We developed a psychometric scale for measuring the subjective environmental perception of public spaces. In the scale development process, we started with an initial pool of 85 items identified from the literature that were related to environmental perception. A total of 1,650 participants rated these items on animated images of 12 public spaces through an online survey. Using principal component analyses and confirmatory factor analyses, we identified two affective factors with 8 items and six cognitive factors with 22 items. These (...) eight factors represent the core attributes underlying environmental perception of public spaces. Practicality of the scale and limitations of the study are also discussed. (shrink)

This is the first experimental study testing the effect of street performance on the subjective environmental perception of public space. It is generally believed that street performance can enhance people’s experience of public space, but studies advocating such a view have not used a control group to explicitly verify the effect of street performance. In response to this methodological limitation, we conducted two studies using experimental design. Study 1 was an online computer-based study where research participants evaluated the extent to (...) which the presence vs. absence of street performance could change their perception of public space. Study 2 was a between-group quasi-experiment in an actual public space where people physically present in the space evaluated the perception of the space with vs. without street performance. Overall, we found converging results that street performance could make public space more visitable, more restorative, and more preferable. The current findings not only fill in a gap in the literature on street performance, but they also inform the policy making and regulations of street performance. (shrink)

The European People's Party - with its 11 Members in 7 countries - represents, according to the latest legislative elections in the member countries of the EEC, about 40 million voters, and 28 % of the totalEEC electorate. Presenting itself as multi-classis! and open to individual adhesions, it refers also directly to the traditional values of Christian Democracy.Signs of heterogeneity can be seen, however, on three main levels - «ideological», political and economical -, which give the EPP a bipolar aspect (...) : on the one hand, the traditional Christian-Democrat Parties of Italy and the Benelux, all playing a major role in their respective countries, and all backed by strong trade-unions; on the other hand, the German CDU/CSU and the French CDS, less concentrated onconfessional options, and more «right-wing». Between the two, the Fine Gail, only party to have joined the Christian-Democrat Group after the first enlargement.This heterogeneity is, however, compensated by strong pro-European options, which make the EPP the best organized political family on the European level, and enable its leaders to express strong hopes for the election in June. (shrink)

Để xem bóng đá và phát sóng video trực tiếp tốc độ cao, Xoilac là trang web lý tưởng. Đặc biệt, Xoilac không có bất cứ quảng cáo nào, vì vậy người xem vẫn thoải mái thưởng thức trận bóng đá mà không lo bị phân tâm vì bất cứ vấn đề gì. Ngoài ra, Xoilac có đội ngũ dày dặn chuyên môn, luôn đưa ra những nhận định chuẩn xác cho từng trận đấu bóng đá. Với đồ hoạ sinh (...) động, âm thanh lôi cuốn và sống động, Xoilac sẽ lưu lại dấu ấn sâu đậm trong tâm trí người xem bóng đá. (shrink)

Die Krisenhaftigkeit der jüngeren und jüngsten Zeit ist unübersehbar. Von daher ist auch das verstärkte Bemühen um Verantwortung in Politik und Gesellschaft zu verstehen. Verantwortliches Handeln ist dabei keineswegs unpopulär. Aber es zeigt sich auch, dass es sich in alltagsmoralischen Überzeugungen nicht von alleine durchsetzt, oder in sein Gegenteil verkehrt wird, wenn es bspw. Von Marketingstrategien des 'green-washing' vereinnahmt wird. Die mit einem Geleitwort von Frau Rita Süssmuth versehenen fünf Vorlesungen der Studium Universale-Ringvorlesung 'Kultur der Verantwortung - Verantwortung der Kultur' (...) der Heinrich-Heine-Universität dis-kutieren deshalb auf 120 Seiten einmal die Herkunft und die Widersprüchlickkeit des Verantwortungsprinzips, aber auch die Chancen einer 'neuen Ära der Verantwor-tung' (Ludger Heidbrink). In einer zweiten Vorlesung werden Gründe dafür genannt, warum es auch ethisch vertretbar sein kann, Wirtschaftsunternehmen in Teilen von einer generellen Verpflichtung zur globalen Verantwortung zu entbinden (Michael Baurmann). Dem Zusammenhang von Verantwortung und Kultur gehen an den Beispielen des Intellektuellen und der Avantgardekunst zwei weitere Vorlesungen nach. Während der Intellektuelle in der heute stark medialisierten Öffentlichkeit seine traditionelle Funktion als Kritiker staatlicher und ökonomischer Machtverhältnisse zuneh-mend verliert (Bernd Witte), scheint diese Rolle von den aktivistischen Kunstpraktiken der Avantgarde und der ihr entsprechenden Museumskultur aufgegriffen worden zu sein (Lutz Hieber). Mit der abschließenden Vorlesung wird der Blick auf eine außereuropäische Gesellschaft und Kultur geworfen und gezeigt, wie die offizielle Innen- und Außen-Politik Chinas einer 'harmonischen Gesellschaft und einer harmonischen Welt' sich zwar auf eine konfuzianische Tradition beruft, in der Alltagswirklichkeit diese aber immer wieder wegen tief sitzender Ängste vor einem Zerfall des Riesenreichs unterläuft (Carmen Meinert). (shrink)

