Handbook of Confucianism in Modern Japan

In mainstream assessments of Confucianism's modern genealogy there is a Sinocentric bias which is in part the result of a general neglect of modern Japanese Confucianism by political and moral philosophers and intellectual historians during the post-war era. The essays in this volume can be read for the insight they provide into the intellectual and ideological proclivities of reformers, educators and philosophers explicitly reconstructing Confucian thought, or more tacitly influenced by it, during critical phases in Japan’s modernization, imperialist expansionism and post-1945 reconstitution as a liberal democratic polity. They can be read as introductions to the ideas of modern Japanese Confucian thinkers and reformers whose work is little known outside Japan—and sometimes barely remembered inside Japan. They can also be read as a needful corrective to the above-mentioned Sinocentric bias in the 20th century intellectual history of Confucianism. For those Confucian scholars currently exploring how Confucianism is, or can be made compatible with democracy, at least some of the studies in this volume serve as a warning. They enjoin readers to consider how Confucianism was also rendered compatible with the authoritarian ultranationalism and militarism that captured Japan’s political system in the 1930s, and brought war to the Asia-Pacific region.

Seed Priming: An Interlinking Technology between Seeds, Seed Germination and Seedling Establishment

Biologically seed is a small embryonic plant along with either endosperm or cotyledons, enclosed with in an outer protecting covering called seed coat. During the time of seed development large metabolic conversions take place, including proper partitioning of photo-assimilates and the formation of complex polymeric forms of carbohydrate, protein and fats for storing as seed reserves. In developing phase of seeds, every detail information stored in the embryonic plant are genetically and sometimes epigenetically also predetermined and influenced by various environmental/external factors already faced by the mother plant. In the growth cycle of plants, seed germination and seedling establishment are the two critical phases where survivability of the seedlings in natural habitats is a matter of question until the onset of photosynthesis by the established seedling. The various sequence of complex processes known to occur in both the phases i.e., an array of metabolic activities are initiating which eventually leads to the renewal of embryo growth of the dormant seeds and ultimately seedlings are established. Efficient seed germination is an important factor for agricultural sciences and successful establishment of germinated seedling requires a rapid and uniform emergence and root growth. With these aspects of seed physiology kept in mind the present chapter will be designed in such a way where, a gap filling, inter linking, eco- and farmers\' friendly technology i.e., ‘seed priming’ (a pre-sowing partial hydration of seeds) will be considered to improve the rate and uniformity of germination and seedling establishment. Under optimal and adverse environmental conditions, the primed seeds of diversified species lead to an enhanced germination performance with increased vigor index has been reported by various scientists which indicates a good establishment of seedlings in the field and thereafter enhance the performance of crops as a whole.

Software quality improvement and validation using reengineering

In software development life cycle, software maintenance is among the critical phases. It is a post-implementation activity that requires rigorous human efforts. For any software developer, maintaining software for a longer period is the primary objective. This objective can be accomplished if good quality software is developed. Maintainability is one of the vital characteristics of software maintenance. Maintainability enables developers to keep the system alive for a longer period of time at a limited cost. Software Maintainability can be enhanced using reengineering. The proposed research validates improvement in the quality of the reengineered software system. The quality of the software is analyzed using a coupling, cohesion, inheritance, and other essential design metrics. The observed improvement in the software design is 62.1%. The execution time of the software is also reduced by 6.5%. Reduction in the cost of maintenance is also another important outcome of this research. The observed reduction in the maintenance cost is 36.8%. Thus, the main objective of the proposed research is to analyze and validate the quality improvement in the reengineered software. Agile Scrum methodology has been used to perform software reengineering. Design Metrics are measured using the Chidamber and Kemerer Java metric (CKJM) version-9.0 tool. For reengineering implementation, Net Beans 7.3 has been used.

