This essay explores numerous and complicated naturalized epistemology against the background of pragmatism. We distinguish three programmes of naturalized epistemology: strong, moderate, and weak. By considering commitments of pragmatism on which different programmes depend, we point out the close-knit relationship between pragmatism and naturalized epistemology. We also illustrate the essential origin of today's controversy over naturalized epistemology and predict the uptrend of naturalized epistemology.

Ecological theory always treats culture as a response to the demands of the environment. Farming, in the history of the world, has significantly influenced the formation of human culture. This paper examines the relationship between managers’ rice culture and corporate tax avoidance. The main finding shows managers from collectivist rice planting areas are less likely to engage in tax avoidance activities. This link is more pronounced in firms with better governance and greater gender diversification and in firms where managers have (...) academic experience. Additionally, the relationship is enhanced in areas with higher regional trust areas and higher tax enforcement regions. Finally, our results are robust to a battery of additional analyses. Overall, our study supports the important role of cultural factors in corporate strategic decision-making. (shrink)

Histone post-translational modifications play important roles in transcriptional regulation. It is known that multiple histone modifications can act in a combinatorial manner. In this study, we investigated the effects of multiple histone modifications on expression levels of five gene categories in coding regions. The combinatorial patterns of modifications for the five gene categories were also studied in the regions. Our results indicated that the differences in the expression levels between any two gene categories were significant. There were some corresponding differences (...) in multiple histone modification levels among the five gene categories. Multiple histone modifications jointly impacted expression levels of every gene category. Four mutual combinations of histone modifications were found and analyzed. (shrink)

Accumulating research has identified the interactive effects of catechol-O-methyltransferase gene Val158Met polymorphism and environmental factors on aggression. However, available evidence was mainly based upon correlational design, which yields mixed findings concerning who are more affected by environmental conditions and has been challenged for the low power of analyses on gene–environment interaction. Drawing on a mixed design, we scrutinized how COMT Val158Met polymorphism impacts on aggression, assessed by hostility, aggressive motivation, and aggressive behavior, under different social conditions in a sample of (...) 70 Chinese male undergraduate students. We found that both Val/Val homozygote and Met alleles carriers showed differences in the feelings of hostility and aggressive motivation under conditions of exclusion versus inclusion, but these differences were more pronounced for Met allele carriers. These findings implied that COMT Val158Met polymorphism did not respond to environmental stimuli in an all-or-none way and shed light on the importance of examining the gene–environment interaction using a mixed design. (shrink)

Given the centrality of learners’ individual differences in their academic achievement, a plethora of research has been done on various individual difference variables and their associations with learners’ increased achievement. Yet, the role of creativity and self-efficacy in EFL learners’ academic achievement has not been extensively studied. Further, no review inquiry has simultaneously probed into the consequences of these two individual difference variables for learners’ academic achievement. This study strives to fill this underappreciated gap by addressing the positive consequences of (...) creativity and self-efficacy for EFL learners’ academic achievement. The desirable consequences of creativity and self-efficacy beliefs were clarified using the available evidence. Finally, the conclusions and consequences of the findings are discussed. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Western creativity is usually entrusted to the human imagination, regarded as a mental power capable of envisioning eternally original artefacts, while in the East creativity is entrusted to nature-in-the human, what Taoist philosophy calls qi, a spiritual power capable of reflecting the passing changes of nature in paintings, poems, and other forms of art. It is the intention of this paper to explore and elucidate these differences between the Western and Eastern conceptualizations of creativity, ending with a suggestion of (...) one feature they may have in common. (shrink)

In poor and remote areas, teachers frequently encounter serious ongoing challenges and experience teacher exhaustion due to the uneven distribution of resource supply, and a shortage of professional support. Maintaining teachers’ professional wellbeing in an unfavorable teaching environment has become a major challenge. The current study explores teachers’ professional wellbeing in the context of a five-month-long professional development program designed for teachers in areas of deep poverty in China. This study adopted the method of narrative enquiry and collected diaries written (...) before and after the program from 46 primary school English teachers. Based on the manually analyzed data, it was found that teachers’ overall wellbeing at work was enhanced in terms of their professional meaning, engagement, and achievement. The systematic analysis of the diaries helped to better understand how the program exerted such an effect on teachers’ learning experiences and their wellbeing. (shrink)

This study aimed to discuss the relationships among the brand image of universities (external variables), university satisfaction (mediating variables) and customer lifetime value (internal variables). The findings can serve as a reference for higher educational institutions in strengthening their advantages and overcoming their shortcomings, as well as for administrative decision-making. A questionnaire survey was conducted on university students in Taiwan, and 470 valid samples were retrieved. The data were analysed with structural equation modelling and multi-group analysis. The results showed that (...) brand image influences customer satisfaction, which in turn affects customer lifetime value. Satisfaction is a partial mediating variable between brand image and customer lifetime value. Multi-group analysis found that gender has no interfering effect between brand image and satisfaction, nor does it between satisfaction and customer lifetime value or between brand image and customer lifetime value. (shrink)

This paper proposes a novel robust fixed-time control for the robot manipulator system with uncertainties. Based on the uniform robust exact differentiator algorithm, a robust control term is constructed. Then, a robust fixed-time inverse dynamics control is proposed. For the proposed control method, the fixed-time stability of a closed-loop system with uncertainties is strictly proved. The newly proposed method exhibits the following two attractive features. First, the proposed control scheme extends the existing fixed-time IDC for the robot manipulator system to (...) the robust control scheme. Second, the proposed method is strictly nonsingular rather than the commonly used approximate approach. Simulation result demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme. (shrink)

Chen employs social capital as a conceptual tool to explore the life experience of a group of young Muslim students within the Han Chinese mainstream society.

