X. Wang

Buddhism Between Religion and Philosophy by Rafal K. Stepien is a spirited take on not only Nāgārjuna but also the modern scholarship surrounding him. Stepien’s main contention is that other scholars, coming from a philosophical background, shy away from “taking Nāgārjuna’s words on their own terms” (p. 64), particularly when Nāgārjuna advocates for the abandonment of all views. Instead, Stepien proposes a way to make sense of such a prescription, which he finds more faithful to Nāgārjuna’s soteriological motivations, even if it goes beyond the strict confines of logic.The introduction, “Emptiness Between the Lines,” identifies two problems with contemporary studies of Nāgārjuna. First, “pronounced emphasis has... Read More.

Background Although the Internet has become an important part of clinical nurses’ professional and personal lives, there are currently no defined indicators to assess the level of cyber ethics literacy of clinical nurses. Research aim This study aims to develop an evaluation index system for evaluating the cyber ethics literacy of clinical nurses. Research design A Delphi study. Participant and research context Two rounds of Delphi consultation were conducted from March 2024 to May 2024, with 20 experts participating in the first round and 18 experts in the second round. Ethical considerations Participation in the study was voluntary and informed consent of the experts was obtained before the study. Approval was obtained from the ethics committee (No. 2022-0018). Results The degree of expert positivity was 100% and 90%, the coefficients of expert authority were 0.863 and 0.883, and Kendall’s W coefficient were 0.143 and 0.151, respectively ( p

A recent publication in Nature (Cogitate et al. 2025) aimed at enriching the progressive build-up of a valid theory of conscious processing using valuable multicentric experimentation and massive data-sharing open to new analyses (Bryant and Whyte 2025). It is important to stress that several of the analyses reported in this Nature article validate key predictions of the Global Neuronal Workspace Theory (GNWT) including (i) transient ignition following stimulus onset in the predicted time-window (200-800 ms), (ii) irrespective of stimulus duration and (iii) of stimulus relevance, as well as (iv) decoding of “conscious content in visual, ventrotemporal and inferior frontal cortex, with sustained responses […] and content specific synchronization between frontal and early visual areas.” In other words, this article confirmed that stimuli that are clearly consciously visible elicit a brain-wide activation and synchronization between sensory areas and prefrontal cortex, even in the absence of task relevance, validating a non-trivial prediction of the GNWT. Also, given that this study only used clearly visible stimuli, it could not test the most central predictions of the GNWT, which tackle the critical contrast between conscious and non-conscious processing. Hence, several conclusions drawn by the authors about GNWT predictions need to be reconsidered.

In accordance with the principle of historical materialism, nature of the property depends primarily on the fact that the actual possession of the property, rather than on their legal ownership first. Accordingly, the Isle of Man from the stock of the "separation of ownership 'departure, the actual property is not recognized joint-stock private property, but" social property ", so they also hopes to achieve socialism in stock. However, the situation at the time, the Isle of Man is sometimes still only legal private ownership of property from the stock starting to think so, sometimes with analysis of private enterprise, "Das Kapital" residual value analysis on the model of joint-stock company, joint-stock property changes on the significant underestimate, even such as the stock is still equivalent to private ownership. According to the principle of materialism, the feature of property first depends on the reality of factual possession of property, but does not first depend on its legal ownership. Hence, from the theory of share holding system of its "separdtion of ownership and manageship" , Marx and Engels considered that the property of share holding system is actually not the private property, but the "public property". They, therefore, put the hope of realizing socialism on the share holding system. But under that situation, Marx and Engels could only consider the problems from the legal private ownership of the property of share holding system by using the theory of surplus values ​​and even regard the share holding system as private ownership

Although sarcasm is commonly used worldwide, little is known about the interpretation of sarcasm in intercultural communications. We conducted an experiment investigating the effect of common ground in intercultural communication by manipulating communicators’ cultural background, with high common ground communicators from the same culture and low common ground communicators from different cultures. Specifically, 201 UK participants and 201 Chinese participants read scenarios describing speakers and recipients from the UK or China. The target comment was either literal or sarcastic criticism. Participants rated the critical comment in terms of how sarcastic, aggressive, amusing, and polite they perceived it to be. Results showed that critical comments made between characters who had low common ground (i.e. UK speaker and Chinese recipient, Chinese speaker and UK recipient) were considered as being more aggressive than those with high common ground (i.e. UK speaker and UK recipient, Chinese speaker and Chinese recipient). Sarcastic criticism, specifically, was viewed as being less amusing when characters had low common ground compared to those with high common ground. The findings have implications for theories developed to explain the social functions of sarcasm, specifically, mutual knowledge shared between communicators plays an important role in sarcasm interpretation in intercultural communications.

