Environmental pollution has become a serious challenge in emerging markets. Using a unique survey of privately owned enterprises in China, this paper investigates how polluting firms respond to institutional pressures. We find that polluting firms conform to external pressures by combining relational activities and clean technology investments. However, some polluting firms alleviate regulative pressures by bribing government officials, which represents an unethical relational strategy to manage political relationship. We further analyze the contingency on firm-level political connection and local institutional conditions. (...) Political connection buffers firms from institutional demand and demotivates firms’ willingness to respond to institutional pressures; stronger local civic activism and better bureaucratic governance curb the pollution-driven bribery, but they are not strong enough to enhance environmentally friendly practices. Collectively, our study demonstrates how polluting firms navigate institutional pressures in emerging markets, and it particularly highlights the pollution-driven bribery as an obstacle to sustainability. (shrink)

Recent research has linked the reduction of abnormal accruals to corporate governance metrics. The results of these studies, however, are based on samples taken from periods prior to promulgated board independence requirements. In other words, during this time period, management not only had discretion over accounting accruals, but also significant influence over the choice of membership on the board of directors. This study suggests that ethical management practices may be a correlated omitted variable in these studies, thus resulting in causal (...) inference problems in the previous research. We argue that, rather than the board of directors monitoring and reducing abnormal accruals as has been posited, management who was not engaging in abusive earnings management was attempting to signal the market regarding the quality of the firm’s financial information through its choice of board membership. (shrink)

Background: Physical exercises can affect executive function both acutely and chronically, with different mechanisms for each moment. Currently, only a few reviews have elaborated on the premise that different types of exercises have different mechanisms for improving executive function. Therefore, the primary purpose of our systematic review was to analyze the effects of acute and chronic exercises on executive function in children and adolescents.Objective: We identified acute and chronic exercise studies and randomized controlled trials of executive function in children and (...) adolescents that reported overall effect, heterogeneity, and publication bias of acute and chronic exercises on executive function.Methods: We searched for RCTs of exercise interventions in children and adolescents from databases including PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, The Cochrane Library, CNKI, and Wanfang, from January 1 2009 to December 31 2019. We performed methodological quality evaluations on the included literature using the Physiotherapy Evidence Database Scale and graded evidence with a meta-analysis using Stata 12.0 software.Results: In total, 36 RCTs were included ; the overall results of the meta-analysis indicated that acute exercises significantly improved working memory = −0.72; 95% confidence interval −0.89 to −0.56; p < 0.001), inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility, whereas chronic exercises significantly improved working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility.Conclusion: Acute and chronic exercises can effectively improve the executive function of children and adolescents. The effects on inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility are considered as small effect sizes, while the effects on working memory are considered as moderate effect size. Limited by the quantity and quality of the included studies, the above conclusions need to be verified with more high-quality studies. (shrink)

As the father of modern linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure influences all aspects of linguistic development with no exception of Cognitive Grammar. A scrutiny of how Saussure is understood in Cognitive Grammar indicates that Saussurean linguistics is misinterpreted in terms of five core ideas: (1) langue, rather than parole, is given highest priority; (2) the internal relation of “signifier-signified” counts as the pairing of “form-meaning”; (3) “arbitrariness” is contradictory to “symbolicity”; (4) “arbitrariness” means “unmotivatedness”; (5) arbitrariness is not the inherent nature (...) of morphological and syntactic structures. This paper is intended to reassess these five ideas and argue that they depart further from Saussure’s thought. (shrink)

A dynamic learning method is developed for an uncertain n-link robot with unknown system dynamics, achieving predefined performance attributes on the link angular position and velocity tracking errors. For a known nonsingular initial robotic condition, performance functions and unconstrained transformation errors are employed to prevent the violation of the full-state tracking error constraints. By combining two independent Lyapunov functions and radial basis function neural network approximator, a novel and simple adaptive neural control scheme is proposed for the dynamics of the (...) unconstrained transformation errors, which guarantees uniformly ultimate boundedness of all the signals in the closed-loop system. In the steady-state control process, RBF NNs are verified to satisfy the partial persistent excitation condition. Subsequently, an appropriate state transformation is adopted to achieve the accurate convergence of neural weight estimates. The corresponding experienced knowledge on unknown robotic dynamics is stored in NNs with constant neural weight values. Using the stored knowledge, a static neural learning controller is developed to improve the full-state tracking performance. A comparative simulation study on a 2-link robot illustrates the effectiveness of the proposed scheme. (shrink)

