Irresponsible research practices damaging the value of science has been an increasing concern among researchers, but previous work failed to estimate the prevalence of all forms of irresponsible research behavior. Additionally, these analyses have not included articles published in the last decade from 2011 to 2020. This meta-analysis provides an updated meta-analysis that calculates the pooled estimates of research misconduct and questionable research practices, and explores the factors associated with the prevalence of these issues. The estimates, committing RM concern at (...) least 1 of FFP and QRPs concern 1 or more QRPs, were 2.9% and 12.5%, respectively. In addition, 15.5% of researchers witnessed others who had committed at least 1 RM, while 39.7% were aware of others who had used at least 1 QRP. The results document that response proportion, limited recall period, career level, disciplinary background and locations all affect significantly the prevalence of these issues. This meta-analysis addresses a gap in existing meta-analyses and estimates the prevalence of all forms of RM and QRPs, thus providing a better understanding of irresponsible research behaviors. (shrink)

With the development of industrialization and urbanization, cities have become the main carriers of economic activities. However, the long-term development of cities has also caused damage to resources and the environment. Hence, objective and scientific evaluation of urban low-carbon sustainable development capacity is very important. An index system of urban low-carbon sustainable development capability is constructed in this paper, and a TOPSIS-BP neural network model is established to evaluate the low-carbon sustainable development capability of Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou in (...) China. At the same time, the difference degree of low-carbon sustainable development level in these four cities is analyzed by standard deviation and coefficient of variation, and the influencing factors of urban low-carbon sustainable development ability are extracted by grey correlation analysis. The results show that the capability of low-carbon sustainable development in four cities is rising and the difference of low-carbon sustainable development capability is decreasing; the general view that the higher the general investment in low-carbon sustainable development, the higher the level of low-carbon sustainable development in cities has not been verified; with the change of time series, the factors affecting the capability of low-carbon sustainable development in the same city are different and the influence of the same factor on the capability of low-carbon sustainable development in different cities is different. (shrink)

China has a longstanding tradition of stressing the values of harmony and coherence, and Chinese society has often been portrayed as a culture in which conflict avoidance is viewed more positively than direct confrontation and argumentation. In order to evaluate the validity of this claim, this paper sketches Chinese people’s feelings and understandings about interpersonal arguing by reporting results of a data collection in China, using measures of argumentativeness, verbal aggressiveness, argument frames, and personalization of conflict. These results were compared (...) to those from a US sample. Chinese and US data differed in complex ways, but did not show Chinese respondents to be more avoidant. The Chinese correlations among variables were a reasonable match to expectations based on Western argumentation theories, although they did not replicate the US results precisely. The paper offers evidence that Chinese respondents had a more sophisticated understanding of interpersonal arguing than their US counterparts, and were more sensitive to the constructive possibilities of face-to-face disagreement. (shrink)

Objective: Work stress is one of the urgent public health problems, which has aroused wide attention. In addition, work stress also has a negative impact on the development of enterprises. This study has three purposes: to understand the current status of working stress among couriers, to examine the association between work stress, job satisfaction and sleep quality of Chinese couriers, and to verify the mediating role of psychological capital.Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 3000 couriers in Beijing of China (...) from January to December 2019 using cluster stratified random sampling. Descriptive statistical analysis was used to describe demographic characteristics of respondents. Pearson correlation analysis was used to analyze the correlation among work stress, job satisfaction, sleep quality, and psychological capital. The mediating analysis was calculated role of psychological capital.Results: A total of 2831 participants were included in this study. The average score of work stress was 2.49 ± 0.76. Work stress was negatively correlated with job satisfaction, sleep quality, and psychological capital, respectively. The direct effect of work stress on job satisfaction is –0.223, and the total effect of work stress on job satisfaction is –0.267. The a*b*c’ is positive, indicating the mediating role psychological capital has in explaining the relationship between couriers’ work stress and job satisfaction. Moreover, psychological capital plays a mediating role between work stress and sleep quality among couriers.Conclusion: Couriers face certain work stress and should be paid attention to and psychological capital can effectively alleviate the work stress of couriers, so measures can be taken to improve it, promoting healthy development of employees and organizations. (shrink)

Discourse connection is a challenging aspect of writing in a second language. This study seeks to investigate the effects of two classroom instructions on discourse connection in writing for EFL college students, focusing on their argumentative writing. Three classes were exposed to different pre-task conditions: receiving reading materials that provide content support for the writing, receiving planning instructions on effective outlining, and receiving no resources. The results showed that the instructions helped students attain better overall coherence in writing. However, noticeable (...) differences between the two experimental groups emerged in terms of cohesion features. The reading group was found to employ more lexical cohesion devices in writing than the outline group, which indicated a heightened genre awareness. This inquiry helped us identify the reading group’s alignment with content support materials, particularly the change in stance as a factor that contributes to a higher level of lexical cohesion in writing. (shrink)

