Plagiarism Allegations Account for Most Retractions in Major Latin American/Caribbean Databases

This study focuses on retraction notices from two major Latin American/Caribbean indexing databases: SciELO and LILACS. SciELO includes open scientific journals published mostly in Latin America/the Caribbean, from which 10 % are also indexed by Thomson Reuters Web of Knowledge Journal of Citation Reports (JCR). LILACS has a similar geographical coverage and includes dissertations and conference/symposia proceedings, but it is limited to publications in the health sciences. A search for retraction notices was performed in these two databases using the keywords “retracted”, “retraction” “withdrawal”, “withdrawn”, “removed” and “redress”. Documents were manually checked to identify those that actually referred to retractions, which were then analyzed and categorized according to the reasons alleged in the notices. Dates of publication/retraction and time to retraction were also recorded. Searching procedures were performed between June and December 2014. Thirty-one retraction notices were identified, fifteen of which were in JCR-indexed journals. “Plagiarism” was alleged in six retractions of this group. Among the non-JCR journals, retraction reasons were alleged in fourteen cases, twelve of which were attributed to “plagiarism”. The proportion of retracted articles for the SciELO database was approximately 0.005 %. The reasons alleged in retraction notices may be used as signposts to inform discussions in Latin America on plagiarism and research integrity. At the international level, these results suggest that the correction of the literature is becoming global and is not limited to mainstream international publications.     

A paradox for significant freedom

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion -     

Evaluating the Acute Contributions of Dopaminergic Replacement to Gait With Obstacles in Parkinson's Disease

The influence of dopaminergic replacement (DR) on gait in people with Parkinson's disease (PD) is well documented. However, little is known about the acute effects of dopamine on more complex locomotor tasks that require visual guidance to avoid obstacles during gait. The authors investigated the influence of DR on locomotor behavior in a task where movement planning and control might be challenged by the height of the obstacle. The PD group included patients diagnosed with idiopathic PD (n = 12), as well as healthy controls (n = 12). Patients walked and stepped over obstacles of different heights before (OFF) and after (ON) levodopa intake. Spatial adjustments were not modulated by DR, but the step time to perform these anticipatory gait adjustments was longer only in PD-OFF (compared with healthy controls) when approaching the highest obstacle, but not PD-ON. During the crossing phase, trail limb toe clearance of PD patients was shorter than healthy controls only during the OFF state. ON-OFF comparisons were significantly different only for the time to reach the lead foot clearance over the highest obstacle. In summary, DR partially improved movement slowness but did not directly affect movement amplitude of lower limb regulation in this gait task.     

Affect of the unconscious: Visually suppressed angry faces modulate our decisions

Emotional and affective processing imposes itself over cognitive processes and modulates our perception of the surrounding environment. In two experiments, we addressed the issue of whether nonconscious processing of affect can take place even under deep states of unawareness, such as those induced by interocular suppression techniques, and can elicit an affective response that can influence our understanding of the surrounding environment. In Experiment 1, participants judged the likeability of an unfamiliar item—a Chinese character—that was preceded by a face expressing a particular emotion (either happy or angry). The face was rendered invisible through an interocular suppression technique (continuous flash suppression; CFS). In Experiment 2, backward masking (BM), a less robust masking technique, was used to render the facial expressions invisible. We found that despite equivalent phenomenological suppression of the visual primes under CFS and BM, different patterns of affective processing were obtained with the two masking techniques. Under BM, nonconscious affective priming was obtained for both happy and angry invisible facial expressions. However, under CFS, nonconscious affective priming was obtained only for angry facial expressions. We discuss an interpretation of this dissociation between affective processing and visual masking techniques in terms of distinct routes from the retina to the amygdala.     

The interpretation of ambiguous trimorphemic words in sentence context

Many trimorphemic words are structurally and semantically ambiguous. For example, unlock-able can either be un-lockable (cannot be locked) or unlock-able (can be unlocked). Which interpretation is preferred and whether the preceding sentence context affects the initial interpretation is not clear from prior research. The present experiment embedded ambiguous trimorphemic words in sentence contexts, manipulated whether or not preceding context disambiguated the meaning, and examined the pattern of fixation durations on the ambiguous word and the remainder of the text. The results indicated that the unlock-able interpretation was preferred; moreover, preceding context did not exert a significant effect until the eyes had initially exited from the target word.     

The relation of career adaptability to work experience,extracurricular activities,and work transition in Portuguese graduate students

This study analyzed the psychometric properties and the factor structure of the Career Adapt-Abilities Scale (CAAS)—Portugal HE Form with 406 graduate students and explored the relationship between career adaptability, work experience, extracurricular activities and work transition. The analysis allows us to conclude that CAAS can be a valid and useful measurement for assessing career adaptability in Portuguese graduates. The differential analysis evidenced that participants with student worker status and with work experiences reported displayed higher scores on the subscales of control and curiosity, respectively. No statistical differences emerged regarding experience of extracurricular activities. Also, participants who referred to anticipating difficulties in work transition scored significantly lower on the subscales of control than did their peers who do not anticipate difficulties in such transitions. The obtained results support the importance of considering practical experiences and fostering career adaptability during higher education studies as a way to help graduates manage the transition to professional contexts.     

Attentional blink differences between adolescent dyslexic and normal readers

The goal of this study was to evaluate the possibility that dyslexic individuals require more working memory resources than normal readers to shift attention from stimulus to stimulus. To test this hypothesis, normal and dyslexic adolescents participated in a Rapid Serial Visual Presentation experiment (Raymond, Shapiro, & Arnell, 1992). Surprisingly, the result showed that the participants with dyslexia produced a shallower attentional blink than normal controls. This result may be interpreted as showing differences in the way the two groups encode information in episodic memory. They also fit in a cascade-effect perspective of developmental dyslexia.     

Molecular Mechanisms Associated with the Benefits of Variable Practice in Motor Learning

Abstract

Variable practice promotes a higher level of motor learning than constant practice. The glutamate receptors, n-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) and alfa-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic (AMPA), have been associated with the changes in motor cortex that occur throughout the process of motor learning. Considering that, it is possible that variable practice is more associated with the NMDA and AMPA receptors than constant practice. This study aimed ao investigating the association between the glutamate receptors, NMDA and AMPA, and constant and variable practice schedules. Seventy-eight male mice practiced the rotarod task in a constant or variable scheduling, in two consecutive days (acquisition phase). Learning tests were performed 24?h and 10?days after the end of the acquisition phase. Variable practice was more associated with the NMDA receptor and had a greater AMPA receptor expression than constant practice. The results suggest that the benefits of variable practice are result of both the greater dependency on the NMDA receptor and the greater AMPA receptor expression.