Development and Validation of an Ability Measure of Emotion Understanding: The Core Relational Themes of Emotion (CORE) Test.

Emotion understanding (EU) ability is associated with healthy social functioning and psychological well-being. Across three studies, we develop and present validity evidence for the Core Relational Themes of Emotions (CORE) Test. The test measures people's ability to identify relational themes underlying 19 positive and negative emotions. Relational themes are consistencies in the meaning people assign to emotional experiences. In Study 1, we developed and refined the test items employing a literature review, expert panel, and confusion matrix with a demographically diverse sample. Correctness criteria were determined using theory and prior research, and a progressive (degrees of correctness) paradigm was utilized to score the test. In Study 2, the CORE demonstrated high internal consistency and a confirmatory factor analysis supported the unidimensional factor structure. The CORE showed evidence of convergence with established EU ability measures and divergent relationships with verbal intelligence and demographic characteristics, supporting its construct validity. Also, the CORE was associated with less relational conflict. In Study 3, the CORE was associated with more adaptive and less maladaptive coping and higher well-being on multiple indicators. A set of effects remained, accounting for variance from a widely used EU test, supporting the CORE's incremental validity. Theoretical and methodological contributions are discussed.

You and me versus the rest of the world: the effects of affiliative motivation and ingroup partner status on social tuning.

Bandura argues that individuals are more likely to engage in social learning when they identify with a social model and when they are motivated or rewarded. Therefore, in the present work, we investigate how these two key factors, perceived similarity and affiliative motivation, influence the extent to which individuals engage in social tuning or align their views with an interaction partner-especially if their partner's attitudes differ from the larger social group. Experiment 1 (170 participants) explored the role of perceived similarity through group membership when needing to work collaboratively with a collaboration partner whose climate change beliefs differed from a larger social group. Experiment 2 (115 participants) directly manipulated affiliative motivation (i.e., length of interaction time) along with perceived similarity (i.e., Greek Life membership) to explore if these factors influenced social tuning of drinking attitudes and behaviors. Experiments 3 (69 participants) and 4 (93 participants) replicated Experiment 2 and examined whether tuning occurred for explicit and implicit attitudes towards weight (negative views Experiment 3 and positive views Experiment 4). Results indicate that when individuals experience high affiliative motivation, they are more likely to engage in social tuning of explicit and implicit attitudes when their interaction partner belongs to their ingroup rather than their outgroup. These findings are consistent with the tenets of Social Learning Theory, Shared Reality Theory, and the affiliative social tuning hypothesis.

The effects of perspective taking primes on the social tuning of explicit and implicit views toward gender and race.

The current research aims to investigate whether perspective taking influences social tuning, or the alignment of one's self-views, explicit attitudes, and/or implicit attitudes with those of an interaction partner. In six different experiments, participants believed they would interact with a partner to complete a task. Prior to this ostensible interaction, participants were given a perspective taking mindset prime, or not, and information about their ostensible interaction partners views. Participants then completed attitude measures related to the partner's perceived views. Experiments 1a, 1b, and 2 examined whether perspective taking with an ostensible interaction partner who endorses gender traditional (or non-traditional) views align their self-views with this partner, including implicit self-views (Experiment 2). Experiments 3-5 investigated whether perspective taking leads to social tuning for egalitarian racial attitudes, including when the partner's expectations of how others will be and when the participant learns their ostensible IAT score at the beginning of the session. We predicted perspective takers would be more likely to social tune their explicit and implicit attitudes to the attitudes of their interaction partner than non-perspective takers. Across all experiments, perspective takers were more likely to social tune their self-views and explicit attitudes than non-perspective takers. However, social tuning never occurred for implicit attitudes. Thus, future research is needed to understand why perspective taking does not influence the tuning of implicit attitudes, but other motivations, like affiliative and epistemic, do.

Occupational risk of organophosphates and other chemical and radiative exposure in the aircraft cabin: A systematic review.

