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\"Today, China's classical antiquity is often studied through recovered artifacts, but before this practice became widespread, scholars instead reconstructed the distant past through classical texts and transmitted illustrations. Among the most important illustrated commentaries was the Sanli tu, or Illustrations to the Ritual Classics, whose origins are said to date back to the great commentator Zheng Xuan. Design by the Book, which accompanies an exhibition at Bard Graduate Center Gallery, discusses the history and cultural significance of the Sanli tu in medieval China. The Sanli tu survives in a version produced around 960 by Nie Chongyi, a professor at the court of the Later Zhou (951-960) and Northern Song (960-1127) dynasties. It is now mostly remembered--if at all--for its controversial entries and as a quaint predecessor of the more empirical antiquarian scholarship produced since the mid-eleventh century. But such criticism hides the fact that the book remained a standard resource for more than 150 years, playing a crucial role in the Song dynasty's perception of ancient ritual and construction of a Confucian state cult. Richly illustrated, Design by the Book brings renewed focus to one of China's most fascinating medieval works\"-- Provided by publisher.

This book analyses the critical reception of Pai Hsien-yung’s Crystal Boys, one of Taiwan’s first recognized gay novels, and one which has played an important role in redefining sexual modernity and linking this to ongoing cultural dialogues on state building. It examines the deployment of sexuality over the past five decades in Taiwan by paying particular attention to male homosexuality and prostitution. In addition to literary and film material, the study engages a number of relevant legal cases and media reports. Through Hans Huang’s primary research and historical investigations, the book not only illuminates the construction of gendered sexual identities in Taiwanese culture but also, in a reflexive fashion, critiques the culture that produces them.

Type-2 fuzzy logic controllers (T2 FLC) can be viewed as an emerging class of intelligent controllers because of their abilities in handling uncertainties; in many cases, they have been shown to outperform their Type-1 counterparts. This paper presents a literature review on recent applications of T2 FLCs. To follow the developments in this field, we first review general T2 FLCs and the most well-known interval T2 FLS algorithms that have been used for control design. Certain applications of these controllers include robotic control, bandwidth control, industrial systems control, electrical control and aircraft control. The most promising applications are found in the robotics and automotive areas, where T2 FLCs have been demonstrated and proven to perform better than traditional controllers. With the development of enhanced algorithms, along with the advancement in both hardware and software, we shall witness increasing applications of these frontier controllers.

The aim of this article is to compare ethical literary criticism of the East with that of the West and to reveal some potential limitations of the emerging critical tendency of “ethical literary criticism” in China when applied to Western literary production. The first part sets out the conceptual framework by contrasting Nie Zhenzhao’s understanding of literature as an expression of ethics, Jacques Derrida’s conception of the institution of “literature” as having “the right to say anything,” and Levinas’s conception of ethics as “first philosophy” involving responsibility towards the Other, bearing in mind that Levinas’s entire philosophical project was an ethical response to all forms of “absolute evil” that emerged in the twentieth century. Starting from this contextual definition, the article focuses on the opening of history after the Second World War as a “caesura” (Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe) to show that while Nie’s application of ethics to literary analysis can work successfully for a corpus of works from the Middle Ages to nineteenth-century realism, his concept of “ethical choice” as an analytical fulcrum breaks down in the face of literature’s response to twentieth-century atrocities. In the final section, therefore, I challenge Nie’s ethical literary criticism by focusing on works in the tradition of the “Holocaust novel” and presenting a case study that demonstrates the limits of ethical criticism in the analysis of William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice.

In recent years, researching on general type-2 fuzzy logic systems (GT2 FLSs) has become a hot topic as the development of alpha-planes representation of general type-2 fuzzy sets. The iterative Karnik–Mendel (KM) algorithms are used to perform the key block of type-reduction (TR) of GT2 FLSs. However, the KM algorithms are computationally intensive and time-consuming, which is not adapted to real-time applications. In the enhanced types of algorithms, the noniterative Nie–Tan (NT) algorithms decrease the computational cost greatly. Moreover, the closed-form Nie–Tan algorithms which calculate the outputs by averaging the lower and upper bounds of the membership functions have been proved to be actually an accurate algorithm for performing TR. The paper expands the NT algorithms to three different forms of weighted NT (WNT) algorithms according to the Newton–Cotes quadrature formulas of numerical integration techniques. Four computer simulation examples are adopted to analyze the performances of WNT algorithms when solving the type-reduction of general type-2 fuzzy logic systems. The proposed WNT algorithms have smaller absolute errors and faster convergence speed compared with NT algorithms, which provide the potential value for designers and adopters of GT2 FLSs.

Governance mechanisms along the agri-food supply chains are increasingly important in a scenario of ecological transition. Under the conceptual and analytical lens of the Transaction Cost Economics, we explored farmers’ preferences towards a variety of clauses usually adopted in production contracts. To this purpose, a discrete choice experiment among 190 durum wheat producers in Italy was conducted. Results from a latent class model showed that producers were mainly interested in fixed prices formula and to join shared rules of production but revealed little or no interest for compelling sustainable cultivation techniques and the provision of technical assistance. However, these preferences are heterogeneous across farmers and vary depending on their level of education and previous use of contractual arrangements, with relevant implications for contract design and management.