Research on the decision drivers of platform corporate digital responsibility behavior

As digital technology and related data become more and more common, the lack of user data protection and personal privacy leakage become more serious. In the era of big data, platform corporate social responsibility is facing more challenges, and platform enterprises should pay more attention to corporate digital responsibility. This paper studies the research status and development trend of platform corporate social responsibility, especially corporate digital responsibility, under the background of digital transformation. The main content covers the implications of platform corporate social responsibility and the new challenges posed by digital change, differentiates corporate digital responsibility (CDR) from corporate social responsibility (CSR) to highlight their uniqueness, while also linking the two, and identifying key stakeholders and critical phases that CDR must address. That is technology and data creation, operation, impact assessment and refinement.

Emergent Replica Conformal Symmetry in Non-Hermitian SYK2 Chains

Recently, the steady states of non-unitary free fermion dynamics are found to exhibit novel critical phases with power-law squared correlations and a logarithmic subsystem entanglement. In this work, we theoretically understand the underlying physics by constructing solvable static/Brownian quadratic Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev chains with non-Hermitian dynamics. We find the action of the replicated system generally shows (one or infinite copies of) O(2)×O(2) symmetries, which is broken to O(2) by the saddle-point solution. This leads to an emergent conformal field theory of the Goldstone modes. We derive the effective action and obtain the universal critical behaviors of squared correlators. Furthermore, the entanglement entropy of a subsystem A with length LA corresponds to the energy of the half-vortex pair S∼ρslog⁡LA, where ρs is the total stiffness of the Goldstone modes. We also discuss special limits with more than one branch of Goldstone modes and comment on interaction effects.

Fused Second-Order MR Image Feature Framework for Region of Interest Delineation

Healthcare infrastructure relies on technology-driven solutions such as CAD systems for improving the overall efficiency of its procedures and processes. Image segmentation is one of the most critical phases for such systems in view of the fact that accuracy of this phase determines the efficacy of the later phases, to a large extent. Extensive research is underway to develop segmentation techniques that can achieve highest accuracy with some suggestions directed towards an information fusion based approach within the machine learning paradigm. This research paper proposes a fused second-order statistical image feature framework for Region of Interest delineation. It is a feature fusion-based segmentation approach (ACM-FT) that fuses texture driven feature maps from GLCM , GLRLM and Gabor filters. The proposed approach is then compared with Active Contour Model with classical edge detection method (ACM-ED) and Active Contour Model without edges (ACM-WE) using Overlap Index (OI) and Jackard’s Similarity Co-efficient (JSI). The proposed approach achieves an average accuracy of 92.17% and 93.19% for JSI and OI, respectively, demonstrating significant improvements.

Agrophysical properties of soil and yield of spring barley for various predecessors and mineral fertilizers in the Central Black Earth Region

The research is devoted to the study of the influence of precursors and mineral fertilizers, applied in various doses, on the agrophysical properties of the soil, the value of the grain yield of spring barley in the soil and climatic conditions of the Central Black Earth region. The field experiment was based on the long-term hospital of Belgorod State Agrarian University named after V. Ya. Gorin. As an object, the variety of spring barley Knyazhich, recommended for the region, was chosen. The soil of the experimental plot is typical chernozem, medium loamy granulometric composition on loess-like loam. The experiment scheme (4×4) provided for the study of four gradations of factor A (predecessors: corn for grain - control, sunflower, sugar beet, soybeans) and factor B (doses of mineral fertilizers: N10P10K10 - control, N30P30K30, N50P50K50, N70P70K70). Growth and development of spring barley plants in 2018-2020 took place in meteorological conditions characterized as arid with a predominance of elevated temperatures and insufficient precipitation during the critical phases of plant vegetation. The results of field experiments established that the water and agrophysical properties (density and structural-aggregate composition) of the soil under the influence of previous crops approached the optimal values and changed insignificantly. Increased doses of mineral fertilizers had a positive effect on the value of the yield of barley grain according to the studied predecessors. The highest grain yield over the years of research was obtained at high N50P50K50 and intensive N70P70K70 backgrounds for the predecessors of soybeans and sugar beets and amounted to 5.48 and 5.03 t/ha and 5.33 and 5.32 t/ha, respectively. This was higher than the control of corn for grain 0.82 and 0.37 t/ha and 0.62 and 0.61 t/ha, while for sunflower it decreased to 4.06 and 4.71 t/ha and was at the level with the control.

