Y Li

Using a unique dataset on land-use in China, we find that the presence of parks and green areas within a 1-km radius of firms’ geographic locations is positively associated with the number of green patents filed and their future citations. Our path analysis shows that firms surrounded by green spaces are more likely to appoint CEOs and directors with environmental expertise and exhibit a greater strategic emphasis on innovation in corporate disclosures, both of which contribute to enhanced green innovation. The relation between green space coverage and green innovation is stronger for firms operating in highly competitive markets, with weaker pioneering innovation capabilities, higher business diversification, greater public environmental attention, and lower corporate social responsibility performance. Together, these findings highlight the positive role of urban green spaces as a micro-geographic factor in corporate sustainability and green innovation, consistent with biophilia theory, which posits that integrating natural elements into working environments is positively associated with emotional well-being and supports higher-order creative outcomes.

With rapid advances in gene editing technology, the ethics of genetic enhancement has emerged as a prominent issue attracting scholarly attention. Many scholars express concern that genetic enhancement facilitated by gene editing may infringe on human dignity. Bioethicists remain divided on whether genetic enhancement violates human dignity and how effectively to safeguard it during the application of this technology. Confucian ethics offers a profound exploration of human dignity and can serve as a critical lens for assessing whether genetic enhancement technology compromises human dignity. This article explores the ethical implications of human genetic enhancement by reinterpreting the dual dimensions of the Confucian concept of dignity and its associated moral requirements. The Confucian perspective on dignity provides a valuable and unique approach to addressing ethical challenges in genetic enhancement technology.

Language control is a cognitive ability that bilinguals use to suppress interference from the language they are not currently using to accurately select and use the intended language. Adaptive language control underpins language switching and enables bilinguals to flexibly switch between languages according to context. Reinforcement learning, which models how individuals update their strategies based on reward prediction errors, provides a computational framework for studying adaptive behavior in changing environments. To investigate how bilingual language control is shaped by reward signals in social interactions, we used dual‐electroencephalography (EEG) to measure the performance of bilinguals who alternated between active and observational learner roles in voluntary language switching tasks. Computational modeling results indicated that the dual‐sensitivity model best captured behavior which showed that bilinguals adaptively updated values by assigning distinct weights to feedback from themselves and others. EEG analyses revealed that bilinguals relied on expected values during active learning and on prediction errors during observational learning to modulate delta band activity. Taken together, these findings reveal how rewards dynamically modulate language control through expected values and prediction errors, providing new evidence for the adaptability of bilingual control during social interaction.

Delivering bad news in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) constitutes a profound ethical and emotional challenge. In China, this complexity is intensified by a defensive medical culture and strained physician-family dynamics. This study explores the lived experiences of Chinese neonatologists navigating these high-stakes interactions to uncover the phenomenon’s essential structure. A descriptive phenomenological study was conducted. Using a purposive sampling strategy, 19 neonatologists from a tertiary NICU in Western China were recruited. Data were collected through individual face-to-face, semi-structured in-depth interviews and analyzed using Colaizzi’s seven-step method, with rigorous adherence to the COREQ guidelines to ensure trustworthiness. Five interconnected themes emerged: (1) The defensive paradox—strategic communication in a low-trust arena; (2) “Pushing the child off the cliff”—the burden of proxy decision-making; (3) Embodied moral distress—the somatic and emotional toll; (4) From technical anxiety to phronesis—identity reconstruction through virtue ethics; and (5) Systemic solitude—structural deficits and the training-practice gap. The findings reveal a trajectory from defensive adaptation and the moral burden of proxy agency to embodied suffering, mitigated by indigenous cultural meaning-making (xiuxing), yet constrained by systemic solitude. Delivering bad news in the Chinese context transcends information transmission, representing a form of moral practice that leaves indelible somatic marks on physicians. While practitioners cultivate individual resilience through professional wisdom and spiritual reframing, this “weight” is compounded by institutional voids. Addressing these challenges requires shifting from individual adaptation to multilevel systemic support, including culturally-adapted training, organizational support structures, and clinical ethics consultation services.

