Do people with different views of what is fair attribute different intentions to actions? In a novel experimental design, participants were significantly more likely to attribute a no-redistribution vote to selfishness if they considered redistribution as being fair. I define this—attributing actions that do not adhere to one’s own fairness view to selfishness—as suspicious attribution. I develop a theory of intention attribution to show how suspicious attribution arises from two other findings from the experiment: the participants underestimate the number of (...) people with fairness views differing from their own and overestimate the selfishness of participants with other fairness views. I discuss how the findings can help explain political polarization. (shrink)

The growing prevalence of health care ethics consultation (HCEC) services in the U.S. has been accompanied by an increase in calls for accountability and quality assurance, and for the debates surrounding why and how HCEC is evaluated. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of HCEC as indicated by several novel outcome measurements in East Asian medical encounters.

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 8, Page 58-59, August 2011.

"Science and religion are often viewed as dichotomies. But although our contemporary society is often perceived as a rationalization process, we still need broad, metaphysical beliefs outside of what can be proven empirically. Rituals and symbols remain at the core of modern life. Do our concepts of science and religion require revitalization? Can science itself be considered a religion, a belief, or an ideology? Science's authority and prestige allows for little in the way of alternate approaches not founded in empirical (...) science. It is not unusual to believe that technology and science will solve the world's fundamental problems. Has truth been colonized by science? Have scientific disciplines become so specialized and "operationally closed" that they have constructed barriers to other disciplines as well as the general public? The writers of this book set out to investigate whether the symbols of academia may in some cases take on a quality of sacrality, whether the rule of experts can be said to have the character of a "priesthood of knowledge", whether religion has a place in scientific contexts, and a selection of other questions concerning science and its relations to religious belief."--P. [4] of cover. (shrink)

Extra-corporeal membrane oxygenation has been introduced to clinical practice for several decades. It is unclear how internet and newspapers portray the use of extra-corporeal membrane oxygenation. This study were: (1) to quantify the coverage of extra-corporeal membrane oxygenation use in newspapers and on the Internet; (2) to describe the characteristics of extra-corporeal membrane oxygenation users presented in newspaper articles and the Internet web pages in comparison with those shown in extra-corporeal membrane oxygenation studies in Taiwan; and (3) to examine the (...) survival rates of extra-corporeal membrane oxygenation users presented in newspaper articles and the Internet web pages in comparison with those in Taiwan and in the Extracorporeal Life Support Registry Report International Summary for January 2014. (shrink)

Case law retrieval is the task of locating truly relevant legal cases given an input query case. Unlike information retrieval for general texts, this task is more complex with two phases (legal case retrieval and legal case entailment) and much harder due to a number of reasons. First, both the query and candidate cases are long documents consisting of several paragraphs. This makes it difficult to model with representation learning that usually has restriction on input length. Second, the concept of (...) relevancy in this domain is defined based on the legal relation that goes beyond the lexical or topical relevance. This is a real challenge because normal text matching will not work. Third, building a large and accurate legal case dataset requires a lot of effort and expertise. This is obviously an obstacle to creating enough data for training deep retrieval models. In this paper, we propose a novel approach called supporting model that can deal with both phases. The underlying idea is the case–case supporting relation and the paragraph–paragraph as well as the decision-paragraph matching strategy. In addition, we propose a method to automatically create a large weak-labeling dataset to overcome the lack of data. The experiments showed that our solution has achieved the state-of-the-art results for both case retrieval and case entailment phases. (shrink)

Background Individual physicians and physician-associated factors may influence patients’/surrogates’ autonomous decision-making, thus influencing the practice of do-not-resuscitate orders. The objective of this study was to examine the influence of individual attending physicians on signing a DNR order. Methods This study was conducted in closed model, surgical intensive care units in a university-affiliated teaching hospital located in Northern Taiwan. The medical records of patients, admitted to the surgical intensive care units for the first time between June 1, 2011 and December 31, (...) 2013 were reviewed and data collected. We used Kaplan–Meier survival curves with log-rank test and multivariate Cox proportional hazards models to compare the time from surgical intensive care unit admission to do-not-resuscitate orders written for patients for each individual physician. The outcome variable was the time from surgical ICU admission to signing a DNR order. Results We found that each individual attending physician’s likelihood of signing do-not-resuscitate orders for their patients was significantly different from each other. Some attending physicians were more likely to write do-not-resuscitate orders for their patients, and other attending physicians were less likely to do so. Conclusion Our study reported that individual attending physicians had influence on patients’/surrogates’ do-not-resuscitate decision-making. Future studies may be focused on examining the reasons associated with the difference of each individual physician in the likelihood of signing a do-not-resuscitate order. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 5, Page 40-41, May 2012.