By extending the quantifier-free predicate logic (without equality, constant and function symbols) with a bundled modality ∃x□\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\exists x\Box $$\end{document}, which packs the quantifier ∃x\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\exists x$$\end{document} and the modality □\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\Box $$\end{document} together, we obtain a fragment of first-order modal logic, namely, ∃□\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\exists \Box $$\end{document}-bundled fragment. In this paper, we prove that the Craig interpolation theorem holds for systems of the ∃□\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\exists \Box $$\end{document}-bundled fragment based on K/D/T/4/S4, while it fails for the system based on S5.

This review examines global human genetic resources management, focusing on genetic data policies and repositories in high- and middle-low-income countries. A comprehensive search strategy was employed across multiple databases, including official government websites and Google, to gather relevant literature on human genetic resources management policies and genetic resource databases. Documents were screened for relevance, focusing on high-income countries (United States, United Kingdom, Japan) and middle-low-income countries (China, India, Kenya). Data were extracted, coded, and analyzed to identify common themes and differences in genetic resource management practices. High-income countries benefit from robust legal frameworks and advanced technological infrastructures. The United States enforces the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act to protect privacy and facilitate data sharing, while Japan relies on the Act on the Protection of Personal Information and ethical guidelines. Additionally, high-income countries host a variety of genetic databases and biobanks that support scientific research. In contrast, middle-low-income countries like China, India, and Kenya are still developing their frameworks. China has regulations such as the Biosecurity Law and the Regulations on the Management of Human Genetic Resources, but still requires more unified standards. India’s policies focus on genetic research and data protection through the Biological Diversity Act, while Kenya seeks to improve data management through the 2019 Data Protection Act. Significant disparities exist in human genetic resources management between high-income and middle-low-income countries. High-income countries have robust systems balancing privacy protection with research facilitation, supported by comprehensive and large-scale databases for scientific research. Middle-low-income countries need to enhance legal frameworks and build population-specific databases. Promoting equitable data sharing and adopting best practices from high-income countries are essential for advancing global scientific discovery and ensuring fair management of genetic resources.

This study explores how Macao, a semi-autonomous colonial territory under Portuguese neutrality, governed epidemic crises between 1937 and 1949 through a civic-driven, multi-actor approach. It examines how local responses to epidemics were formulated and sustained amid institutional fragility, political isolation, mass refugee inflows, and in the absence of strong centralized authority. Drawing on 1036 contemporaneous reports from Overseas Chinese News, the study employs procedural grounded theory to inductively reconstruct Macao’s epidemic governance logic. The findings reveal six interrelated strategies: real-time epidemiological monitoring and disclosure, universal compulsory vaccination, cross-institutional and transregional collaboration, grassroots hygiene education, institutionalized civil society participation, and strict quarantine and sanitation enforcement.The study proposes a “Civic-Driven Epidemic Governance Framework under Neutrality”, illustrating how decentralized collaboration, institutional improvisation, and social capital compensated for limited state control. The Macao case offers a historically grounded alternative to state-centric public health models by underscoring the role of civic engagement and cross-border cooperationFinally, it highlights the media’s dual role as a platform for public communication and a driver of social mobilization. These findings contribute to broader debates on resilient, inclusive and adaptive governance in politically fragmented or fragile contexts.

Evidence accumulation has been the core component in recent development of perceptual and value-based decision-making theories. Most studies have focused on the evaluation of evidence between alternative options. What remains largely unknown is the process that prepares evidence: how may the decision-maker sample different sources of information sequentially, if they can only sample one source at a time? Here we propose a normative framework in prescribing how different sources of information should be sampled proactively to facilitate the decision process: beliefs for different noisy sources are updated in a Bayesian manner and participants can proactively allocate resource for sampling (i.e. saccades) among different sources to maximize the information gain in such process. We show that our framework can account for human participants’ actual choice and saccade behaviors in a two-alternative value-based decision-making task. Moreover, our framework makes novel predictions about the empirical eye movement patterns.

A survey study was conducted to look into the effect of Confucian ethics and the psychological foundations of morality on business managers' perspectives on corporate social responsibility (CSR). Using responses from 393 Chinese managers, we first conducted confirmatory factor analysis to assess the reliability and validity of the measurement model and then employed hierarchical regression to explore the relationships among Confucian ethics, moral foundations, and managers' shareholder value perspectives. The results indicate that both Confucian ethics and managers' moral foundations had significant influence on shareholder value perspectives. In fact, moral foundations and Confucian ethics interacted and jointly affected managers' positions on the shareholder value model of corporate responsibility. This study demonstrates the importance of psychological foundations of morality to managers' CSR orientations and substantiates the persistent impact of Confucian ethics/cultural traditions on today' business practices.

