Conducting emotion analysis and generating users' feedback from social media platforms may help understand their emotional responses to video products, such as a documentary on the lockdown of Wuhan during COVID-19. The results of emotion analysis could be used to make further user recommendations for marketing purposes. In our study, we try to understand how users respond to a documentary through YouTube comments. We chose “The lockdown: One month in Wuhan” YouTube documentary, and applied emotion analysis as well as a (...) machine learning approach to the comments. We first cleaned the data and then introduced an emotion analysis based on the statistical characteristics and lexicon combination. After that, we applied the Latent Dirichlet Allocation topic modeling approach to further generate main topics with keywords from the comments and visualized the distribution by visualizing the topics. The result shows trust, joy, and anticipation are the most prominent emotions dominating the comments. The major three themes, which account for 70% of all comments, are discussing stories about fighting against the virus, medical workers being heroes, and medical workers being respected. Further discussion has been conducted on the changing of different sentiments over time for the ongoing health crisis. This study proves that emotion analysis and LDA topic modeling could be used to generate explanations of users' opinions and feelings about video products, which could support user recommendations in marketing. (shrink)

More and more research on left ventricle quantification skips segmentation due to its requirement of large amounts of pixel-by-pixel labels. In this study, a framework is developed to directly quantify left ventricle multiple indices without the process of segmentation. At first, DenseNet is utilized to extract spatial features for each cardiac frame. Then, in order to take advantage of the time sequence information, the temporal feature for consecutive frames is encoded using gated recurrent unit. After that, the attention mechanism is (...) integrated into the decoder to effectively establish the mappings between the input sequence and corresponding output sequence. Simultaneously, a regression layer with the same decoder output is used to predict multi-indices of the left ventricle. Different weights are set for different types of indices based on experience, and l2-norm is used to avoid model overfitting. Compared with the state-of-the-art, our method can not only produce more competitive results but also be more flexible. This is because the prediction results in our study can be obtained for each frame online while the SOTA only can output results after all frames are analyzed. (shrink)

This study examines the influence of Confucianism on corporate poverty alleviation (PA) participation. We argue that firms in regions with more Confucian temples are more likely to participate in government-initiated PA programs because Confucianism emphasizes common social welfare. This positive relationship is stronger for firms with chief executive officers born in Confucian regions and for firms that are under high media pressure, as the trade-off between social welfare and firm interest is in favor of Confucianism. Using a sample of Chinese-listed (...) firms, we find evidence supporting our arguments. Moreover, we find consistent evidence that firms influenced by Confucianism are motivated to pay long-term attention to PA activities and improve corporate PA efficiency, highlighting the substantive role of Confucianism in a PA campaign. Our study contributes to the business ethics literature by introducing Confucianism into research on corporate social activities and provides practical implications. (shrink)

Legal Judgment Prediction (LJP) is a typical application of Artificial Intelligence in the intelligent judiciary. Current research primarily focuses on automatically predicting law articles, charges, and terms of penalty based on the fact description of cases. However, existing methods for LJP have limitations, such as neglecting document structure and ignoring case similarities. We propose a novel framework called Graph Contrastive Learning with Augmentation (GCLA) for legal judgment prediction to address these issues. GCLA constructs trainable document-level graphs for fact description, capturing (...) local and global context through sentence-level subgraphs. Graph augmentation enhances robustness. We introduce a comparison case relation perspective, using graph contrastive learning to model case-text label relationships effectively. Experimental results on real-world datasets demonstrate the competitive performance of GCLA. (shrink)

In this paper, we study the estimation of motion direction prediction for fast motion and propose a threshold-based human target detection algorithm using motion vectors and other data as human target feature information. The motion vectors are partitioned into regions by normalization to form a motion vector field, which is then preprocessed, and then the human body target is detected through its motion vector region block-temporal correlation to detect the human body motion target. The experimental results show that the algorithm (...) is effective in detecting human motion targets in videos with the camera relatively stationary. The algorithm predicts the human body position in the reference frame of the current frame in the video by forward mapping the motion vector of the current frame, then uses the motion vector direction angle histogram as a matching feature, and combines it with a region matching strategy to track the human body target in the predicted region, thus realizing the human body target tracking effect. The algorithm is experimentally proven to effectively track human motion targets in videos with relatively static backgrounds. To address the problem of sample diversity and lack of quantity in a multitarget tracking environment, a generative model based on the conditional variational self-encoder conditional generation of adversarial networks is proposed, and the performance of the generative model is verified using pedestrian reidentification and other datasets, and the experimental results show that the method can take advantage of the advantages of both models to improve the quality of the generated results. (shrink)

