Research on Deviation Detection of Belt Conveyor Based on Inspection Robot and Deep Learning.Yi Liu,Changyun Miao,Xianguo Li &Guowei Xu -2021 -Complexity 2021:1-15.detailsThe deviation of the conveyor belt is a common failure that affects the safe operation of the belt conveyor. In this paper, a deviation detection method of the belt conveyor based on inspection robot and deep learning is proposed to detect the deviation at its any position. Firstly, the inspection robot captures the image and the region of interest containing the conveyor belt edge and the exposed idler is extracted by the optimized MobileNet SSD. Secondly, Hough line transform algorithm is (...) used to detect the conveyor belt edge, and an elliptical arc detection algorithm based on template matching is proposed to detect the idler outer edge. Finally, a geometric correction algorithm based on homography transformation is proposed to correct the coordinates of the detected edge points, and the deviation degree of the conveyor belt is estimated based on the corrected coordinates. The experimental results show that the proposed method can detect the deviation of the conveyor belt continuously with an RMSE of 3.7 mm, an MAE of 4.4 mm, and an average time consumption of 135.5 ms. It improves the monitoring range, detection accuracy, reliability, robustness, and real-time performance of the deviation detection of the belt conveyor. (shrink)
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Patient-centred care and patient autonomy: doctors’ views in Chinese hospitals.Peter Howard,Yongli Zhou,Guowei Liu,Min Xu &Zhanming Liang -2022 -BMC Medical Ethics 23 (1):1-12.detailsBackgroundPatient-centred care and patient autonomy is one of the key factors to better quality of service provision, hence patient outcomes. It enables the development of patients’ trusts which is an important element to a better doctor-patient relationship. Given the increasing number of patient disputes and conflicts between patients and doctors in Chinese public hospital, it is timely to ensure patient-centred care is fully and successfully implemented. However, limited studies have examined the views and practice in different aspects of patient-centred care (...) among doctors in the Chinese public hospitals.MethodsA quantitative approach was adopted by distributing paper-based questionnaires to doctors and patients in two hospitals (Level III and Level II) in Jinan, Shandong province, China.ResultsIn total, 614 doctors from the surgical and internal medicine units of the two hospitals participated in the survey yielding 90% response rates. The study confirmed the inconsistent views among doctors in terms of their perception and practice in various aspects patient-centred care and patient autonomy regardless of the hospital where they work (category II or category III), their unit speciality (surgical or non-surgical), their gender or seniority. The high proportion of doctors (more than 20%) who did not perceive the importance of patient consultation prior to determining diagnostic and treatment procedure is alarming. This in in part due to the belief held by more than half of the doctors that patients were unable to make rational decisions and their involvement in treatment planning process did not necessarily lead to better treatment outcomes.ConclusionThe study calls for the development of system level policy and organisation wide strategies in encouraging and enabling the practice of patient-centred care and patient autonomy with the purposes of improving the quality of the service provided to patients by Chinese hospitals. (shrink)
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Logical dynamics of belief change in the community.Fenrong Liu,Jeremy Seligman &Patrick Girard -2014 -Synthese 191 (11):2403-2431.detailsIn this paper we explore the relationship between norms of belief revision that may be adopted by members of a community and the resulting dynamic properties of the distribution of beliefs across that community. We show that at a qualitative level many aspects of social belief change can be obtained from a very simple model, which we call ‘threshold influence’. In particular, we focus on the question of what makes the beliefs of a community stable under various dynamical situations. We (...) also consider refinements and alternatives to the ‘threshold’ model, the most significant of which is to consider changes to plausibility judgements rather than mere beliefs. We show first that some such change is mandated by difficult problems with belief-based dynamics related to the need to decide on an order in which different beliefs are considered. Secondly, we show that the resulting plausibility-based account results in a deterministic dynamical system that is non-deterministic at the level of beliefs. (shrink)
Ownership structure and auditor choice: evidence from Chinese listed firms.Noel W. Leung &Junxia Liu -2015 -Asian Journal of Business Ethics 4 (2):163-185.detailsIn this study, we examine the association between the ownership structure of Chinese listed firms and their audit choices among the Big 4, Second-tier, and Other firms between 2007 and 2012. The market share of the Big 4 firms in China was relatively low, while that of the Second-tier firms increasing during the sample period. Although there is little evidence to indicate that the audit quality of the Second-tier firms is not comparable to that of the Big 4 firms in (...) China, we find that large shareholders and boards of directors do not perceive the financial reporting credibility associated with the Second-tier firms to be the same as that of the Big 4 firms. We further find that the largest shareholders of Chinese listed firms prefer low-quality auditors when they have a low level of ownership but prefer high-quality auditors when they have a high level of ownership. The empirical evidence presented in this study should be of interest to regulators and academics. (shrink)