This study investigates the impact of board secretary gender on ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) rating divergence using data from Chinese A-share listed companies. Firms with female board secretaries experience significantly higher ESG rating divergence, driven by gender bias and stereotypes that reduce stakeholder recognition. Contextual factors, such as regional gender equality awareness, social trust, education levels, and the development of the tertiary industry, mitigate these effects. Additionally, corporate governance characteristics, including ownership structure, firm size, and agency costs, moderate the relationship. This study contributes to the literature by identifying gender bias as a key driver of ESG rating divergence, highlighting the role of contextual and governance factors in shaping these dynamics, and offering actionable insights for improving ESG evaluation mechanisms and fostering gender equity in corporate leadership. These findings have significant implications for policymakers, corporate leaders, and market participants seeking to enhance market efficiency, reduce biases, and promote sustainable development.

In causal reasoning literature, the term actual causality is used to refer to the causality of some specific event that actually happened. One of the most prominent approaches for reasoning about actual causality is that of causal models developed by Halpern and Pearl (Pearl, Causality 2009, Halpern, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 2005, Halpern, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 2005). In this work, we extend Halpern and Pearl’s models for actual causality to an environment of possible world semantics. In this environment, we introduce a logic of actual causality with modal operators and provide sound and (weakly) complete axiomatization for this logic. This logic can be used for reasoning about causality in scenarios involving multiple possibilities, uncertainty and knowledge. Based on this new framework, we define what it means for an agent’s knowledge or lack of knowledge of some event to be an actual cause of some other event. We provide several examples to illustrate that our framework and definitions provide an intuitive environment to reason about actual causality in these scenarios.

We further develop the abstract algebraic logic approach to input/output logic initiated in (De Domenico, International Workshop on Logic, Language, Information, and Computation 326–343, 2022), where the family of selfextensional logics was proposed as a general background environment for input/output logics. In this paper, we introduce and discuss the generalizations of several types of permission (negative, dual negative, static, dynamic), as well as their interactions with normative systems, to various families of selfextensional logics, thereby proposing a systematic approach to the definition of normative and permission systems on nonclassical propositional bases.

Research has indicated that microRNAs (miRNAs), a special class of non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs), can perform important roles in different biological and pathological processes. miRNAs’ functions are realized by regulating their respective target genes (targets). It is thus critical to identify and analyze miRNA-target interactions for a better understanding and delineation of miRNAs’ functions. However, conventional knowledge discovery and acquisition methods have many limitations. Fortunately, semantic technologies that are based on domain ontologies can render great assistance in this regard. In our previous investigations, we developed a miRNA domain-specific application ontology, Ontology for MIcroRNA Target (OMIT), to provide the community with common data elements and data exchange standards in the miRNA research. This paper describes (1) our continuing efforts in the OMIT ontology development and (2) the application of the OMIT to enable a semantic approach for knowledge capture of miRNA-target interactions.

The question of what determines brain laterality for auditory cognitive processing is unresolved. Here, we demonstrate a swap of hemisphere dominance from right to left during semantic interpretation of Chinese lexical tones in native speakers using simultaneously recorded mismatch negativity response and behavioral reaction time during dichotic listening judgment. The mismatch negativity, which is a brain wave response and indexes auditory processing at an early stage, indicated right hemisphere dominance. In contrast, the behavioral reaction time, which reflects auditory processing at a later stage, indicated a right ear listening advantage, or left hemisphere dominance. The observed swap of hemisphere dominance would not occur when the lexical tone was substituted with a meaningless pure tone. This swap reveals dependence of hemisphere labor division initially on acoustic and then on functional cues of auditory inputs in the processing from sound to meaning.

Although there is a wealth of studies on question-asking during clinical settings, scant attention has been paid to patient’s practice of question-asking, especially during Online Medical Consultation (OMC). This study thus probes into the forms, topics, and functions of Chinese e-patient’s question-asking during OMCs. A dataset of 267 examples of e-patient’s question-asking was collected from 44 doctor-patient interactions from Chunyu Doctor. Conventional form (Polar question, Wh-question, Alternative question) and non-conventional form (Sentential fragment, Statement, Response token) were identified and analyzed. Medical questions and General questions were two topics the question-asking concerns. Functionally, e-patient’s question-asking serves as unknown information-seeking, doubted information-verifying, corresponding action-requesting, lay expertise-displaying, and shared decision-making. Furthermore, e-patient’s question-asking is discussed as a deliberate balance between proactive participation and respect for doctor’s superior epistemic access and authorized status.

