No abstract

Social science research has highlighted “honor” as a central value driving social behavior in Mediterranean societies, which requires individuals to develop and protect a sense of their personal self-worth and their social reputation, through assertiveness, competitiveness, and retaliation in the face of threats. We predicted that members of Mediterranean societies may exhibit a distinctive combination of independent and interdependent social orientation, self-construal, and cognitive style, compared to more commonly studied East Asian and Anglo-Western cultural groups. We compared participants from eight Mediterranean societies (Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus [Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot communities], Lebanon, Egypt) to participants from East Asian (Korea, Japan) and Anglo-Western (the United Kingdom, the United States) societies, using six implicit social orientation indicators, an eight-dimensional self-construal scale, and four cognitive style indicators. Compared with both East Asian and Anglo-Western samples, samples from Mediterranean societies distinctively emphasized several forms of independence (relative intensity of disengaging [vs. engaging] emotions, happiness based on disengaging [vs. engaging] emotions, dispositional [vs. situational] attribution style, self-construal as different from others, self-directed, self-reliant, self-expressive, and consistent) and interdependence (closeness to in-group [vs. out-group] members, self-construal as connected and committed to close others). Our findings extend previous insights into patterns of cultural orientation beyond commonly examined East–West comparisons to an understudied world region.

No abstract

Ni−Fe nanoparticles of ∼1 nm in size were synthesized by the dendrimer-templating technique using hydroxylterminated fourth-generation poly aminoamide (PAMAM) dendrimers. Spectroscopy and electron microscopy results are consistent with 40 atom clusters, in which all atoms are at the surface, as dictated by the synthesis strategy. Following immobilization of the clusters onto silica, the role of Ni:Fe ratio in the bimetallic was addressed for ethylene hydrogenation. A distinctive enhancement (factor of 10) in the catalytic activity was observed for the Ni-rich (Ni:Fe = 3:1) nanoparticles as compared to pure Ni, which was more active than pure Fe and a physical mixture of the pure parent components. Examination of the rate dependencies upon temperature and ethylene partial pressure indicates ethylene and its intermediates' strong binding as a key kinetic limitation. Using an available semiempirical model, the d-band center of the Ni−Fe systems correlated to turnover frequencies calculated for increasing strain (and not ligand effects). The estimation of the catalytic activity of a bimetallic system proposed here provides a novel strategy that facilitates catalytic advancements by its application to other bimetallic systems.

Social science research has highlighted ‘honor’ as a central value driving social behavior in Mediterranean societies, which requires individuals to develop and protect a sense of their personal self-worth and their social reputation, through assertiveness, competitiveness, and retaliation in the face of threats. We predicted that members of Mediterranean societies may exhibit a distinctive combination of independent and interdependent social orientation, self-construal, and cognitive style, compared to more commonly studied East Asian and Anglo-Western cultural groups. We compared participants from eight Mediterranean societies (Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus [Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot communities], Lebanon, Egypt) to participants from East Asian (Korea, Japan) and Anglo-Western (UK, US) societies, using six implicit social orientation indicators, an eight-dimensional self-construal scale, and four cognitive style indicators. Compared with both East Asian and Anglo-Western samples, samples from Mediterranean societies distinctively emphasized several forms of independence (relative intensity of disengaging [vs. engaging] emotions, happiness based on disengaging [vs. engaging] emotions, dispositional [vs. situational] attribution style, self-construal as different from others, self-directed, self-reliant, self-expressive, and consistent) and interdependence (closeness to ingroup [vs. outgroup] members, self-construal as connected and committed to close others). Our findings extend previous insights into patterns of cultural orientation beyond commonly examined East-West comparisons to an understudied world region.