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The primary aim of this chapter is to provide a framework to understand and synthesize the processes of person construal—early perceptions that lead to initial ingroup/outgroup categorizations—with the processes involved in intergroup relations. To this end, we review research examining the initial perception and categorization of ingroup and outgroup members and its downstream consequences. We first discuss bottom-up processes in person construal based on visual features (e.g., facial prototypicality and bodily cues), and then discuss how top-down factors (e.g., beliefs, stereotypes) may influence these processes. Next, we examine how the initial categorization of targets as ingroup or outgroup members influences identification, stereotyping, and group-based evaluations, and the relations between these constructs. We also explore the implications of the activation of these constructs for a range of social judgments including emotion identification, empathy, and intergroup behaviors. Finally, we describe a variety of well established and more recent strategies to reduce intergroup bias that target the activation of category-based knowledge, including intergroup contact, approach orientations, evaluative conditioning, and perspective taking.

Ostracism is characterized by a social pain provoked by being excluded and ignored. In order to address the effects of social ostracism in virtual non-physical interactions, we developed a more realistic paradigm as an alternative to Cyberball and assessed its effects on participant's expression of basic social needs, emotional experience and painful feeling. The chat room consisted of controlled social dialogue interactions between participants and two other (confederate) chat room partners. Exclusion was manipulated by varying the number of messages a participant received (15% and 33% in exclusion and inclusion, respectively). Analysis of participant (N = 54) responses revealed that exclusion induced a lower experience of basic-need states and greater anger, compared with included participants. In addition, excluded participants reported higher levels of two specific self-pain feelings, namely tortured and hurt. Our findings suggest that this procedure is effective in inducing social ostracism in a realistic and yet highly controlled experimental procedure.

Power is thought to increase discrimination toward subordinate groups, yet its effect on different forms of implicit bias remains unclear. We tested whether power enhances implicit racial stereotyping, in addition to implicit prejudice (i.e., evaluative associations), and examined the effect of power on the automatic processing of faces during implicit tasks. Study 1 showed that manipulated high power increased both forms of implicit bias, relative to low power. Using a neural index of visual face processing (the N170 component of the ERP), Study 2 revealed that power affected the encoding of White ingroup vs. Black outgroup faces. Whereas high power increased the relative processing of outgroup faces during evaluative judgments in the prejudice task, it decreased the relative processing of outgroup faces during stereotype trait judgments. An indirect effect of power on implicit prejudice through enhanced processing of outgroup versus ingroup faces suggested a potential link between face processing and implicit bias. Together, these findings demonstrate that power can affect implicit prejudice and stereotyping as well as early processing of racial ingroup and outgroup faces.

Racial prejudice is associated with a fundamental distinction between "us" and "them"-a distinction linked to the perceived overlap between representations of the self and others. Implicit prejudice has been shown to reduce the intensity of White individuals' hand ownership sensation as induced by the Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI) with dark rubber hands. However, evidence for this link to implicit prejudice comes from self-report questionnaire data regarding the RHI. As an alternative, we assessed the onset time of the RHI. We hypothesized that onset time of the RHI would be higher for the black compared to the white RH, acting as the mediator between implicit prejudice and magnitude of the RH illusion and proprioceptive drift. As expected, participants took longer to incorporate the black RH and presented lower RH illusion magnitude and a smaller proprioceptive drift for the black RH. Mediation analysis revealed a significant indirect effect of implicit racial bias on proprioceptive drift and magnitude of illusion through onset time to illusion only for the black RH. These findings further illuminate the connection between implicit prejudice and embodied perception, suggesting new perspectives on how implicit biases operate., This work was supported by Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnologico (CNPq; grant numbers: 466922/2014-0 and 401143/2014-7)., info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Despite global increases in diversity, social prejudices continue to fuel intergroup conflict, disparities and discrimination. Moreover, as norms have become more egalitarian, prejudices seem to have 'gone underground', operating covertly and often unconsciously, such that they are difficult to detect and control. Neuroscientists have recently begun to probe the neural basis of prejudice and stereotyping in an effort to identify the processes through which these biases form, influence behaviour and are regulated. This research aims to elucidate basic mechanisms of the social brain while advancing our understanding of intergroup bias in social behaviour.

When the economy declines, racial minorities are hit the hardest. Although existing explanations for this effect focus on institutional causes, recent psychological findings suggest that scarcity may also alter perceptions of race in ways that exacerbate discrimination. We tested the hypothesis that economic resource scarcity causes decision makers to perceive African Americans as "Blacker" and that this visual distortion elicits disparities in the allocation of resources. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated that scarcity altered perceptions of race, lowering subjects' psychophysical threshold for seeing a mixed-race face as "Black" as opposed to "White." In studies 3 and 4, scarcity led subjects to visualize African American faces as darker and more "stereotypically Black," compared with a control condition. When presented to naïve subjects, face representations produced under scarcity elicited smaller allocations than control-condition representations. Together, these findings introduce a novel perceptual account for the proliferation of racial disparities under economic scarcity.

