Judging similarities among objects, events, and experiences is one of the most basic cognitive abilities, allowing us to make predictions and generalizations. The main assumption in similarity judgment is that people selectively attend to salient features of stimuli and judge their similarities on the basis of the common and distinct features of the stimuli. However, it is unclear how people select features from stimuli and how they weigh features. Here, we present a computational method that helps address these questions. Our (...) procedure combines image-processing techniques with a machine-learning algorithm and assesses feature weights that can account for both similarity and categorization judgment data. Our analysis suggests that a small number of local features are particularly important to explain our behavioral data. (shrink)

The East Asian family-oriented principle is defensible in theory as a shared decision making model and thus a viable alternative to individual-oriented decision making in bioethics. There are two crucial problems with the family-oriented principle, i.e., family-oriented paternalism and conflicts of interests between a patient and his family. These obstacles may appear formidable but they are not insurmountable in practice.

BackgroundThe rating of perceived exertion scales with respiratory and muscular illustrations are recognized as simple and practical methods to understand individual psychometric characteristics in breathing and muscle exertion during exercise. However, the implementation of respiratory and muscular RPE to quantify training load in futsal training camps has not been examined. This study investigates respiratory and muscular RPE relationships during domestic training camps and overseas training camps in an under 20 futsal national team.MethodsData collected from eleven field players were used for (...) comparison in this study. All players reported Borg CR10 RPE and 7-scales respiratory RPE and muscular RPE after training sessions and matches. Additionally, total distance covered and training impulse were used to quantify external and internal loads via the Polar Team Pro system. Paired-sample t-tests were used to compare the RPECR10, RPErespiration, RPEmuscle, TD, and TRIMP between DTC and OTC. Furthermore, linear regression was performed to determine the relationships among all RPE scales, TD, and TRIMP.ResultsThe RPECR10, TD, and TRIMP showed significant difference between DTC and OTC. Furthermore, linear regression analyses showed significant correlation between RPErespiration and RPEmuscle, RPECR10 and RPErespiration, and RPECR10 and RPEmuscle.ConclusionPictorial RPErespiration or RPEmuscle can be used as an alternative to quantify perceived measures of internal loads during DTC and OTC in futsal players. Interpretation of perceived measures of training load and cardiac-related responses in association with external training loads during short-term training camps would be useful in further understanding the demands of futsal players’ experience in these circumstances. (shrink)

Hong Kong’s Covid-19 epidemic circumstances have given us a valuable opportunity to reflect on Hong Kong’s elderly care policies. This essay argues that Hong Kong should learn from the West and provide a subsidy to family caregivers for proper elderly care. We rebut the social and moralistic reasons for not introducing such a subsidy in Hong Kong. We indicate that providing cash subsidy to family caregivers does not monetize or tarnish Confucian filial obligation to take care of elderly people, but (...) enable adult children from low-income families to undertake this obligation effectively. In addition, we contend that providing such a subsidy would not significantly affect the job market in Hong Kong and that incurred financial and manpower costs for monitoring family care are controllable. (shrink)

ObjectiveThis pilot study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of a digital cognitive behavioral therapy in patients with cancer experiencing sleep problems.MethodsA total of 57 participants aged 25–65 years were randomly assigned to three groups—21 participants to a dCBT program, 20 participants to an app-based attentional control program, and 16 participants to a waitlist control group—and evaluated offline before and after the program completion. Of the 57 participants, there were a total of 45 study completers, 15 participants in each group. The (...) dependent variables were sleep quality scores, measured by the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index and health-related quality of life scores, measured using the Short-Form 36, and attentional bias scores from a dot-probe computer task.ResultsFor both the intention-to-treat and study-completers analyses, a significant increase supported by a large effect size was found in the quality of sleep score of the HARUToday Sleep group compared to both the app-based attentional control and the waitlist control group. However, no significant changes were found in the quality of life and attentional bias scores.ConclusionOur results suggest that the HARUToday Sleep app has the potential to serve as an intervention module to enhance the sleep quality of patients with cancer experiencing sleep problems. (shrink)

Packed with ideas designed to help children learn to sing, this booklet offers criteria for selecting songs, strategies to bring out the best in children's voices, and suggestions for games, ideas, and resources.

Nanotechnology shows great promise in a variety of applications with attractive economic and societal benefits. However, societal issues associated with nanotechnology are still a concern to the general public. While numerous technological advancements in nanotechnology have been achieved over the past decade, research into the broader societal issues of nanotechnology is still in its early phases. Based on the data from the Web of Science database, we applied the main path analysis, cluster analysis and text mining tools to explore the (...) main research fronts and hierarchical structure of these societal issues. We found that the research studies fell into four categories: "General Toxicity and EHS (Environment, Health and Safety)," "Medicine and Cytotoxicity," "Assessment and Regulation," and "Environment and Ecotoxicity." These research studies have disclosed much information about the potential effect of nanotechnology on public health and the environment. Relatively speaking, the studies on the assessment, regulation, preventive solutions, and environmental protection are just emerging. This finding indicates that an abundance of effort should be conducted on these emerging themes to maximize the benefits of nanotechnology while minimizing its potential harm. The implications for various parties in this domain are also presented. (shrink)

