Reducing the Gap Between Pro-Environmental Disposition and Behavior:The Role of Feeling Power

Environmental issues are some of the most pressing threats the world is facing nowadays. In this context, motivating individual pro-environmental behavior becomes highly relevant. One strategy is to harness people's pro-environmental dispositions (e.g., biospheric values, pro-environmental attitudes). Although acknowledging the need to behave pro-environmentally lies at the core of these dispositions, the extent to which they are reflected in day-to-day pro-environmental practices fluctuates to a great extent. How to bridge this gap between dispositions and behaviors in pro-environmentalism? This research tests a novel psychological solution, that is, to heighten subjective feelings of power. Power depicts people's control over their own and others’ outcomes. Two studies (total N = 338, with n = 200 in Study 1 and n = 138 in Study 2) manipulated people's situational sense of high versus low power (by recalling and writing about relevant incidents), measured pro-environmental dispositions (biospheric values in Studies 1 and 2; attitude toward a specific environmental cause in Study 2), and examined their effects on pro-environmental behaviors (spending time on environmental persuasion in Study 1 and spending money on environmental donation in Study 2). Overall, both studies revealed that pro-environmental dispositions predicted pro-environmental behaviors, but only when the actors were prompted to experience a high instead of a low sense of power. The findings illuminate power as an important and viable communication tactic—to orient people toward their dispositions and practice what they preach in pro-environmentalism

Self-interest bias in the COVID-19 pandemic: A cross-cultural comparison between the United States and China

In the global crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries attempt to enforce new social norms to prevent the further spread of the coronavirus. A key to the success of these measures is the individual adherence to norms that are collectively beneficial to contain the spread of the pandemic. However, individuals’ self-interest bias (i.e., the prevalent tendency to license own but not others’ self-serving acts or norm violations) can pose a challenge to the success of such measures. The current research examines COVID-19-related self-interest bias from a cross-cultural perspective. Two studies (N = 1,558) sampled from the United States and China consistently revealed that participants from the United States evaluated their own self-serving acts (exploiting test kits in Study 1; social gathering and sneezing without covering the mouth in public in Study 2) as more acceptable than identical deeds of others, while such self-interest bias did not emerge among Chinese participants. Cultural underpinnings of independent versus interdependent self-construal may influence the extent to which individuals apply self-interest bias to justifications of their own self-serving behaviors during the pandemic

Genetic variation and marker−trait association affect the genomic selection prediction accuracy of soybean protein and oil content

IntroductionGenomic selection (GS) is a potential breeding approach for soybean improvement.MethodsIn this study, GS was performed on soybean protein and oil content using the Ridge Regression Best Linear Unbiased Predictor (RR-BLUP) based on 1,007 soybean accessions. The SoySNP50K SNP dataset of the accessions was obtained from the USDA-ARS, Beltsville, MD lab, and the protein and oil content of the accessions were obtained from GRIN.ResultsOur results showed that the prediction accuracy of oil content was higher than that of protein content. When the training population size was 100, the prediction accuracies for protein content and oil content were 0.60 and 0.79, respectively. The prediction accuracy increased with the size of the training population. Training populations with similar phenotype or with close genetic relationships to the prediction population exhibited better prediction accuracy. A greatest prediction accuracy for both protein and oil content was observed when approximately 3,000 markers with -log10(P) greater than 1 were included.DiscussionThis information will help improve GS efficiency and facilitate the application of GS

Genome-wide association mapping of resistance to Phytophthora sojae in a soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] germplasm panel from maturity groups IV and V.

Phytophthora sojae, an oomycete pathogen of soybean, causes stem and root rot, resulting in annual economic loss up to $2 billion worldwide. Varieties with P. sojae resistance are environmental friendly to effectively reduce disease damages. In order to improve the resistance of P. sojae and broaden the genetic diversity in Southern soybean cultivars and germplasm in the U.S., we established a P. sojae resistance gene pool that has high genetic diversity, and explored genomic regions underlying the host resistance to P. sojae races 1, 3, 7, 17 and 25. A soybean germplasm panel from maturity groups (MGs) IV and V including 189 accessions originated from 10 countries were used in this study. The panel had a high genetic diversity compared to the 6,749 accessions from MGs IV and V in USDA Soybean Germplasm Collection. Based on disease evaluation dataset of these accessions inoculated with P. sojae races 1, 3, 7, 17 and 25, which are publically available, five accessions in this panel were resistant to all races. Genome-wide association analysis identified a total of 32 significant SNPs, which were clustered in resistance-associated genomic regions, among those, ss715619920 was only 3kb away from the gene Glyma.14g087500, a subtilisin protease. Gene expression analysis showed that the gene was down-regulated more than 4 fold (log2 fold > 2.2) in response to P. sojae infection. The identified molecular markers and genomic regions that are associated with the disease resistance in this gene pool will greatly assist the U.S. Southern soybean breeders in developing elite varieties with broad genetic background and P. sojae resistance