Together, China and India account for almost two fifths of mankind. In purchase power parity terms the Chinese economy is the second largest in the world ahead of Japan, and the Indian economy is the fourth largest ahead of Germany. In less than two decades these two big Asian economies together might account for a quarter of the global product. Currently, however, both countries are still poor.Both countries might outgrow poverty, because potential advantages of backwardness as well as fairly strong (...) domestic investment favor growth. Concerning human capital formation China and India differ. China is much better than India in primary school education. Eradication of analphabetism is in sight in China, but far in the future in India. India, however, is much stronger in tertiary education than China. Another major difference between China and India is their degree of integration in the global economy. China benefits much more from the global division of labor than India does. China attracts much more foreign direct investment, too.In the past fifty years, Chinese economic performance was superior to the Indian performance. Nevertheless I reject the interpretation that either China’s autocracy or China’s communist ideology is responsible for China’s better performance. China started to grow faster than the global economy only after Deng Xiaoping liberalized and opened up the economy. Under Mao Zedong and during the great leap forward more than 30 million Chinese starved to death. Similar disasters did not happen in poorer India. If China and India teach a lesson about the impact of regime characteristics on growth, it is the following: Democracy promotes performance quite similar to the global average, autocracy as a constitution of arbitrariness permits much better performance or much worse performance.In the long run, the growth prospects of both China and India depend not only on their own economic policies, but also on Western readiness to take their exports. Open Western markets together with sensible policies in China and India may promote global prosperity and peace.A eux deux, la Chine et l’Inde représentent deux cinquièmes de l’humanité. En termes de capacité de pouvoir d’achat comparé, l’économie chinoise est la deuxième plus grande au monde, devant le Japon, et l’économie indienne est la quatrième plus grande, devançant l’Allemagne. Dans moins de deux décennies, ces deux gigantesques économies asiatiques pourraient représenter conjointement un quart du produit global. Aujourd’hui cependant, ces deux pays sont toujours pauvres.Les deux pays pourraient surmonter la pauvreté car les potentialités que recèle un retard économiq- ue ajoutées à un investissement intérieur relativement soutenu favorisent la croissance. En ce qui concerne la formation du capital humain, des différences existent entre la Chine et l’Inde. La Chine est meilleure que l’Inde dans le domaine de l’éducation primaire. L’éradication de l’analphabétisme semble être en vue en Chine mais est loin d’être une partie gagnée en Inde. A l’inverse, l’Inde devance la Chine dans le domaine de l’éducation tertiaire. Une autre différence majeure entre la Chine et l’Inde concerne leur degré d’intégration dans l’économie globale. La Chine bénéficie davantage de la division globale du travail que l’Inde. De plus, la Chine attire plus d’investissements directs de l’étranger. Durant les cinquante dernières années, la performance de l’économie chinoise a été supérieure à celle de l’Inde. Néanmoins, l’auteur rejette l’interprétation suivant laquelle ce serait ou l’autocratie chinoise ou l’idéologie communiste qui serait à l’origine de cette supériorité. La Chine commença à croître plus rapidement que l’économie globale seulement après que Deng Xiao Ping a libéralisé l’économie chinoise et ouvert ses frontières. Sous le règne de Mao Tsé Tung, et durant le “grand bond en avant”, plus de 30 millions de chinois sont morts de famine. De tels désastres n’ont pas été observés en Inde qui est relativement plus pauvre. Si une leçon peut être tirée des expériences chinoise et indienne à propos de l’impact des caractéristiques des régimes sur la croissance économique, c’est la suivante : la démocratie promeut des performances assez identiques à la moyenne globale, et l’autocratie en tant que constitution de l’arbitraire donne lieu à des performances bien meilleures ou bien pires. A long terme, les perspectives de croissance de la Chine et de l’Inde dépendent non seulement de leurs propres politiques, mais aussi de la volonté des pays occidentaux de digérer leurs exportations. Des marchés occidentaux ouverts et des politiques intelligentes en Chine et en Inde peuvent promouvoir la prospérité et la paix au niveau global. (shrink)

