Y Jiang

For two millennia, the dominant approach to preventing the abuse of power in political philosophy has been structured around the logic of "checks and balances"—pitting power against power, ambition against ambition. Yet this paradigm faces a logical challenge: the supervisors themselves need to be supervised, generating a potential infinite regress of "who guards the guardians?" In response to this difficulty, this paper attempts to propose a testable theoretical conjecture: jurisdictional separation. Rather than assigning different powers to oversee one another in the same domain, this conjecture suggests drawing insurmountable boundaries of exclusive jurisdiction for distinct types of power, such that no power can structurally reach into another's domain. This paper does not claim to have found a fully established alternative. Rather, it offers a preliminary examination of the conjecture's logical coherence, theoretical advantages, and enabling conditions. Specifically, this paper provides a formal definition of jurisdictional separation, derives its three core corollaries (separation over balancing, boundary rigidity over power elasticity, temporariness over permanence), engages with the tradition of separation of powers, and argues for the conjecture's potential theoretical advantages in preventing jurisdictional overreach. The paper further deduces the concept of temporal jurisdictional separation and demonstrates the conjecture's potential applicability to states of exception, as well as its scope conditions, failure conditions, and cost function. Two forms of jurisdictional separation—pure institutional form and technology-enhanced form—are distinguished. The contribution of this paper lies in providing a preliminary formal articulation of a theoretical proposition that may be tested, revised, or refuted by subsequent research, rather than offering an already validated institutional scheme.

Intelligent technology introduces both opportunities and challenges in the realm of employee ethics. While intelligent technology is widely believed to combat employee unethical behavior by enhancing transparency and reducing discretionary decisions, it may also inadvertently promote unethical conduct by triggering awareness of job substitution (i.e., intelligent technology awareness [ITA]). This study investigates how ITA affects accountants’ unethical decision-making (i.e., UDM). Drawing on the cognitive appraisal theory of stress and self-regulation theory, we theorize a double-edged sword impact of ITA on UDM. Our results suggested that ITA could be appraised either as a challenge, leading to a reduction in self-regulation depletion and subsequent UDM, or as a threat, resulting in an increase in self-regulation depletion and subsequent UDM. Further, we found that organizational support for development attenuated the relationship between ITA and threat appraisal. However, the link was more pronounced when individual adaptability was high. This study offers vital insights for managing employee unethical behavior amid an evolving trend of intelligent technology-induced job replacement.

The inspiration for this collective writing project began with a digital conference entitled ‘Knowledge Socialism, COVID-19 and the New Reality of Education’ held at Beijing Normal University. In this conference and through this article, multiple researchers spread across six continents have engaged in the collaborative task of outlining emerging innovations and alternative contingencies towards education, international collaboration, and digital reform in this time of global crisis. Trends associated with digital education, knowledge openness, peer production, and collective intelligence as articulated by Michael A. Peters’ conception of Knowledge Socialism are given careful analysis and exploration. Some of the members of this collective endeavor to identify problems, others, begin to draw boxes around potential solutions. Overall, this article engages with real world challenges and innovations that look beyond dominant neoliberal trends in the knowledge economy to build bridges toward novel possibilities in this era of rapid digital change.

Size perception of visual objects is highly context dependent. Here we report a novel perceptual size illusion that the self-face, being a unique and distinctive self-referential stimulus, can enlarge its perceived size. By using a size discrimination paradigm, we found that the self-face was perceived as significantly larger than the other-face of the same size. This size overestimation effect was not due to the familiarity of the self-face, since it could be still observed when the self-face was directly compared with a famous face. More crucially, such illusion effect could be extended to a new cartoon face that was transiently associated with one's own face and could also exert further contextual influences on visual size perception of other objects. These findings together highlight the role of self-awareness in visual size perception and point to a special mechanism of size perception tuned to self-referential information.

Schizophrenia is considered as a self-disorder with disordered local synchronous activation. Previous studies have reported widespread dyssynchrony of local activation in patients with SZ, which may be one of the crucial physiological mechanisms of SZ. To further verify this assumption, this work used a surface-based two-dimensional regional homogeneity approach to compare the local neural synchronous spontaneous oscillation between patients with SZ and healthy controls, instead of the volume-based regional homogeneity approach described in previous study. Ninety-seven SZ patients and 126 HC were recruited to this study, and we found the SZ showed abnormal 2dReHo across the cortical surface. Specifically, at the global level, the SZ patients showed significantly reduced global 2dReHo; at the vertex level, the foci with increased 2dReHo in SZ were located in the default mode network, frontoparietal network, and limbic network ; however, foci with decreased 2dReHo were located in the somatomotor network, auditory network, and visual network. Additionally, this work found positive correlations between the 2dReHo of bilateral rectus and illness duration, as well as a significant positive correlation between the 2dReHo of right orbital inferior frontal gyrus with the negative scores of the positive and negative syndrome scale in the SZ patients. Therefore, the 2dReHo could provide some effective features contributed to explore the pathophysiology mechanism of SZ.