This study investigates measurement invariance of the 17-item-4-factor Love of Money Scale across gender and college major among university students in People's Republic of China. Results revealed configural invariance across gender. Metric invariance across gender was not achieved based on chi-square change, but achieved based on fit indices change between unconstrained and constrained multi-group confirmatory factor analysis. Both configural invariance and metric invariance were achieved across college major. Results of this study suggest that the Love of Money Scale, developed in (...) the U.S., has achieved measurement invariance in this student sample in China. Future researchers will have some confidence in using this measurement when they examine the love of money in Chinese management and organizational studies. (shrink)

This study aimed to explore the linking mechanisms and conditional processes underlying the relationship between proactive behavior and work-family conflict. Considering the conservation of resources theory, we argue that workplace anxiety mediates the relationship between proactive behavior and work-family conflict. Furthermore, we suggest that immediate supervisor perspective taking and employee emotional intelligence moderate this proposed indirect effect. Two-wave, multisource lagged data were collected from 450 employees of seven domestic Chinese firms to examine the hypothesized moderated mediation model. Our findings support (...) the hypothesis that proactive behavior is positively related to work-family conflict and that workplace anxiety partially mediates this relationship. Immediate supervisor perspective taking moderates the positive association of proactive behavior with workplace anxiety and the indirect relationship between proactive behavior and work-family conflict through workplace anxiety. Emotional intelligence moderates the positive association of proactive behavior with workplace anxiety and the indirect relationship between proactive behavior and work-family conflict through workplace anxiety. The results deepen our theoretical understanding of the consequences of proactivity by demonstrating the positive associations between proactive behavior and work-family conflict. The current study also contributes to the literature by identifying workplace anxiety as a mediating mechanism explaining the relationship between proactivity and work-family conflict. Furthermore, supervisor perspective taking and employee emotional intelligence moderate the above mediating effect. (shrink)

Business Ethics, the Environment &Responsibility, EarlyView.

The era of sustainable transformation has witnessed an increase in corporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure waves. Using Chinese A-share listed companies from 2016 to 2021 as a sample, this study adopted textual analysis and machine-learning techniques to analyze ESG reports and explore the imitation behavior of ESG disclosures in emerging Chinese markets for the first time. The results show imitation behavior exists in corporate ESG disclosures from the perspective of group association. Regarding the imitation object, enterprises tend to (...) choose the peer average level as a reference rather than the best enterprise in the same industry, which reveals the inherent law that enterprises' ESG disclosures are satisfied with compliance rather than championship. In terms of effects, the ESG-mimetic isomorphic pressure has no incremental information effect but has an efficiency optimization effect. Furthermore, the imitation intensity and impact effects of ESG disclosure behavior exhibit heterogeneity owing to differences in properties, sales growth rates, and external attention. This study expands the motivation for corporate ESG disclosure behavior and enriches the empirical evidence for institutional isomorphism. (shrink)

The rise of China, along with problems of governance in democratic countries, has reinvigorated the theory of political meritocracy. But what is the theory of political meritocracy and how can it set standards for evaluating political progress? To help answer these questions, this volume gathers a series of commissioned research papers from an interdisciplinary group of leading philosophers, historians and social scientists. The result is the first book in decades to examine the rise of political meritocracy and what it will (...) mean for political developments in China and the rest of the world. Despite its limitations, meritocracy has contributed much to human flourishing in East Asia and beyond and will continue to do so in the future. This book is essential reading for those who wish to further the debate and perhaps even help to implement desirable forms of political change. (shrink)