Benefits Analysis of Smart Grid Projects.C. Marnay,L. Liu,J. Yu,D. Zhang,J. Mauzy,B. Shaffer,X. Dong,W. Agate &S. Vitiello -unknowndetailsSmart grids are rolling out internationally, with the United States nearing completion of a significant USD4-plus-billion federal program funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The emergence of smart grids is widespread across developed countries. Multiple approaches to analyzing the benefits of smart grids have emerged. The goals of this white paper are to review these approaches and analyze examples of each to highlight their differences, advantages, and disadvantages. This work was conducted under the auspices of a joint U.S.-China (...) research effort, the Climate Change Working Group Implementation Plan, Smart Grid. We present comparative benefits assessments of smart grid demonstrations in the U.S. and China along with a BA of a pilot project in Europe. In the U.S., we assess projects at two sites: the University of California, Irvine campus, which consists of two distinct demonstrations: Southern California Edison’s Irvine Smart Grid Demonstration Project and the UCI campus itself; and the Navy Yard area in Philadelphia, which has been repurposed as a mixed commercial-industrial, and possibly residential, development. In China, we cover several smart-grid aspects of the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city and the Shenzhen Bay Technology and Ecology City. In Europe, we look at a BA of a pilot smart grid project in the Malagrotta area west of Rome, Italy, contributed by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission. The Irvine sub-project BAs use the U.S. Department of Energy Smart Grid Computational Tool, which is built on methods developed by the Electric Power Research Institute. The TEC sub-project BAs apply Smart Grid Multi-Criteria Analysis developed by the State Grid Corporation of China based on the analytic hierarchy process with fuzzy logic. The B-TEC and TNY sub-project BAs are evaluated using new approaches developed by those project teams. JRC has adopted an approach similar to EPRI’s but tailored to the Malagrotta distribution grid. (shrink)
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From responsible robotics towards a human rights regime oriented to the challenges of robotics and artificial intelligence.Hin-Yan Liu &Karolina Zawieska -2020 -Ethics and Information Technology 22 (4):321-333.detailsAs the aim of the responsible robotics initiative is to ensure that responsible practices are inculcated within each stage of design, development and use, this impetus is undergirded by the alignment of ethical and legal considerations towards socially beneficial ends. While every effort should be expended to ensure that issues of responsibility are addressed at each stage of technological progression, irresponsibility is inherent within the nature of robotics technologies from a theoretical perspective that threatens to thwart the endeavour. This is (...) because the concept of responsibility, despite being treated as such, is not monolithic: rather this seemingly unified concept consists of converging and confluent concepts that shape the idea of what we colloquially call responsibility. From a different perspective, robotics will be simultaneously responsible and irresponsible depending on the particular concept of responsibility that is foregrounded: an observation that cuts against the grain of the drive towards responsible robotics. This problem is further compounded by responsible design and development as contrasted to responsible use. From a different perspective, the difficulty in defining the concept of responsibility in robotics is because human responsibility is the main frame of reference. Robotic systems are increasingly expected to achieve the human-level performance, including the capacities associated with responsibility and other criteria which are necessary to act responsibly. This subsists within a larger phenomenon where the difference between humans and non-humans, be it animals or artificial systems, appears to be increasingly blurred, thereby disrupting orthodox understandings of responsibility. This paper seeks to supplement the responsible robotics impulse by proposing a complementary set of human rights directed specifically against the harms arising from robotic and artificial intelligence technologies. The relationship between responsibilities of the agent and the rights of the patient suggest that a rights regime is the other side of responsibility coin. The major distinction of this approach is to invert the power relationship: while human agents are perceived to control robotic patients, the prospect for this to become reversed is beginning. As robotic technologies become ever more sophisticated, and even genuinely complex, asserting human rights directly against robotic harms become increasingly important. Such an approach includes not only developing human rights that ‘protect’ humans but also ‘strengthen’ people against the challenges introduced by robotics and AI [This distinction parallels Berlin’s negative and positive concepts of liberty ], by emphasising the social and reflective character of the notion of humanness as well as the difference between the human and nonhuman. This will allow using the human frame of reference as constitutive of, rather than only subject to, the robotic and AI technologies, where it is human and not technology characteristics that shape the human rights framework in the first place. (shrink)