Dans beaucoup de textes magiques , on retrouve des triangles, des carrés et des cercles créés par des mots magiques arrangés selon ces for­mes. Une série de gemmes et de papyri avait recours à des héros de la mythologie grecque pour la guérison de certaines maladies. On s’adressait à Tantale, Lycurgue ou Persée pour contrôler des organes du corps humain, et les formules qui les nommaient étaient écrites en forme de triangles. On a l’habitude d’expliquer ces formations triangulaires de mots (...) comme une soustraction progressive de lettres qui faisait décroître la maladie et les autres maux. Cette explication est valable dans certains cas, mais non dans d’autres. Souvent des triangles du même type ajoutent chaque partie du mot au mot lui-même, comme dans le cas de noms de divinités, dont la force était multipliée par cette opération graphique. La Tetraktys pythagoricienne est le cas le plus ancien de ce type d’additions. Les formations carrées de mots multipliaient un mot par lui-même et représentaient d’autres formes d’exaltation d’un nom divin ou d’une formule magique. Ces spéculations se fondaient sur la pensée mathématique et géométrique des pythagoriciens. Les mots magiques palindromiques étaient souvent écrits sous forme circulaire, laquelle pouvait entourer et contrôler le nom d’une personne ou des symboles du mal.Geometric formations of words in the ancient magic arts. In many magical texts triangles, squares and circles often occur, which are created by magical words arranged in these forms. A series of gems and papyri look to the heroes of Greek mythology for the treatment of specific diseases. In fact, it is known that spells invoking Tantalos, Lycourgos or Perseus were created in order to control the organs of the human body and that triangular word formations were used to write these spells. The usual explanation of triangular word formations maintains that the progressive elimination of letters compels sickness and other evil to diminish. This is true, but this explanation cannot be applied to every triangle or wing formation. Similar triangles often add each part of the word to the others, as in the case of divine names, whose force is magnified by such a graphic operation. The pythagoric Tetraktys is the most ancient example of such sums. The square formations multiplied one word by itself and represented other ways of extolling a divine name or the might of a magical spell. These speculations were based on the mathematics and geometry of the Pythagoric tradition. Palindromic magical words were often written in circular formations, which could cluster round and control the name of a person or symbols of something evil. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.2 (2001) 371-373 [Access article in PDF] Book Review French Fiction in the Mitterrand Years: Memory, Narrative, Desire French Fiction in the Mitterrand Years: Memory, Narrative, Desire, by Colin Davis & Elizabeth Fallaize; 160pp. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, $24.95. Like the Mitterrand era itself, Davis and Fallaize's French Fiction in the Mitterrand Years is somewhat uneven. The election of François Mitterrand in 1981 as the (...) President of the Fifth Republic was a milestone in modern French history. After the conservative politics of the 1960s and 70s, the election of a socialist president and legislature seemed to offer the possibility of a new political and intellectual atmosphere. Indeed, the first two years of Mitterrand's presidency brought sweeping reforms. However, several scandals, continued economic problems and later "cohabitation" with a right-wing legislative majority muted the original verve. Mired in partisan politics, the government often appeared ineffectual.As with the political arena, French fiction of the 1980s was produced under the shadow of another long-standing French institution--the nouveau roman. Again we find a new direction, a turning-away from the past during the 1980s. Yet there was no outright refusal. There were no manifestos or polemical articles written by budding novelists, no claim to Literature. As Annie Ernaux describes her work Une Femme (1987): "Mon projet est de nature littéraire [...]. Mais je souhaite rester, d'une certaine façon, au-dessous de la littérature" (My project is of a literary nature [...]. But I wish to remain, in a certain way, beneath literature (p. 144).This lack of pretension is important, for it helps us better understand the writing of the period. As Davis and Fallaize point out, in the fiction of the Mitterrand years we find a return to history, to the subject, and to storytelling, three areas disdained by the new novelists of the 1950s and 60s (pp. 12-15). But at the same time, there is not an elegiac return to the conventions of the past. There are no didactic tales of Lucien de Rubempré's lost illusions. A good example of this is Patrick Roegiers's Beau Regard (1990), the account of a dinner during which hardly anyone speaks, told by a narrator who knows no one else at the table. Davis and Fallaize note: "In these novels the event is merely an incident, the story no more than an anecdote, and the anecdote merely a fait divers" (p. 147). Although not inconsequential, argue Davis and Fallaize, there is an unquestionable modesty to these texts.In the introduction to their work Davis and Fallaize write: "The aim of the current book is to analyze some of the most important and interesting directions in French fiction through detailed discussions of a selection of texts, all published during François Mitterrand's period as President of the Fifth Republic (1981-95)" (p. 1). This is exactly what they accomplish, selecting six novels--Duras's L'Amant (The Lover, 1984), Pennac's Au bonheur des ogres (The Scapegoat, 1985), Semprun's La Montagne blanche (1986), Echenoz's Lac (Lake, 1989), Guilbert's A l'ami qui ne m'a pas sauvé la vie (To the Friend Who Did Not Save [End Page 371] my Life, 1990), and Ernaux's Passion simple (Simple Passion, 1991)--and spending one chapter on each. They also discuss some of the important features of the era's fiction including memory, especially of World War II, contemporary culture and postmodernism, and autofiction.However, the book's limited goal also leads to some of its problems. As a whole, the work lacks cohesion. Chapters often read like individual essays. Moreover, although some chapters are well-grounded critically and contextually, others are not. Finally, the conclusion is too brief to synthesize aptly the various topics discussed in the previous chapters. The reader does not have a solid grasp of the fictional landscape of the Mitterrand years, but rather, as the introduction indicated, knowledge of "some of the [...] interesting directions in French fiction."One of the most illuminating chapters considers Daniel... (shrink)