Motor imagery-based brain-computer interfaces have been studied without controlling subjects’ gaze fixation position previously. The effect of gaze fixation and covert attention on the behavioral performance of BCI is still unknown. This study designed a gaze fixation controlled experiment. Subjects were required to conduct a secondary task of gaze fixation when performing the primary task of motor imagination. Subjects’ performance was analyzed according to the relationship between motor imagery target and the gaze fixation position, resulting in three BCI control conditions, (...) i.e., congruent, incongruent, and center cross trials. A group of fourteen subjects was recruited. The average group performances of three different conditions did not show statistically significant differences in terms of BCI control accuracy, feedback duration, and trajectory length. Further analysis of gaze shift response time revealed a significantly shorter response time for congruent trials compared to incongruent trials. Meanwhile, the parietal occipital cortex also showed active neural activities for congruent and incongruent trials, and this was revealed by a contrast analysis of R-square values and lateralization index. However, the lateralization index computed from the parietal and occipital areas was not correlated with the BCI behavioral performance. Subjects’ BCI behavioral performance was not affected by the position of gaze fixation and covert attention. This indicated that motor imagery-based BCI could be used freely in robotic arm control without sacrificing performance. (shrink)

Over the past few decades, a body of research has developed examining the academic dishonesty of university and college students. While research has explored academic dishonesty amongst American criminal justice and policing students, no research has specifically focused on investigating the dynamics and correlates of academic dishonesty amongst Australian criminology students. This study drew upon data obtained from a survey of 79 undergraduate criminal justice and policing students studying at an Australian university. Overall, the results suggest that male gender, viewing (...) academic dishonesty as less serious and holding justifications for engaging in this type of behaviour were significant predictors of self-reported academic dishonesty. The findings suggest that more proactive strategies need to be implemented by universities to prevent student involvement in academic dishonesty. (shrink)

: This is a study of the Confucian ideal of harmony and harmonization (he 和). First, through an investigation of the early development of he in ancient China, the meaning of this concept is explored. Second, a philosophical analysis of he and a discussion of the relation between harmony, sameness, and strife are offered. Also offered are reasons why this notion is so important to Confucian philosophy. Finally, on the basis of value pluralism, a case is made for the Confucian (...) approach of he to the politics of today's world culture. (shrink)

Background: The prevalence of sedentary behavior in adolescents has aroused social attention. The association between sedentary behavior and cognitive flexibility remains unclear, and it may vary depending on the type of sedentary behavior. This study aimed to investigate the associations between specific-type sedentary behaviors and cognitive flexibility in adolescents.Method: A total of 700 Chinese adolescents aged 10–15 years were recruited. The self-report questionnaire was used to assess total sedentary time, recreational screen-based sedentary time, and educational sedentary time. The More-odd shifting (...) task was used to assess cognitive flexibility.Results: The correlation analysis showed that recreational screen-based sedentary time was negatively correlated with cognitive flexibility, whereas educational sedentary time was positively correlated with cognitive flexibility. The regression analysis also further revealed that a significantly negative association between recreational screen-based sedentary time and cognitive flexibility, while a significantly positive association existed between educational sedentary time and cognitive flexibility.Conclusion: The findings shown that the association between recreational screen-based sedentary behavior and cognitive flexibility differs from educational sedentary behavior in adolescents, providing new ideas for a more comprehensive understanding of the association between sedentary behavior and cognitive flexibility in adolescents. (shrink)

This article compares Confucian ethics of Jen and feminist ethics of care. It attempts to show that they share philosophically significant common grounds. Its findings affirm the view that care-orientation in ethics is not a characteristic peculiar to one sex. It also shows that care-orientation is not peculiar to subordinated social groups. Arguing that the oppression of women is not an essential element of Confucian ethics, the author indicates the Confucianism and feminism are compatible.