The Cell and Protoplasm as Container, Object, and Substance, 1835–1861.Daniel Liu -2017 -Journal of the History of Biology 50 (4):889-925.details(Recipient of the 2020 Everett Mendelsohn Prize.) This article revisits the development of the protoplasm concept as it originally arose from critiques of the cell theory, and examines how the term “protoplasm” transformed from a botanical term of art in the 1840s to the so-called “living substance” and “the physical basis of life” two decades later. I show that there were two major shifts in biological materialism that needed to occur before protoplasm theory could be elevated to have equal status (...) with cell theory in the nineteenth century. First, I argue that biologists had to accept that life could inhere in matter alone, regardless of form. Second, I argue that in the 1840s, ideas of what formless, biological matter was capable of dramatically changed: going from a “coagulation paradigm” that had existed since Theophrastus, to a more robust conception of matter that was itself capable of movement and self-maintenance. In addition to revisiting Schleiden and Schwann’s original writings on cell theory, this article looks especially closely at Hugo von Mohl’s definition of the protoplasm concept in 1846, how it differed from his primordial utricle theory of cell structure two years earlier. This article draws on Lakoff and Johnson’s theory of “ontological metaphors” to show that the cell, primordial utricle, and protoplasm can be understood as material container, object, and substance, and that these overlapping distinctions help explain the chaotic and confusing early history of cell theory. (shrink)
Irresponsibilities, inequalities and injustice for autonomous vehicles.Hin-Yan Liu -2017 -Ethics and Information Technology 19 (3):193-207.detailsWith their prospect for causing both novel and known forms of damage, harm and injury, the issue of responsibility has been a recurring theme in the debate concerning autonomous vehicles. Yet, the discussion of responsibility has obscured the finer details both between the underlying concepts of responsibility, and their application to the interaction between human beings and artificial decision-making entities. By developing meaningful distinctions and examining their ramifications, this article contributes to this debate by refining the underlying concepts that together (...) inform the idea of responsibility. Two different approaches are offered to the question of responsibility and autonomous vehicles: targeting and risk distribution. The article then introduces a thought experiment which situates autonomous vehicles within the context of crash optimisation impulses and coordinated or networked decision-making. It argues that guiding ethical frameworks overlook compound or aggregated effects which may arise, and which can lead to subtle forms of structural discrimination. Insofar as such effects remain unrecognised by the legal systems relied upon to remedy them, the potential for societal inequalities is increased and entrenched, situations of injustice and impunity may be unwittingly maintained. This second set of concerns may represent a hitherto overlooked type of responsibility gap arising from inadequate accountability processes capable of challenging systemic risk displacement. (shrink)
Policy-Balancing and Ticket-Splitting: Problems with 'Preference for Checks and Balances' in Taiwanese Electoral Studies.Ted Hsuan Yun Chen & Liu -2014 -Japanese Journal of Political Science 15 (2):317-337.detailsIn order to better understand the individual-level motives for ticket-splitting, Taiwan's Election and Democratization Study has since 2001 included a question aimed at measuring respondents’ preferences for checks and balances. We argue that this set of questions, designed to measure a combination of Fiorina's policy-balancing hypothesis and Ladd's cognitive Madisonianism, is inconsistent with principles of survey methodology and thus produces data that are suboptimal. Following a method developed by Carsey and Layman, we propose an alternative concept, the policy-balancing index derived (...) from the perceived ideological distance between respondent and political parties, which both avoids methodological violations and provides us with a more precise concept to work with. We test the index and find it to be a significant determinant of ticket-splitting behavior. (shrink)
Special Topic: Filial Piety: The Root of Morality or the Source of Corruption?: Confucianism and Corruption: An Analysis of Shun’s Two Actions Described by Mencius.Liu Qingping -2007 -Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 6 (1):1-19.detailsConfucianism advocates the lofty moral ideal of “humane love” (ren ai 仁愛) and condemns immoral actions. Strangely enough, however, Mencius, a “paradigmatic Confucian intellectual” who believed that “a true man cannot be corrupted by wealth, subdued by power, or affected by poverty” (Tu 1989a: 15), highly commended such typically corrupt actions as bending the law for the benefit of relatives or appointing people by mere nepotism when he talked about Shun 舜 in the text of the Mencius. In the first (...) four sections of this article, I will address the issue of how Confucianism encourages a special kind of corruption through its fundamentally consanguineous affection. Then, in the remaining sections, I will try to respond to some criticisms of my views by a few Chinese scholars. (shrink)