Progressive supranuclear palsy is a movement disorder with prominent tau neuropathology. Brain diseases with abnormal tau deposits are called tauopathies, the most common of which is Alzheimer's disease. Environmental causes of tauopathies include repetitive head trauma associated with some sports. To identify common genetic variation contributing to risk for tauopathies, we carried out a genome-wide association study of 1,114 individuals with PSP and 3,247 controls followed by a second stage in which we genotyped 1,051 cases and 3,560 controls for the (...) stage 1 SNPs that yielded P ≤ 10-3. We found significant previously unidentified signals associated with PSP risk at STX6, EIF2AK3 and MOBP. We confirmed two independent variants in MAPT affecting risk for PSP, one of which influences MAPT brain expression. The genes implicated encode proteins for vesicle-membrane fusion at the Golgi-endosomal interface, for the endoplasmic reticulum unfolded protein response and for a myelin structural component. © 2011 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

It has been argued that human restoration of nature is morally problematic because artificially restored natural entities are artifacts, which are ontologically different from natural entities and hence essentially devoid of the moral standing that natural entities have. I discuss the alleged assimilation of restored natural entities to artifacts, and argue that it does not follow from the ontological differences, if any, between the artifactual and the natural that the former is morally inferior to the latter. This defense against the (...) devaluation of restored natural entities is aimed at narrowing the ethical gap between the wild and thetamed, which is often endorsed by ecocentric environmental ethics. (shrink)

It has been argued that human restoration of nature is morally problematic because artificially restored natural entities are artifacts, which are ontologically different from natural entities and hence essentially devoid of the moral standing that natural entities have. I discuss the alleged assimilation of restored natural entities to artifacts, and argue that it does not follow from the ontological differences, if any, between the artifactual and the natural that the former is morally inferior to the latter. This defense against the (...) devaluation of restored natural entities is aimed at narrowing the ethical gap between the wild and thetamed, which is often endorsed by ecocentric environmental ethics. (shrink)

"Few thinkers have stood as squarely at both the center and the periphery of an intellectual movement as has Shao Yung (1011-1077). Ethical model and eccentric, socialite and eremite, Shao Yung is perhaps not only the greatest enigma of early Neo-Confucianism, but also one of its undisputed giants. In this impressive life-and-thought study, Don J. Wyatt painstakingly sifts through all available evidence relating to Shao Yung and his scholarship to provide a portrait that fully exposes the moral (...) center of the man and his work. Drawing on the abundant store of letters and accounts by Shao's contemporaries and his own much-neglected poetry, Wyatt has assembled a study that intimately relates Shao's life to his thought. He challenges the assumptions of previous Western scholarship by persuasively arguing against the acceptance of works traditionally ascribed to Shao - specifically, the Kuan-wu wai-p'ien (Outer Chapters on Observing Things), the Yu-ch'iao wen-ta (Fisherman and Woodcutter Dialogue), and the cryptic quasi-autobiographical essay Wu-ming kung chuan (Biography of the Nameless Lord)." "Shao is presented as an independent thinker whose philosophical lexicon functioned according to a profound interdependence that was unique among the systems of his peers. His metaphysical concepts, which appear impervious to and beyond the scope of human influence - namely, his ching-shih (world ordering), kuan-wu (observing things), and I-Ching - derived hsien-t'ien (before Heaven) methodologies - are essentially the products of a morally reflective life. Wyatt's discoveries, therefore, refute the common assertion of Shao Yung's moral indifference. Moreover, by meticulously integrating the progress of this Neo-Confucian's thought into the course of his life, the author has produced one of the most textured and accessible works on a philosopher of the Sung era."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

Charles Taylor is one of the most distinctive figures in the landscape of contemporary philosophy. His ability to contribute to philosophical conversations across a wide spectrum of ideas is especially impressive in a time of increasing specialization. These areas include moral theory, theories of subjectivity, political theory, epistemology, hermeneutics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language and aesthetics. Most recently, Taylor has branched into the study of religion. Written by a team of international authorities, this collection will be read primarily by (...) students and academic professionals in philosophy, political science, and religious studies, and will also appeal to a broad swathe of professionals across the humanities and social sciences. Ruth Abbey is Senior Lecturer in Political Theory at University of Kent at Canterbury. She has published numerous articles and is author of Nietzsche's Middle Period (Oxford University Press, 2000) and Philosophy Now: Charles Taylor (Princeton University Press, 2000). (shrink)