This article argues that Bentham’s metaphysics has until recently been unfairly belittled, and that it in fact built on and surpassed that of David Hume, of whom Bentham was both an attentive student and a fierce critic. Bentham’s logic is metaphysically based, multi-levelled, and comprehensive. First, taking Hume’s empiricism as a starting point, Bentham developed the additional mechanism of “reflection” to facilitate a utilitarian pragmatic resolution to Hume’s skepticism. Second, unlike Hume, Bentham aspired to encyclopedic knowledge, especially of the human (...) mind, which he believed allowed him to place his thought on a more solid and broader foundation. Third, whereas Hume focused on the passive understanding, Bentham captured the interaction between understanding and volition. Fourth, in relation to moral approbation, Hume adopted an approach which highlighted benevolence, whereas Bentham sought to reconcile self-preference with benevolence. Fifth, Hume’s common sense moral philosophy pushed him to associate justice with social convention, and helped to make him a conservative. Bentham developed the principle of utility to direct and push forward social reform for a better world. (shrink)

In this article, we explore the micro-foundations of elite politics by focusing on changes in network structures that emerge from informal conversations. Empirically, we offer a novel “situational conflict” explanation to account for the puzzle of why reformist leaders were periodically ousted during China’s reform era (1977–1992), emphasizing the unexpected power collision that catalyzed the violent crackdown on the Tiananmen movement in 1989. To do so, we employ network analysis and narrative to utilize an original dataset of elite conversations and (...) primary sources that have only recently been made available. We find that ideological cleavage and manipulative brokerage produced each conflict to varying degrees but were contingent on the relational structure arising from elite conversational interactions. Furthermore, the actual unfolding of those conflicts often resulted from key actors’ discrepant understandings of the changing relationships via ongoing interactions at vital moments, such as during the Tiananmen movement. Integrating micro-sociological theories and network analysis, our work has methodological and theoretical implications for unpacking the black box of elite politics and its role in macro-historical change. (shrink)

Recent studies of the low abundant signaling lipid, phosphatidylinositol 3,5‐bisphosphate (PI(3,5)P2), reveal an intriguingly diverse list of downstream pathways, the intertwined relationship between PI(3,5)P2 and PI5P, as well as links to neurodegenerative diseases. Derived from the structural lipid phosphatidylinositol, PI(3,5)P2 is dynamically generated on multiple cellular compartments where interactions with an increasing list of effectors regulate many cellular pathways. A complex of proteins that includes Fab1/PIKfyve, Vac14, and Fig4/Sac3 mediates the biosynthesis of PI(3,5)P2, and mutations that disrupt complex function and/or (...) formation cause profound consequences in cells. Surprisingly, mutations in this pathway are linked with neurological diseases, including Charcot‐Marie‐Tooth syndrome and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Future studies of PI(3,5)P2 and PI5P are likely to expand the roles of these lipids in regulation of cellular functions, as well as provide new approaches for treatment of some neurological diseases. (shrink)

This paper proves the finite axiomatizability of transitive modal logics of finite depth and finite width w.r.t. proper-successor-equivalence. The frame condition of the latter requires, in a rooted transitive frame, a finite upper bound of cardinality for antichains of points with different sets of proper successors. The result generalizes Rybakov’s result of the finite axiomatizability of extensions of $\mathbf {S4}$ of finite depth and finite width.

This study chooses to describe social entrepreneurship as a social mission that enables business students to identify opportunities to launch start-ups and social enterprises by understanding the nature of social responsibility and fostering a reciprocal attitude to solve social issues. We collected data on students from different business schools in mainland China through a structured questionnaire and analyzed them through structural equation modeling. The results show that moral efficacy and meaningfulness are positively related to positive reciprocity, which leads to students’ (...) social entrepreneurial intentions. The study concluded that potential social entrepreneurs should take ethical courses as part of their training to help them develop a responsible mentality and social entrepreneurial aspirations. On this basis, the practical and theoretical significance of this study is proposed, and its limitations and future development directions are pointed out. (shrink)

The article describes an approach of systematic, rule guided qualitative text analysis, which tries to preserve some methodological strengths of quantitative content analysis and widen them to a concept of qualitative procedure. First the development of content analysis is delineated and the basic principles are explained (units of analysis, step models, working with categories, validity and reliability). Then the central procedures of qualitative content analysis, inductive development of categories and deductive application of categories, are worked out. The possibilities of computer (...) programs in supporting those qualitative steps of analysis are shown and the possibilities and limits of the approach are discussed. (shrink)

This paper presents two general results of decidability concerning logics based on an indeterministic metric tense logic, which can be applied to, among others, logics combining knowledge, time and agency. We provide a general Kripke semantics based on a variation of the notion of synchronized Ockhamist frames. Our proof of the decidability is by way of the finite frame property, applying subframe transformations and a variant of the filtration technique.