Personalization of medical treatments in oncology: time for rethinking the disease concept to improve individual outcomes

The agenda of pharmacology discovery in the field of personalized oncology was dictated by the search of molecular targets assumed to deterministically drive tumor development. In this perspective, genes play a fundamental “causal” role while cells simply act as causal proxies, i.e., an intermediate between the molecular input and the organismal output. However, the ceaseless genomic change occurring across time within the same primary and metastatic tumor has broken the hope of a personalized treatment based only upon genomic fingerprint. Indeed, current models are unable in capturing the unfathomable complexity behind the outbreak of a disease, as they discard the contribution of non-genetic factors, environment constraints, and the interplay among different tiers of organization. Herein, we posit that a comprehensive personalized model should view at the disease as a “historical” process, in which different spatially and timely distributed factors interact with each other across multiple levels of organization, which collectively interact with a dynamic gene-expression pattern. Given that a disease is a dynamic, non-linear process — and not a static-stable condition — treatments should be tailored according to the “timing-frame” of each condition. This approach can help in detecting those critical transitions through which the system can access different attractors leading ultimately to diverse outcomes — from a pre-disease state to an overt illness or, alternatively, to recovery. Identification of such tipping points can substantiate the predictive and the preventive ambition of the Predictive, Preventive and Personalized Medicine (PPPM/3PM). However, an unusual effort is required to conjugate multi-omics approaches, data collection, and network analysis reconstruction (eventually involving innovative Artificial Intelligent tools) to recognize the critical phases and the relevant targets, which could help in patient stratification and therapy personalization.

Determination of the Critical Phases of the Experimental Research Using Laboratory Animals: Risk Analysis

Critical phases (stages) of preclinical studies are those procedures or types of research activities whose accurate and correct implementation is a prerequisite for obtaining valid and reliable results. Russian and foreign standards require determination of the critical phases of each individual study by quality assurance staff based on checking the study protocol (plan).The aim of the study was to identify critical phases typical for most preclinical studies, and assess the potential risks during inspections.Materials and methods: the study was carried out by analysing the types and consequences of nonconformities. Numerical parameters of risks were analysed for each critical phase of the preclinical study identified by quality officers of the Joint Stock Company “Scientific and Production Association ‘HOME OF PHARMACY’”.Results: it was discovered that incorrect implementation of a procedure constituted a potential nonconformity at all the identified critical phases, and a potential consequence was acquisition of low-quality data. A combination of incorrectly implemented procedures at two or more critical phases could pose an unacceptable risk and lead to complete loss of data or failure to process data, and, as a result, the need to repeat the study.Conclusions: the highest risk was identified for such critical phases as preparation and administration of final doses of test samples, performance of physiological tests, collection of biological material samples, and handling of biological material samples by other relevant departments. Summarising the data obtained on the risks of all the critical phases, it can be concluded that risk action should take the form of regular inspections by the quality assurance staff and the study director. By adjusting the frequency of inspections, the risk of each critical phase can be made insignificant.

Knock down analysis reveals critical phases for specific oskar noncoding RNA functions during Drosophila oogenesis

The oskar transcript, acting as a noncoding RNA, contributes to a diverse set of pathways in the Drosophila ovary, including karyosome formation, positioning of the microtubule organizing center, integrity of certain ribonucleoprotein particles, control of nurse cell divisions, restriction of several proteins to the germline, and progression through oogenesis. How oskar mRNA acts to perform these functions remains unclear. Here we use a knock down approach to identify the critical phases when oskar is required for three of these functions. The existing transgenic shRNA for removal of oskar mRNA in the germline targets a sequence overlapping a regulatory site bound by Bruno1 protein to confer translational repression, and was ineffective during oogenesis. Novel transgenic shRNAs targeting other sites were effective at strongly reducing oskar mRNA levels and reproducing phenotypes associated with the absence of the mRNA. Using GAL4 drivers active at different developmental stages of oogenesis, we found that early loss of oskar mRNA reproduced defects in karyosome formation and positioning of the microtubule organizing center, but not arrest of oogenesis. Loss of oskar mRNA at later stages was required to prevent progression through oogenesis. The noncoding function of oskar mRNA is thus required for more than a single event.