Despite growing attention to the environment decoupling behaviors of emerging market multinational enterprises (EM-MNEs) in reconciling the resource dilemmas of responding to institutional pressures and achieving profit maximization, there is limited focus on how different environmental management practices affect EM-MNEs’ international expansion. We argue that symbolic environmental protection of EM-MNEs can effectively balance institutional pressures and economic efficiency, thereby facilitating their international expansion. In contrast, substantive environmental protection introduces risks of sacrificing economic benefits in response to institutional pressures, thus inhibiting international expansion. Furthermore, drawing on recent research on the multi-dimensionality of digitalization in addressing resource dilemmas, we argue that higher digitalization intensity strengthens the positive impact of symbolic environmental protection on international expansion and mitigates the negative impact of substantive environmental protection by reducing both legitimacy and efficiency issues. Conversely, a broader digitalization scope weakens the positive effect of symbolic environmental protection on international expansion and amplifies the negative impact of substantive environmental protection by increasing legitimacy and efficiency challenges. Based on a sample of Chinese listed manufacturing MNEs from 2010 to 2020, we find support for our arguments. This study contributes to the international business (IB) literature at the intersection of EM-MNEs’ legitimation strategies, environmental management practices, and digitalization.

$\varTheta $ -$\varXi $ functions are the unified form of 0-overlap and 1-grouping functions. And the unified form of $0$-overlap and $1$-grouping functions via multiplicative generators on unit interval has been researched. In fact, either real number sets or interval-valued sets are special cases of posets or lattices and many questions in applications involve incomparable elements. Based of above questions, we continue to consider this topic and construct the unified form of $0$-overlap and $1$-grouping functions via multiplicative generators on a completely distributive lattice. Finally, we investigate some properties including extended migrativity and homogeneity of $\varTheta $-$\varXi $ functions constructed by generalized multiplicative generators triples.

Given the widespread occurrence of ethical dilemmas and moral distress in healthcare, it is crucial for educators to strengthen nursing students’ ethical education. However, there is little published research on the best practices for teaching nursing ethics. This study aims to determine whether the Presentation-Assimilation-Discussion (PAD) mode, compared to traditional lecture-based learning (LBL) teaching, increases nursing students’ moral sensitivity and ethical decision-making skills. A total of 100 eligible nursing students were randomized into two groups: the PAD model group (n = 50) and the LBL group (n = 50). Their moral sensitivity and ethical decision-making skills were evaluated using the Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire-Revised Chinese Version (MSQ-R-CV) and the Chinese Version of Judgment About Nursing Decision (JAND-CV), both before and after the course, and again three months later. After the course, the PAD group showed significantly higher scores in moral sensitivity and ethical decision-making compared to the LBL group, both immediately and at the 3-month follow-up (p < 0.05). Specifically, the PAD group demonstrated greater improvements in total scores and in most subdimensions, including moral responsibility, moral burden, ethical choice, and ethical action. While both groups showed some degree of improvement after the intervention, the changes were more substantial and longer-lasting in the PAD group. This study confirms that the PAD model is an effective method for teaching nursing ethics and developing nursing students’ moral sensitivity and ethical decision-making skills. This randomized trial was registered in Chinese Clinical Registry Center, under code (ChiCTR2400086717) in 07/09/2024.

Post-pandemic witnessed the domestic movies in the Chinese film industry continuously capture an expanding market share, which further made the domestic movies more familiar to audiences. On the other hand, however, greater popularity created more interest, and hence created more special expectation towards localization among audiences. Conceptualization of the local films' localization implies two vital conditions: Firstly, native feature films are to create a sense of sympathy for their people, and it is built upon the ability of the movies to answer the needs and challenges of modern society's reality and currents, yet achieving at the same time an inner integrity between the form and the content. Second, it is assumed that local films should be able to portray Chinese cultural identity in international terms, with the spiritual and philosophical underpinnings of Chinese society. With the industry's maturity, audience expectations and aesthetic tastes are also evolving. The question then is: Can new mainstream blockbusters regularly innovate in both form and thematic substance and adhere to a systematic logic of localization? This paper aims to explore how new mainstream films can achieve significant leaps in emotional building, adapting to shifting cultural trends and viewer demands through the lens of localization.

