Prevalence of depressive symptoms and its correlates among medical students in China: a national survey in 33 universities

We conducted a national survey among medical students in China to estimate the prevalence of depressive symptoms and explore associated risk factors based on an established questionnaire composed of demographic information, life events in the past four weeks before survey, and the validated Chinese version of the 21-item Beck’s Depression Inventory (BDI). The mean age of enrolled 9010 students was 20.7 (standard deviation: 1.6) years. BDI scores indicated that 19.9% had depressive symptoms based on the cut-off score of 14. Socioeconomic factors and student characteristics such as male sex, low monthly income per capita, father’s poor education background, and higher year of study were associated with higher prevalence of depressive symptoms among medical students. Students who studied in comprehensive universities were more likely to have depressive symptoms compared with those from medical universities. Habitual smoking and alcohol drinking, sleep deprivation, and hospitalization or medication for one week or more in the last four weeks also predisposed students to higher risk of depressive symptoms. Our results indicate that depressive symptoms are becoming a highly prevalent health problem among Chinese medical students. Primary and secondary prevention should be prioritized to tackle this issue based on potential risk factors.     

Sexism and the Effectiveness of Femvertising in China: A Corporate Social Responsibility Perspective

The present study draws on theories and prior research on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and gender attitudes (i.e., sexism) to understand young Chinese peoples’ responses toward women-empowering advertising (i.e., femvertising). We conducted two experiments in which male and female Chinese college students (232 in Study 1 and 231 in Study 2) were exposed to either women-empowering or control advertisements (traditional ad in Study 1 and gender-irrelevant ad in Study 2) and reported their attitudes about the ads as well as their purchase intentions toward the advertised products (shampoo and smartphone, respectively). In line with our predictions, both experiments showed that messaging about women’s empowerment in advertising can induce perceptions of CSR, thereby increasing favorable responses such as enhanced positive ad attitudes and increased purchase intentions toward the advertised products. Moreover, hostile sexism was negatively associated with consumer responses toward femvertising such that the lower participants’ hostile sexism, the more positive ad attitudes and stronger purchase intent participants they reported. However, benevolent sexism was not predictive of consumer responses toward femvertising. These results offer insights into people’s responses toward women-empowering advertisements and also have practical implications for advertisers and marketers who are interested in using such an advertising tactic to promote products and services.

     

启蒙的吊诡与启蒙的反思——以中国现代思想中的启蒙反思论说为中心

17-18世纪兴起于西欧北美的启蒙运动,是人类发展史上一座划时代的里程碑.启蒙思想家接续在欧洲中世纪社会内部所萌蘖的文艺复兴、宗教改革以及实验科学等异端思潮,进一步高扬理性、人权、自由、平等、民主、法治、科学、进步等价值理念,对禁锢人们头脑的神学教条和束缚人们身心的王权制度进行了深刻批判乃至猛烈抨击,在观念领域发生了极大的祛蔽作用和解放效应.     

齐都临淄空间形态演变的功能性导向

战国时期临淄小城的修筑,是临淄城市空间发展的重要节点,使其空间形态出现了功能性导向的演变:在布局形式上,由宫城、郭城内外相套演变为小城、大城相互衔联。在功能配置上,以宫廷、官府为中心的政治性功能设施,部署于小城,形成以宫为核心的政治功能区;而市、手工业作坊等经济性功能设施,分布在大城,形成以市为核心的经济功能区。在地形利用上,将宫城布置在西南部地势高亢处,以利于防守和排水。这种演变趋向,表明我国古代都城空间形态,越来越贴近政治、军事、经济功能的实际需要,逐渐从形式上的规范走向功能上的实用。     

Health Effects of Religion,Spirituality, and Supernatural Beliefs in Mainland China: A Systematic Review

Effects of religion, spirituality and supernatural beliefs (RSS) upon health in mainland China remain poorly understood, despite strong RSS beliefs influencing Chinese society. We conducted a Chinese–English bilingual systematic review to summarize the state of RSS-health research in mainland China. Study quality was assessed using the Critical Appraisal Skills Program tool. We screened 1858 studies, 162 of which were included in the review. From 2000–2004 to 2015–2019, the number of RSS-health studies in China increased from five to 73. However, only 7% of studies were rated as higher quality. Cross-sectional and case–control studies represented the vast majority of study designs (94%) and religious affiliation was the only RSS measure for 58% of studies. Higher, moderate, and lower quality studies indicated that RSS has both beneficial and adverse health implications. RSS-health research in China has accelerated rapidly in the last 20 years, but fundamental gaps in knowledge remain. Longitudinal study designs and nuanced RSS measures are needed to advance understanding of RSS health effects in China.