This paper is to argue that conductive arguments could be understood from a rhetorical perspective. It contends that conductive arguments can be regarded as a particular mode of strategic maneuvering, rather than a new type of argument. Moreover, it demonstrates that the use of conductive arguments can be adequately analyzed and evaluated by adopting the theoretical tools developed in the extended Pragma-Dialectics.

Argument by analogy has long been regarded as the characteristic way of arguing in ancient Chinese culture. Classic Chinese philosophers not only prefer to use analogy to argue for their own views, but also take efforts to theorize it in a systematic way. This paper aims to provide a careful study on the relevant ideas in ancient China in order to reconstruct the ancient Chinese theory of argument by analogy, and then to reveal some of its distinctive features through a (...) comparison with the Western counterpart account as developed by Aristotle. It is indicated that in ancient China analogical argument was conceived primarily as a way of arguing based on classification, with a unique mechanism of taking and giving according to kind. On that basis, it is argued that although such a characterization captures the logical structure of analogical argument in a similar way to Aristotle, the ancient Chinese theory stresses the foundational role of a particular notion of kind, thus makes the construction and application of analogical arguments become highly flexible and context-sensitive. Moreover, it is also contended that in ancient China the rationale of analogical arguments is explained from a general perspective of kind, relying upon the universal knowledge pertaining to the forming of kinds. Then it is further revealed that, unlike Aristotle who emphasizes the causal links between attributes in the physical world, ancient Chinese thinkers justify analogical argument by appealing to some normative metaphysical and epistemological principles. (shrink)

Extant studies of corporate hypocrisy have largely overlooked its implications for employees until recently. Drawing upon social information processing theory, we theorize the impact of corporate hypocrisy on employee silence—an employee behavior potentially detrimental to both organizations and society, as well as the underlying mediating and moderating mechanisms. We empirically tested our hypotheses with two studies. In Study 1, we found that corporate hypocrisy was positively related to employee silence through both employee cognitive trust and employee prosocial motivation. In Study (...) 2, we revealed that consumer pressure weakened the mediating roles of employee cognitive trust and prosocial motivation, while regulatory pressure strengthened these roles. Overall, this study sheds light on whether, how, and when employees remain silent when they perceive corporate hypocrisy. Implications for theory and practice are discussed. (shrink)

This paper addresses the issue of the relationship between Ralph Johnson’s idea of dialectical tier and the critical scrutiny function in argument. We first give a concise articulation of the critical view of argument, and then probe into both the apparent similarities and deep discrepancies between the critical view of argument and Johnson’s views on the dialectical tier and manifest rationality. On that basis, we disprove the conjecture that the presence of a dialectical tier indicates that the thesis in argument (...) is critically established. However, we also urge to bridge together the critical view of argument and Johnson’s theory of argument, and thereby to make the dialectical tier critical in nature. We argue that this could be a promising proposal, and conclude with some remarks on exploring the critical dimension within our current study of argument. (shrink)

In a recent paper, “One Logician’s Perspective on Argumentation”, van Benthem expressed his reservations on Toulmin’s diagnosis and abandonment of formal logic, and argued that Toulmin was wrong for leading the study of argumentation apart from formal approach. In this paper we will try to reveal two se-rious misunderstandings of Toulmin’s ideas in his discussions, and thereby make an apology for Toulmin.

Globalization and informatization are reshaping human life and social behaviors. The purpose is to explore the worldwide strategies to cultivate international talents with a global vision. As a global language with the largest population, English, and especially its learning effect, have always been the major concerns of scholars and educators. This work innovatively studies the combination of immersion-based English teaching with virtual reality technology. Then, based on the experimental design mode, 106 students from a Chinese school were selected for a (...) quasi-experimental study for 16 weeks. The collected data were analyzed by computer statistical software, and hypotheses are verified. The results showed that there is a significantly positive correlation between VR and immersion-based language teaching. There is a significantly positive correlation between immersion-based language teaching and academic achievement, and VR is positively correlated with learning outcome. Compared with other state-of-art research methods, this work modifies the students’ oral test through the analysis and comparison with the system database, and the students’ learning effect is greatly improved. Finally, some suggestions are put forward according to the research results to provide an experimental reference for English teachers and future linguistics teaching. (shrink)