Most studies have examined the outcomes of patients supported by extracorporeal membrane oxygenation as a life-sustaining treatment. It is unclear whether significant social events are associated with the use of life-sustaining treatment. This study aimed to compare the trend of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation use in Taiwan with that in the world, and to examine the influence of significant social events on the trend of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation use in Taiwan.

Whereas using artificial intelligence (AI) to predict natural hazards is promising, applying a predictive policing algorithm (PPA) to predict human threats to others continues to be debated. Whereas PPAs were reported to be initially successful in Germany and Japan, the killing of Black Americans by police in the US has sparked a call to dismantle AI in law enforcement. However, although PPAs may statistically associate suspects with economically disadvantaged classes and ethnic minorities, the targeted groups they aim to protect are (...) often vulnerable populations as well (e.g., victims of human trafficking, kidnapping, domestic violence, or drug abuse). Thus, determining how to enhance the benefits of PPA while reducing bias through better management is important. In this paper, we propose a policy schema to address this issue. First, after clarifying relevant concepts, we examine major criticisms of PPAs and argue that some of them should be addressed. If banning AI or making it taboo is an unrealistic solution, we must learn from our errors to improve AI. We next identify additional challenges of PPAs and offer recommendations from a policy viewpoint. We conclude that the employment of PPAs should be merged into broader governance of the social safety net and audited publicly by parliament and civic society so that the unjust social structure that breeds bias can be revised. (shrink)

The study reported here considers the relationship between emotional state and cooperation. An experiment is conducted in which the emotions of fear, happiness, and disgust are induced using 360-degree videos, shown in virtual reality. There is also a control condition in which a neutral state is induced. Under the Fear, Happiness, and Disgust conditions, the cooperation level is lower than under the Neutral condition. Furthermore, cooperation declines over time in the three emotion conditions, while it does not under Neutral. The (...) findings suggest that emotions are associated with the dynamic pattern of declining cooperation over time. (shrink)

In the early 2000s, some scholars suggested integrative ethical education as an approach to reconcile the gap between cognitive-development education, based on rule ethics, and traditional character-ethics education, inspired by character ethics in Western ethical education. Darcia Narvaez also tried to establish a comprehensive and systematic model. Nonetheless, she has indicated four questions that need further research. This paper aims to respond to Narvaez’s project and its questions from the angle of Xunzi’s ritual education. It argues that Xunzi’s thought may (...) provide some insights for Narvaez’s approach. To present this, it begins its discussion with an introduction of the main ideas of Xunzi’s thought. Later, it tries to show the insights from certain notions and elements, such as Junzi, reasoned judgment, of Xunzi’s ritual education for Narvaez’s project of integrative ethical education. Some relevant questions are also discussed. (shrink)

We study whether changes in analyst recommendation ratings systems encouraged by the implementation of NASD 2711 in 2002 are associated with improved objectivity and independence in analyst recommendations. Using recommendations issued during windows surrounding major investment banking events, we show that reductions in analyst optimism following the reforms concentrate in the recommendations of analysts whose employer adopted a three-tier rating system at the time of the reforms, and that this effect is generally stronger for analysts whom the underlying incentives to (...) engage in unethical behaviour is greatest. We also find evidence that adoption of the three-tier system improved the market’s perception of the objectivity of analyst recommendations issued after SEOs, and that for hold and sell-type recommendations this effect was stronger for analysts subject to the greatest potential ethical conflicts. While we find some evidence of a general post-reform increase in the profitability of recommendations issued following equity transactions, this improvement was only conditioned by changes to the rating system in our IPO sample. (shrink)