With the problems of climate warming and ecological destruction becoming more and more serious, natural risks have attracted more and more attention, and corporate natural resource disclosure has gradually become a focal topic in academia. Therefore, based on the institutional theory and the upper echelon theory, this study selects 348 Chinese natural resource-based listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets from 2014 to 2021 as samples to investigate the influence of clan culture on corporate natural resource disclosure and the (...) moderating effect of natural resource endowment on the relationship between the two, and analyzes the heterogeneity from the two aspects of the workplace and growth experience of corporate executives. The results indicate that clan culture has a significant positive effect on corporate natural resource disclosure. Natural resource endowment can negatively moderate the effect of clan culture on corporate natural resource disclosure. The positive effect of clan culture on the quality of corporate natural resource disclosure is significant when executives work in their birthplace or are born before the Cultural Revolution, but it is not significant when executives do not work in their birthplace or are born after the Cultural Revolution. These findings help to extend the analysis of the influence of informal institutions on information disclosure, providing a reference for future research on natural resource disclosure and informal institutions in developing countries. (shrink)

COVID-19 often manifests with different outcomes in different patients, highlighting the complexity of the host-pathogen interactions involved in manifestations of the disease at the molecular and cellular levels. In this paper, we propose a set of postulates and a framework for systematically understanding complex molecular host-pathogen interaction networks. Specifically, we first propose four host-pathogen interaction (HPI) postulates as the basis for understanding molecular and cellular host-pathogen interactions and their relations to disease outcomes. These four postulates cover the evolutionary dispositions involved (...) in HPIs, the dynamic nature of HPI outcomes, roles that HPI components may occupy leading to such outcomes, and HPI checkpoints that are critical for specific disease outcomes. Based on these postulates, an HPI Postulate and Ontology (HPIPO) framework is proposed to apply interoperable ontologies to systematically model and represent various granular details and knowledge within the scope of the HPI postulates, in a way that will support AI-ready data standardization, sharing, integration, and analysis. As a demonstration, the HPI postulates and the HPIPO framework were applied to study COVID-19 with the Coronavirus Infectious Disease Ontology (CIDO), leading to a novel approach to rational design of drug/vaccine cocktails aimed at interrupting processes occurring at critical host-coronavirus interaction checkpoints. Furthermore, the host-coronavirus protein-protein interactions (PPIs) relevant to COVID-19 were predicted and evaluated based on prior knowledge of curated PPIs and domain-domain interactions, and how such studies can be further explored with the HPI postulates and the HPIPO framework is discussed. (shrink)

Conflicts between target and distraction can occur at the level of both stimulus and response processing. However, the neural oscillations underlying occurrence of the interference in different levels have not been understood well. Here, we reveal such a neural oscillation modulation by combining a 4:2 mapping design (two targets are mapped into one response key) with a practice paradigm (pretest, practice, and posttest) when healthy human participants were performing a novel color-word flanker task. Response time (RT) results revealed constant stimulus (...) conflict (SC, stimulus incongruent minus congruent, SI-CO) but increased response conflict (RC, response incongruent minus stimulus incongruent, RI-SI) with practice. Event-related potential (ERP) results demonstrated stable P3 amplitude differences for the SI-CO in the centro-parietal region across practice, which may reflect maintenance of the stimulus processing; and significantly larger P3 amplitudes in the same region for the RI relative to SI trial type in posttest, which may reflect inhibition of the distraction response. Further, neural oscillatory results showed that with practice, the lower alpha band in the frontal region and the upper alpha band in the occipital-parietal region distinguished between stimulus- and response-conflicts, respectively, suggesting that practice reduces the alertness (sensitiveness) of the brain to conflict occurrence, and enhances stimulus-response associations. (shrink)

Enhancing research and development and ensuring equitable pricing and access to cutting-edge treatments are both vital to a biopharmaceutical innovation system that works in the public interest. However, despite delivering numerous therapeutic advances, the existing system suffers from major problems: a lack of directionality to meet key needs, inefficient collaboration, high prices that fail to reflect the public contribution, and an overly-financialized business model.