ABSTRACT Although unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB) in the workplace has been widely researched, studies have focused on its antecedents rather than its outcomes. To fill this gap in the literature, we integrated moral licensing theory and the literature on leader gratitude expression to explore the ethical consequences of UPB. Using a sample of multi-source time-lagged surveys of 206 leader–employee dyads, we found that the pro-organizational nature of UPB fostered employees’ psychological entitlement and thereby increased their likelihood of engaging in subsequent (...) unethical behavior. Leaders’ expressions of gratitude for employee UPB strengthened the relationship between UPB and psychological entitlement, ultimately reinforcing employees’ unethical behavior. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed. (shrink)

In recent years, the network has become more complex, and the attacker’s ability to attack is gradually increasing. How to properly understand the network security situation and improve network security has become a very important issue. In order to study the method of extracting information about the security situation of the network based on cloud computing, we recommend the technology of knowledge of the network security situation based on the data extraction technology. It converts each received cyber security event into (...) a standard format that can be defined as multiple brochures, creating a general framework for the cyber security situation. According to the large nature of network security situation data, the Hadoop platform is used to extract aggregation rules, and perform model extraction, pattern analysis, and learning on a network security event dataset to complete network security situation rule mining, and establish a framework for assessing the state of network security. According to the results of the federal rule extraction, the level of network node security risk is obtained in combination with signal reliability, signal severity, resource impact, node protection level, and signal recovery factor. A simulation test is performed to obtain the intrusion index according to the source address of the network security alarm. Through the relevant experiments and analysis of the results, the attack characteristics obtained in this study were obtained after manually reducing the network security event in the 295 h window. The results show that after the security event is canceled, the corresponding window attack index decreases to 0, indicating that this method can effectively implement a network security situation awareness. The proposed technique allows you to accurately sense changes in network security conditions. (shrink)

Knowledge reduction of information systems is one of the most important parts of rough set theory in real-world applications. Based on the connections between the rough set theory and the theory of topology, a kind of topological reduction of incomplete information systems is discussed. In this study, the topological reduction of incomplete information systems is characterized by belief and plausibility functions from evidence theory. First, we present that a topological space induced by a pair of approximation operators in an incomplete (...) information system is pseudo-discrete, which deduces a partition. Then, the topological reduction is characterized by the belief and plausibility function values of the sets in the partition. A topological reduction algorithm for computing the topological reducts in incomplete information systems is also proposed based on evidence theory, and its efficiency is examined by an example. Moreover, relationships among the concepts of topological reduct, classical reduct, belief reduct, and plausibility reduct of an incomplete information system are presented. (shrink)

1. Cleansing behaviours such as hands washing, face washing, teeth brushing, and so on, are essential in daily life. The primary purpose of cleansing is to remove dirt and keep the body clean. Inte...

1. J.S. Mill made a dual estimation of Jeremy Bentham’s philosophy featuring two polarized attitudes, one extremely positive, and the other extremely negative. On the positive side, in Mill’s eyes,...

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本书通过深入探究边沁法理学终极的哲学根据及其思想渊源而发现,在认识论上,边沁与贝克莱和休谟是一脉相承的,都秉持主观主义认识论,哈特所谓的道德中立在边沁法理学那里是根本不存在的.哈特的法律与道德是分离的 命题,最终依据的是G.E.摩尔所创立的认知与情感是分离的学说,而G.E.摩尔的分离学说乃是对休谟的"是—应当"区分学说的误解.

本书主要共有五大部分的内容。第一是以易经为代表的东方战略管理哲学思想。第二是东方军事战略管理思想,东方军事战略管理思想主要由治军战略思想和治敌战略思想组成。第三是东方治国战略管理思想,主要论述儒道法等 诸子治国思想以及近代中国治国思想中具有战略意义的管理思想。第四是东方人生战略管理思想,主要论述传统管理思想关于人生目标、理想人格以及人生修养、人生谋略等具有战略性的思想。第五是东方企业战略管理思想,主 要关注东方战略管理思想在当代东方企业经营管理中的运用和发展.