Modelling data in applied areas particularly in reliability engineering is a prominent research topic. Statistical models play a vital role in modelling reliability data and are useful for further decision-making policies. In this paper, we study a new class of distributions with one additional shape parameter, called a new generalized exponential-X family. Some of its properties are taken into account. The maximum likelihood approach is adopted to obtain the estimates of the model parameters. For assessing the performance of these estimators, (...) a comprehensive Monte Carlo simulation study is carried out. The usefulness of the proposed family is demonstrated by means of a real-life application representing the failure times of electronic components. The fitted results show that the new generalized exponential-X family provides a close fit to data. Finally, considering the failure times data, the Bayesian analysis and performance of Gibbs sampling are discussed. The diagnostics measures such as the Raftery–Lewis, Geweke, and Gelman–Rubin are applied to check the convergence of the algorithm. (shrink)

This paper presents an autobiographical narrative of two aspects of my history; two events that permeated my moral consciousness and influenced my political development and a sequence of changes in my dominant theoretical and epistemological perspectives. The two events were, as a teenager, the intense experience of briefly witnessing Apartheid culture and, as a young adult, becoming deeply engaged in feminist activism. My intellectual journey began in cognitive developmental theory and progressed to a cultural, discursive perspective in which the role (...) of affect is seen as integrated. The paper explores the intersection of these two strands of my moral and intellectual development and concludes with a preliminary model of action and engagement. (shrink)

Western thought has dominated scientific development for a long time, and nursing has not escaped the influence of such ideology. Nurse scholars, in an attempt to fit the dominant scientific ideology, typically have had to struggle with non-empirical elements of nursing. This orientation in science, however, may have contributed inadvertently to a form of scientific ethnocentrism in the culture of inquiry in nursing as in other fields. The result has been a narrow view of science and knowledge and failure to (...) recognize the potential significance of Eastern philosophy in nursing knowledge development. Recently, intensive cultural exchanges between the East and the West have contributed to Western scientists becoming aware of the limits of Western linear thinking and concomitant efforts to explore the mysteries of Eastern philosophy. In this article, we explore Buddhism as one example of such philosophies that have great potential to enrich nursing as it continues to strive for definition and identity. (shrink)

In this paper, we analyze how citizens evaluate their president, especially focusing on why voters lower their evaluations at an individual-level perspective. We assert that citizens raise their evaluations of a new president when their expectations are met and lower their opinions when his or her performance disappoints them. Furthermore, the evaluations of the president are not only affected by a government's economic and diplomatic performance, but are also influenced by individual awareness of salient political issues, the contents of the (...) news, and their own perceived influence on politics. We test the theoretical hypotheses using Taiwan's Election and Democratization Study panel survey data. The statistical results support our theoretical hypotheses and show that when President Ma's performance did not meet respondents media exposure and political efficacy are significantly associated with the change in their opinions of Ma. (shrink)

Ensuring adequate informed consent for surgery in a trauma setting is challenging. We developed and pilot tested an educational video containing information regarding the informed consent process for surgery in trauma patients and a knowledge measure instrument and evaluated whether the audiovisual presentation improved the patients’ knowledge regarding their procedure and aftercare and their satisfaction with the informed consent process. A modified Delphi technique in which a panel of experts participated in successive rounds of shared scoring of items to forecast (...) outcomes was applied to reach a consensus among the experts. The resulting consensus was used to develop the video content and questions for measuring the understanding of the informed consent for debridement surgery in limb trauma patients. The expert panel included experienced patients. The participants in this pilot study were enrolled as a convenience sample of adult trauma patients scheduled to receive surgery. The modified Delphi technique comprised three rounds over a 4-month period. The items given higher scores by the experts in several categories were chosen for the subsequent rounds until consensus was reached. The experts reached a consensus on each item after the three-round process. The final knowledge measure comprising 10 questions was developed and validated. Thirty eligible trauma patients presenting to the Emergency Department were approached and completed the questionnaires in this pilot study. The participants exhibited significantly higher mean knowledge and satisfaction scores after watching the educational video than before watching the video. Our process is promising for developing procedure-specific informed consent and audiovisual aids in medical and surgical specialties. The educational video was developed using a scientific method that integrated the opinions of different stakeholders, particularly patients. This video is a useful tool for improving the knowledge and satisfaction of trauma patients in the ED. The modified Delphi technique is an effective method for collecting experts’ opinions and reaching a consensus on the content of educational materials for informed consent. Institutions should prioritize patient-centered health care and develop a structured informed consent process to improve the quality of care. The ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier is NCT01338480. The date of registration was April 18, 2011. (shrink)