The impact on researchers of working with sensitive data is often not considered by ethics committees when approving research proposals. We conducted interviews with eight research assistants processing clinical notes on emergency department presentations for deliberate self-harm and suicide attempts during a suicide prevention trial. Common experiences of working with the data included feeling unprepared for the level of detail in the records, being drawn deeply into individual stories, emotional exhaustion from the cumulative exposure to the data over long periods (...) of time while working alone, and experiencing a heightened awareness of the fragility of life and the need for safety. The research assistants also reported on some of the strategies they had developed to cope with the sensitive nature of the data and the demands of the work. The ethical implications for suicide research reliant on non-clinically trained researchers exploring sensitive data are considered. These include the need for research l... (shrink)

With growing global concerns about water scarcity and environmental sustainability, understanding the factors influencing individual water conservation behaviors is crucial. This study utilizes the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics to investigate the relationship between concerns of local issues and water conservation behaviors in a sample of 1831 residents in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. New Mexico is an arid region of which 90% faced severe drought driven by the most significant wildfire in state history and some of the driest months ever (...) recorded in 2022. The results show a positive association between the drought or water scarcity concern and the number of water conservation behaviors adopted. Likewise, the positive association between the concern about population growth and development and water conservation behaviors is also observed. However, further examination is needed due to the weak reliability of this relationship. In contrast, negative associations between concerns about water quality and water bills with water conservation behaviors are also identified. Based on these findings, the study discusses the potential of building the eco-surplus culture by improving information dissemination of water-saving methods and existing water-related issues in the local areas. (shrink)

Previous studies argue that religious firms are more ethical and thus engage less in accrual earnings management. At odds with the ethical view, we use a sample of Chinese listed firms and show that firms in religious regions use more real earnings management. We postulate that besides ethics, religion also proxies for risk aversion, which motivates firms to substitute accrual earnings management with real earnings management. Consistent with this view, we show that the positive association between religiosity and real earnings (...) management is more pronounced for firms with lower litigation risk and for firms with less reputable auditors. In addition, we use a mediation model introduced by Baron and Kenny :1173–1182, 1986) to show that religiosity affects earnings management through the channel of risk aversion. We conclude that firms choose real earnings management over accrual-based earnings management because of risk aversion, rather than ethical reasons. (shrink)

Previous studies argue that religious firms are more ethical and thus engage less in accrual earnings management. At odds with the ethical view, we use a sample of Chinese listed firms and show that firms in religious regions use more real earnings management. We postulate that besides ethics, religion also proxies for risk aversion, which motivates firms to substitute accrual earnings management with real earnings management. Consistent with this view, we show that the positive association between religiosity and real earnings (...) management is more pronounced for firms with lower litigation risk and for firms with less reputable auditors. In addition, we use a mediation model introduced by Baron and Kenny :1173–1182, 1986) to show that religiosity affects earnings management through the channel of risk aversion. We conclude that firms choose real earnings management over accrual-based earnings management because of risk aversion, rather than ethical reasons. (shrink)

We conducted the largest multiple-iteration retelling study to date (12,840 participants and 19,086 retellings) with two different studies that test how emotional appraisals are transmitted across retellings. We use a novel Bayesian model that tracks changes across retellings. Study 1 examines the preservation of appraisals of happy and sad stories and finds that retellings preserve the story’s degree of happiness and sadness even when length shrinks and aspects of story coherence and rationalisation deteriorate. Study 2 compared the transmission of appraisals (...) of happiness and sadness with embarrassment, disgust, and risk. Appraisals of happiness, sadness, and also embarrassment showed high appraisal preservation, while disgust and risk were not well preserved. We conclude that participants in our studies encoded happy and sad stories by encapsulating the events and details into an overall emotional appraisal of the story and that this processing strategy might also apply to stories involving other emotions like embarrassment. The emotional appraisal played a key role in retelling by helping to guide the selection, invention, and ordering of the story elements. Hence, we posit that emotion appraisals can operate as anchors for remembering and retelling stories, thus playing an important role in narrative communication. (shrink)

The basic concepts we use to frame metaphysical discussions – our tools of metaphysics – profoundly influence how those discussions proceed. Much recent work in anglophone metaphysics has centred on a set of hyperintensional such tools: grounding, dependence, fundamentality, and essence. This topical collection will provide new perspectives on these debates by bringing them into contact with Asian metaphysical traditions.

