Influence of voluntary action and outcome valence on the sense of agency.

Recent studies have revealed that people might experience a lessened sense of agency for negative consequences by claiming that they were obeying orders. However, little is known about the cognitive neural mechanism behind the reduced sense of agency when individuals are forced to inflict physical harm on others. This study adopted temporal estimation tasks to investigate the internal mechanism of voluntary action on the sense of agency and the moderating effect of outcome valence as measured by event-related potentials (ERPs). In the temporal estimation task, participants were asked to make trade-offs of monetary gains for themselves against painful electric stimuli experienced by strangers, subjectively estimated the perceptual temporal interval between keypress actions (i.e., free or coercive actions) and consequent outcomes (i.e., positive or negative tones) and rated the feeling of control. The results showed that perceived temporal interval was shorter for positive tones compared with negative tones in the coercive condition, and induced more negative N1 and N300 amplitudes, which indicated that the implicit sense of agency was higher. However, the explicit sense of agency was stronger in the free condition than in the coercive condition, which was not influenced by outcome valence. We discuss the implications of utilizing positive feedback and free choice as significant strategies for those experiencing the abnormal sense of agency.

The Role of Social Norms and Personal Costs on Pro-Environmental Behavior: The Mediating Role of Personal Norms.

Background: Pro-environmental behavior necessitates individuals to make personal sacrifices, such as spending more money on environmentally-friendly products to benefit the environment. Realistically, individuals may not be willing to engage in pro-environmental behavior based self-interest. The increase in personal pro-environmental behavior has become an urgent issue in the field of environmental psychology. Purpose: The present study adopted green consumption paradigm to explore the internal mechanisms of pro-environmental behavior at different personal costs, the role of social and personal norms on pro-environmental behavior, which can promote individual pro-environmental behavior. Methods: In our experiment, participants first were instructed to read texts unrelated and related to social norms in sequence. Participants subsequently completed the product choice task, which involved making choices between buying green (eco-friendly) products or cheaper (self-interested) common products, a method to measure pro-environment behavior. Finally, the participants completed the personal norms scale and social norms check. Results: The findings of present study indicated that pro-environmental behavior decreased as personal costs increased. However, social norms effectively promoted individuals' pro-environmental behavior, and personal norms played a mediating role at high personal costs. Conclusion: Our findings indicate that individuals tend to choose cheaper common products that are harmful to the natural environment in self-interest. However, we discuss the implications for the use of social norms as a social marketing technique, which extends the Norm Activation Model.

Synthesis of 5-Alkynyltetrandrine Derivatives and Evaluation of their Anticancer Activity on A549 Cell Lines.

BACKGROUND: Lung cancer is one of the most prevalent malignancies and thus the development of novel therapeutic agents for managing lung cancer is imperative. Tetrandrine, a bis-benzyltetrahydroisoquinoline alkaloid isolated from Stephania tetrandra S. Moore, has been found to exert cytotoxic effects on cancerous cells. METHODS: A series of 5-alkynyltetrandrine derivatives was synthesized via the Sonogashira cross-coupling reactions and evaluated as potential anti-tumor agents. The anti-tumor activities of 12 compounds on lung cancer cells (A549) were evaluated using the MTT method. The population of apoptotic cells was measured using a TUNEL assay. Real-time PCR quantified the gene expression levels of Bcl-2, Bax, survivin and caspase-3. The content of Cyt-C was detected using a Human Cyt-C ELISA kit. RESULTS: Most of these compounds exhibited better activities than tetrandrine itself on A549 cells. Among them, compound 7 showed the highest cytotoxicity among the tested compounds against human lung adenocarcinoma A549 cells with an IC50 of 2.94 µM. Preliminary mechanistic studies indicated that compound 7 induced apoptosis of human lung cancer A549 cells and increased the level of the proapoptotic gene Bax, release of Cyt-C from mitochondria and activation of caspase-3 genes. CONCLUSION: The results suggest that compound 7 exerts its antitumor activity against A549 cells through the induction of the intrinsic (mitochondrial) apoptotic pathway. These findings will contribute to the future design of more effective anti-tumor agents in lung cancer therapy.

Smoothing approximation to the lower order exact penalty function for inequality constrained optimization.

For inequality constrained optimization problem, we first propose a new smoothing method to the lower order exact penalty function, and then show that an approximate global solution of the original problem can be obtained by solving a global solution of a smooth lower order exact penalty problem. We propose an algorithm based on the smoothed lower order exact penalty function. The global convergence of the algorithm is proved under some mild conditions. Some numerical experiments show the efficiency of the proposed method.

Electron holography characterization as a method for measurements of diameter and mean inner potential of hollow nanomaterials.

In this paper, we provide a method for the simultaneous measurement of the inner diameter of nanotubes with a regular shape and calculation of their mean inner potential (MIP) using electron holography. This method contains 4 steps: (i)phase profile characterization from electron holography; (ii) shape assumption from prepared data; (iii) thickness simulation from a shape assumption and fitting method; (iv) calculation of MIP of the simulated and fitted parameters. By this method, as an example, the shape and the outer and inner diameters of a tube formed from C(60) molecules were characterized. The MIP of the tube was also calculated through this method. The MIP calculation from another nano whisker formed from C(60) molecules supports the feasibility of our method and it could be extended to other nanomaterials. This work provides a convenient method for morphology characterization of hollow nanomaterials, such as diameter measurements and cross-sectional shape determination, which are the most basic and important characteristics of the nanomaterials. In addition, it also provides a method for MIP calculation without a thickness measurement if the samples have relatively regular shapes. Thus this method should be more convenient for closely combining the tomography and physical properties of samples, which could be essential for in situ TEM studies of nanomaterials.