ObjectiveDepression is one of the most prevalent mental disorder in college students. The traditional screening method for is psychological measurements or scales, but social desirability can cause students to mask their thoughts, and an auxiliary projective test may be needed. This study was designed to measure the validity of applying human figure drawing test as an auxiliary tool for depression screening in this population.MethodsThe HFD test was administered to 113 clinical participants diagnosed with major depressive disorder and 97 healthy college (...) students with self-rating depression scale scores <50. Correlation analysis, chi-square tests, and logistic regression were conducted to identify specific drawing features that associated with depression and could differentiate between the clinical and control subjects. ROC curve was also implemented to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy.ResultsEleven drawing features were significantly related to depression based on the chi-square test results and seven drawing features were associated with depression based on correlation analysis. After logistic regression by controlling gender and age, three drawing features were associated with depression: shaded eyes, drawing clothes in detail, and drawing other personal belongings. Further, drawing clothes in detail and drawing other personal belongings were two significant variables in ROC curve analysis.ConclusionLogistic regression showed that shaded eyes, drawing clothes in detail and drawing other personal belongings were significant drawing features. Individuals with depression will have less energy to put extra effort into drawing and are less likely to have detailed drawings. And the shading of eyes may represent that depressive individuals have a low willingness to communicate and tend to isolate themselves. The results indicated that Human Figure Drawing could be used as an auxiliary tool in college students’ depression screening. Further, the ROC curve analysis showed low discrimination of single drawing features, suggesting that the application of Human Figure Drawing should be considered as a whole instead of focusing on the single drawing feature. (shrink)

Background and PurposeTranscranial direct current stimulation is an emerging non-invasive neuromodulation technique for focal epilepsy. Because epilepsy is a disease affecting the brain network, our study was aimed to evaluate and predict the treatment outcome of cathodal tDCS by analyzing the ctDCS-induced functional network alterations.MethodsEither the active 5-day, −1.0 mA, 20-min ctDCS or sham ctDCS targeting at the most active interictal epileptiform discharge regions was applied to 27 subjects suffering from focal epilepsy. The functional networks before and after ctDCS were (...) compared employing graph theoretical analysis based on the functional magnetic resonance imaging data. A support vector machine prediction model was built to predict the treatment outcome of ctDCS using the graph theoretical measures as markers.ResultsOur results revealed that the mean clustering coefficient and the global efficiency decreased significantly, as well as the characteristic path length and the mean shortest path length at the stimulation sites in the fMRI functional networks increased significantly after ctDCS only for the patients with response to the active ctDCS. Our prediction model achieved the mean prediction accuracy of 68.3% after the nested cross validation. The mean area under the receiver operating curve was 0.75, which showed good prediction performance.ConclusionThe study demonstrated that the response to ctDCS was related to the topological alterations in the functional networks of epilepsy patients detected by fMRI. The graph theoretical measures were promising for clinical prediction of ctDCS treatment outcome. (shrink)

BackgroundDepression is a serious mental disorder often accompanied by emotional and physiological disorders. Visceral fat index is the current standard method in the evaluation of visceral fat deposition. In this study, we explored the association between VAI and depression in the American population using NHANES data.MethodsA total of 2,577 patients were enrolled for this study. Data were collected through structured questionnaires. Subgroup analysis for the relationship between VAI and depression was evaluated using multivariate regression analysis after adjustment for potential confounding (...) factors.ResultsFor every 1 unit increase in VAI, the clinical depression increased by 14%. High VAI scores increased the highest risk of developing depression. Subgroup analysis demonstrated a strong and stable association between VAI and the development of depression.ConclusionOur study showed that depressive symptoms are associated with a high ratio of visceral adiposity index after controlling confounding factors. (shrink)

The energy conversion units and energy storage equipment connected to the multi-energy system are becoming diversified, and the uncertain factors brought by distributed wind power and photovoltaic power generation make the system energy flow structure more complex, which brings great difficulties to the modeling and application of traditional energy hub modeling methods. This study deeply analyzes the multi-energy flow coupling structure and operation mechanism of multi-energy systems, and carries out the power flow calculation and analysis of multi-energy systems based on (...) an energy hub, so as to ensure the safe and stable operation of regional energy. Based on the physical characteristics of energy systems such as power systems, thermal systems, and gas systems, this article studies the comprehensive power flow model including the electric-gas-thermal multi-energy coupling network and proposes the power flow decomposition of the energy supply subsystem and its applicable equation based on Newton–Raphson method. The effectiveness of the proposed method under different operation modes is verified by case studies. The calculation results show that under constant load, the energy hub running in fixing thermal by electricity and fixing electricity by thermal mode has little influence on the voltage of each node in the power sub-network. Within the constraint range, the natural gas flow obtained from the natural gas subsystem is coupled with the power subsystem to meet the load demand. The influence on the power flow at each node of the heat network is not obvious. (shrink)