Researchers are enthusiastically concerned about neural stem cell (NSC) therapy in a wide array of diseases, including stroke, neurodegenerative disease, spinal cord injury (SCI) and depression. Although enormous evidences have demonstrated that neurobehavioral improvement may benefit from NSC-supporting regeneration in animal models, approaches to endogenous and transplanted NSCs are blocked by hurdles of migration, proliferation, maturation and integration of NSCs. Electrical stimulation (ES) may be a selective nondrug approach for mobilizing NSCs in the central nervous system (CNS). This technique is (...) suitable for clinic application, because it is well established and its potential complications are manageable. Here, we provide a comprehensive review of the emerging positive role of different electrical cues in regulating NSC biology in vitro and in vivo, as well as biomaterial-based and chemical stimulation of NSCs. In the future, ES combined with stem cell therapy or other cues probably becomes an approach for promoting brain repair. (shrink)

Does morality require the filial obligation of grown children toward their aged parents? First, problems with some accounts of filial morality that have been put forth in recent years in the West are examined (Jane English, Jeffrey Blustein, and others), and then it is shown how Confucianism provides a sensible alternative perspective.

Drawing on the status characteristic theory, we investigate the effect of gender on board directors’ status ranking and find that all else being equal, female directors’ status ranking is 81.48% of one position lower than that of male directors, a discrepancy that is attributable to gender. We theorize on the mechanism that determines the ways in which the status value of gender on a board affects board interactions, and we predict how this mechanism influences firm outcomes, including excessive managerial spending, (...) social responsibility performance, and firm risk. We test our hypotheses in Chinese firms using an unbalanced panel that includes 5396 firm-year observations for a period of 6 years and find them supported. (shrink)

This essay explores a tragic event that happened in China, which garnered much attention, the Li case: a young woman who was nine months pregnant and her baby died as a result of the failure to receive a medically necessary c-section due to the hospital having failed to secure her family's consent for the c-section. Differing from some critiques, this essay argues that the Li case should not be used to blame the Confucian family-determination model that has been applied in (...) Chinese society for thousands of years. Based on summarizing the reasons supporting the model, this essay indicates that it is an integral part of the model that, in emergency or special cases, the physician must take medical action to save the patient, without the need to secure the consent of a family member. In order to prevent tragic cases like the Li case from happening, we recommend that relevant Chinese laws be further developed and specified and that, most importantly, Chinese physicians must cultivate the Confucian virtue of benevolence in their practice of taking care of patients in a virtuous way, along with patients’ families. (shrink)

This essay introduces the philosophy of harmony in Classical Confucianism. In the first part of the essay the author summarizes the concept of harmony as it was developed in various Confucian classics. In the second part, the author offers an account of the Confucian program of harmony, ranging from internal harmony in the person, to harmony in the family, the state, the international world, and finally to harmony in the entire universe.

In this study we present a self‐organizing connectionist model of early lexical development. We call this model DevLex‐II, based on the earlier DevLex model. DevLex‐II can simulate a variety of empirical patterns in children's acquisition of words. These include a clear vocabulary spurt, effects of word frequency and length on age of acquisition, and individual differences as a function of phonological short‐term memory and associative capacity. Further results from lesioned models indicate developmental plasticity in the network's recovery from damage, in (...) a non‐monotonic fashion. We attribute the network's abilities in accounting for lexical development to interactive dynamics in the learning process. In particular, variations displayed by the model in the rate and size of early vocabulary development are modulated by (a) input characteristics, such as word frequency and word length, (b) consolidation of lexical‐semantic representation, meaning‐form association, and phonological short‐term memory, and (c) delayed processes due to interactions among timing, severity, and recoverability of lesion. Together, DevLex and DevLex‐II provide an accurate computational account of early lexical development. (shrink)