Background Ensuring adequate informed consent for surgery in a trauma setting is challenging. We developed and pilot tested an educational video containing information regarding the informed consent process for surgery in trauma patients and a knowledge measure instrument and evaluated whether the audiovisual presentation improved the patients’ knowledge regarding their procedure and aftercare and their satisfaction with the informed consent process. Methods A modified Delphi technique in which a panel of experts participated in successive rounds of shared scoring of items (...) to forecast outcomes was applied to reach a consensus among the experts. The resulting consensus was used to develop the video content and questions for measuring the understanding of the informed consent for debridement surgery in limb trauma patients. The expert panel included experienced patients. The participants in this pilot study were enrolled as a convenience sample of adult trauma patients scheduled to receive surgery. Results The modified Delphi technique comprised three rounds over a 4-month period. The items given higher scores by the experts in several categories were chosen for the subsequent rounds until consensus was reached. The experts reached a consensus on each item after the three-round process. The final knowledge measure comprising 10 questions was developed and validated. Thirty eligible trauma patients presenting to the Emergency Department were approached and completed the questionnaires in this pilot study. The participants exhibited significantly higher mean knowledge and satisfaction scores after watching the educational video than before watching the video. Conclusions Our process is promising for developing procedure-specific informed consent and audiovisual aids in medical and surgical specialties. The educational video was developed using a scientific method that integrated the opinions of different stakeholders, particularly patients. This video is a useful tool for improving the knowledge and satisfaction of trauma patients in the ED. The modified Delphi technique is an effective method for collecting experts’ opinions and reaching a consensus on the content of educational materials for informed consent. Institutions should prioritize patient-centered health care and develop a structured informed consent process to improve the quality of care. Trial registration The ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier is NCT01338480. The date of registration was April 18, 2011. (shrink)

Political scientists generally consider that the incentive for legislators to switch parties lies in their desire to be re-elected. While some scholars attribute defection to the legislators’ popularity and strong connections with their constituents which enable them to be re-elected without relying on party labels, others assert that legislators switch if they perceive that staying put might threaten their chances of re-election. In this paper, we find that the two assumptions, to some extent, contradict each other. More surprisingly, the two (...) contradictory hypotheses cohabit under the single non-transferable vote system. From an analysis of the switching in the Taiwanese Legislative Yuan, the empirical evidence shows that because of fierce intraparty competition in the multimember districts, not only barely elected but also top-ranked legislators switched party affiliation in order to avoid the loss in votes or even seats to their copartisans and to maximize their chances of re-election. (shrink)

Numerous organizations have faced substantial environmental performance challenges resulting from more than a half-century of worldwide industrialization. Grounded in social learning theory and recourse-based view theory, this study explores environmental performance and its impact on employees and industry outcomes. Drawing on a cross-sectional online survey of 500 full-time employees working in the chemical industry in Lahore, Pakistan. The results revealed a significant positive influence of Green HRM practices on employees’ Green innovation as well as on environmental performance. Additionally, significant influences (...) of study variables were recorded on outcomes such as green compensation and reward, green performance management and appraisal, green training and development, and green recruitment and selection. Several key policy insights related to consumer resistance to innovation in low income societies and future research directions are suggested, along with theoretical and practical implications. (shrink)

This paper looks at the tragedy of Qiao Feng in Jin Yong’s The Demi-Gods and the Semi-Devils. While it is common practice for Žižekean scholars to examine genre writing and popular culture with Lacanian theory, the martial arts genre has received little attention. In Demi-Gods, Qiao Feng experiences an ‘identity crisis’ at the peak of his career: rumour has it that though he was raised and trained in China, he was born a Khitan. Qiao Feng at first believes it is (...) a just conspiracy, and henceforth is blind-sided by the imaginary relation between his ego and small others. He mis-recognises others’ scheming as ‘the Other of the Other,’ while his supposedly deceased Khitan father occupies the corner of the Other in the schema L to orchestra the manipulation game. However, what Qiao Feng is really under prey is the desire of the father, and of the two fatherlands, one Han-Chinese, one Khitan: his tragedy lies in the split of the national Other, in the impossibility of the ethical imperative Your duty is to be loyal to your country. And yet, it is exactly because of the emptiness in the ethical call that Qiao Feng can start to act as a subject, a subject that is by definition already always split. This paper thus interprets the actions of Jin Yong’s hero according to Lacan’s schema L, and also provides variations of the schema based on the twists and turns of this martial arts tragedy. (shrink)

