that the dilemma will not be undermined by such a case and suggests an alternative way to resolve it. (shrink)

This study explored the correlation between mental toughness and physical activity, and the moderation role between PA intention and subsequent behavior among college students and wage earners. Five hundred ninety-one college students aged from 19 to 24 and 285 wage earners aged from 27 to 58 recruited from seven colleges and five cities in China. A Theory of Planned Behavior questionnaire, MT Inventory, and the International PA Questionnaire was completed online. Results showed that attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control (...) explained 46.5 and 38.3% variance in PA intention among college students and wage earners separately. Intention predicted PA behavior significantly among college students and wage earners. Structural equation modeling indicated that the TPB model and the moderation model have an adequate to good fit except the TPB model among wage earners. MT was positively correlated with PA among college students and wage earners and had a significant moderation role in intention-behavior gap among college students and partially affected the transfer of PA intention to behavior among college students. Individuals with high MT had high levels of PA regardless of intention, while PA of those with low MT was low and unstable. Future research should further explore the correlation between intention and PA and the moderation role of MT in different populations using a longitudinal study in order to better understand the correlation between intention and PA, and the transition from intention to PA and better guidance PA intervention to promote PA. (shrink)

In recent years, sequencing technologies have enabled the identification of a wide range of non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs). Unfortunately, annotation and integration of ncRNA data has lagged behind their identification. Given the large quantity of information being obtained in this area, there emerges an urgent need to integrate what is being discovered by a broad range of relevant communities. To this end, the Non-Coding RNA Ontology (NCRO) is being developed to provide a systematically structured and precisely defined controlled vocabulary for the (...) domain of ncRNAs, thereby facilitating the discovery, curation, analysis, exchange, and reasoning of data about structures of ncRNAs, their molecular and cellular functions, and their impacts upon phenotypes. The goal of NCRO is to serve as a common resource for annotations of diverse research in a way that will significantly enhance integrative and comparative analysis of the myriad resources currently housed in disparate sources. It is our belief that the NCRO ontology can perform an important role in the comprehensive unification of ncRNA biology and, indeed, fill a critical gap in both the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) Library and the National Center for Biomedical Ontology (NCBO) BioPortal. Our initial focus is on the ontological representation of small regulatory ncRNAs, which we see as the first step in providing a resource for the annotation of data about all forms of ncRNAs. The NCRO ontology is free and open to all users. (shrink)

BackgroundTinnitus is a common disease, and sound therapy is an effective method to alleviate it. Previous studies have shown that notched sound not only changes levels of cortical blood oxygen, but affects blood oxygen in specific cerebral cortical areas, such as Brodmann area 46, which is associated with emotion. Extensive evidence has confirmed that tinnitus is closely related to emotion. Whether notched sound plays a role in regulating the emotional center is still unclear.MethodsThis study included 29 patients with newly diagnosed (...) chronic tinnitus who were treated with notched sound. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy was conducted before and after treatment to observe bilateral changes in cortical blood oxygen in the cerebral hemispheres. We compared the changes in connectivity between the two regions of interest, as wells as other cortical regions before and after treatment.ResultsThe results showed That global connectivity between the bilateral auditory cortex of the superior temporal sulcus and the ipsilateral cortex did not change significantly between baseline and the completion of treatment, and That the connectivity between channel 14 and the right superior temporal sulcus decreased after treatment. The overall connectivity between the right BA46 region and the right cortex decreased after treatment, and decreases in connectivity after treatment were specifically found for channels 10 and 14 in the right parietal lobe and channels 16, 20, 21, and 22 in the frontal lobe, while there was no significant change on the left side. There were no significant changes in the questionnaire measures of tinnitus, anxiety, or depression before and after treatment.ConclusionThe results of the study indicate that cerebral cortex reorganization occurs in tinnitus patients after submitted to treatment with notched sound for 1 month, and that notched sound decreases the connectivity between the auditory cortex and specific brain regions.SignificanceNotched sound not only regulates the auditory center through lateral inhibition, but also alleviates tinnitus by reorganizing the emotional control center. (shrink)

This study seeks to clarify the nature of linguistic synesthesia using a lexical-conceptual account. Based on a lexical analysis of Mandarin synesthetic usages, we find that linguistic synesthesia maps the metaphorical meaning between two domains; and linguistic synesthetic mappings and conceptual metaphoric mappings have similar behaviors when sense modalities are treated as conceptual domains that contain a set of mappings constrained by Mapping Principles. This lexical-conceptual account is designed to capture the fact that linguistic synesthesia involves mapping between lexicalized concepts (...) of sensory properties, instead of the real-time sensory input that is processed in neurological synesthesia. The incorporation of a lexical semantic view with the framework of Conceptual Metaphor Theory not only offers a coherent and comprehensive account for the nature of linguistic synesthesia, but also handles aspects of linguistic synesthesia previously only accounted for by non-metaphorical accounts. These design features make this proposal the most comprehensive account to fit the current data. Furthermore, by showing linguistic synesthesia as a type of metaphor, our study strengthens the role of conceptual metaphors as the link between the perceived world and our conceptualization of that world. (shrink)

With the development of network technology, enterprises face the explosive growth of data every day. Therefore, to fully mine the value of massive data, big data analysis technology has become the key to developing the core competitiveness of enterprises. However, few empirical studies have investigated the influencing mechanism of the BDA capability of an enterprise on its operational performance. To fill this gap, this study explores how BDA technology capability influences enterprise operation performance, based on dynamic capabilities theory and resource-based (...) theory. It proposes the key variables, including the connectivity, compatibility, and modularization of big data analysis technical capability, enterprise's operational performance, and the fit between data and tools, to establish a model and study the correlation between the variables. The results highlight the mediating role of data-tool fit in the relationships between BDA capability and the enterprise's operational performance, which is a major finding that has not been underlined in the extant literature. This study provides valuable insight for operational managers to help them in mobilizing BDA capability for enterprises' operational management and improving operational performance. (shrink)