Background: The factors influencing parents’ willingness to enroll their children in biobanks are poorly understood. This study sought to assess parents’ willingness to enroll their children, and their perceived benefits, concerns, and information needs under different consent and data-sharing scenarios, and to identify factors associated with willingness. Methods: This large, experimental survey of patients at the 11 eMERGE Network sites used a disproportionate stratified sampling scheme to enrich the sample with historically underrepresented groups. Participants were randomized to receive one of (...) three consent and data-sharing scenarios. Results: In total, 90,000 surveys were mailed and 13,000 individuals responded (15.8% response rate). 5737 respondents were parents of minor children. Overall, 55% (95% confidence interval 50–59%) of parents were willing to enroll their youngest minor child in a hypothetical biobank; willingness did not differ between consent and data-sharing scenarios. Lower educational attainment, higher religiosity, lower trust, worries about privacy, and attitudes about benefits, concerns, and information needs were independently associated with less willingness to allow their child to participate. Of parents who were willing to participate themselves, 25% were not willing to allow their child to participate. Being willing to participate but not willing to allow one’s child to participate was independently associated with multiple factors, including race, lower educational attainment, lower annual household income, public health care insurance, and higher religiosity. Conclusions: Fifty-five percent of parents were willing to allow their youngest minor child to participate in a hypothetical biobank. Building trust, protecting privacy, and addressing attitudes may increase enrollment and diversity in pediatric biobanks. (shrink)

Using Bakhtin's notion of polyphony, this study explored the discussion of the end-of-life issues in the Course on Life and Death Education in one Chinese university. Ethnographic methods were adopted to investigate the collision between the classroom voices and the voices of the mainstream culture on end-of-life in the process of developing students' attitudes toward death. The findings revealed that “to understand death” involved challenging the voice of “strangeness and fear of death”; “honestly facing up to and accepting the feelings (...) of the fear, pain, and helplessness” was the response to “be brave”; and the goal “to die peacefully” resisted the notion of “extending life at any cost.” Through the collision between these voices, students developed their attitudes toward death in facing, understanding, accepting, and choosing how to die. The analysis further revealed that providing only one “answer” to death by the teacher is not sufficient or effective to foster students' attitudes toward death because the students are a diverse group holding different views on the end-of-life issues, which demonstrated the importance of creating dialogues in the life and death education. (shrink)

Workplace aggression has been established as a prevalent and detrimental issue in organizations. While numerous studies have documented the important role of leaders in inhibiting or accelerating workplace aggression, a systematic overview of the associations between different leadership styles and workplace aggression as well as its boundary conditions is still lacking. This study reports a meta-analysis investigating the associations between leadership and workplace aggression. Drawing on data from 165 samples, our results revealed that change-oriented, relational-oriented, and values-based and moral leadership (...) were associated with reduced workplace aggression. In contrast, passive and destructive leadership were associated with increased workplace aggression. Importantly, relative weights analyses revealed that ethical leadership was most strongly negatively associated with workplace aggression. Additionally, moderation analyses revealed that the associations between leadership and workplace aggression were, in some cases, moderated by power distance and rating sources, but independent of measurement time lag. Overall, the findings of this meta-analysis highlight the important associations between leadership and workplace aggression. Implications for future research and policy recommendations aiming to reduce workplace aggression are discussed. (shrink)

The Confucian tradition is famous for its family value. This tradition emphasizes that, after one's moral sentiments are cultivated in the family, one is capable of caring for people outside the family. However, since the early 2000s, there has been a debate in the Chinese Philosophy community about how to understand the ?the father-covering-son? story in the Analects. The story tells that a father covers for his son's stealing a sheep. This is a puzzle because while Confucius's virtue theory implies (...) that concealing a theft is wrong, Confucius contends that a father's covering is right. In this paper I discuss two arguments, the tree argument and the argument of the whole, implicitly held by the Confucian scholars for the priority of the family love in this debate. I argue that none of the arguments are convincing. (shrink)

Throughout the developing world, it is a well-documented fact that women farmers tend to get lower yields than their male counterparts. Typically this is attributed to disproportionate access to high-quality inputs and labor, with some even arguing there could be a skills-gap stemming from unbalanced access to training and education. This article examines the gender-based yield gap in the context of Zambian maize producers. In addition to the usual drivers, we argue that Zambia’s patriarchal and multi-tiered land distribution system could (...) disfavor women with respect to accessing quality soils. We are uniquely able to control for soil characteristics using farm data from a sample of 1573 fields with accompanying soil analysis. We find an expected difference in yields, but no evidence of a gap in unobserved characteristics, like skill, after controlling for access to inputs, especially quality soil, suggesting women are indeed disproportionately disadvantaged. We discuss how our findings could be used to develop self-targeting policy interventions that could empower women and would be consistent with the government’s stated equity goals. (shrink)