Two organogelators of different chemistry (a fatty acid derivative and a bis-urea derivative), as well as their blends, were used to impart shape stability to a bio-based phase-change material (PCM) ...bearing a near-ambient phase-transition temperature. Characterization of the individual gelators and their blends revealed their ability to immobilize the PCM by forming a continuous fibrillar network. The fibrils formed by the fatty acid derivative were helical, while the bis-urea derivative formed smooth fibrils. Also, the bis-urea derivative formed a continuous network at a lower critical concentration than the fatty acid derivative. At each fixed concentration, the bis-urea derivative yielded gels with higher thermal stability than the fatty acid derivative. The two gelators blended in certain ratios demonstrated a strong synergistic effect, providing gels with a significantly higher modulus (∼20-fold) and yield stress (∼1.5-fold) than each gelator individually. PCM gelation did not significantly affect its thermal behavior, however, affected its crystalline morphology. The gelled PCM displayed stacked structures, consisting of alternating pure PCM layers separated by layers formed by gelator fibrils. The phase diagram of the triple system comprising both gelators and PCM demonstrated either single or double gelation behavior depending on the composition. These findings may provide guidelines for the development of novel, shape-stable PCMs, which could be of potential use in various thermal energy storage applications.
There is surprisingly little empirical evidence supporting theoretical and anecdotal claims regarding the spontaneous production of prototypic facial expressions used in numerous emotion recognition ...studies. Proponents of innate prototypic expressions believe that this lack of evidence may be due to ethical restrictions against presenting powerful elicitors in the lab. The current popularity of internet platforms designed for public sharing of videos allows investigators to shed light on this debate by examining naturally-occurring facial expressions outside the laboratory. An Internet prank ("Scary Maze") has provided a unique opportunity to observe children reacting to a consistent fear- and surprise-inducing stimulus: The unexpected presentation of a "scary face" during an online maze game. The purpose of this study was to examine children's facial expressions in this naturalistic setting. Emotion ratings of non-facial behaviour (provided by untrained undergraduates) and anatomically-based facial codes were obtained from 60 videos of children (ages 4-7) found on YouTube. Emotion ratings were highest for fear and surprise. Correspondingly, children displayed more facial expressions of fear and surprise than for other emotions (e.g. anger, joy). These findings provide partial support for the ecological validity of fear and surprise expressions. Still prototypic expressions were produced by fewer than half the children.
When faced with a decision, certain aspects of the decision itself shape our affective responses to choice options, which, in turn, influence our choices. These integral affective influences manifest ...as immediate feelings about choice options as well as the feelings that we anticipate we will feel after certain potential outcomes. We examined whether the effect of framing on risk taking can be explained through the mediating roles of immediate and anticipated affect. Two experiments were conducted using a gambling task. On each trial, participants were endowed a sum of money (e.g., $25) then presented with a choice between a sure option (leaving them with a portion of the initial endowment) and a gamble option (that could result in either keeping or losing the entire endowment). The sure option was framed differently across two within-participant conditions: as a gain (keep $20 from $25) or loss (lose $5 from $25). Experiment 1 examined whether immediate feelings toward choice options explain how framing the sure option as a loss versus a gain increases risk taking. Experiment 2 examined whether immediate and/or anticipated affect explain how framing guides risk taking. We found that the tendency to take risks to avoid sure losses was explained by immediate (not anticipated) affective evaluations of the sure option only. Individuals tended to take more risks when faced with sure losses due to greater negative immediate feelings that were evoked by sure losses relative to sure gains.
Chiral Salan ligands were found to wrap in a highly diastereoselective manner around zirconium leading to C 2-symmetric complexes of predetermined chirality at the metal. These complexes led to ...active polymerization of higher olefins, their activity and isospecific induction depending on the nature of the phenolate substituents.
We are all faced with ambiguous situations daily that we must interpret to make sense of the world. In such situations, do you wear rose-colored glasses and fill in blanks with positives, or do you ...wear dark glasses and fill in blanks with negatives? In the current study, we presented 32 older and 32 younger adults with a series of ambiguous scenarios and had them continue the stories. Older adults continued the scenarios with less negativity than younger adults, as measured by negative and positive emotion word use and by the coded overall emotional valence of each interpretation. These results illuminate an interpretative approach by older adults that favors less negative endings and that supports broader age-related positivity. In addition, older adults interpreted social scenarios with less emotionality than did younger adults. These findings uncover a new manifestation of age-related positivity in spontaneous speech generated in response to ambiguity, indicating that older adults tend to create emotional meaning differently from the young.