Gender role congruity theory emphasizes the ubiquity of male-typed leadership schemas as barriers to female leaders’ career development (i.e., descriptive stereotypes); however, the expectation of female leaders’ fulfilling their gender role (i.e., prescriptive stereotypes) has received limited attention. Extending this line of research, we propose the concept of female-typed leadership schemas and suggest that the (mis)match between female CEOs’ gender-stereotyped behavioral differences (agentic vs. communal) and female-typed leadership stereotypes helps explain the prescriptive gender stereotypes that women face in the CEO post-succession stage. Using data from 251 female CEO succession events at publicly listed firms on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges from 2007 to 2017 in China, we found that the risk-taking behaviors of new female CEOs may lead to a perceived mismatch between prescriptive gender-stereotyped expectations and the actual behaviors of female CEOs as top leaders, increasing their likelihood of being dismissed during the post-succession process. Moreover, gender inequality beliefs in local contexts and adverse selection at the time of succession amplify the gender-stereotyped attribution. This study contributes to the female leadership and ethics literature by developing a comprehensive theoretical framework to test how female-typed leadership stereotypes hinder the career development of women in top executive positions.

The question of how to improve the effectiveness of charitable solicitation has long been a subject of investigation for charity organizations. Through six studies, including four incentive-compatible studies and a field study, the present research demonstrates an easy, actionable, and widely applicable semantic-framing strategy that can be utilized to promote charitable giving. Semantically framing charitable giving as a gift (rather than a donation) increases not only donors’ intention to contribute but also their actual contribution amount (Studies 1–3). Both mediation (Study 4) and moderation (Study 5) approaches provide convergent evidence that the effect of framing charitable giving as a gift rather than a donation on contribution is driven by donors’ perceived social distance from beneficiaries. The authors further find that this framing effect is weakened when soliciting contributions from donors who see social distance as desirable (e.g., those with a high need for status; Study 6). The current work contributes to the literature streams on charitable giving, social exchange, and semantic framing and provides strong managerial implications for charity organizations.

The human brain optimises cognitive resource allocation to enhance the processing speed and efficiency of vital information for better survival and adaptation in response to threat signals. Previous studies found that fearful expressions, as visual cues signalling threats, can not only have advantages in entering and remaining in awareness, but also enhance subsequent perceptual processing of low-spatial-frequency (LSF) information. However, it remains unknown whether the enhanced perceptual processing of LSF induced by fearful expressions also grants LSF information a competitive advantage in awareness. To this end, we employed a binocular rivalry paradigm to measure awareness of Gabor patches with low or high spatial frequencies following the rapid priming of fearful versus neutral expressions. The results revealed that the relative dominance of LSF over high-spatial-frequency (HSF) Gabor patches was markedly heightened following brief exposure to fearful compared with neutral expressions. This effect was found for both upright and inverted expressions, indicating it is independent of face configuration. Our study thus suggests a feature-based perceptual optimisation mechanism with evolutionary significance, potentially optimising cognitive resource allocation in threatening situations.

The book Comprehensive Review of Contemporary Western Writing Theories Centering on Jean-Luc Nancy examines Jean-Luc Nancy's ideas on writing within the context of Western cultural thought. It delves deeply into the theoretical origins and philosophical foundations of his thought, focusing on the theoretical connotations, characteristics, and artistic forms of "writing", while fully exploring the academic value of Nancy's writing philosophy. Rather than merely tracing the modern history of writing thought, the book places it within the academic history of writing, exploring the connotation of writing from ancient Greece to the postmodern era. It reveals the trend of writing evolving "from hidden to apparent" and connects writing with sense, the body, art, and literature, centering on "writing." The author, through this survey of writing, presents a comprehensive and multidimensional view of contemporary Western writing and opens up to the infinite possibilities of writing and sense.

Patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease are characterized by attenuated pulmonary function and are frequently reported with cognitive impairments, especially memory impairments. The mechanism underlying the memory impairments still remains unclear. We applied resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging to compare the brain local activities with static and dynamic amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations among patients with COPD and healthy controls. Compared with HC, COPD patients exhibited decreased sALFF in the right basal ganglia and increased dALFF in the bilateral parahippocampal/hippocampal gyrus. The reduced the left basal ganglia was associated with lower oxygen partial pressure. Besides, the increased dALFF in the left hippocampal/parahippocampal cortex was associated with poor semantic-memory performance and the increased dALFF in the left hippocampal/parahippocampal cortex was associated the forced vital capacity. The present study revealed the abnormal static and dynamic local-neural activities in the basal ganglia and parahippocampal/hippocampal cortex in COPD patient and its relationship with poor lung function and semantic-memory impairments.

Second-person neuroscience holds social cognition as embodied meaning co-regulation through reciprocal interaction, modeled here as coupled active inference with affect emerging as inference over identity-relevant surprise. Each agent maintains a self-model that tracks violations in its predictive coherence while recursively modeling the other. Valence is computed from self-model prediction error, weighted by self-relevance, and modulated by prior affective states and by what we term temporal aiming, which captures affective appraisal over time. This accommodates shifts in the self-other boundary, allowing affect to emerge at individual and dyadic levels. We propose a novel method termed geometric hyperscanning, based on the Forman-Ricci curvature, to empirically operationalize these processes: it tracks topological reconfigurations in inter-brain networks, with its entro-py serving as a proxy for affective phase transitions such as rupture, co-regulation, and re-attunement.