Reasoning About Preference Dynamics.Fenrong Liu -2011 - Dordrecht, Netherland: Springer Verlag.detailsOur preferences determine how we act and think, but exactly what the mechanics are and how they work is a central cause of concern in many disciplines. This book uses techniques from modern logics of information flow and action to develop a unified new theory of what preference is and how it changes. The theory emphasizes reasons for preference, as well as its entanglement with our beliefs. Moreover, the book provides dynamic logical systems which describe the explicit triggers driving preference (...) change, including new information, suggestions, and commands. In sum, the book creates new bridges between many fields, from philosophy and computer science to economics, linguistics, and psychology. For the experienced scholar access to a large body of recent literature is provided and the novice gets a thorough introduction to the action and techniques of dynamic logic. (shrink)
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Making sense of algorithms: Relational perception of contact tracing and risk assessment during COVID-19.Ross Graham &Chuncheng Liu -2021 -Big Data and Society 8 (1).detailsGovernments and citizens of nearly every nation have been compelled to respond to COVID-19. Many measures have been adopted, including contact tracing and risk assessment algorithms, whereby citizen whereabouts are monitored to trace contact with other infectious individuals in order to generate a risk status via algorithmic evaluation. Based on 38 in-depth interviews, we investigate how people make sense of Health Code, the Chinese contact tracing and risk assessment algorithmic sociotechnical assemblage. We probe how people accept or resist Health Code (...) by examining their ongoing, dynamic, and relational interactions with it. Participants display a rich variety of attitudes toward privacy and surveillance, ranging from fatalism to the possibility of privacy to trade-offs for surveillance in exchange for public health, which is mediated by the perceived effectiveness of Health Code and changing views on the intentions of institutions who deploy it. We show how perceived competency varies not just on how well the technology works, but on the social and cultural enforcement of various non-technical aspects like quarantine, citizen data inputs, and cell reception. Furthermore, we illustrate how perceptions of Health Code are nested in people’s broader interpretations of disease control at the national and global level, and unexpectedly strengthen the Chinese authority’s legitimacy. None of the Chinese public, Health Code, or people’s perceptions toward Health Code are predetermined, fixed, or categorically consistent, but are co-constitutive and dynamic over time. We conclude with a theorization of a relational perception and methodological reflections to study algorithmic sociotechnical assemblages beyond COVID-19. (shrink)
The Effect of the Non-task Language When Trilingual People Use Two Languages in a Language Switching Experiment.Jianlin Chen &Hong Liu -2020 -Frontiers in Psychology 11.detailsThis study investigated the effect of non-task language in language switching experiment. Non-task language refers to participants’ language(s) (regardless of proficiency level) that are not used in any trials throughout the experiment. We recruited 60 Tibetan-Chinese-English trilinguals (grade-12 high school students with a median age of 17) to perform a lexical decision (word vs. non-word) task in only two of their languages. We repeated the experiment three times to present each language pair once. In each experiment, the participants were divided (...) into two groups which significantly contrasted with each other in their non-task language while remained comparable in the two task languages. Response time (RT) and error rate (ER) have been examined to evaluate task performance. The interaction between task performance and the participants’ proficiency in the non-task language was also examined. The results showed null effect of language switching. In addition, the effect of the non-task language was not found. These results were interpreted with reference to the main models of bilingual visual word recognition and the role of orthography specificity. (shrink)
Genetically Modified Rice: Do Chinese Consumers Support or Go Against It? Based on the Perspectives of Perceived Risk and Trust.Lingyu Huo &Yan Liu -2022 -Frontiers in Psychology 13.detailsRice is a staple food in China, and, thus, its security has drawn much attention. The Chinese government proactively fuels the application of biotechnology in agriculture and food to cope with increasingly severe food security issues. However, most consumers resist the commercialization of genetically modified rice. One of the important reasons is the consumer perception of its various risks. Conversely, trust in the government, scientists, and media can stimulate consumer purchase. On the basis of the dual perspectives of perceived risks (...) and trust, this study establishes a model of purchase intention for GM rice to explore the structural relationship between variables. Perceived risks explore how exclusion can weaken the purchase intention from the consumer perspective; trust examines the benefits that support can provide. Based on the structural equation model, online survey results of 564 consumers in eight provinces and cities are analyzed. The following observations are offered: health risks, moral risks, and purchase intention are negatively correlated; environmental, functional, and economic risks have no significant correlation with purchase intention; and trust and purchase intention have a significant positive correlation. (shrink)