     

Equivalent strain-hardening work theorem

A new physical concept, termed ‘equivalent strain-hardening work’, is proposed. The physical concept can be used to redefine the commonly used effective stress and effective strain theory as applied in constructing the constitutive relations of stress and strain, especially when related to an anisotropic strain-hardening material. The concept concerns that part of plastic work which emphasizes the action due to the strain-hardening behaviour of a material. Based on this concept, any one of the strain-hardening stress–strain curves obtained through common experiments on anisotropic materials can be selected as a nominally effective stress and an associated effective strain, and the rest of the strain-hardening relations can all be then transformed to be functions of variables of the nominally effective strain. Thus, any kind of loading path can be characterized by a single relation between effective stress and effective strain. When applied to the isotropic materials, the equivalent strain-hardening work concept is identical with the work-equivalent deformation concept but is more general.     

The development and analysis of tutorial dialogues in AutoTutor Lite

The goal of intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) that interact in natural language is to emulate the benefits that a well-trained human tutor provides to students, by interpreting student answers and appropriately responding in order to encourage elaboration. BRCA Gist is an ITS developed using AutoTutor Lite, a Web-based version of AutoTutor. Fuzzy-trace theory theoretically motivated the development of BRCA Gist, which engages people in tutorial dialogues to teach them about genetic breast cancer risk. We describe an empirical method to create tutorial dialogues and fine-tune the calibration of BRCA Gist’s semantic processing engine without a team of computer scientists. We created five interactive dialogues centered on pedagogic questions such as “What should someone do if she receives a positive result for genetic risk of breast cancer?” This method involved an iterative refinement process of repeated testing with different texts and successively making adjustments to the tutor’s expectations and settings in order to improve performance. The goal of this method was to enable BRCA Gist to interpret and respond to answers in a manner that best facilitated learning. We developed a method to analyze the efficacy of the tutor’s dialogues. We found that BRCA Gist’s assessment of participants’ answers was highly correlated with the quality of the answers found by trained human judges using a reliable rubric. The dialogue quality between users and BRCA Gist predicted performance on a breast cancer risk knowledge test completed after exposure to the tutor. The appropriateness of BRCA Gist’s feedback also predicted the quality of answers and breast cancer risk knowledge test scores.     

Microstructural characterization of the M23C6 carbide in a long-term aged Ni-based superalloy

The microstructural features of M₂₃C₆ carbide in a long-term aged heat- and corrosion-resistant Ni-based superalloy have been investigated in detail using various kinds of transmission electron microscope (TEM) techniques. It is found that TEM contrast, which is related to structural and chemical inhomogeneities inside the grains, always exists in the interior of grains in the alloy. The structure of these inhomogeneous regions has been determined to be the same as that of the γ′ and t-M₂₃C₆ phases, where t-M₂₃C₆ indicates a transitional and metastable phase. Although possessing the same structure as the M₂₃C₆ phase, the chemical composition of the t-M₂₃C₆ is different from that of the M₂₃C₆ phase. Compared with M₂₃C₆, t-M₂₃C₆ is richer in Ni, Co, Al and Ti but poorer in W, Mo and Cr. This phenomenon of structural and chemical inhomogeneity demonstrates that pristine M₂₃C₆ carbide (p-M₂₃C₆) precipitated in standard heat-treated samples is unstable. Therefore, upon long-term ageing treatment, Ni, Co, Al and Ti may locally enrich inside the p-M₂₃C₆ phase, finally forming the γ′ phase, which can be described by the decomposition reaction p-M₂₃C₆ → M₂₃C₆ + γ′.     

Formation of yittrium oxide in cemented carbides

Rare-earth (RE) elements are helpful in improving the mechanical properties of cemented carbides. In this work, the formation of Y₂O₃ in functionally graded cemented carbides is investigated using transmission electron microscopy. The results indicate that Y₂O₃ can stabilize the Co phase with the face-centred cubic structure (α-Co), since it has a cubic structure similar to the high-temperature Co phase. The α-Co phase has a higher plasticity than ε-Co, and this suggests a possible mechanism for the role of RE elements in toughening cemented carbides.     

The influence of visual mental imagery size on metamemory accuracy in judgment of learning

Many studies have found the font size of to-be-remembered words has a significant influence on judgments of learning (JOLs). However, few studies have investigated whether JOLs are affected by the mental imagery size of to-be-remembered words, even when the font sizes themselves are kept identical in study materials. This study investigated whether the visual mental imagery size influences the participants’ JOLs and what the underlying mechanisms are. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants learned words with identical font sizes, mentally generated large or small imageries and then made JOLs. We found that JOLs under the large imagery condition were significantly higher than those under the small imagery condition, but actual recall performance exhibited no significant difference. In Experiment 3, participants pressed a button immediately after mental imagery generation and showed that it took significantly longer to generate large imageries than to generate small imageries, and the difference in JOLs between two conditions was no longer significant. In Experiment 4, we used a questionnaire to investigate the contribution of beliefs and found that participants believed large imageries were easier to remember. These findings indicate that imagery size has a significant impact on JOLs, in which beliefs may play a leading role.