Effective legal case retrieval is critical for fair and just adjudication of similar cases. Unfortunately, current methods fall short of understanding legal cases at a semantic level. To address the issue, this paper presents a BERT-based two-stage ranking model for Chinese legal case retrieval. The first stage uses the well-known BM25 ranking function to quickly retrieve top n case candidates from the candidate pool. In the second stage, firstly the fine-tuned BERT is used for semantic analysis of the retrieved case candidates (i.e., obtained their embeddings) and then a ranking mechanism is used to re-rank the retrieved cases. We fine-tune the BERT model by integrating the point-wise method with auxiliary learning to better understand the deep semantics of a legal judgement text, and we further train the re-ranking neural network based on the fine-tuned BERT model in conjunction with the pair-wise method. Our extensive experiments reveal that the proposed method surpasses state-of-the-art methods on the Legal Case Retrieval Dataset (LeCaRD) by improving the ranking quality of retrieved legal cases, leading to more relevant cases appearing higher in the ranked results.

本书尝试回答一个根本问题：在一切概念与知识被悬置之后，我们如何从“无”出发，重新理解存在、意识与文明的底层结构？ 传统哲学与逻辑学通常将自指悖论视为需要封禁或规避的问题。本书反其道而行，将自指本身作为唯一的操作引擎。通过“自指三层次”（一始层/二渐层/三断层），从有边界信息与无边界信息的区分入手，逐层生成层级、概念与世界模型，由此提出“有无组三环”体系：有无环（存在稳定性与序意识）、平缩环（空间与物质的生成架构）、异同环（区别信号与现象层）。 在此基础上，本书进一步将三环模型对接物理学基本问题（光速、质量、基本力、时空维度），并延伸至意识理论、文明历史观与宇宙伦理等等问题。 This book attempts to answer a fundamental question: how can we, starting from the "void," re-understand the underlying structures of existence, consciousness, and civilization after all concepts and knowledge are suspended? Traditional philosophy and logic often regard self-referential paradoxes as issues that need to be banned or avoided. This book takes the opposite approach, treating self-reference itself as the sole operational engine. Through the "Three Layers of Self-Reference" (initial layer, gradual layer, and break layer), it begins with the distinction between bounded and unbounded information, progressively generating hierarchies, concepts, and world models, thereby proposing the "Three Rings of Being and Non-Being" system: the Ring of Being and Non-Being (stability of existence and ordered consciousness), the Ring of Compression and Expansion (generative architecture of space and matter), and the Ring of Similarity and Difference (differentiating signals and the phenomenal layer). On this basis, the book further connects the three-ring model to fundamental physics questions (speed of light, mass, fundamental forces, and spacetime dimensions), extending it to theories of consciousness, historical perspectives on civilization, and cosmic ethics, among other issues.

Tracking patient preferences is vital to medical decision-making, but evidence suggests that the standard method for tracking the preferences of incapacitated or incompetent patients (ie, surrogates) is inaccurate. Recent proposals suggest that artificial intelligence preference predictors (AIPPs) can improve preference tracking for these patients, but have faced significant objections. While many of these objections depend on unsettled empirical or technical assumptions, one prominent objection—that AIPPs rely inappropriately on impersonal information—seems to be an in-principle challenge to AIPPs. In this paper, we show that even granting an implausibly strong version of this objection, AIPPs may provide value to clinical decision-making. To show this, we develop suggestions that AIPPs may support best interest decision-making (BIDM) by improving the accuracy, consistency and speed of BIDM, and show that the prevalence of BIDM in the intensive care unit (ICU) grants this application of AIPPs significant moral and practical consequence. This not only clears a path to improve BIDM but also establishes a safe harbour—a relatively uncontroversial yet impactful space—in which proponents may develop AIPPs sufficently to resolve empirical and technical questions about their potential. We conclude by highlighting key questions for the application of AIPPs to BI determinations, setting an agenda for the deeper examination of a largely overlooked application of these tools.

Legal Multi-Choice Question Answering (LMCQA) presents unique challenges due to the complexity and subtlety of legal reasoning. This paper presents DeAtt-LMCQA, a novel model that integrates the DeBERTa language model with attention mechanisms to mitigate classification bias and enhance performance in legal multiple-choice tasks. The system first uses BM25 to retrieve relevant legal articles for each question-option pair, grounding answer evaluation in authoritative legal content. It then encodes these triples via DeBERTa and employs a two-stage attention mechanism for semantic fusion and matching across articles, questions, and answer options. A binary classification strategy is adopted to assess each option independently, improving interpretability and robustness. Extensive experiments on the Judicial Examination Challenge - Question Answering (JEC-QA) dataset from China’s judicial examination demonstrate that DeAtt-LMCQA outperforms multiple strong baselines and achieves third place in the Challenge of AI in Law (CAIL) 2022 competition. Furthermore, it shows competitive advantages over several contemporary large language models in both accuracy and interpretability, highlighting its practical value in domain-specific legal question answering. Our code and model checkpoint are available at https://github.com/gbchen99/chatGPT_result/tree/main/source_code.

