A Quasi-Intramolecular Solid-Phase Redox Reaction of Ammonia Ligands and Perchlorate Anion in Diamminesilver(I) Perchlorate

The reaction of ammoniacal AgNO3 solution (or aq. solution of [Ag(NH3)2]NO3) with aq. NaClO4 resulted in [Ag(NH3)2]ClO4 (compound 1). Detailed spectroscopic (correlation analysis, IR, Raman, and UV) analyses were performed on [Ag(NH3)2]ClO4. The temperature and enthalpy of phase change for compound 1 were determined to be 225.7 K and 103.04 kJ/mol, respectively. We found the thermal decomposition of [Ag(NH3)2]ClO4 involves a solid-phase quasi-intramolecular redox reaction between the perchlorate anion and ammonia ligand, resulting in lower valence chlorine oxyacid (chlorite, chlorate) components. We did not detect thermal ammonia loss during the formation of AgClO4. However, a redox reaction between the ammonia and perchlorate ion resulted in intermediates containing chlorate/chlorite, which disproportionated (either in the solid phase or in aqueous solutions after the dissolution of these decomposition intermediates in water) into AgCl and silver perchlorate. We propose that the solid phase AgCl-AgClO4 mixture eutectically melts, and the resulting AgClO4 decomposes in this melt into AgCl and O2. Thus, the final product of decomposition is AgCl, N2, and H2O. The intermediate (chlorite, chlorate) phases were identified by IR, XPS, and titrimetric methods.

MontefineseEtAl_2021_ANEW-COVID_PrePrint

Italy was the first Western country with numerous COVID-19 infections that underwent a strong lockdown. This represents the first threat-related mass isolation in the history that can be in-depth studied by scientists to understand the side effects of pandemic lockdown in the psychophysical domain. There is increasing evidence that Italian lockdown was associated with larger incidence of stress, anxiety, and mood symptoms. It was thus expected that, at a more basic level, also emotion perception -namely how an individual judges the affective content of common words- changed substantially during lockdown, especially in individuals with high COVID-19 fear and high negative affect. We measured the effects of this long-term isolation and the related pandemic phobia in an online survey on 71 healthy Italian participants. They completed the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule and Fear of COVID-19 Scale and judged valence, arousal, and dominance of words either related or unrelated to COVID-19, as identified by Google search trends. We found that lockdown imposed by the COVID-19 epidemic had a substantial impact on participants’ emotional responses. Moreover, emotional judgments changes from normative data varied depending on word type and individuals’ emotional state, revealing early signals of individuals’ mental distress to COVID-19 confinement. Lower valence and dominance judgments were given only to COVID-19-related words by individuals with less negative feelings and COVID-19 fear, but also to COVID-19-unrelated words by individuals with more negative feelings and COVID-19 fear. Moreover, arousal judgments for all words decreased and increased, respectively, for individuals with less and more negative feelings and COVID-19 fear. With respect to more direct but demanding and expensive tools such as surveys and questionnaires, the methods used here allow to measure more conveniently but reliably the emotional alteration and clinical psychiatric risk of population through the analysis of word use in the web and their affective connotation.

Defect ferromagnetism induced by lower valence cation doping: Li-doped SnO2 nanoparticles

To explore the role of Li in establishing room-temperature ferromagnetism in SnO2, the structural, electronic and magnetic properties of Li-doped SnO2 compounds were studied for different size regimes, from nanoparticles to bulk crystals.

LIBR Methamphetamine and Opioid Cue Database (LIBR MOCD): Development and Validation

IntroductionDrug cue reactivity (DCR) is widely used in experimental settings for both assessment and intervention. There is no validated database of pictorial cues available for methamphetamine and opioids.Methods360 images in three-groups (methamphetamine, opioid and neutral (control)) matched for their content (objects, hands, faces and actions) were selected in an initial development phase. 28 participants with a history of both methamphetamine and opioid use (37.1 ± 8.11 years old, 12 female) with over six months of abstinence were asked to rate images for craving, valence, arousal, typicality and relatedness.ResultsAll drug images were differentiated from neutral images. Drug related images received higher arousal and lower valence ratings compared to neutral images (craving (0-100) for neutral (11.5±21.9), opioid (87.7±18.5), and methamphetamine (88±18), arousal (1-9) for neutral (2.4±1.9), opioid (4.6±2.7), and methamphetamine (4.6±2.6), and valence (1-9) for neutral (4.8±1.3), opioid (4.4±1.9), and methamphetamine (4.4±1.8)). There is no difference between methamphetamine and opioid images in craving, arousal and valence. There is a significant positive relationship between the amount of time that participants spent on drug-related images and the craving they reported for the image. Every 10 points of craving were associated with an increased response time of 383millisecond. Three image sets were automatically selected for equivalent fMRI tasks (methamphetamine and opioids) from the database (tasks are available at github).ConclusionLIBR MOCD provides a resource of validated images/tasks for future DCR studies. Additionally, researchers can select several sets of unique but equivalent images based-on their psychological/physical characteristics for multiple assessments/interventions.