Secular Examination of Spirituality-Prosociality Association

Religious beliefs in Chinese cultural background, especially in Chinese secular society, have rarely been systematically investigated. The nonreligious-based population in China endorses certain supernatural beliefs or has related transcendent experience, even though they usually claim themselves as non-believers. Therefore, the current research examined the spirituality-prosociality association in Chinese secular background, demonstrating how spiritual connection with the transcendence related to individual secular social life. A total of 440 Chinese participants completed our questionnaires in three survey studies. The results showed that: 1) for the nonreligious-based population in China, spirituality was positively connected with personal prosocial trait, prosocial attitude, and prosocial behavior; 2) the prosocial trait of compassionate love partially mediated the association between spirituality and daily prosocial expenses on time and money; and 3) personal emphasis on moral principles such as ultimate justice beliefs partially mediated the association between spirituality and interpersonal altruism in organizational settings. Limitations and future directions were discussed

Determination of the key aroma compounds in Sachima and using solid phase micro extraction (SPME) and solvent-assisted flavour evaporation (SAFE)-gas chromatography-olfactometry-mass spectrometry (GC-O-MS)

The aroma-active compounds present in Sachima samples purchased at retail from the same batch code and stored for different durations of the shelf life were analysed by two methods: solid phase micro extraction (SPME) and solvent-assisted flavour evaporation (SAFE)-gas chromatography-olfactometry-mass spectrometry (GC-O-MS). A total of 41 volatile key compounds were identified. Among them, the predominant compounds in Sachima were tentatively identified by dilution analysis as being 3-(methylthio)propionaldehyde, 2-pentylfuran, 2-methyl-3-(methylthio)pyrazine, dimethyl disulfide, and dipropyl trisulfide. These compounds produced the highest due to their highest calculated flavour dilution (FD) factors. Sensory evaluations of the extracted compounds by a panel of trained individuals revealed that the ‘egg’ aroma was the main characteristic aroma due to its high sensory assessment score. With increasing length of storage of the product from 0 to 10 months, the overall acceptability of the Sachima aroma declined gradually. The observed changes in concentration of the different volatile compounds during storage indicated that the Maillard reaction and lipid oxidation continued during storage, so that aroma compounds and off-flavour compounds were being generated simultaneously. In addition, the undesirable smell of Sachima that increased during storage was not just generated from one volatile compound with a distinct off-flavour, but rather it was the result of an increase in both pleasant and unpleasant aromas. Furthermore, the pleasant aroma components appeared to still play a dominant role in the overall aroma profile of Sachima even after 10 Months of storage, which is within the stated shelf life on the product label

Prosocial Attitudes toward Money from Terror Management Perspective:Death Transcendence through Spirituality

Based on Terror Management Theory (TMT), we suggest that spirituality and prosocial attitudes toward money have a similar defensive function in resisting existential anxiety. In mortality salient (MS) situations, both spirituality and prosocial money attitudes afford symbolic immortality by self-transcendent connections. In four studies, we found that activating death awareness weakened people’s subjective love of money (Study 1) and predicted increased spending willingness on prosocial rather than proself goals (Studies 2, 3, and 4). More importantly, MS effects on money attitudes were smaller when people’s trait spirituality was high (vs. low; Studies 1, 2, 3) and when people were primed to experience spirituality (vs. happiness control condition; Study 4). For low spirituality people, the association between MS and prosocial spending also depended on the capacity of money spending to contribute positively to one’s feelings of self-worth (Study 3). Theoretical implications and future directions are discussed

Unraveling the degradation mechanism for the hydrogen storage property of Fe nanocatalyst-modified MgH₂

Maintaining fast hydrogen storage kinetics is a key challenge for the practical application of MgH2. To address this challenge, understanding the mechanism of kinetics that declines during cycling is crucial but it has not been systematically investigated to date. In this paper, three different Fe nanocatalysts were synthesized and then doped into MgH2 to form new composites. The MgH2-Fe composite had significantly reduced operating temperatures and activation energy compared to that of undoped MgH2. During cycling, a capacity retention of 93.4% was obtained after the 20th cycle. For a better understanding of the declining performance, prolonged incubation was intentionally performed. Grain growth was found in MgH2 and the Fe nanocatalysts, which was directly responsible for capacity loss and kinetic degradation. These findings provide fundamental insights to facilitate designing and preparing catalytic hydrogen storage systems with superior cycling performance.Submitted/Accepted versionThe authors appreciatively acknowledge the financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51801078) and the Nature Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (Grant No. BK202110884)