Automated deduction based on contradiction separation extends the binary resolution principle, offering a novel approach to deductive inference rules. Constructing standard contradictions is essential for its efficiency. This paper systematically investigates two new types of standard contradictions in propositional and first‐order logic, enriching the library of standard contradictions and enhancing its effectiveness. First, we define two types of standard contradictions: sign‐boundary contradictions and diagonal vacancy‐type contradictions. Next, we propose the corresponding construction methods and present their properties related to contradiction composition and literal addition. Furthermore, we explore the transformations between these two types of contradictions and analyze the conditions necessary to construct standard contradictions. Finally, we extend these findings to first‐order logic, demonstrating their applicability in more complex logical systems.

The ethical use of placebos in herbal medicine (HM) clinical trials remains contested, particularly in contexts where traditional medical systems shape patients’ beliefs and expectations. Complexities in placebo preparation, insufficient transparency, and inconsistent consent practices pose challenges not only to scientific validity but also to ethical standards. This study aimed to explore stakeholder perspectives on placebo use in HM trials, with a specific focus on ethical concerns related to trust, informed consent, and trial integrity. In-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with 23 stakeholders, including clinical investigators, research coordinators, trial managers, pharmaceutical staff, and patient representatives. We applied an inductive, framework-based thematic analysis to identify key perceptions, challenges, and needs regarding placebo use. Participants demonstrated diverse understandings and attitudes toward placebos. Medical professionals, who often had higher levels of formal medical training, tended to describe placebos from a scientific perspective, whereas patients more commonly expressed skepticism rooted in concerns about trust and transparency. Pharmacists reported substantial challenges in developing indistinguishable HM placebos, raising questions about the ethical implications of adding small amounts of active ingredients. Participants also highlighted inconsistent practices in placebo composition and similarity evaluation, which raised concerns about blinding integrity and transparency, as well as insufficient communication that affected participant trust and overall trial integrity. Differences in professional and educational background appeared to shape how stakeholders perceived HM placebos, influencing informed consent and ethical conduct in trials. Enhancing understanding and transparency in placebo composition and similarity evaluation is essential to uphold ethical and scientific integrity of HM trials and to guide the development of clear guidelines for HM placebo design and communication. not applicable.

Coalition Logic is a popular logic in logical research on strategic reasoning. In a recent paper, Li and Ju argued that generally, models of Coalition Logic, concurrent game models, have three too strong assumptions: seriality, independence of agents, and determinism. They presented a Minimal Coalition Logic based on general concurrent game models, which do not have the three assumptions. However, when constructing coalition logics about strategic reasoning in special kinds of situations, we may want to keep some of the assumptions. Thus, studying coalition logics with some of these assumptions makes good sense. In this paper, we show the completeness of these coalition logics in a uniform way.

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.

Certain populations face challenges in accessing online health information, leading to the emergence of Proxy Online Health Information Seeking (Proxy OHIS). Due to their close contact with patients and medical knowledge, nursing interns frequently encounter requests from patients to perform Proxy OHIS, which presents various ethical challenges. Currently, no research specifically focuses on nursing interns within the context of their Proxy OHIS activities. This study aims to explore the ethical decision-making processes of nursing interns when engaging in Proxy OHIS for patients during their clinical practice and to analyze the associated ethical challenges, thereby contributing to improved ethical decision-making among nursing students. This qualitative study was guided by a constructivist paradigm. Rest’s Four-Component Model of ethical decision-making served as the theoretical framework for examining the decision-making process. Participants were recruited via purposive sampling from a tertiary Grade A hospital in Zibo between August and September 2025. Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with eligible participants until data saturation was achieved. The study involved nursing interns at multiple educational levels (diploma, bachelor’s, and postgraduate) from eight different universities. Data were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using Graneheim and Lundman’s conventional qualitative content analysis approach with NVivo 14.0 software. A total of 18 nursing interns participated. Content analysis identified four primary categories: “Identifying ethical issues and risks”, “Formulating appropriate ethical judgments”, “Balancing multiple ethical motivations” and “Implementing prudent behavioral strategies”. Guided by Rest’s Four-Component Model, this study revealed that nursing interns encounter a range of ethical challenges throughout their decision-making process when performing Proxy OHIS for patients. These challenges span the entire process, from initial issue recognition to the implementation of final actions. To address these challenges effectively, interventions should focus on two key areas: ethics and online health information seeking. In the future, nursing education stakeholders can build a comprehensive ethical support system, including establishing structured supervision protocols for handling Proxy OHIS requests.