Trente ans après la fin définitive de la dictature et l'approbation de la Constitution de 1978, après trente-sept ans de franquisme, le moment semble venu pour l'Espagne moderne de revenir sur les années de dictature. L'ombre du franquisme n'avait jamais disparu, mais elle revient, puissante, avec l'opposition des partis de droite à la « Loi sur la mémoire historique » et le refus de l'Église de reconnaître une quelconque responsabilité dans les exactions du franquisme. La rencontre entre la Mémoire et (...) la Loi est au cœur de cet article.Thirty years alter dictatorship finally came to an end with the adoption of the 1978 Constitution and after thirty seven years of Francoism, the time seems to have come for modern Spain to look back on those years. The shadow of Francoism had never entirely disappeared, and it has returned, powerfully, with oppo­sition from the right-wing parties to the "Historical Memory Law" and the Church' s refusal to admit to any responsibility in the abuses of power meted out by the Franco regime. The encounter between Memory and Law is the core issue of this article. (shrink)

“Looking for Asian America shows real people engaged in the full range of human activity. This is no small accomplishment for the photographer or his subjects. For Asian Americans it is extraordinary to be merely ordinary. To others, even if not to themselves, Asian Americans appear to be contradictions of identity—a Chinese-Yankee is a knockoff.” —Frank H. Wu, from the Foreword In search of contemporary Asian America, celebrated photographer Wing Young Huie—the only member of his family not born in (...) China—traveled with his wife Tara through nearly forty states to explore and document the funny, touching, and sometimes strange intersection of Asian American and American cultures. Looking for Asian America illustrates their rich and surprising journey across the United States. Through Huie’s eyes, keenly aware of his own Midwestern roots and perspective, we witness such images as a Vietnamese Elvis, Miss Congeniality on her cell phone in San Francisco’s Chinatown, a Hmong street sign in rural North Carolina, a meditating Falun Gong protestor in Washington, D.C., a bubble tea Valley Girl, and a Chinese theme park in Orlando. Huie’s camera captures ABCs, FOAs, and a self-described “redneck” Chinese restaurant owner near the Okefenokee Swamp. Taken together the photographs reveal a complex portrait of the U.S. cultural landscape, and their dignified elegance invites a closer, deeper look. Accompanied by the personal reflections of both Wing and Tara Huie, the nearly one hundred spectacular photos tell a story that both mirrors and contradicts stereotypes of Asian Americans, ultimately questioning what it means to be ethnic and American in the twenty-first century. Wing Young Huie has received widespread acclaim for his works, including Lake Street USA, documenting the cultural landscape of his native Minnesota. He is a recipient of a Bush Artist Fellowship and two-time recipient of the McKnight Photography Fellowship. He lives in Minneapolis. Frank H. Wu is dean of Wayne State University Law School and the author of Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White. Anita Gonzalez teaches in the Master of Liberal Studies Program at the University of Minnesota. (shrink)