Interval-Valued Intuitionistic Fuzzy Ordered Weighted Cosine Similarity Measure and Its Application in Investment Decision-Making.Donghai Liu,Xiaohong Chen &Dan Peng -2017 -Complexity:1-11.detailsWe present the interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy ordered weighted cosine similarity measure in this paper, which combines the interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy cosine similarity measure with the generalized ordered weighted averaging operator. The main advantage of the IVIFOWCS measure provides a parameterized family of similarity measures, and the decision maker can use the IVIFOWCS measure to consider a lot of possibilities and select the aggregation operator in accordance with his interests. We have studied some of its main properties and particular cases such (...) as the interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy ordered weighted arithmetic cosine similarity measure and the interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy maximum cosine similarity measure. The IVIFOWCS measure not only is a generalization of some similarity measure, but also it can deal with the correlation of different decision matrices for interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy values. Furthermore, we present an application of IVIFOWCS measure to the group decision-making problem. Finally the existing similarity measures are compared with the IVIFOWCS measure by an illustrative example. (shrink)
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Comparison of Two Approaches to Enhance Self-Esteem and Self-Acceptance in Chinese College Students: Psychoeducational Lecture vs. Group Intervention.Yi Qian,Xinnian Yu &Fulian Liu -2022 -Frontiers in Psychology 13.detailsObjectiveSelf-esteem and self-acceptance are not only basic features but also influential factors of mental health. The present study aimed at assessing the effects of psychoeducational lecture and group intervention on self-esteem and self-acceptance in Chinese college students.MethodsA total of 149 Chinese college students who participated in a mental health course were randomly class-based assigned into the psychoeducational lecture group and the self-focused intervention group. The lecture group received 6-session psychoeducational lectures on overview of mental health, campus adaptation, stress adjustment, self-understanding, (...) emotion management, and interpersonal relationships. The self-focused intervention group was treated with self-related group activities involving aspects of self-knowledge, self-feeling, and self-regulation for six sessions. Pre- and post-intervention measurements were taken with Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale and Self-Acceptance Questionnaire for both groups.ResultsSelf-esteem significantly increased in both groups after six sessions. However, the enhancement of self-acceptance was more robust for the self-focused intervention group than the psychoeducational lecture group.ConclusionThe psychoeducational lecture and self-focused intervention were effective approaches to improve self-esteem for Chinese college students. With respect to self-acceptance, self-focused group intervention might have a more prominent effect. (shrink)
Delayed Spiking Neural P Systems with Scheduled Rules.Qianqian Ren &Xiyu Liu -2021 -Complexity 2021:1-13.detailsDue to the inevitable delay phenomenon in the process of signal conversion and transmission, time delay is bound to occur between neurons. Therefore, it is necessary to introduce the concept of time delay into the membrane computing models. Spiking neural P systems, as an attractive type of neural-like P systems in membrane computing, are widely followed. Inspired by the phenomenon of time delay, in our work, a new variant of spiking neural P systems called delayed spiking neural P systems is (...) proposed. Compared with normal spiking neural P systems, the proposed systems achieve time control by setting the schedule on spiking rules and forgetting rules, and the schedule is also used to realize the system delay. A schedule indicates the time difference between receiving and outputting spikes, and it also makes the system work in a certain time, which means that a rule can only be used within a specified time range. We specify that each rule is performed only in the continuous schedule, during which the neuron is locked and cannot send or receive spikes. If the neuron is not available at a given time, it will not receive or send spikes due to the lack of a schedule for this period of time. Moreover, the universality of DSN P systems in both generating and accepting modes is proved. And a universal DSN P system having 81 neurons for computing functions is also proved. (shrink)
The Sure-thing Principle and P2.Yang Liu -2017 -Economics Letters 159:221-223.detailsThis paper offers a fine analysis of different versions of the well known sure-thing principle. We show that Savage's formal formulation of the principle, i.e., his second postulate (P2), is strictly stronger than what is intended originally.