In recent years, CityWalk has been a favorite among visitors asanimmersive way of city touring. Traditional CityWalk experiences, however, lacks deep interpretation of the surroundings, andvisitorsare not able to obtain real-time historical, cultural, and architecturalbackground information easily. The rapid development of augmentedreality (AR) technology have provided CityWalk withnewinteractive approaches, enabling users to obtain augmentedinformation in real-time through smart devices. The useof ARtechnology in CityWalk applications, however, still needfurtherstudy, especially in terms of technological maturity, user interactionexperience, data synchronization, and privacy. This paper explores the application prospects of the combinationofAR and CityWalk in three aspects: technical feasibility, interactionoptimization, and content generation. First, fromthe technicalperspective, consider the latest advancements of AR, the popularityof smart devices, and the trend of market growth to describeitsfeasibility in the CityWalk scenario. Second, answeringtheinteractive requirements of CityWalk, the application of GPSandinertial navigation technology and SLAM(SimultaneousLocalization and Mapping) technology was explored to enhancetheprecision and immersion of AR navigation. Meanwhile, throughthecombination of multimodal interaction modes such as voice, vision, and gestures, the user experiences of convenience and operabilitycan be achieved. Finally, the real-time update mechanismof ARcontent based on cloud computing, Internet of Things (IoT) andedgecomputing is discussed to ensure the timeliness of data anduserprivacy security. In addition, user research results showthat over80% of respondents hope to experience localized ARcontent inCityWalk, with 72% willing to pay for high-quality customizedaugmented reality experiences, further validating its commercialpotential. Overall, the combination of CityWalk and AR not onlyenhancestourists' exploration experience, but also provides newpossibilities00 February 00 Keywords CityWalk，Augmented Reality (AR) Technology，User Experience，Technical Feasibility Corresponding Author Yusheng Guo 2 International Theory and Practice in Humanities and Social Sciences | www.wisvora.comfor urban tourism, cultural dissemination, and business modelinnovation. In the future, with the continuous optimizationof ARtechnology, its application in CityWalk is expected to becomeanimportant development direction for smart tourism.

Population aging and environmental pollution have become critical challenges to global sustainable development. Against this backdrop, we aim to explore the largely underexamined economic role of corporate pension plans in promoting corporate environmental sustainability, beyond their traditional function of mitigating demographic aging risks. Leveraging China's rapid expansion of the second pillar of its pension system, we empirically investigate the association between corporate pension plans and firms' environmental sustainability practices, based on 51,435 firm-year observations of Chinese A-share listed firms over the period 2007–2024. Our results indicate that the implementation of annuity systems significantly enhances firms' green technology innovation. This finding remains robust across a battery of identification strategies, including instrumental variable estimation, Heckman two-stage models, propensity score matching, and placebo tests. Mechanism analyses suggest that annuity systems promote green technology innovation by improving the quality of human resources, alleviating financing constraints, and mitigating managerial myopia. Cross-sectional analyses further indicate that the effect is more pronounced as Chinese society transitions into the stage of deep aging, particularly in regions with higher levels of population aging, and among firms with greater levels of digitalization and corporate governance. Overall, our study integrates labor market dynamics with socio-ecological sustainability within the context of population aging, thereby providing novel insights into synergistic pathways for addressing demographic transitions and advancing sustainable development globally.