There have been questions that are directed toward the outcome of using an exemplar in moral and character education. Meanwhile, the role of the narrative in the context of moral and character education has often been viewed as being didactic and being used to indoctrinate moral lessons only. On the other hand, some scholars have also attempted to explore the significances of the exemplar and the narrative for moral and character education. In classical Confucianism, the exemplar refers to the Junzi. (...) Moreover, there were many narratives concerning the lives of the exemplars mentioned by Confucius, Mencius and Xunzi for their students to emulate and aspire to. This paper argues that the utilization of the exemplar and the narrative in classical Confucianism can offer us another perspective for conducting moral and character education. This paper firstly illustrates the notion of the Junzi as an exemplar in classical Confucianism. Then, it explores the role of the narrative of the Junzi as an exemplar in classical Confucianism. Lastly, it discusses its four implications for moral and character education, comprising: (1) assisting students to discover the commonality of their exemplars and themselves as the starting point to emulate their exemplars; (2) helping students to build their morality and character through their interaction with ‘many others;’ (3) guiding students to create a proper narrative of themselves to form an integrative view of their lives; and (4) emphasizing the exemplary function of the teacher in moral and character education. (shrink)

There have been questions that are directed toward the outcome of using an exemplar in moral and character education. Meanwhile, the role of the narrative in the context of moral and character education has often been viewed as being didactic and being used to indoctrinate moral lessons only. On the other hand, some scholars have also attempted to explore the significances of the exemplar and the narrative for moral and character education. In classical Confucianism, the exemplar refers to the Junzi. (...) Moreover, there were many narratives concerning the lives of the exemplars mentioned by Confucius, Mencius and Xunzi for their students to emulate and aspire to. This paper argues that the utilization of the exemplar and the narrative in classical Confucianism can offer us another perspective for conducting moral and character education. This paper firstly illustrates the notion of the Junzi as an exemplar in classical Confucianism. Then, it explores the role of the narrative of the Junzi as an exemplar in classical Confucianism. Lastly, it discusses its four implications for moral and character education, comprising: (1) assisting students to discover the commonality of their exemplars and themselves as the starting point to emulate their exemplars; (2) helping students to build their morality and character through their interaction with ‘many others;’ (3) guiding students to create a proper narrative of themselves to form an integrative view of their lives; and (4) emphasizing the exemplary function of the teacher in moral and character education. (shrink)

COVID-19 began to spread worldwide in early 2020. Various governments have taken measures such as isolation, travel bans, and evacuation, mandating people to wear masks and go out less, in an attempt to prevent the spread of the virus. Governments also restrict human contact service industries, including beauty and hair salons. When the pandemic was very serious, consumers had great doubts about going for hairdressing so the beauty industry was greatly affected. This study designed and developed an app platform that (...) considers the COVID-19 and is used for the psychological role of consumer safety. The methodology of this research is a qualitative study. Based on the Capability, Opportunity, Motivation, Behavior model, and presenting the context of capabilities, opportunities, and motives of the theoretical framework, this study investigates the factors that identify the demand for the development of the platform for the beauty industry app matching mechanism. Four groups of people including consumers, beauty technicians, store managers, and application development engineers all conduct interviews based on their ability, opportunity, and motivation after experiencing the using application of OpenBeautiful. The results found that all groups of people already had the knowledge and ability to avoid infection in a pandemic, so it was possible to establish the need and feasibility of using the app platform. The use of the beauty industry app platform can bring new consumption patterns and career opportunities, and can trigger more business behavior activities. Therefore, this study starts from the COM-B model, and then explores the user needs of the platform according to the COM-B model framework, and proposes the mechanism and platform of app matching. Finally, based on the conclusion of the study, we propose practices and suggestions for the future operation of the app matching platform. (shrink)