Free Will and Necker's Cube: Reason, Language and Top-Down Control in cognitive neuroscience.Grant Gillett &Sam C. Liu -2012 -Philosophy 87 (1):29-50.detailsThe debates about human free will are traditionally the concern of metaphysics but neuroscientists have recently entered the field arguing that acts of the will are determined by brain events themselves causal products of other events. We examine that claim through the example of free or voluntary switch of perception in relation to the Necker cube. When I am asked to see the cube in one way, I decide whether I will follow the command (or do as I am asked) (...) using skills that reason and language give to me and change my brain states accordingly. The voluntary shift of perspective in seeing the Necker cube this way or that exemplifies the top-down control exercised by a human being on the basis of the role of language and meaning in their activity. It also indicates the lived story that is at the centre of each human consciousness. In the third part of this essay, three arguments are used to undermine metaphysical objections to the very idea of top-down self control. (shrink)
Adaptive Fixed-Time 6-DOF Coordinated Control of Multiple Spacecraft Formation Flying with Input Quantization.Shiyu Wang,Ruixia Liu &Lihua Wen -2020 -Complexity 2020:1-16.detailsThis paper investigates the fixed-time coordinated control problem of six-degree-of-freedom dynamic model for multiple spacecraft formation flying with input quantization, where the communication topology is assumed directed. Firstly, a new multispacecraft nonsingular fixed-time terminal sliding mode vector is derived by using neighborhood state information. Secondly, a hysteretic quantizer is utilized to quantify control force and torque. Utilizing such a quantizer not only can reduce the required communication rate but also can eliminate the control chattering phenomenon induced by the logarithmic quantizer. (...) Thirdly, a 6-DOF fixed-time coordinated control strategy with adaptive tuning laws is proposed, such that the practical fixed-time stability of the controlled system is ensured in the presence of both upper bounds of unknown external disturbances. It theoretically proves that the relative tracking errors of attitude and position can converge into the regions in a fixed time. Finally, a numerical example is exploited to show the usefulness of the theoretical results. (shrink)
How leader humor stimulates subordinate boundary-spanning behavior: A social information processing theory perspective.Xi Wang,Songbo Liu &Wen Feng -2022 -Frontiers in Psychology 13.detailsBased on social information processing theory, we provide a novel theoretical account of how and when leader humor influences subordinate boundary-spanning behavior. We develop a moderated mediation model explicating the mechanism of psychological safety and the boundary condition of subordinate interpersonal influence. Using multiwave data, we tested our research hypotheses with a sample of 452 members from 140 teams in a Chinese information technology company. Results showed that leader humor positively affects subordinate boundary-spanning behavior via increased psychological safety. Moreover, this (...) mediated effect is stronger when subordinates have high interpersonal influence. These findings offer theoretical and practical insights into boundary-spanning activities and leader humor, which we discuss. (shrink)
A Big-Data Approach to Understanding the Thematic Landscape of the Field of Business Ethics, 1982–2016.Ying Liu,Feng Mai &Chris MacDonald -2019 -Journal of Business Ethics 160 (1):127-150.detailsThis study focuses on examining the thematic landscape of the history of scholarly publication in business ethics. We analyze the titles, abstracts, full texts, and citation information of all research papers published in the field’s leading journal, the Journal of Business Ethics, from its inaugural issue in February 1982 until December 2016—a dataset that comprises 6308 articles and 42 million words. Our key method is a computational algorithm known as probabilistic topic modeling, which we use to examine objectively the field’s (...) latent thematic landscape based on the vast volume of scholarly texts. This “big-data” approach allows us not only to provide time-specific snapshots of various research topics, but also to track the dynamic evolution of each topic over time. We further examine the pattern of individual papers’ topic diversity and the influence of individual papers’ topic diversity on their impact over time. We conclude this study with our recommendation for future studies in business ethics research. (shrink)
Identity and national identity.Qiang Liu &David Turner -2018 -Educational Philosophy and Theory 50 (12):1080-1088.detailsThis article reviews the history of international mobility of students from China to other countries over the century and a half from 1870 to the present day. Different motivations, goals, courses, and knowledge are considered, together with how the purposes of individuals have matched national policy. Implications for the future development in a globalized context are briefly considered.