In general discussions of the relationship between artificial intelligence (AI) and the environment, the focus often lies on how AI technologies can be leveraged for environmental protection, as well as the ethical risks that may arise in the process. While this line of inquiry is important, this paper shifts the attention to a less explored yet equally significant question: How does AI influence lived experience within environmental ethics? Adopting a phenomenological approach, this paper draws on lived experience from East Asian perspectives and analyzes three representative concepts intimately tied to it: terroir, trajetivity, and the living flesh. Terroir refers not to an objective environment, but to a situated perspective on the environment—one that encompasses sensory perception, emotion, and layers of metaphorical and cultural meaning. Within this view, Augustin Berque’s notion of trajetivity is introduced, emphasizing the dynamic, communicative, and continuously evolving interplay between humans and the environment. Embedded within terroir and trajetivity is the idea of living flesh (なまみ), that signifies a direct, bodily relationship with the ecological web, emphasizing the embodied, unmediated experience of nature. However, AI, as a technological paradigm, directly affects environmental ethics grounded in lived experience. Concrete technology such as virtual reality and generative AI shapes different modes of lived experience, and exerts a profound influence on terroir, trajetivity, and the living flesh. This paper argues for a renewed understanding of these concepts in order to recenter lived experience within environmental ethics. Considering the phenomenological approach, this paper does not seek to answer whether AI should be used favorably. Instead, it aims to reveal how AI, as a technological paradigm, shapes, alters, and influences lived experience within environmental ethics. This reveals a call for attention to lived experience within East Asian cultures, offering an alternative theoretical framework for the development of environmental ethics.

The literature on downward envy mainly explores its consequences at the dyadic level, given the role of envy as a “call to action” that motivates leaders to reduce the gap between themselves and the envied employee. In this paper, we argue that downward envy can be a team-level phenomenon and that its outcomes are due to an out-of-control situation. Specifically, we posit that maximum downward envy triggers ego depletion in leaders, in turn causing them to engage in team-level abusive supervision. We further propose that these relationships are moderated by the leaders’ moral disengagement propensity. Our hypotheses are supported by results from an analysis of 53 leaders and 335 employees. Our findings thus advance the extant literature on downward envy and have important implications for practitioners in terms of managing envy and abusive supervision.

When employers break promises, employees may engage in counterproductive work behaviours. Though traditionally viewed negatively, the current research examined whether such behaviours can help restore a sense of power, potentially leading to more constructive outcomes such as the employee’s willingness to reconcile. We conducted two studies (Study 1: _N_ = 186; Study 2: _N_ = 201) using autobiographical recollection and repeated measures to examine these questions. In both studies, we found that merely recalling a broken promise was associated with a significant drop in the sense of power employees experienced, while merely recalling counterproductive behaviours they had engaged in significantly increased their sense of power. Additionally, in Study 2 we found that this increased sense of power was associated with an increased willingness to reconcile with the employer. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the social psychology of counterproductive behaviour following broken promises.

Drawing upon the concept of vicarious interaction and information processing theories, this study proposed that online users can derive advantages in information seeking from observing human–human or AI–human conversations. We also explored the roles of message involvement and news-finds-me (NFM) perception in the relationship between vicarious interaction and information seeking. Online users with environmental concerns (N = 218) participated in a (human–human vicarious interaction vs. AI–human vicarious interaction) between-subject experiment. Results revealed that while the direct effect of different vicarious interactions on the intention to seek related information was not significant, AI–human vicarious interaction did lead to higher message involvement. Moreover, the NFM perception moderated the relationship between message involvement and information seeking. Specifically, this effect was particularly pronounced among participants with a lower level of NFM perception when compared to those with a higher level of NFM perception. The findings advance the understanding of vicarious interaction and contribute theoretically to AI–human communication.

We advance the behavioral theory of the firm (BTOF) by theorizing the prioritization of different types of searches (i.e., shareholder- versus stakeholder-oriented) in response to performance feedback, as well as the convergence versus divergence between such performance feedback-driven prioritization and executive propensities. We first posit that negative feedback pushes firms to prioritize R&D over CSR, while positive feedback encourages them to prioritize CSR over R&D. Furthermore, we theorize the alignment versus misalignment between performance feedback-driven prioritization and executive propensities. Focusing on female directors’ traits of risk aversion and ethicality, we posit that they mitigate firms’ prioritization of R&D over CSR in response to negative feedback due to the misalignment that leads to search direction divergence. In contrast, female directors amplify the prioritization of CSR over R&D in response to positive feedback because of the alignment that leads to search direction convergence. Using panel data on S&P 1500 firms in 2002–2020, we find support for our arguments. Moving beyond prior BTOF research on identifying specific search directions in response to performance feedback, we develop a new theory illustrating how firms prioritize distinct types of searches. We further deepen our theory to offer novel insights into how executive propensities are aligned or misaligned with search prioritization driven by performance feedback.