Favorite Words as a Window onto the Aesthetic Function of Language

This article characterizes the aesthetic properties of English words. One thousand adult speakers of American English reported their favorite words and justified their selections. Each word was coded for phonological characteristics, valence, and frequency of occurrence and compared with words from a corpus of everyday English from Reader’s Digest. The participants’ stated reasons for their selections were categorized as utilitarian (meaning, use) or aesthetic (form). Compared to the word types in the Reader’s Digest corpus, the favorite words were longer and lower in frequency of occurrence. They were less likely to include a sonorant consonant but more likely to include a repeated consonant. Consonant clusters were sparser among the favorite words. The majority of people justified their favorite words on utilitarian grounds, suggesting some difficulty considering form apart from meaning. The best predictors of aesthetic justifications were lower valence, lower frequency, longer length, higher sonority, and a higher density of lax vowels. People value words for the work they do—the meanings they convey. Nevertheless, people can appreciate words as objects, and when they do, novelty and musicality are privileged. This study informs our understanding of the aesthetic function of language and situates that function into a broader consideration of aesthetic appreciation.

Effects of valent image-based secondary tasks on verbal working memory

Two experiments examined if exposure to emotionally valent image-based secondary tasks introduced at different points of a free recall working memory (WM) task impair memory performance. Images from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) varied in the degree of negative or positive valance (mild, moderate, strong) and were positioned at low, moderate and high WM load points with participants rating them based upon perceived valence. As predicted, and based on previous research and theory, the higher the degree of negative (Experiment 1) and positive (Experiment 2) valence and the higher the WM load when a secondary task was introduced, the greater the impairment to recall. Secondary task images with strong negative valance were more disruptive than negative images with lower valence at moderate and high WM load task points involving encoding and/or rehearsal of primary task words (Experiment 1). This was not the case for secondary tasks involving positive images (Experiment 2), although participant valence ratings for positive IAPS images classified as moderate and strong were in fact very similar. Implications are discussed in relation to research and theory on task interruption and attentional narrowing and literature concerning the effects of emotive stimuli on cognition.

Nonpolicy Factors in Party Competition

Moving beyond the assumption that voters care about only the party policy positions on offer, this chapter models the possibility that they also care about perceived “nonpolicy” attributes of political candidates, such as competence, charisma, honesty. These characterize what have become known as “valence” models of party competition. Voters balance utility derived from each candidate's nonpolicy valence against utility derived from the candidate's policy position. The contribution of valence models has been to explain why all parties do not all converge on regions of the policy space with the highest densities of voter ideal points. Higher valence parties tend to go to regions of the policy space with higher voter densities, while lower valence parties are forced to steer well clear of these parties and pick policy positions in regions with lower voter densities.

ANTIMONY FIXATION IN SOLID PHASES AT THE HYDROTHERMAL FIELD OF KOLUMBO SUBMARINE ARC-VOLCANO (SANTORINI): DEPOSITION MODEL AND ENVIRONMENTAL IMPLICATIONS

Antimony, an emergent global contaminant, that is hydrothermally discharged along with other epithermal metals(-loids) (Au, As, Hg, Ag, Tl, Ag) onto Kolumbo volcano’s shallow (<500 m water depth) crater seabed, is fixed either in pyrite, orpiment-like As-sulfides, and ferrihydrite-like Fe-oxy(hydro)oxides, or forms independent Pb(Zn)- Sb sulfosalts, of layered Sb-rich (up to 2.2 wt%) chimneys. High concentrations of Sb (≤ 27.2 wt%) are found in early colloform chemically-zoned hydrothermal pyrite, and later orpiment (As2S3)-type As sulfide phases(≤16.09 wt %), along individual micronscale growth zones. Antimony in pyrite may occur in the relatively more toxic trivalent (or lower valence) (Sb3+) rather than pentavalent (Sb5+) forms. Lead (Pb) always occurs with Sb in growth zones where the abundances of Sb and Pb vary inversely with Fe and S, suggesting that Sb and Pb occur either as homogeneously distributed sulfosalt nanoparticles of Sb and Pb and/or lattice bound trace elements. These findings indicate the solid phases that fix Sb on the seafloor are crucial for high- grade concentration during shallow-water hydrothermal polymetallic mineralization, and reducing the high hydrothermal flux of this notorious environmental toxin to seawater, near the fishing area of Santorini that is also one of the most popular tourist places in the world.