Although group membership has many privileges, members are expected to reciprocate those privileges. We tested whether in-group members would be punished more harshly than out-group members for marginal fairness norm violations within ultimatum game bargaining interactions. Participants considered monetary splits (of US$20) from in-group and out-group proposers, which ranged in proportion. Accepting an offer yielded the proposed payout; rejecting it caused each player to earn nothing—a punishment of the proposer at a personal cost. Participants exacted stricter costly punishment on racial in-group than out-group members for marginally unfair offers (Study 1), an effect that was replicated with college group membership and magnified among strong in-group identifiers (Study 2). Importantly, ultimatum game decisions were driven by fairness perceptions rather than proposer evaluations (Study 3), suggesting our effects reflected norm enforcement and not esteem preservation. These findings illuminate a previously unexplored process for maintaining group-based norms that may promote in-group favoritism.

In order to assess indoor air quality (IAQ), two 1-week monitoring campaigns of volatile organic compounds (VOC) were performed in different areas of a multistorey shopping mall. High-spatial-resolution monitoring was conducted at 32 indoor sites located in two storehouses and in different departments of a supermarket. At the same time, VOC concentrations were monitored in the mall and parking lot area as well as outdoors. VOC were sampled at 48-h periods using diffusive samplers suitable for thermal desorption. The samples were then analyzed with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The data analysis and chromatic maps indicated that the two storehouses had the highest VOC concentrations consisting principally of terpenes. These higher TVOC concentrations could be a result of the low efficiency of the air exchange and intake systems, as well as the large quantity of articles stored in these small spaces. Instead, inside the supermarket, the food department was the most critical area for VOC concentrations. To identify potential emission sources in this department, a continuous VOC analyzer was used. The findings indicated that the highest total VOC concentrations were present during cleaning activities and that these activities were carried out frequently in the food department. The study highlights the importance of conducting both high-spatial-resolution monitoring and high-temporal-resolution monitoring. The former was able to identify critical issues in environments with a complex emission scenario while the latter was useful in interpreting the dynamics of each emission source.

The emergence of political neuroscience—an interdisciplinary venture involving political science, psychology, and cognitive neuroscience—has piqued the interests of scholars as well as the mass public. In this chapter, we review evidence pertaining to four areas of inquiry that have generated most of the research in political neuroscience to date: (1) racial prejudice and intergroup relations; (2) the existence of partisan bias and motivated political cognition; (3) the nature of left-right differences in political orientation; and (4) the dimensional structure of political attitudes. Although these topics are well-known to political psychologists, the application of models and methods from neuroscience has renewed interest in each of them and yielded novel insights. There is reason to believe that many other areas of political psychology await similarly promising renewals and that innovative methods will continue to advance our understanding of the physiological processes involved in political cognition, evaluation, judgment, and behavior. We address limitations, criticisms, and potential pitfalls of existing work—including the “chicken-and-egg problem”—and propose an ambitious agenda for the next generation of research in political neuroscience.

The atmosphere is a carrier on which some natural and anthropogenic organic and inorganic chemicals are transported, and the wet and dry deposition events are the most important processes that remove those chemicals, depositing it on soil and water. A wide variety of different collectors were tested to evaluate site-specificity, seasonality and daily variability of settleable particle concentrations. Deposition fluxes of POPs showed spatial and seasonal variations, diagnostic ratios of PAHs on deposited particles, allowed the discrimination between pyrolytic or petrogenic sources. Congener pattern analysis and bulk deposition fluxes in rural sites confirmed long-range atmospheric transport of PCDDs/Fs. More and more sophisticated and newly designed deposition samplers have being used for characterization of deposited mercury, demonstrating the importance of rain scavenging and the relatively higher magnitude of Hg deposition from Chinese anthropogenic sources. Recently biological monitors demonstrated that PAH concentrations in lichens were comparable with concentrations measured in a conventional active sampler in an outdoor environment. In this review the authors explore the methodological approaches used for the assessment of atmospheric deposition, from the analysis of the sampling methods, the analytical procedures for chemical characterization of pollutants and the main results from the scientific literature.

Humans learn about people and objects through positive and negative experiences, yet they can also look beyond the immediate reward of an interaction to encode trait-level attributes. We found that perceivers encoded both reward and trait-level information through feedback in an instrumental learning task, but relied more heavily on trait representations in cross-context decisions. Both learning types implicated ventral striatum, but trait learning also recruited a network associated with social impression formation.