This paper investigates the representation of authors with different linguistic backgrounds in academic publishing. We first review some common rebuttals of concerns about linguistic injustice. We then analyze 1039 authors of philosophy journals, primarily selected from the 2015 Leiter Report. While our data show that Anglophones dominate the output of philosophy papers, this unequal distribution cannot be solely attributed to language capacities. We also discover that ethics journals have more Anglophone authors than logic journals and that most authors are affiliated (...) with English-speaking universities, suggesting other factors may also play significant roles. Moreover, some interesting results are revealed when we combine the factor of sex with place of affiliation and linguistic background. It indicates that while certain linguistic injustice is inevitable in academic publishing, it may be more complex than thought. We next introduce Broadbent’s :457–476, 2012, Philosophy of epidemiology, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2013, Stud Hist Philos Biol Biomed Sci 48:250–257, 2014) contrastive account of causation to give a causal explanation of our findings. Broadbent’s account not only well characterizes the multifaceted causality in academic publishing but also provides a methodological guideline for further investigation. (shrink)

An elementary presentation is given of classical and relativistic collision dynamics based upon the principle of conservation of momentum. The concepts of mass are shown to be implicitly defined and their basic properties are rigorously derived and discussed. Luxons and tachyons are treated on the same footing as material particles.

According to agency theory, agents base their economic decisions on self-interests when adverse selection conditions exist. However, cognitive moral development theory predicts that ethics/morals may influence decision-makers not to behave egoistically. Rutledge and Karim, 173-184) find both the moral reasoning level of the managers and an adverse selection condition affect a manager's project evaluation decisions significantly. Since prior studies have shown that national culture might influence the application of agency theory in project evaluation, this current study uses a different moral (...) development measurement to reexamine Rutledge and Karim's hypotheses in another culture. A total of 73 Taiwanese executive MBA students with an average of 12.17 years work experience participated in this study. We found that both moral development level and adverse selection conditions significantly affect managers' project continuance decisions. The interaction effect of these two factors indicates that, when adverse selection conditions exist, participants with a high level of moral development exhibit less of a tendency to continue an unprofitable project than those with a low level of moral development. With subjects from a different culture, our results confirm the findings of Rutldege and Karim. That is, the effects of moral development and adverse selection conditions on managers' project continuance decisions are robust and can be generalized to different cultures. Implications of the findings of this study to multinational firms are also discussed. (shrink)

We investigated whether, in the emergency department, educational video-assisted informed consent is superior to the conventional consent process, to inform trauma patients undergoing surgery about the procedure, benefits, risks, alternatives, and postoperative care. We conducted a prospective randomized controlled trial, with superiority study design. All trauma patients scheduled to receive trauma-related debridement surgery in the ED of Kaohsiung Medical University Hospital were included. Patients were assigned to one of two education protocols. Participants in the intervention group watched an educational video (...) illustrating informed consent information, whereas those in the control group read an informed consent document. The primary outcome was knowledge scores and the secondary outcome was assessment of patient satisfaction. A multivariable regression model, with predefined covariates, was used to analyze differences in knowledge scores and patient satisfaction levels between the groups. A total of 142 patients were enrolled, with 70 and 72 assigned to the intervention and control groups, respectively. Mean knowledge scores were higher in the intervention ) than in the control group. By multivariate analysis, the intervention group had significantly greater differences in knowledge scores. Age, injury severity score, and baseline knowledge score significantly affected the differences in knowledge scores. Significant improvements were observed in patients’ perception of statements addressing comprehension of the information provided, helpfulness of the supplied information for decision making, and satisfaction with the informed consent process. Multivariate analysis showed significant correlations between video education and patient satisfaction. Both the educational approach and severity of injury may have an impact on patient understanding during the informed consent process in an emergency environment. Video-assisted informed consent may improve the understanding of surgery and satisfaction with the informed consent process for trauma patients in the ED. Institutions should develop structured methods and other strategies to better inform trauma patients, facilitate treatment decisions, and improve patient satisfaction. The ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier is NCT01338480. The date of registration was April 18, 2011. (shrink)