Research on adult age differences in the interpretation of facial expressions has yet to examine evaluations of surprised faces, which signal that an unexpected and ambiguous event has occurred in ...the expresser's environment. The present study examined whether older and younger adults differed in their interpretations of the affective valence of surprised faces. Specifically, we examined older and younger participants' evaluations of happy, angry, and surprised facial expressions. We predicted that, on the basis of age-related changes in the processing of emotional information, older adults would evaluate surprised faces more positively than would younger adults. The results indicated that older adults interpreted surprised faces more positively than did their younger counterparts. These findings reveal a novel age-related positivity effect in the interpretation of surprised faces, suggesting that older adults imbue ambiguous facial expressions-that is, expressions that lack either positive or negative facial actions-with positive meaning.
Accurate quantification of bacterial burden within macrophages, termed bacterial burden quantification (BBQ), is crucial for understanding host-pathogen interactions. Various methods have been ...employed, each with strengths and weaknesses. This article addresses limitations in existing techniques and introduces two novel, automated methods for BBQ within macrophages based on confocal microscopy data analysis. The first method refines total fluorescence quantification by incorporating filtering steps to exclude uninfected cells, while the second method calculates total bacterial volume per cell to mitigate potential biases in fluorescence-based readouts. These workflows utilize PyImageJ and Cellpose software, providing reliable, unbiased, and rapid quantification of bacterial load. The proposed workflows were validated using Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium and Mycobacterium tuberculosis models, demonstrating their effectiveness in accurately assessing bacterial burden. These automated workflows offer valuable tools for studying bacterial interactions within host cells and provide insights for various research applications.
Background: Health-related messages, framed in terms of gains or losses, can impact decision-making differently across the adult life span. The focus of this study was on the emotional responses ...evoked by such framing and their relationship to perceived effectiveness, as mechanisms that may underpin how health messages impact health decisions.
Methods: A web-based study using Amazon's Mechanical Turk platform was conducted with a sample of 132 younger adults and 106 older adults. Participants were asked to read exercise-related messages framed in terms of gains or losses, and to rate each message for affect and effectiveness.
Results: Relative to younger adults, older adults showed less negative reactions to loss-framed messages and to messages that described undesirable outcomes. Importantly, younger and older adults differentially used affective cues to gauge effectiveness of framed messages: for gain-framed messages (which tended to evoke positive affect), older adults found messages that made them feel good to be more effective; but for loss-framed messages (which tend to evoke negative affect), younger adults found messages that made them feel bad to be more effective.
Conclusions: These results suggest that in processing health messages, older adults may be more motivated by positive affect, while younger adults may be more motivated by negative affect.
Blending two gelators with different chemistries (12-hydroxystearic acid and a bis-urea derivative, Millithix MT-800) was used to impart shape stability to CrodaTherm 29, a bio-based phase change ...material (PCM), melting/crystallizing at near-ambient temperature. The gelators immobilized the PCM by forming an interpenetrating fibrillar network. 15 wt % concentration of the gelators was found to be effective in preventing liquid PCM leakage. In order to improve the mechanical properties and thermal conductivity (TC) of the PCM, gelation of suspensions of multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) and graphene nanoplatelets (GnPs) in a molten material was done at concentrations exceeding their percolation thresholds. Compared to pristine PCM, the gelled PCM containing 3.0 wt % of GnPs demonstrated a shorter crystallization time, ∼1.5-fold increase in strength, improved stability, and ∼65% increase in TC. At the same time, PCM filled with up to 0.6 wt % of MWCNTs had diminished strength and increased leakage with a slight TC improvement. Gelation of PCM did not significantly alter its thermal behavior, but it did change its crystalline morphology. The developed shape-stable PCMs may have a wide range of applications in ambient temperature solar-thermal installations, for example, temperature-controlled greenhouses, net zero-energy buildings, and water heaters.
Age differences in responses to framed health messages-which can influence judgments and decisions-are critical to understand yet relatively unexplored. Age-related emotional shifts toward positivity ...would be expected to differentially impact the affective responses of older and younger adults to framed messages. In this study, we measured the subjective and physiological affective responses of older and younger adults to gain- and loss-framed exercise promotion messages. Relative to older adults, younger adults exhibited greater negative reactivity to loss-framed health messages. These results suggest that health message framing does matter, but it depends on the age of the message recipient.
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