Participants’ tendency to be more supportive of the one-off proposal than the general rule was significantly reduced when they evaluated the two proposals jointly as opposed to separately. Finally, the effect also occurred in sacrificial moral dilemmas, a general phenomenon occurring in multiple moral contexts. We discuss possible explanations of the effect, including concerns about negative consequences of the rule and a deontological aversion against making difficult trade-off decisions unless they are absolutely necessary.Empathy is an important psychological process. It consists of two dissociable components cognitive empathy (adopting another’s perspective and understanding their emotions), and affective empathy (the vicarious experiences of another’s emotions). Here we examined individual differences in cognitive and affective empathy, and how they were related to two different aspects of attentional control focusing and shifting. A sample of 299 adult participants completed psychometrically validated questionnaires, the Attentional Control Scale and the Questionnaire of Cognitive and Affective Empathy. Individuals who reported a greater ability to shift their attention in everyday life exhibited higher levels of cognitive but not affective empathy, whereas individuals who reported greater ability to focus their attention demonstrated lower levels of affective but not cognitive empathy. This reveals how cognitive-attentional processes are selectively related to core social and emotional functioning, highlighting the importance of considering these distinct sub-processes of empathy and of attentional control.In source monitoring, schematic expectations affect both memory and metamemory. In metamemory judgments, people predict better source memory for items that originated from an expected source (e.g., oven in the kitchen) than for items that originated from an unexpected source (e.g., hairdryer in the kitchen; expectancy effect; Schaper et al., 2019a). By contrast, actual source memory is either unaffected by expectations or better for unexpected sources (inconsistency effect; Kuhlmann & Bayen, 2016). Thus, the metamemory expectancy effect is illusory. This research is the first to test the hypotheses that such metamemory monitoring of source memory affects metamemory control (i.e., measures taken to achieve a desired level of memory; Nelson & Narens, 1990) and memory. Due to their expectancy illusion, people should choose to restudy unexpected source-item pairs more often. Three participant groups (n = 36 each) studied expected and unexpected source-item pairs. One group rendered metamemory judgments and chose pairs for restudy. A second group made restudy choices only. These two groups then restudied the chosen pairs. A third group did not make restudy choices and restudied a random half of the pairs. All participants completed a source-monitoring test. As predicted, participants chose unexpected pairs more often for restudy based on their illusory conviction that they would remember unexpected sources more poorly. These restudy choices concurred with an inconsistency effect on source memory not shown in the group without restudy choices. Thus, the metamemory illusion related to control and memory in source monitoring.Coagulation/flocculation is one of the most extensive and cost-effective pretreatments to improve the dewaterability of sludge in water treatment plants. In this study, three series of graft cationic starch (St)-based flocculants with distinct structural characteristics including charge density (CD), graft-chain length (L), and graft-chain distribution (N) were synthesized by graft copolymerization of [(2-methacryloyloxy-ethyl) trimethyl ammonium chloride] and acrylamide onto St backbone. The structural effects of these St-based flocculants on the sludge dewaterability have been quantitatively analyzed by using a second-order polynomial model according to phenomenological theory. The predicted dewatering performance and optimal dose were fully consistent with the experimental results. On the basis of this established model, the dewatering mechanisms were discussed in detail by combination of the analysis of the changes in filter cake moisture content, specific resistance of filtration, bound water content, compression coefficient, extracellular polymeric substances fractions and components, spatial distributions of proteins and polysaccharides, microstructures of sludge cake, and flocs properties in the dewatering process. This graft St-based flocculant, with the structural characteristics of high CD, long L, and low N, exhibited superior sludge dewaterability because of the enhanced charge neutralization and bridging flocculation effects. Among these three structural factors, CD played a more important role in improvement of sludge dewaterability than L and N due to the dominant effect of charge neutralization. This study provided a better understanding of structure-activity relationship of these grafting modified flocculants, which was of significant guidance for the exploit and design of novel and efficient flocculants for improvement of sludge dewaterability.Dams are important for flood control, water storage, irrigation, electric generation, navigation, and have been regarded as the largest anthropogenic disturbance in aquatic ecosystems. However, how dams impact nitrogen transformation on a large watershed scale remained less studied. To explicitly address the impact of dams on nitrogen transformation, we used 16S rRNA gene sequencing to investigate the microbial dynamics and ecological processes under different dam conditions along the Yangtze River, as microbial communities are playing a key role in aquatic nitrogen transformation. Luzindole research buy Compared with landforms, dams exerted a more significant impact on the distribution patterns of microbial communities along the Yangtze River. The results showed that, by controlling suspended sand concentration, dams filtered keystone species, reshaped distribution of metacommunities, and mediated ecological assembly processes of microbial communities. Moreover, direct causal relationships between dams and nitrogen transformation were chained via microbial communities.