Chen Guying’s _Laozi_ includes some of the most significant traditional commentary and influential contemporary scholarship. This book completely changed _Laozi_ studies in China, and its English translation gives scholars a unique inroad to Chinese perspectives on the _Laozi_.

Xi Chen explores the question of why there has been a dramatic rise in and routinization of social protests in China since the early 1990s. Drawing on case studies, in-depth interviews and a unique data set of about 1,000 government records of collective petitions, this book examines how the political structure in Reform China has encouraged Chinese farmers, workers, pensioners, disabled people and demobilized soldiers to pursue their interests and claim their rights by staging collective protests. Chen suggests (...) that routinized contentious bargaining between the government and ordinary people has remedied the weaknesses of the Chinese political system and contributed to the regime's resilience. Social Protest and Contentious Authoritarianism in China challenges the conventional wisdom that authoritarian regimes always repress popular collective protest and that popular collective action tends to destabilize authoritarian regimes. (shrink)

The following paper, together with its sequel ("The use and non-use of mathematics"), is a study in the mathematization of nature. It looks into the history of one of the most emblematic achievements of this fundamental aspect of the making of modem science - the Inverse Square Law of universal gravitation - before its celebrated application by Newton to celestial mechanics. What did it take, we ask, to tum a particular mathematical ratio into a candidate for a law of nature?

Peer assessment is employed as one fundamental practice of classroom-based assessment in terms of its learning-oriented and formative nature. The exercise of peer assessment has multiple and additional benefits for student learning. However, research into the learning processes in peer assessment is scarce both in theory and in practice, making it difficult to evaluate and pinpoint its value as a tool in assessment as learning. This study focuses both on the learning process and outcome through assessment activities. We set out (...) with three goals in mind: to examine students' assessment performance in context, to evaluate its impact on student progress, and to illuminate teachers on organizing assessment activities. Three specific research questions are answered in this study: How do student raters perform in the process of PA in an advanced English class? To what extent do assessment activities influence the students' speaking ability? What are students' perceptions of PA regarding its benefits and caveats? A total of 29 undergraduate students participated in two assessment activities on argumentative speaking. Many-Facet Rasch Model analysis was conducted to measure the rater effects both at the group level and the individual level. Bias/interaction analyses were performed to diagnose rater behavior in different contexts including the rating session, speaking session, and peer assessment vs. self-assessment. Questionnaire and semi-structured interview data were also collected to explore factors and strategies that could interfere with PA as AaL. Results show that students exhibited stable rating behavior and made progress in argumentative speaking in all dimensions, including delivery, organization, and language use. They are more stringent with themselves than with peers although there is one rare case with a bias against peers. Participants acknowledged the benefits of PA but also shared reasonable concerns in practice. This study validated the feasibility and the effectiveness of PA for student learning. Discussion on findings and guidelines for effective implementation of PA as AaL are provided. (shrink)

Leadership styles, especially empowering leadership, affect the psychological relationship between employees and organizations, and then affect employees’ positive behavior in the organization. In this research, we studied the effects of empowering leadership and psychological distance on employees’ pro-environmental behavior and explored the mechanism of green organizational climate. By adopting correlation analysis, statistical analysis, and regression analysis, we conducted a multisource field study of 873 valid employee questionnaires to verify our theoretical model. The results showed that empowering leadership had a significant (...) positive impact on psychological distance and employees’ pro-environmental behavior; and psychological distance played a partly intermediation role in the relationship between empowering leadership and employees’ pro-environmental behavior. Moreover, GOC can promote employees’ pro-environmental behavior, but it cannot regulate between psychological distance and employees’ pro-environmental behavior. The findings obtained some intriguing insights that could help to better guide employees toward pro-environmental behavior. (shrink)

In order to systematically evaluate perceptual anticipation between experts and non-experts for different kinds of combat sports, we needed to perform a comprehensive assessment. In this systematic review and meta-analysis, we searched four English-language and three Chinese-language databases that used expert/non-expert research paradigms, to explore perceptual anticipation in combat sports. We employed a random effects model for pooled analyses using the inverse variance method. We included 27 eligible studies involving 233 datasets in this meta-analysis. We observed large effect sizes for (...) the differences between experts and non-experts in both response accuracy and reaction time. We also observed substantial differences between experts and non-experts in the mean duration of visual fixations per trial, but not in the visual fixation duration. Taken together, high-level combat athletes have more advantages in perceptual anticipation than lower-level athletes, showing faster and more accurate responses when facing the opponent's attacks, as well as focusing on fewer points of visual fixations than novice athletes. Different types of combat sports and stimulus presentations affect perceptual anticipation abilities to varying extents in relation to outcome measures, with more pronounced expertise in a stimulus that is closer to real-world situations.Systematic review registrationhttps://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?ID=CRD42021226343, PROSPERO CRD42021226343. (shrink)

Food safety risk is becoming a vital issue for public health, and improving public awareness of FSR through social media is necessary. This study aims to explore specific mechanisms of FSR perception; it first categorizes 19 risk characteristics into two variables, dread and efficacy, and then examines how social media use affects perceived FSR through both variables. Additionally, the study explores the moderating effects of source credibility and science literacy on the mechanisms of FSR perception. Based on a nationwide online (...) survey of more than six salient food safety issues in China, the study found that exposure to food safety risk information on social media can help improve perceived FSR based on the proposed “dread–efficacy processing model”, where dread stimulates perceived risk, while efficacy suppresses risk perception. Moreover, source credibility intensifies the effect of social media use on efficacy appraisal, whereas science literacy exerts a “double-weakening” influence on dread appraisal. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed. (shrink)