More on the ontological status of autism and double empathy

This response to Milton’s recent article on the ontological status of autism and double empathy also explores, through the lens of ‘double empathy’ and ‘theory of mind’, the issues of relationality and interaction that researchers in the fields of cognitive neuroscience and psychology hardly acknowledge. I go on to consider Wittgenstein’s criteriological view of mind, propose a synthesis of theory to describe autism, and suggest that public criteria of a non-autistic ontology enable many autistic people to eventually develop the understanding of other (non-autistic) minds that, in turn, enables them to survive, and even thrive.     

论思想解放的内在机制

今天的解放思想已经从人类社会特殊历史时刻才出现的重大的思想和理论变革运动转变为社会发展的经常性、普遍化、常规化、常态化的内在要求和有机组成部分。解放思想是人之生存结构中给定性与创造性、自然性与超越性之间的张力和冲突的集中体现，它的动力机制和制约机制具体表现为：创新的与保守的思想观念之间的张力和冲突、开放的与封闭的思维方式之间的张力和冲突、现代的与传统的文化模式之间的张力和冲突。在新的解放思想进程中，我们不仅要积极推动各个领域各个层面的具体的解放思想；而且要高度关注解放思想的机制体制建设，特别是解放思想的文化创新机制的形成：营造尊重不同思想观念的制度文化，确立开放包容和求异创新的思维方式，培育尊重个性和创新的文化模式。     

Strategic Design Responsiveness: An Empirical Analysis of US Retail Store Networks

This study uses a service operations management (SOM) strategy lens to investigate chain store retailers' strategic design responsiveness (SDR)—a term that captures the degree to which retailers dynamically coordinate investments in human and structural capital with the complexity of their service and product offerings. Labor force and physical capital are respectively used as proxies for investments in human capital and structural capital, whereas gross margins are proxies for product/service offering complexity. Consequently, SDR broadly reflects three salient complementary choices of SOM design strategy. We test the effects of “brick and mortar” chain store retailers' SDR on current and future firm performance using publically available panel data collected from Compustat and the University of Michigan American Customer Satisfaction Index databases for the period 1996–2011. We find that retailers that fail to keep pace with investments in both structural and human capital exhibit short‐term financial benefits, but have worse ongoing operational performance. These findings corroborate the importance of managers strategically maintaining the complementarity of design‐related choices for improving and maintaining business performance.     

Repurposing Materials and Waste through Online Exchanges: Overcoming the Last Hurdle

Online material and waste exchanges (OMWEs) provide online channels to repurpose by‐products, unused materials and waste from industrial and commercial facilities. Unfortunately, OMWE's also have challenges. First, sellers may have access to other disposal options and, as a result, may not fully commit to the exchange. Second, buyers can face high uncertainty about the product exchanged and the transaction being undertaken. Overcoming these challenges is the “last hurdle” to making OMWEs successful. This study investigates the factors that reduce the buyers' uncertainty and increase the sellers' commitment to the OMWE. We analyze novel transaction‐level data from an online exchange (MNExchange.org) combined with other archival public records on county‐level repurposing and disposal statistics. First, we find that regional repurposing policies and alternatives have a complementary effect on sellers' commitment toward OMWEs, resulting in increased OMWE exchanges. However, regional disposal policies and alternatives have a substitution effect on sellers' commitment, resulting in reduced exchange success. Further, greater product and transaction information reduce the buyer's uncertainty and increase exchange success. Finally, the analysis shows that users' (buyers and sellers) heavily rely on their prior experience with OMWEs. Specifically, higher familiarity between the buyer–seller pair and familiarity with the OMWE system leads to higher likelihood of exchange success. This study lays the foundation for understanding OMWEs and has important implications for developing policies and operations to increase online transactions of by‐products, materials and wastes.     

Revenue Management vs. Newsvendor Decisions: Does Behavioral Response Mirror Normative Equivalence?

We study and compare decision‐making behavior under the newsvendor and the two‐class revenue management models, in an experimental setting. We observe that, under both problems, decision makers deviate significantly from normative benchmarks. Furthermore, revenue management decisions are consistently higher compared to the newsvendor order quantities. In the face of increasing demand variability, revenue managers increase allocations; this behavior is consistent with normative patterns when the ratio of the selling prices of the two customer segments is less than 1/2, but is its exact opposite when this ratio is greater than 1/2. Newsvendors' behavior with respect to changing demand variability, on the other hand, is consistent with normative trends. We also observe that losses due to leftovers weigh more in newsvendor decisions compared to the revenue management model; we argue that overage cost is more salient in the newsvendor problem because it is perceived as a direct loss, and propose this as the driver of the differences in behavior observed under the two problems.     

Bounding Optimal Expected Revenues for Assortment Optimization under Mixtures of Multinomial Logits

We consider assortment problems under a mixture of multinomial logit models. There is a fixed revenue associated with each product. There are multiple customer types. Customers of different types choose according to different multinomial logit models whose parameters depend on the type of the customer. The goal is to find a set of products to offer so as to maximize the expected revenue obtained over all customer types. This assortment problem under the multinomial logit model with multiple customer types is NP‐complete. Although there are heuristics to find good assortments, it is difficult to verify the optimality gap of the heuristics. In this study, motivated by the difficulty of finding optimal solutions and verifying the optimality gap of heuristics, we develop an approach to construct an upper bound on the optimal expected revenue. Our approach can quickly provide upper bounds and these upper bounds can be quite tight. In our computational experiments, over a large set of randomly generated problem instances, the upper bounds provided by our approach deviate from the optimal expected revenues by 0.15% on average and by less than one percent in the worst case. By using our upper bounds, we are able to verify the optimality gaps of a greedy heuristic accurately, even when optimal solutions are not available.     

How to Compete Against a Behavioral Newsvendor

We investigate newsvendor ordering behavior under competition. We present a laboratory experiment that documents the behavioral ordering regularities in competitive newsvendor environments, and an analytical model extending the standard theory of newsvendor competition by including an optimal best‐response policy for competing with a behaviorally biased newsvendor. We test the effectiveness of this policy using an out‐of‐sample experiment and find that it results in improved market share, service level and profitability.     

解放思想与对社会主义的再认识

对社会主义的再认识 ,思想的持续解放是现实事业发展所需。解放思想就是使思想、观念、践线、方针、政策不落后于实践 ,力争使理论具有超前性和预见性。邓小平将坚持社会主义的本质界定为“三个有利于” ,在经济和精神生活日益国际化的今天 ,“三个代表”是社会主义事业可靠政治保证 ,是对邓小平理论的发展     

儒家身心和谐思想及其现代意义

儒家身心和谐思想主要包括:身心合一的身心观,知、仁、勇统一的全面发展观,身心性命双修的修养观。儒家身心和谐思想对构建和谐社会、和谐世界的现实意义主要表现为自我身心和谐。这是实现人与社会和谐、人与自然和谐的基础;自我身心和谐,才能安顿生命、培育精神;自我身心和谐,才能激发人的潜能,提高人的创造力。     

略论非法行医罪的主观方面

通过我国刑法的罪过理论分析,认为非法行医罪的基本犯罪的主观方面为故意,包括间接故意,并不要求牟利的目的的理解,才符合我国现行刑法的规定。并且,认为本罪的结果加重犯的罪过形式为典型的复合罪过,即过失和间接故意,并给出了自己的理由。