In recent years consciousness has become a significant area of study in the cognitive sciences. The Frontiers of Consciousness is a major interdisciplinary exploration of consciousness. The book stems from the Chichele lectures held at All Souls College in Oxford, and features contributions from a 'who's who' of authorities from both philosophy and psychology. The result is a truly interdisciplinary volume, which tackles some of the biggest and most impenetrable problems in consciousness. The book includes chapters considering the apparent explanatory (...) gap between science and consciousness, our conscious experience of emotions such as fear, and of willed actions by ourselves and others. It looks at subjective differences between two ways in which visual information guides behaviour, and scientific investigation of consciousness in non-human animals. It looks at the challenges that the mind-brain relation presents for clinical practice as well as for theories of consciousness. The book draws on leading research from philosophy, experimental psychology, functional imaging of the brain, neuropsychology, neuroscience, and clinical neurology. Distinctive in its accessibility, authority, and its depth of coverage, Frontiers of Consciousness will be a groundbreaking and influential addition to the consciousness literature. (shrink)

This paper investigates a first-order extension of GL called \. We outline briefly the history that led to \, its key properties and some of its toolbox: the \emph{conservation theorem}, its cut-free Gentzenisation, the ``formulators'' tool. Its semantic completeness is fully stated in the current paper and the proof is retold here. Applying the Solovay technique to those models the present paper establishes its main result, namely, that \ is arithmetically complete. As expanded below, \ is a first-order modal logic (...) that along with its built-in ability to simulate general classical first-order provability―"\" simulating the the informal classical "\"―is also arithmetically complete in the Solovay sense. (shrink)

As a comparative study of the virtue ethics of Aristotle and Confucius, this book explores how they each reflect upon human good and virtue out of their respective cultural assumptions, conceptual frameworks, and philosophical perspectives. It does not simply take one side as a framework to understand the other; rather, it takes them as mirrors for each other and seeks to develop new readings and perspectives of both ethics that would be unattainable if each were studied on its own.

In a much-revised version of his 1980 doctoral dissertation in the history of science for Princeton University, Kim (history and philosophy of science, Seoul National U.) examines the knowledge about the natural world that informed Chu Hsi's renowned neo-Confucian synthesis. He sets out his basic concepts, reviews his understanding of the world, and examines the relationship between the two. He includes an extensive glossary with the English meaning and the Chinese characters. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR.

Previous research has shown implicit semantic processing of faces or pictures, but whether symbolic carriers such as words can be processed this way remains controversial. Here we examine this issue by adopting the continuous flash suppression paradigm to ensure that the processing undergone is indeed unconscious without the involvement of partial awareness. Negative or neutral words projected into one eye were made invisible due to strong suppression induced by dynamic-noise patterns shown in the other eye through binocular rivalry. Inverted and (...) scrambled words were used as controls to provide baselines at orthographic and feature levels, respectively. Compared to neutral words, emotion-described and emotion-induced negative words required longer time to release from suppression, but only for upright words. These results suggest that words can be processed unconsciously up to semantic level since under interocular suppression completely invisible words can lead to different processing speed due to the emotion information they carry. (shrink)

How vertebrates evolved different traits for acid excretion to maintain body fluid pH homeostasis is largely unknown. The evolution of Na+/H+ exchanger (NHE)‐mediated NH4+ excretion in fishes is reported, and the coevolution with increased ammoniagenesis and accompanying gluconeogenesis is speculated to benefit vertebrates in terms of both internal homeostasis and energy metabolism response to acidic stress. The findings provide new insights into our understanding of the possible adaptation of fishes to progressing global environmental acidification. In human kidney, titratable H+ and (...) NH4+ comprise the two main components of net acid excretion. V‐type H+‐ATPase‐mediated H+ excretion may have developed in stenohaline lampreys when they initially invaded freshwater from marine habitats, but this trait is lost in most fishes. Instead, increased reliance on NHE‐mediated NH4+ excretion is gradually developed and intensified during fish evolution. Further investigations on more species will be needed to support the hypothesis. Also see the video abstract here https://youtu.be/vZuObtfm-34. (shrink)

Social enterprises, as typical hybrid organisations, are embedded in a plural institutional environment in which some stakeholders regard achieving social goals as fundamental, while others see economic profit as the priority. A great challenge for social enterprises is dealing with the conflicts resulting from the diverse expectations of stakeholders. Based on the existing works on organisational legitimacy and the social business model, we propose a legitimacy-based social enterprise model composed of three main phases, namely, legitimacy proposition, legitimacy strategy planning, and (...) legitimacy strategy implementation. Our model is meant to serve as an effective legitimacy-building tool for social enterprises of various kinds. (shrink)

The current study aims to separate conscious and unconscious behaviors by employing both online and offline measures while the participants were consciously performing a task. Using an eye-movement tracking paradigm, we observed participants’ response patterns for distinguishing within-word-boundary and across-word-boundary reverse errors while reading Chinese sentences . The results showed that when the participants consciously detected errors, their gaze time for target words associated with across-word-boundary reverse errors was significantly longer than that for targets words associated with within-word-boundary reverse errors. (...) Surprisingly, the same gaze time pattern was found even when the readers were not consciously aware of the reverse errors. The results were statistically robust, providing converging evidence for the feasibility of our experimental paradigm in decoupling offline behaviors and the online, automatic, and unconscious aspects of cognitive processing in reading. (shrink)