Biometric technologies are becoming more pervasive in the workplace, augmenting managerial processes such as hiring, monitoring and terminating employees. Until recently, these devices consisted mainly of GPS tools that track location, software that scrutinizes browser activity and keyboard strokes, and heat/motion sensors that monitor workstation presence. Today, however, a new generation of biometric devices has emerged that can sense, read, monitor and evaluate the affective state of a worker. More popularly known by its commercial moniker, Emotional AI, the technology stems (...) from advancements in affective computing. But whereas previous generations of biometric monitoring targeted the exterior physical body of the worker, concurrent with the writings of Foucault and Hardt, we argue that emotion-recognition tools signal a far more invasive disciplinary gaze that exposes and makes vulnerable the inner regions of the worker-self. Our paper explores attitudes towards empathic surveillance by analyzing a survey of 1015 responses of future job-seekers from 48 countries with Bayesian statistics. Our findings reveal affect tools, left unregulated in the workplace, may lead to heightened stress and anxiety among disadvantaged ethnicities, gender and income class. We also discuss a stark cross-cultural discrepancy whereby East Asians, compared to Western subjects, are more likely to profess a trusting attitude toward EAI-enabled automated management. While this emerging technology is driven by neoliberal incentives to optimize the worksite and increase productivity, ultimately, empathic surveillance may create more problems in terms of algorithmic bias, opaque decisionism, and the erosion of employment relations. Thus, this paper nuances and extends emerging literature on emotion-sensing technologies in the workplace, particularly through its highly original cross-cultural study. (shrink)

In order to produce a coherent narrative, speakers must identify the characters in the tale so that listeners can figure out who is doing what to whom. This paper explores whether speakers use gesture, as well as speech, for this purpose. English speakers were shown vignettes of two stories and asked to retell the stories to an experimenter. Their speech and gestures were transcribed and coded for referent identification. A gesture was considered to identify a referent if it was produced (...) in the same location as the previous gesture for that referent. We found that speakers frequently used gesture location to identify referents. Interestingly, however, they used gesture most often to identify referents that were also uniquely specified in speech. Lexical specificity in referential expressions in speech thus appears to go hand‐in‐hand with specification in referential expressions in gesture. (shrink)

The interventionist theory of causation has been advertised as an empirically informed and more nuanced approach to causality than the competing theories. However, previous literature has not yet analyzed the regression discontinuity (hereafter, RD) and the difference-in-differences (hereafter, DD) within an interventionist framework. In this paper, I point out several drawbacks of using the interventionist methodology for justifying the DD and RD designs. However, I argue that the first step towards enhancing our understanding of the DD and RD designs from (...) an interventionist perspective is to take advantage of the assumptions of common trend and continuity. (shrink)

We have examined the attitude and moral perception of 228 college students towards artificial intelligence in an international university in Japan. The students were asked to select a single most significant ethical issue associated with AI in the future from a list of nine ethical issues suggested by the World Economic Forum, and to explain why they believed that their chosen issues were most important. The majority of students chose unemployment as the major ethical issue related to AI. The second (...) largest group of students were concerned with ethical issues related to emotional AI, including the impact of AI on human behavior and emotion. The paper discusses the results in detail and concludes that, while policymakers must consider how to ameliorate the impact of AI on employment, AI engineers need to consider the emotional aspects of AI in research and development, as well. (shrink)

Judging an act’s causal efficacy plays a crucial role in causal decision theory. A recent development appeals to the causal modeling framework with an emphasis on the analysis of intervention based on the causal Bayes net for clarifying what causally depends on our acts. However, few writers have focused on exploring the usefulness of extending structural causal models to decision problems that are not ideal for intervention analysis. The thesis concludes that structural models provide a more general framework for rational (...) decision makers. (shrink)

This Source Book is devoted to the purpose of providing such a basis for genuine understanding of Chinese thought (and thereby of Chinese life and culture, ...