Background: In 2011, Brants, Wagemans, & Op de Beeck (JOCN 23:12, pp. 3949–3958) trained eight individuals to become Greeble experts, and found neuronal inversion effects [NIEs; i.e., higher Fusiform Face Area (FFA) activity for upright, rather than inverted Greebles]. These effects were also found for faces, both before and after training. By claiming to have replicated the seminal Greeble training study (i.e., Gauthier, Tarr, Anderson, Skudlarski, & Gore, 1999, Nat Neurosci, 2, 568-573), Brants et al. interpreted these results as participants viewing Greebles as faces throughout training, contrary to the original argument of subjects becoming Greeble experts only after training. However, Brants et al.’s claim presents two issues. First, their behavioral training results did not replicate those of Gauthier, Tarr conducted in 1997 and 1998, raising concerns of whether the right training regime had been adopted. Second, both a literature review and meta-analysis of NIEs in the FFA suggest its impotency as an index of face(-like) processing. Objectives: To empirically evaluate these issues, the present study compared two documented training paradigms (i.e., Gauthier & Tarr, 1997, Vision Res, 37, 1673-1682; and Gauthier, Williams, Tarr, & Tanaka, 1998, Vision Res, 38, 2401-2428) and compared their impact on the brain.

Since the alpha-planes expressions of general type-2 fuzzy sets (GT2 FSs) have been proposed, general type-2 fuzzy logic systems (GT2 FLSs) that are dependent on GT2 FSs are becoming quite popular to fuzzy logic researchers. Usually enhanced Karnik–Mendel (EKM) algorithms are adopted for performing the kernel block of type-reduction (TR). However, the essence of EKM-based TR process probably hinders the GT2 FLSs from real-world applications. It is an intriguing as well as unsolved problem for comparing EKM algorithms with other non-iterative algorithms. This paper provides a framework encompassing fuzzy reasoning, defuzzification, as well as type-reduction. Furthermore, the continuous of NT (CNT) algorithm is shown to be a precise approach when it is used to execute the centroid TR of GT2 fuzzy logic systems. Four computer tests display the characteristics of discrete Nagar-Bardini (NB) and Nie-Tan (NT) non-iterative algorithms. Compared with EKM approach, the developed one exhibits some superiorities in terms of guaranteeing high computation accuracy and low computation burdens, which broadens the application ranges for the proposed method.

Contracts represent key governance mechanisms along the supply chain to pursue collective sustainable strategies in line with new citizen-consumers’ preferences for sustainable products. Adopting an embedded multiple case study approach, this paper explores and analyzes 11 cases of contractual relationships between Italian semolina and pasta producers and farmers in order to investigate whether sustainability strategies affect the design of contracts and the related consequences. Findings reveal that different sustainability strategies correspond to different design and combinations of (both monetary and nonmonetary) contractual incentives aimed to centralize property and decision rights. What emerges is that stronger sustainability strategies entail a higher degree of buyers’ control over strategic investments (such as land and seeds) as well as wider provision of technical assistance and knowledge and innovation transfer toward farmers. Therefore, mutual gains seem at stake, even if socio-economic implications of the shift in decisional and control rights from farmers toward buyers shall be neglected, to ensure a better coherence with the farm to fork strategy and sustainable development goals.

Background Soil-transmitted helminths (STH) affect more than 1 billion people worldwide. Due to the morbidity in children caused by the accumulation of infections with these parasites, the World Health Organization (WHO) developed deworming programs to reduce worm burden, providing guidelines for Ascaris lumbricoides , Trichuris trichiura , and hookworms, since they are diagnosed and treated using the same tools. Recently, the WHO has provided guidelines for Strongyloides stercoralis , given it requires specific tools for diagnosis and treatment, with the goal to reduce prevalence and encourage the study of new diagnostic algorithms for deworming campaigns in areas where all STHs are present. Herein, we present an evaluation of the SsRapid, a prototype serological test developed to detect S. stercoralis IgG4. Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted in indigenous communities of Puerto Iguazú (Misiones) during 2023, an endemic area for STH in Argentina. Stool samples were analyzed using coprological methods (sedimentation and Baermann) for helminth parasite detection. Serum samples were analyzed for S. stercoralis -specific antibodies using a standardized in-house NIE-ELISA and the SsRapid test. Diagnostic performance was assessed through two analytical frameworks: (i) conventional analysis using coprological methods as a reference standard and (ii) latent class analysis (LAC) to account for the imperfect nature of all diagnostic tests and estimate true sensitivity and specificity without assuming a gold standard. Results A total of 327 stools and 226 serum samples were collected and processed. The overall copro-parasitological prevalence of all species of STH, including S. stercoralis , was 69.7%. Hookworm was the most prevalent STH detected (59.0%), followed by S. stercoralis (25.7%). The seroprevalence of S. stercoralis using SsRapid and in-house NIE-ELISA was 51.3% (95% CI 44.8–57.8) and 39.4% (95% CI 33.1–45.8), respectively; a statistically significant difference ( P  = 0.0049) was observed between the assays. Compared to coprological methods, the diagnostic sensitivities of the SsRapid and in-house NIE-ELISA were 86.8% [95% CI 74.6–94.5] and 69.8% [95% CI 55.6–81.6], respectively. LAC, which does not assume a perfect gold standard, estimated a higher true prevalence of 30.7% and identified SsRapid as the most sensitive test (94.3%) and copro-parasitological methods as the most specific (95.9%). The model demonstrated adequate class separation (entropy = 0.68). Conclusions Both conventional analysis and latent class modeling consistently demonstrated the superior sensitivity of SsRapid compared to in-house NIE-ELISA and copro-parasitological techniques. The LAC further strengthened these findings by providing unbiased estimates that confirmed SsRapid as the most sensitive test (94.3%) and revealed a higher true disease burden (30.7%) than apparent by coprological methods alone. Therefore, SsRapid is a promising field diagnostic tool for detecting S. stercoralis in deworming programs. Graphical Abstract