Most scholars engage in the free will and moral responsibility debate by examining its relationship with determinism. However, this debate remains trapped in conceptual analysis, showing no sign of resolution. Inspired by Strawson's "Freedom and Resentment" (1962), I argue that Nietzsche offers a method to move beyond the compatibilism/incompatibilism dualism by analysing the development of conscience in response to moral expectations and punishment. In this account, conscience and guilt are corresponding attitudes to moral expectations and to be a free agent is a matter of competence, which hinges on one's ability to assume responsibility for oneself. I first focus on moral responsibility, suggesting that Nietzsche sees morality as a natural phenomenon evolving alongside moral practices. Through an analysis of its evolution, I argue that Nietzsche does not reject moral responsibility but instead advocates for a version promoting health, rooted in individuals' strong will to create values and hold themselves responsible based on pride and confidence in their ability to rectify misdeeds. To develop a positive account of Nietzschean free will, I claim that he explicitly defines free will as "the will to self-responsibility" (TI, Skirmishes, 39), a form of strong will. The elements shaping conscience and value creation—autonomy and amor fati—constitute Nietzsche's positive interpretation of free will. To support this, I analyse the origins of "freedom" and "the will" and examine how Nietzsche builds on Stoic ideas of fate and free will by emphasising the active embracing of suffering as essential to autonomy. Nietzsche's practical understanding of free will as a strong will in the practice of amor fati—one that actively creates its own values amid the constraints of existence—challenges traditional notions of free will and offers a new approach to the determinism-free will/moral responsibility debate. This also has the potential to free contemporary debates from endless conceptual analysis.

This study uses China’s Medicinal Product Procurement Reform (MPPR) as an exogenous negative shock to commercial kickbacks for Chinese pharmaceutical firms and examines the causal effect of commercial kickbacks on corporate aggressive tax avoidance. Employing a staggered difference-in-differences approach, we find a significant reduction in tax aggressiveness among firms affected by the MPPR. Mechanism analysis reveals that the reform leads to a notable decline in treated firms’ kickback-related expenses, including abnormal entertainment and travel costs and average sales personnel salaries. In line with this mechanism, we find that the suppressive effects of the MPPR on tax aggressiveness vary depending on firms’ pressures, rationalization, and opportunities for avoiding tax. These results highlight that firms engaged in unethical practices like commercial kickbacks are more likely to adopt other forms of misconduct, such as aggressive tax avoidance, thus emphasizing the need to address unethical behavior at its root cause to mitigate its broader consequences.

Many organizations still face significant challenges in document audits, such as contract reviews, accounting audits, and compliance checks, which require substantial manpower and time. Current Artificial Intelligence solutions struggle with ambiguous requirements, unclear standards, and complex documents, limiting their scalability and effectiveness. To address these challenges, we propose a novel architecture, LLMES, designed to generate a concise and independent audit checklist. This approach allows Large Language Models to perform audits and produce results without prior fine-tuning. LLMES effectively integrates complex legal documents, expert knowledge, and mandatory regulatory guidelines with large language modeling to enhance artificial intelligence-assisted auditing. In our experiments auditing a medical device quality management system using a 292-item sampled checklist, LLMES achieved an F1 score of 0.895 on core datasets, significantly outperforming the 0.696 score of direct auditing. Additionally, LLMES attained an F1 score of 0.876 ± 0.034 across full datasets and 0.905 on a complete 1696-item checklist. The source code and datasets are publicly available on our GitHub repository: https://github.com/lyxx3rd/LLMES.

To enhance the expressiveness of the interval temporal logic HS over branching interval models, this paper extends the language of HS by introducing quantifiers over paths. We also modify the original semantics of HS by evaluating formulas on pairs of intervals and paths, rather than on intervals alone. Our extension of HS aligns with the extension of CTL to CTL∗\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\texttt {CTL}^*}$$\end{document}. The resulting logic is called HS∗\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\texttt {HS}^{*}$$\end{document} in this paper. We show that HS∗\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\texttt {HS}^{*}$$\end{document} is strictly more expressive than HS, and we also demonstrate that HS∗\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\texttt {HS}^{*}$$\end{document} is a fragment of Monadic Path Logic, a monadic second-order logic where set quantification is restricted to paths.