The image of St. Petersburg is an integral part of Russian art, in particular, in watercolor painting. This article is devoted to the analysis of the work of Russian watercolor artists, identifying the specifics and characteristic features of the image of the city on the Neva in their work. The object of the study is watercolors by Russian artists, the subject is expressive means, techniques and methods through which the image of St. Petersburg is embodied. On the example of watercolor (...) works by E.P. Gau, I.A. Vladimirova, A.S. Vedernikov, A.P. Ostroumova-Lebedeva, P.P. Grigoryants, G.P. Fitingof, A. Ermolaev, V.V. Proshkin, K. Kuzema, V. Kolbasov, O. Litvinenko, etc. the historical transformation of the artistic image of St. Petersburg, its conditionality by cultural and historical factors and the nature of the life of the inhabitants of the city is shown. The study concluded that the image of St. Petersburg is important for Russian artists, as well as a significant variety of its creative interpretations. Each watercolor work demonstrates the subjective attitude of artists to St. Petersburg, thanks to which real urban landscapes acquire spirituality and unique expressiveness. The complex historical fate of this cultural and artistic center of Russia, which was once a magnificent capital, experienced revolutionary events and went through military destruction, determined the versatility of creative approaches to the embodiment of the city, as a result of various turns of history, it lost, then regained its greatness, beauty and attractiveness. Petersburg in watercolors is invariably filled with vitality, lyrical feelings and the love of artists. (shrink)

Mit der rekonstruierenden Textanalyse der Preisschrift über die Fortschritte der Metaphysik (1804) und der drei Kritiken hat der Autor den Begriff der „eigentlichen Metaphysik“ Kants zum Inhalt. Demnach wird die Hauptfrage der kantischen Metaphysik als die Frage nach der Möglichkeit der Erkenntnis von den übersinnlichen Prinzipien der Natur bestimmt. Die Grundmethode zur Kants Antwort auf diese Frage bezeichnet der Autor als „praktische Regulation der Natur“, in der die reine praktische Vernunft ihrem notwendigen Bedürfnis gemäß die reflektierende Urteilskraft dazu leitet, nach (...) dem System der praktisch postulierten Prinzipien (Gott, Freiheit und Unsterblichkeit) eine moralisch-zweckmäßigen Natur zu regulieren. Durch dieses methodische Verfahren zeichnet sich die kantische Metaphysikkonzeption aus, die ihrerseits aber auch auf die aristotelische Tradition zurückbezogen ist. Yuwei Xie promovierte in Philosophie an der Universität Heidelberg und arbeitet derzeit am Philosophischen Seminar der Sun Yat-sen Universität in Guangzhou, China. Seine Forschungsschwerpunkte sind klassische deutsche Philosophie und Phänomenologie. (shrink)

Working memory is a limited capacity memory system that involves the short-term storage and processing of information. Neuroscientific studies of working memory have mostly focused on the essential roles of neural oscillations during item encoding from single sensory modalities (e.g., visual and auditory). However, the characteristics of neural oscillations during multisensory encoding in working memory are rarely studied. Our study investigated the oscillation characteristics of neural signals in scalp electrodes and mapped functional brain connectivity while participants encoded complex audiovisual objects (...) in a working memory task. Experimental results showed that theta oscillations (4–8 Hz) were prominent and topographically distributed across multiple cortical regions, including prefrontal (e.g., superior frontal gyrus), parietal (e.g., precuneus), temporal (e.g., inferior temporal gyrus), and occipital (e.g., cuneus) cortices. Furthermore, neural connectivity at the theta oscillation frequency was significant in these cortical regions during audiovisual object encoding compared with single modality object encoding. These results suggest that local oscillations and interregional connectivityviatheta activity play an important role during audiovisual object encoding and may contribute to the formation of working memory traces from multisensory items. (shrink)

Book Review Giving Reasons: A Linguistic-Pragmatic Approach to Argumentation Theory Lilian Bermejo-Luque Springer, Argumentation Library Vol. 20, 2011, Pp. xvi, 1-209 ISBN 978-94-007-1760-2 106.95 € e-ISBN 978-94-007-1761-9 99.99 €.