Focusing attention on others' negative emotions reduces the effect of social relationships on children's distributive behaviors.

The present study investigates whether directing five- to six-year-old children's attention to hypothetical resource recipients that included familiar and non-familiar people would affect their favoritism toward a familiar person, as reflected in how they allocated resources. In Experiment 1, we instructed participants to give one of several stickers to another person or keep all the stickers for themselves. Under the control conditions, participants more frequently gave stickers to friends than to non-friends. However, when asked about others' emotions, they distributed stickers equally among friends and non-friends. Therefore, focusing on others' thoughts reduced participants' favoritism toward friends. Experiment 2 tested whether focusing on both emotional valences would affect favoritism toward a familiar person, as reflected in children's resource distribution choices. Experiment 2 was identical to Experiment 1, except we asked participants about the other person's emotional valence. When asked about others' negative emotions, participants distributed the stickers equally between themselves and others. However, when asked about others' positive emotions, they distributed more stickers to friends than to non-friends. Neither others' emotional valence nor group status affected the perceived intensity of their emotion or the participant's emotional state. These results suggest that children's favoritism toward friends can be reduced by encouraging them to think about others' negative emotional states.

Fourteen- to Eighteen-Month-Old Infants Use Explicit Linguistic Information to Update an Agent's False Belief.

The current research examined how infants exploit linguistic information to update an agent's false belief about an object's location. Fourteen- to eighteen-month-old infants first watched a series of events involving two agents, a ball, and two containers (a box and a cup). Agent1 repeatedly acted on the ball and then put it in the box in the presence of agent2. Then agent1 disappeared from the scene and agent2 switched the ball's location from the box to the cup. Upon agent1's return, agent2 told her, "The ball is in the cup!" Agent1 then reached for either the cup (cup event) or the box (box event). The infants looked reliably longer if shown the box event as opposed to the cup event. However, when agent2 simply said, "The ball and the cup!" - which does not explicitly mention the ball's new location - infants looked significantly longer if shown the cup event as opposed the box event. These findings thus provide new evidence for false-belief understanding in infancy and suggest that infants expect an agent's false belief to be updated only by explicit verbal information.

Application and optimization of electric field-assisted ultrasonication for disintegration of waste activated sludge using response surface methodology with a Box-Behnken design.

In the present study, an electric field is applied in order to disintegrate waste activated sludge (WAS). As a preliminary step, feasibility tests are investigated using different applied voltages of 10-100V for 60min. As the applied voltage increases, the disintegration degrees (DD) are gradually enhanced, and thereby the soluble N, P, and carbohydrate concentrations increase simultaneously due to the WAS decomposition. Subsequently, an optimization process is conducted using a response surface methodology with a Box-Behnken design (BBD). The total solid concentration, applied voltage, and reaction time are selected as independent variables, while the DD is selected as the response variable. The overall results demonstrate that the BBD with an experimental design can be used effectively in the optimization of the electric field treatment of WAS. In the confirmation test, a DD of 10.26±0.14% is recorded, which corresponds to 99.1% of the predicted response value under the statistically optimized conditions. Finally, the statistic optimization of the combined treatment (electric field+ultrasonication) demonstrated that even though this method is limited to highly disintegrated WAS when it is applied individually, a high DD of 47.28±0.20% was recorded where the TS concentration was 6780mg/l, the strength of ultrasonication was 8.0W, the applied voltage was 68.4V, and the reaction time was 44min. E-SEM images clearly revealed that the application of the electric field is a significant alternative method for the combined treatment of WAS. This study was the first attempt to increase disintegration using the electric field for a combined treatment with ultrasonication.

Development of a novel electric field-assisted modified hydrodynamic cavitation system for disintegration of waste activated sludge.

In this current study, we present a modified hydrodynamic cavitation device that combines an electric field to substitute for the chemical addition. A modified HC system is basically an orifice plate and crisscross pipe assembly, in which the crisscross pipe imparts some turbulence, which creates collision events. This study shows that for maximizing disintegration, combining HC system, which called electric field-assisted modified orifice plate hydrodynamic cavitation (EFM-HC) in this study, with an electric field is important. Various HC systems were compared in terms of disintegration of WAS, and, among them, the EFM-HC system exhibited the best performance with the highest disintegration efficiency of 47.0±2.0% as well as the destruction of WAS morphological characteristics. The experimental results clearly show that a conventional HC system was successfully modified. In addition, electric field has a great potential for efficient disintegration of WAS for as a additional option in a combination treatment. This study suggests continued research in this field may lead to an appropriate design for commercial use.