Sign languages modulate the production of signs in space and use this spatial modulation to refer back to entities—to maintain coreference. We ask here whether spatial modulation is so fundamental to language in the manual modality that it will be invented by individuals asked to create gestures on the spot. English speakers were asked to describe vignettes under 2 conditions: using gesture without speech, and using speech with spontaneous gestures. When using gesture alone, adults placed gestures for particular entities in (...) non-neutral locations and then used those locations to refer back to the entities. When using gesture plus speech, adults also produced gestures in non-neutral locations but used the locations coreferentially far less often. When gesture is forced to take on the full burden of communication, it exploits space for coreference. Coreference thus appears to be a resilient property of language, likely to emerge in communication systems no matter how simple. (shrink)

The idea of a final end of human conduct – the highest good – lies at the centre of important parts of Kant’s philosophy, such as his moral theory, his philosophy of religion, his views on the historical progress of the human species, and his conception of human rationality. This collection of new essays attempts to re-evaluate the doctrine of the highest good and to determine its relevance for contemporary philosophy.

This article synthesizes the current theoretical attempts to understand human-machine interactions and introduces seven premises to understand our emerging dynamics with increasingly competent, pervasive, and instantly accessible algorithms. The hope that these seven premises can build toward a social theory of human-AI cocreation. The focus on human-AI cocreation is intended to emphasize two factors. First, is the fact that our machine learning systems are socialized. Second, is the coevolving nature of human mind and AI systems as smart devices form an (...) indispensable part of our cognitive scaffolds, thus, shaping how we perceive the world and ourselves. The seven premises include: primacy of social structures; human’s desire for freedom and autonomy; AI systems will form inseparable parts of our cognitive/affective scaffolds and can change our self-understanding; philosophy and humanistic foundations on human flourishing as a guide to human-AI interaction; mindsponge information-filtering process; acculturative process of how values change and emerge from human-AI interaction; overlapping Venn diagram of the human-human, human-nature, and human-machine interactions. This article concludes with a discussion on human agency in our entanglements with socialized machines and the illusoriness of the Cartesian agent view of the mind. (shrink)

Despite numerous published writings on China's regional role, the world still knows very little about Beijing's perception and strategy. This article seeks to make an intellectual contribution in understanding China's foreign policy and its efforts to participate in East Asian integration. This article argues that under the rhetoric of peaceful development and community building, China's foreign policy is pragmatic and changes with the tide of events in international relations. China's participation in regional integration serves as a good case for examining (...) changes in Beijing's strategy. In the past two decades, China has moved from a reluctant participant of regional affairs to an active participant and potential future leader. China's adjusting role is a consequence of Beijing's pragmatism in policy and its growing economic confidence. Pragmatism has led China to and wait for the proper timing to step onto the world stage. (shrink)

Despite numerous published writings on China's regional role, the world still knows very little about Beijing's perception and strategy. This article seeks to make an intellectual contribution in understanding China's foreign policy and its efforts to participate in East Asian integration. This article argues that under the rhetoric of peaceful development and community building, China's foreign policy is pragmatic and changes with the tide of events in international relations. China's participation in regional integration serves as a good case for examining (...) changes in Beijing's strategy. In the past two decades, China has moved from a reluctant participant of regional affairs to an active participant and potential future leader. China's adjusting role is a consequence of Beijing's pragmatism in policy and its growing economic confidence. Pragmatism has led China to and wait for the proper timing to step onto the world stage. (shrink)

We give necessary conditions for a set to be definable by a formula with a universal quantifier and an existential quantifier over algebraic integer rings or algebraic number fields. From these necessary conditions we obtain some undefinability results. For example, N is not definable by such a formula over Z. This extends a previous result of R. M. Robinson.