Search results

This paper aims at describing and exploring how consumers perceive acupuncture as a medical treatment in relation to biomedicine.

Data were collected through an online survey using quota sampling. The attitudes of 879 Hong Kong residents aged 20 or above were surveyed. Questions were generated from a previous focus group study.

Factor analysis found that attitude toward acupuncture consisted of five underlying dimensions, including trust in biomedicine, risks versus benefits, cure and effectiveness, qualification and skills of acupuncturists, side effects and costs and severe aftereffects. Lack of trust in acupuncturists and perceived inferiority of acupuncture to biomedicine were the major barriers of public acceptance of acupuncture. Perceived strengths of acupuncture identified were not involving taking medicine, fewer side effects and being good for preventive care.

This study used a convenience sample recruited through personal networks, so the findings cannot automatically be generalized to the rest of the population.

There is a need to build trust in the therapy and the reputation of acupuncturists through better communication of the profession’s qualification and accreditation system, as well as dissemination of clinical evidence on a long-term basis. Consumers need to be better educated about the sensations to be expected during acupuncture and the criteria for selecting an acupuncturist.

This has been the first quantitative study focusing on Hong Kong consumers’ perceptions of acupuncture.

Implementation of intelligent electronic needles is presented that can judge the physical conditions of a patient and be applied anytime anywhere with the information of pulse waves sent from a remote place through the web. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The present research developed a web-based system of electronic acupuncture using fuzzy rules. Anybody can use his or her smart phone and select a file in the menu that automatically calculates optimal points and time of acupuncture.

A set of experiments found improvement of the time of acupuncture by 25 percent.

The present research developed a web-based system of electronic acupuncture using fuzzy rules. Anybody can use his or her smart phone and select a file in the menu that automatically calculates optimal points and time of acupuncture. A set of experiments found improvement of the time of acupuncture by 25 percent.

The present contribution is in the field of quantum modelling of macroscopic phenomena. The focus is on one enigmatic aspect of quantum physics, namely, the Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen paradox and entanglement. After a review of the state-of-the-art concerning macroscopic quantum effects and quantum interaction, this paper aims to propose a link between embryology and acupuncture in the framework of macroscopic intricate states induced by quantum mechanics.

The author uses the fractaquantum hypothesis which supposes that the quantum framework is applicable to all insecable elements in nature, whatever their size.

This contribution considers an open question related to a possible link between acupuncture and embryology: can a weak form of intrication be maintained during stem cell division to interpret the acupuncture meridians as an explicit manifestation of a macroscopic intricate system? The macroscopic structure suggested by quantum mechanics could be a beginning of explanation of acupuncture through the embryologic development.

A fundamental hypothesis is the fact that during cell division, cells keep some weak intrication.

This contribution suggests a structure of the acupuncture meridians. The links between the acupuncture points have to be searched in the embryologic development of the individual through a weak remaing intrication of some of his cells and not in present explicit relations.

A new link between occidental and oriental cultures is explored.

This contribution suggests conceptual links between acupuncture, embryology and macroscopic intricate states.

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is a complete medical healthcare system that encompasses acupuncture, acupressure, moxibustion, herbal medicine, diet, tui na massage, and exercises (tai chi and qigong) among other traditional therapies. It uses herbs and natural resources to produce the traditional medicines and focuses on maintaining the balance between body and mind. As such, many aspects of TCM can be considered as green and sustainable. While there is market demand for TCM in some countries and among some communities, some others are still not aware of TCM. Moreover, there are fewer discussions in the academic platforms on TCM. This case highlights the scenario of TCM based on Malaysia’s perspective and discusses its challenges and prospects.

Immigrants’ access to health services is a widely researched topic, yet few studies examine immigrants’ use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). This study uses the Behavioral Model to compare overall CAM use and use of acupuncture, chiropractic, herbs, yoga, and relaxation by immigrant status (nativity and time in the United States). It then explains the nativity gap in use by assessing knowledge, cost, and need as potential reasons for not using these modalities. Results show that controlling for predisposing, enabling, and need factors, recent immigrants use CAM less than the U.S.-born. Lack of knowledge of CAM modalities partially explains why some recent immigrants do not use acupuncture, chiropractic, or relaxation, while established immigrants cite lack of need as a reason for not using yoga. Cost does not explain immigrants’ lower use of these five modalities. Finally, ethnicity moderates the association between immigrant status and reasons for not using CAM.

How do you get people – particularly young people – to engage with social and political issues? Activists and academics alike have been plagued by this question for some time, and answers to it have ranged from greater organizational involvement to framing. Another possibility is meeting youth where they are at; that is, connecting youth’s existing interests in popular culture with broader social problems and issues. A group that is doing just that is the Harry Potter Alliance (HPA), a story-fueled nonprofit organization that turns fans into heroes. In this chapter, we trace the development of the Harry Potter fan community, the stories’ resonance with fans, and how the HPA has drawn on the community and the story for mobilization. We argue that the HPA leverages culture in two ways that are relevant for social movements and political communication scholars. The HPA is able to tap into the fan community for bloc recruitment using its ties and connections to media – in this case, the fictional story – as a point of mobilization. Additionally, the HPA is able to bloc recruit from mass society – a process they refer to as “cultural acupuncture” – by strategically connecting the story with social justice issues when cultural attention is at its peak. We conclude with a discussion of the HPA’s impact on its members and how bloc recruitment and cultural acupuncture may be relevant for other fan communities.