The writing of histories of Chinese philosophy in the first half of the twentieth century was pivotal in sustaining Chinese philosophy as a sub-discipline under philosophy. Feng Youlan's 馮友蘭 (1895–1990) two-volume _The History of Chinese Philosophy_ stands as a milestone contribution in the field of Chinese philosophy. However, the combined publication of the two volumes in 1934 overshadowed the publication of the first volume in 1931. The 1931 edition thus remains largely overlooked in the field of Chinese philosophy. In this article, I take Feng's discussion of the pre-Qin Yang Zhu as my focal point to examine the differences between the 1931 and 1934 editions, demonstrating how Feng's narration of Chinese philosophy was shaped by his engagement in the discourse on Chinese philosophy of his time and how his revised interpretation became definitive for the contemporary understanding of Yang Zhu.

D. Davidson argues that the existence of alternative conceptual schemes presupposes the Kantian scheme-content dualism, which requires a scheme-neutral empirical content and a fixed, sharp schemecontent distinction. The dismantlement of such a Kantian scheme-content dualism, which Davidson calls “the third dogma of empiricism”, would render the notion of alternative conceptual schemes groundless. To counter Davidson’s attack on the notion of alternative conceptual schemes, I argue that alternative conceptual schemes neither entail nor presuppose the Kantian scheme-content dualism. On the contrary, it is exactly the abandonment of the concept-neutral content and the denial of a fixed, absolute scheme-content distinction that turns the Kantian conceptualabsolutism upside down and thus makes alternative conceptual schemes possible. Proposing common-sense experience as the empirical content of alternative schemes, I construct and defend a non-Kantian scheme-content dualism based on a non-fixed, relative scheme-content distinction. The proposed non-Kantian scheme-content dualism is not only “innocent” enough to be immune from Davidson’s charge of the third dogma of empiricism, but also “solid” enough to be able to sustain alternative conceptual schemes. I conclude that in terms of our conceptual schemes, we are connected to the world as closely as possible; only through conceptual schemes can we be connected to the world.

Is grammatical metaphor – the different ways of construing experience as captured in the grammar of clauses – a challenge for translating like other metaphor types? We investigated how source texts’ degrees of metaphoricity and levels of translation expertise influence the performance of 41 informants when translating texts containing more or less metaphorical segments as stimuli. Data comprised keylogging, screen recording, written retrospective protocols and translation products. No significant differences emerged in total task time, and time allocated to source text reading, information search, and revision in processing stimuli. However, degrees of metaphoricity significantly impact (a) the aggregated time devoted to stimuli, (b) the subset thereof devoted to first-draft typing and (c) the degree of metaphoricity of stimuli renditions. Levels of translation expertise significantly influence informants’ stimuli renditions. Moreover, degrees of metaphoricity interact with translation expertise through the ratio of aggregated time devoted to stimuli to total task time. Informants with higher-level translation expertise showed increased awareness of stimuli, identified them as problems, organized problem-solving behaviors, and demonstrated higher degrees of metaphoricity in renditions. The study sheds light on the intricate relationship between grammatical metaphor, translation expertise, and translation performance, emphasizing nuanced impacts on time allocation and translation quality within a controlled experimental setting.

This paper expands upon the work by Wang (Proceedings of TARK, pp. 493–512, 2017) who proposes a new framework based on quantifier-free predicate language extended by a new bundled modality ∃x□\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\exists x\Box $$\end{document} and axiomatizes the logic over S5 frames. This paper first gives complete axiomatizations of the logics over K, D, T, 4, S4 frames with increasing domains and constant domains, respectively. The systems w.r.t. constant domains feature infinitely many additional rules defined inductively than systems w.r.t. increasing domains. In the second part of the paper, we show that these rules are admissible in the systems without them by providing a general strategy for proving completeness theorems for the logics without these rules over constant domain models (also increasing domain models).

This article examines past and present moral education practices in Chinese families. It begins with a brief overview of Confucian thought on moral education and its lasting influence on Chinese moral ethos. It then identifies the types of moral values emphasised by Chinese parents, as well as the kinds of moral education literature they use for teaching. It proceeds to analyse the methods employed by Chinese parents to instil moral values in everyday contexts. Using evidence from research and recent news reports on Chinese moral conduct, the author argues that the moral socialisation practices in Chinese families may be problematic, despite their best intentions. The article concludes by suggesting alternative family moral education approaches for future consideration.