Yi Chen

Offering an alternative mode of visual cultural analysis to the prevalent discursive model, this book proposes to situate analysis of Image within 'formal' analyses of culture experience. Specifically, the discussion draws on theories of affective aesthetics with the view of addressing the sensual form of culture (i.e. 'cultural form'). Therefore, the volume puts forward a mode of formalist analysis in visual cultural research which takes purchase on the idea of 'cultural form.' A continuum of formalist attention between Image analysis (visual media, industrial design) and probing of 'cultural forms' establishes the theoretical underpinning of the book. These concepts are expounded through a case study which looks at formal experimentations and debates arising from 1960s avant-garde artistic practices in London.

Background: Although ethics consultation has been introduced to clinical practice for many years, the results of empirical studies to evaluate the effectiveness of ethics consultation are still controversial. The design of randomised controlled trials is considered the best research design to evaluate the effect of a clinical practice on the outcomes of interests. In order to understand the effects of ethics consultation, we conducted this search for studies with the design of randomised controlled trials to evaluate ethics consultation.Objective: To provide an integrated review of studies with the design of randomised controlled trials to evaluate the effectiveness of ethics consultation.Methods: PubMed was used to search for studies using the randomised controlled trial design to evaluate the effectiveness of ethics consultation. The search term used was “ethics consultation”. The selection criterion was limited to “randomised controlled trial”.Results: Four articles that met both search criteria were retrieved. One of these articles reported a study that did not actually use the design of a randomised controlled trial and is excluded from the following discussion.Conclusions: To apply randomised controlled trials to evaluate the effectiveness of ethics consultation is extremely difficult as long as two issues are not resolved: the standardisation of ethics consultation and a placebo for ethics consultation to eliminate the placebo effect. Thus, the results generated by the design of randomised controlled trials are always problematic. Furthermore, as long as the two issues exist, the results generated by the design of quantitative research methods always pose problems

A number of existing researches agree that digitalization would facility firms to launch ambidextrous innovations. Digitalization is not only about technological change, but more importantly, the reshaping of the firms’ knowledge structure and routines to percept and integrate knowledge. Thus, some researchers suggest that whether firms could benefit from digitalization varies across firms and industries, since innovation in different firms and industries relies on differentiated level of cognitive and reasoning of knowledge. However, existing studies mainly focus on exploring the firm-level differences, and leave the industry-level difference underdeveloped. In response, this study integrates knowledge-based view to examine how a firm’s digitalization affects ambidextrous innovation, and further explore the conjoint effect of industrial knowledge bases—the knowledge base of the industry the firm is located in—on the relationship between firm digitalization level and ambidextrous innovation. This study uses Python to conduct text mining of firms’ annual reports, and obtains data of 394 listed companies from the year 2014 to 2020. The empirical results show that digitalization level has positive effect on both exploratory innovation and exploitative innovation, and the effect on exploitative innovation is stronger than on exploratory innovation. Moreover, the moderating effect of industrial knowledge base is significant on “digitalization–exploratory innovation” but not on “digitalization–exploitative innovation” relationship. By doing so, this study refines the research on the relationship between digitalization and firm innovation, and confirms that the usage of digitalization may lead to achieve an ambidextrous situation. This study also provides a theoretical basis for industrial differences of the effectiveness of digitalization, suggesting firms considering industrial characteristics to implement digitalization-assisted innovation practices.

There is currently an evidentiary gap in the scholarship concerning medical tourism's impact on low- and middle-income destination countries (LMICs). This article reviews relevant evidence that exists and concludes that there are signs of correlation between medical tourism and the expansion of private, technology- intensive health care in LMICs, which has largely remained out of reach for the majority of the local patients. In light of this health care inequity between local residents and medical tourists in LMICs, we argue that the presumption should not be in favor of medical tourism and that governments have a legitimate interest in seeking to regulate this industry to ensure that the net effects for their citizens is positive. Moreover, sending countries, particularly those in the developed world, have the responsibility to adopt public policies to diminish demand on the part of their citizens for medical tourism and to work with LMICs to ensure that the growth of medical tourism does not occur at the expense of the poorest of the poor

Travelling internationally to acquire medical treatments otherwise unavailable or inaccessible in one’s home country is not a novel concept. Conventionally, such medical travel largely entailed patients from developed countries or wealthy patients from the developing world seeking care in Western facilities like the Mayo Clinic in the U.S. and myriad private clinics along Harley Street in London, England. What is different about the topical phenomenon known as “medical tourism” is the growing trend of health services export in the opposite direction. The number of patients travelling from the developed world to low- and middle-income countries for treatments has ballooned in recent years, primarily driven by difficulties with accessing affordable care at home. According to a liberal estimate by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, the number of Americans travelling abroad for care rose from 750,000 in 2007 to 1.6 million in 2012. On the flip side, Thailand reportedly treated a total of 1.3 million foreign nationals in 2007, which represented a 16% leap from 2001.

Venneman and colleagues argue that “do not resuscitate” (DNR) is problematic and should be replaced by “allow natural death” (AND). Their argument is flawed. First, while end-of-life discussions should be as positive as possible, they cannot and should not sidestep painful but necessary confrontations with morality. Second, while DNR can indeed be nonspecific and confusing, AND merely replaces one problematic term with another. Finally, the study’s results are not generalisable to the populations of physicians and working nurses and certainly do not support the authors’ claim that there is a movement to replace DNR with AND

Confucian state doctrines have shaped Asian cultures for millennia as prescriptive codes of conduct with an emphasis on hierarchy and obligation. Yet a premise at the core of lǐ —understood as propriety, ritual, or generally a cultural grammar—is authenticity, and authentic respect cannot be commanded. What if the lǐ were to be elegant instead? Hans-Georg Gadamer analyzed play as a fusion of horizons that are absorbed into the same event, co-constituting subject and object in an aesthetic experience, and dissolving their dichotomy. We consider examples from Japanese aesthetics in this framework to give depth to key Confucian concepts: the values that enable a relationality that is not in conflict with autonomy; the points of reference for self-improvement through culture; a social organization that enacts reciprocity; and the essential posture this requires. The radical simplicity of the philosophy of tea, chanoyu, and the aesthetic refinement of the Katsura Rikyū palace illuminate the principle of emotional resonance in encounters, which underlies the fusion of cognitive, ethical, and aesthetic horizons. This view reveals how the relational premise of the Confucian philosophical system entails an ontological commitment to mutuality. This is indeed ethics, but neither particularism nor generalism; in its aesthetic dimension it is the mode of perception of a self fulfilled in play.