Robust Fractional-Order PID Controller Tuning Based on Bode’s Optimal Loop Shaping.Lu Liu &Shuo Zhang -2018 -Complexity 2018:1-14.detailsThis paper presents a novel fractional-order PID controller tuning strategy based on Bode’s optimal loop shaping which is commonly used for LTI feedback systems. Firstly, the controller parameters are achieved based on flat phase property and Bode’s optimal reference model, so that the controlled system is robust to gain variations and can achieve desirable transient performance according to various control requirements. Then, robustness analysis of the controlled system is carried out to support the results. Furthermore, the parameter setting is analyzed (...) to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed controller. At last, some simulation examples are shown to verify the accuracy and usefulness of the proposed control strategy. The proposed fractional-order PID controller does not have any restriction on the controlled plant, so it can be widely applied on both integer-order and fractional-order systems. (shrink)
Examining the Psychological State Analysis Relationship Between Bitcoin Prices and COVID-19.JianPing Hou,Jingyi Liu &YingJiang Jie -2021 -Frontiers in Psychology 12.detailsThe rapid worldwide spread of COVID-19 forced many countries to enforce complete lockdown and strict quarantine policies. The strict lockdown and quarantine affect the psychological state of people toward cryptocurrency. The current research aims to examine the effect of COVID-19 on Bitcoin prices concerning cumulative deaths and confirmed cases. The research comprises daily data from January 20, 2020, to April 30, 2020, during the initial worldwide breakout of COVID-19. This research employed the augmented Dickey-Fuller test to check the stationarity of (...) data, the co-integration test for the interdependency of variables, and the vector error correction model for identifying the direction and long or short-run relationship between Bitcoin prices and COVID-19. The research results show that Bitcoin prices are negatively significant and related to COVID-19 in the short-run. A unidirectional relationship between Bitcoin prices and cumulative deaths is also observed. Investors and the public’s psychological state were positively significant to Bitcoin prices in the long-term because of cashless transactions, unbanked, and less risky virus traveling. The second reason behind the positive psychological relation is un-centralization and easy-to-make payments by Bitcoin. This study’s finding provides timely evidence to decision-makers on Bitcoin price volatility and its impacts on the public’s psychological states regarding COVID-19. (shrink)
An Extension of Testlet-Based Equating to the Polytomous Testlet Response Theory Model.Feifei Huang,Zhe Li,Ying Liu,Jingan Su,Li Yin &Minqiang Zhang -2022 -Frontiers in Psychology 12.detailsEducational assessments tests are often constructed using testlets because of the flexibility to test various aspects of the cognitive activities and broad content sampling. However, the violation of the local item independence assumption is inevitable when tests are built using testlet items. In this study, simulations are conducted to evaluate the performance of item response theory models and testlet response theory models for both the dichotomous and polytomous items in the context of equating tests composed of testlets. We also examine (...) the impact of testlet effect, length of testlet items, and sample size on estimating item and person parameters. The results show that more accurate performance of testlet response theory models over item response theory models was consistently observed across the studies, which supports the benefits of using the testlet response theory models in equating for tests composed of testlets. Further, results of the study indicate that when sample size is large, item response theory models performed similarly to testlet response theory models across all studies. (shrink)