Wikipedia has the lofty goal of compiling all human knowledge. The purpose of the present study is to map the structure of the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) knowledge domain on Wikipedia, to identify patterns of knowledge representation on Wikipedia and to test the applicability of author bibliographic coupling analysis, an effective method for mapping knowledge domains represented in published scholarly documents, for Wikipedia data.

We adapted and followed the well-established procedures and techniques for author bibliographic coupling analysis (ABCA). Instead of bibliographic data from a citation database, we used all articles on TCM downloaded from the English version of Wikipedia as our dataset. An author bibliographic coupling network was calculated and then factor analyzed using SPSS. Factor analysis results were visualized. Factors were labeled upon manual examination of articles that authors who load primarily in each factor have significantly contributed references to. Clear factors were interpreted as topics.

Seven TCM topic areas are represented on Wikipedia, among which Acupuncture-related practices, Falun Gong and Herbal Medicine attracted the most significant contributors to TCM. Acupuncture and Qi Gong have the most connections to the TCM knowledge domain and also serve as bridges for other topics to connect to the domain. Herbal medicine is weakly linked to and non-herbal medicine is isolated from the rest of the TCM knowledge domain. It appears that specific topics are represented well on Wikipedia but their conceptual connections are not. ABCA is effective for mapping knowledge domains on Wikipedia but document-based bibliographic coupling analysis is not.

Given the prominent position of Wikipedia for both information users and for researchers on knowledge organization and information retrieval, it is important to study how well knowledge is represented and structured on Wikipedia. Such studies appear largely missing although studies from different perspectives both about Wikipedia and using Wikipedia as data are abundant. Author bibliographic coupling analysis is effective for mapping knowledge domains represented in published scholarly documents but has never been applied to mapping knowledge domains represented on Wikipedia.

The purpose of this paper is to describe and discuss the use of Chinese medicine in the prevention and treatment of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in China and Asia.

This paper provides a brief overview of the COVID-19. Based on the syndrome differentiation (辨證論治), the concept of clearing heat and detoxifying lung in traditional Chinese medicine is used to prevent and treat COVID-19 through restoring the vital qi (正氣) in human body and regulating the lung as well as spleen to strengthen the immune system. Traditional Chinese medicine has been used as a complementary therapy for the possible intervention of COVID-19 including traditional Chinese herbal decoctions, Chinese traditional patent medicines, acupuncture and moxibustion as well as the traditional health exercises in China and parts of Asia.

Traditional Chinese medicine plays a significant role in the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 pandemic. The infection cases of China are around 80,000 and a steady decline compared with the USA which has 5,000,000 infection cases and continuous increases. It is shown that more than 90% of patients recovered after the treatment of traditional Chinese herbal decoctions and Chinese traditional patent medicines without any side-effect compared to the use of Remdesivir (GS-5734). Acupuncture (針灸) and moxibustion (艾灸) stimulate the immune and nervous systems for preventing infectious diseases. Taichi (太極) and Baduanjin (八段錦) as the auxiliary aerobic exercise under the theory of Chinese medicine can enhance the immune system and improve the lung function. Thus, an integration of traditional Chinese Medicine and Western medicine is the best strategy for the prevention, treatment and control of COVID-19 pandemic in the future.

This paper describes traditional Chinese medicine as an effective way for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19.

One of the consequences of the democratization of higher education in the United States is the explosion of institutions that have arisen to meet mass demand, and the stratification of those institutions based on the populations they serve. The Ivy League, the “public ivy” flagship state universities, and a cadre of elite small private liberal arts colleges are the basis for the institutionalized myths that inform public perception of what colleges or universities are, even though these schools account for an ever-shrinking fraction of American higher education experiences. The growth in schools serving primarily “nontraditional” students – that is, anything except in-person residential undergraduate liberal arts for at-least-middle-class white eighteen-year-olds with certain test scores coming directly from a college-preparatory high school program – has created a legitimacy paradox within the higher education sector. Democratization has created a need for different types of institutions, but the quest for legitimacy within the higher education sector drives isomorphic change and fuels mission creep, pulling schools away from their original nontraditional constituencies. In order to effectively serve nontraditional students, schools must explore other sectors outside of higher education where there is potential for creating programmatic and/or institutional legitimacy, including the business sector, specific professional sectors, and social/cultural milieu. The intentional development of multiliminality, where institutions draw legitimacy from multiple overlapping environmental sectors simultaneously, offers one response which helps anchor colleges and universities in their missions and helps maintain the access promised by the democratization of higher education.