Classical logics for strategic reasoning, such as Coalition Logic and Alternating-time Temporal Logic, formalize absolute strategic reasoning about the unconditional strategic abilities of agents to achieve their goals. Goranko and Ju in [5, 6] introduced a Logic for Conditional Strategic Reasoning ($\textsf{CSR}$). $\textsf{CSR}$ is a powerful logic, and its completeness is still an open problem. In this paper, we do some useful work towards showing the completeness of $\textsf{CSR}$. $\textsf{CSR}$ has three featured operators, and one of them has the following reading: for some action of A that guarantees the achievement of her goal, B has an action to guarantee the achievement of his goal. This operator makes good sense when A is cooperating with B, and the logic about this operator is called Logic for Cooperating Conditional Strategic Reasoning ($\textsf{CCSR}$). In this paper, we prove the completeness of two fragments of $\textsf{CCSR}$: the liability fragment and the ability fragment. The key ingredients of our proof approach include standard disjunctions, the validity-reduction condition of standard disjunctions, abstract game forms and their realization, and the derivability-reduction condition of standard disjunctions. The approach has good potential to be applied to the completeness of $\textsf{CSR}$ and other strategic logics.

Insider trading has long been scrutinized in corporate law, finance, and business ethics, yet whether politicians trade on insider information—and if so, whether this breaches their fiduciary duty—remains unsettled. Drawing on the perspectives of social contract theory and virtue ethics, this study examines the ethical implications of U.S. senators exploiting nonpublic, bill-related information for personal gain. We analyze a comprehensive dataset of senators’ equity trades from 2014 to 2021, matched with legislative bill data classified using natural language processing to identify key legislative milestones: introduction, engrossment, enrollment, and enactment. Our findings reveal that trades executed just prior to critical legislative events yield significant abnormal returns. We also document patterns consistent with stealth trading, in which senators sequentially trade leading up to legislative decisions. Furthermore, senators with greater legislative influence realize higher abnormal returns, highlighting the financial benefits of privileged information. To address these ethical concerns, we propose a “contingent freedom” framework, restricting senators’ trading during critical legislative periods. This approach aims to balance ethical integrity and individual financial autonomy by mitigating conflicts of interest.

International collaboration on genetic/genomic studies has expanded dramatically. Informed consent remains a cornerstone for protecting participant autonomy. Over the past few decades, guidelines, recommendations, and theoretical discussions have been published on the informed consent process in cross-cultural contexts, particularly in Africa. These resources suggest best practices—ranging from assessing participant comprehension to engaging local communities. However, it remains unclear how well the current practices address the full range of informed consent challenges encountered by the stakeholders. We performed a systematic literature review of empirical studies that explored stakeholders’ perspectives, primarily research participants and researchers, on informed consent in the context of international genetic/genomic research in countries of Africa. We followed the PRISMA guideline and used thematic analysis for data synthesis and analysis. Twenty-four relevant articles were identified and reviewed for five bioethical issues: (1) comprehension of consent information, (2) voluntary participation, (3) consent elements, (4) consent model, and (5) community engagement. Different levels of understanding and recall over different consent elements, and multiple factors associated with comprehension were observed. Voluntary participation could be influenced by misconception, monetary and healthcare compensation, and previously established trust with the research team. Many participants show less interest in certain consent elements, such as biobanking, data sharing, and future use, but more in the section on benefits. Returning results had potential advantages in building trust between participants and the research team; however, the most appropriate way to return results is under discussion. There was also conversation over consent models (broad, tired, and dynamic) on their balance between autonomy and practicality. Finally, many articles ascertained the value of community engagement and encouraged researchers to consider local cultural beliefs, social stigma, and decision-making habits when designing the consent process. We observed an increased interest in the ethical conduct of the informed consent process under international genetics/genomics studies in recent decades. Awareness and attention to these issues are needed to develop more appropriate consent strategies that could further safeguard the rights and welfare of local participants and support the smooth conduct of research.