Occupational exposure to oil fumes, organophosphates, halogenated flame retardants, and other volatile and semi-volatile contaminants is a concern within the aviation industry. There is no current consensus on the risk attributed to exposure to these chemical classes within the aircraft cabin. Contaminant concentrations rarely exceed conventional air quality guidelines, but concerns have been raised about these guidelines' applicability within the aircraft environment. This systematic review, the largest and most comprehensive completed to date on the subject matter, aims to synthesize the existing research related to chemical and other exposures inside the aircraft cabin to determine the occupational risk that may be attributed said exposure, as well as, determine knowledge gaps in source, pathway, and receptor that may exist. The Science Direct, Scopus, and Web of Science databases were queried with five search terms generating 138 manuscripts that met acceptance criteria and screening. Several potential areas requiring future examination were identified: Potable water on aircraft should be examined as a potential source of pollutant exposure, as should air conditioning expansion turbines. Historical exposure should also be more fully explored, and non-targeted analysis could provide valuable information to comprehend the aircraft cabin exposome. Occupational risk under typical flight scenarios appears to be limited for most healthy individuals. Contaminants of concern were demonstrated to be extant within the cabin, however the concentrations under normal circumstances do not appear to be individually responsible for the symptomologies that are present in impacted individuals. Questions remain regarding those that are more vulnerable or susceptible to exposure. Additionally, establishing the effects of chronic low dose exposure and exposure to contaminant mixtures has not been satisfied. The risk of acute exposure in mitigable fume events is substantial, and technological solutions or the replacement of compounds of concern for safer alternatives should be a priority.

FAU-Type Zeolite Synthesis from Clays and Its Use for the Simultaneous Adsorption of Five Divalent Metals from Aqueous Solutions.

In this research, a vermiculite-kaolinite clay (VK) was used to prepare faujasite zeolites via alkaline fusion and hydrothermal crystallisation. The optimal synthesis conditions were 1 h fusion with NaOH at 800 °C, addition of deionised water to the fused sample at a sample to deionised water mass ratio of 1:5, 68 h of non-agitated ageing of the suspension, and 24 h of hydrothermal treatment at 90 °C. The efficacy of the prepared faujasite was compared to raw clay and a reference zeolite material through adsorption experiments of aqueous solutions containing five divalent cations-Cd, Co, Cu, Pb, and Zn. The results showed that in the presence of competing cations at concentrations of 300 mg L-1 and adsorbent loading of 5 g L-1, within the first 10 min, about 99% of Pb, 60% of Cu, 58% of Cd, 28% of Zn, and 19% of Co were removed by the faujasite prepared from clay. Two to four parameter nonlinear adsorption isotherms were used to fit the adsorption data and it was found that overall, three and four parameter isotherms had the best fit for the adsorption process.

Investigating the potential for transisomerisation of trycresyl phosphate with a palladium catalyst and its implications for aircraft cabin air quality.

The quality of aircraft cabin air has been an area of concern for several decades. Many investigations have linked the presence of organophosphates in air to Aerotoxic Syndrome with adverse symptoms reported by thousands of aircraft crew across the globe. Currently the source of organophosphates has been under debate, with studies pointing towards tricresylphosphates (TCP) in aircraft oil as the main source due to leaks in engine seals resulting in fumes entering the cabin. However, comparisons of oil and cabin samples have shown that the cabin samples contain a much higher proportion of ortho-substituted TCP than is commonly detected in oil. The aim of this experiment was to investigate the potential for palladium catalysts (present in aircraft air conditioning systems) to convert meta- and para-substituted TCP to produce ortho-substituted TCP through transisomerisation. This experiment was performed in a controlled laboratory setting aimed to represent the conditions likely to be experienced in aircraft. Samples were introduced to a stainless steel micro reactor tube containing the pelletized palladium catalyst using a HPLC pump with a 0.2 ml/min feed flow rate. The temperature maintained at 400 °C over a period of 1 h and samples collected using a condensing vesicle. These were then diluted and transferred to a 2 mL vial for analysis by gas chromatography mass spectrometry. No evidence supporting the transisomerisation of tricresylphosphate was obtained. This indicates that more emphasis should be placed on identifying other potential sources of ortho substituted TCP.