An assessment of the fugitive emission impact on ambient air PM, PAHs and metal concentrations was performed in a residential area near the biggest European steel plant. A careful experimental design was developed to characterize fugitive emissions produced by the integrated steel plant. A PM10 and PM2.5 monitoring campaign was conducted at three sampling sites around the steel plant, in order to perform a triangulation in the area surrounding the investigated site and evaluate its impact based on wind direction. Data analysis showed that the transport of air mass, from the steelworks to one of the receptor sites, resulted in ambient air concentrations of Fe, Mn, Zn and PAHs higher than those observed in the other two sites. Principal component analysis allowed the identification of four emission sources: coke ovens stack, mineral park, a crustal source and vanadium source. The first two sources were characterized by high concentrations of PAHs and metals and related to the steelworks, while the vanadium source was probably associated with maritime traffic in the port area. This preliminary monitoring approach proved effective in identifying the fugitive emission contribution of the steel plant to the surrounding air quality.

article i nfo According to the principle of hypodescent, multiracial individuals are categorized according to their most so- cially subordinate group membership. We investigated whether the tendency to apply this principle is relat- ed to political ideology. In three studies, participants categorized a series of morphed faces that varied in terms of racial ambiguity. In each study, self-reported conservatism (vs. liberalism) was associated with the tendency to categorize ambiguous faces as Black. Consistent with the notion that system justification mo- tivation helps to explain ideological differences in racial categorization, the association between conserva- tism and hypodescent was mediated by individual differences in opposition to equality (Study 2) and was stronger when U.S. participants categorized American than Canadian faces (Study 3). We discuss ways in which the categorization of racially ambiguous individuals in terms of their most subordinate racial group may exacerbate inequality and vulnerability to discrimination.

Faces are inherently social, but the extent to which social group information affects early face processing remains unknown. To address this issue, we examined cortical activity associated with structural encoding of novel ingroup vs. outgroup faces. Participants were assigned to one of two arbitrarily-defined groups using the minimal group procedure, and event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants categorized faces of people identified as members of their novel ingroup vs. outgroup. Our analysis focused on the N170 component of the ERP, which peaks 170 ms following face onset and reflects face structural encoding. Ingroup faces elicited larger N170 amplitudes than outgroup faces, suggesting that mere group information affects this initial stage of face perception. These findings show that social categories influence how we “see” faces, thus providing insight into the process through which categorizations may lead to biased intergroup perceptions.

Atmospheric particulate matter (PM) characterizes the atmospheric air quality. PM particles can adsorb and include several toxic air pollutants of urban areas. The current study aimed to develop an experimental procedure to assess the toxicity of the pollutants on PPM10 by means of the comet assay on earthworms directly exposed to PM10 collecting filters. A particular focus was the amount of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in the filter, in spite of their very low concentration in PM, because of their strong mutagenic and carcinogenic effects. A quartz filter exposed to polluted air containing 24.9 mg/g of PM10 and 14.1 μg/g of PAHs was characterized and mechanically reduced into a very fine powder by means of a planetary ball mill. This powder was combined with artificial soil samples allowing treatments at 15 μg/g of PM10 (0.008 μg/g of PAHs), 22.5 μg/g of PM10 (0.012 μg/g of PAHs), 30 μg/g of PM10 (0.016 μg/g of PAHs). Earthworms were exposed to each treatment for seven days, including blank treatments with powdered clean quartz filter, such as phenanthrene (used as the standard), and an untreated soil. DNA damage was observed starting from 0.012 μg/g of PAHs in 22.5 μg/g of PM10. No single PAH was detected or quantified in the bodies of the earthworms after microwave assisted solvent extraction (MASE) and GC-MS analysis. The results demonstrate that even a very low amount of PM10 absorbed by the earthworms had a toxic effect on their immune systems, which could also have been caused by other xenobiotics included into the filter.

Taranto (in the Apulia Region of southern Italy) has been included in a list of the most polluted sites of national interest because of its large industrial area that is situated near the urban centre. The impact of this on urban air quality has been evaluated by monitoring PM2.5 and PM10 at the industrial site of ‘via Orsini’ and the urban station of ‘via Dante’. At both sites, the temporal distribution and chemical composition of PM, in terms of PAHs and element concentrations, were used to characterize the air quality in the urban area and to deduce the possible and theoretical carcinogenic indices, and thus the impact on human health. High PM concentrations were found to be caused by wind coming from the north (industrial area), and during days when the wind was from this direction the PAH and elemental concentrations (such as iron, manganese and zinc) were the highest of the sampling period. These data confirm the impact of this industrial area, in particular its steel plant activities, on urban air quality in Taranto. In order to determine the source contributions to PM levels at the two investigated sites, Principal Component Analysis was applied to the collected data. Statistical investigations also included PAH and elemental concentrations determined at two other sites in Apulia Region, characterized by traffic and biomass burning sources. These investigations made it possible to distinguish the samples collected in via Dante and via Orsini from those collected at the two other sites, confirming the effects of industrial activities on urban air quality in Taranto.

This study examined factors that predicted children's gender intergroup attitudes at age 5 and the implications of these attitudes for intergroup behavior. Ethnically diverse children from low-income backgrounds (N = 246; Mexican-, Chinese-, Dominican-, and African American) were assessed at ages 4 and 5. On average, children reported positive same-gender and negative other-gender attitudes. Positive same-gender attitudes were associated with knowledge of gender stereotypes. In contrast, positive other-gender attitudes were associated with flexibility in gender cognitions (stereotype flexibility, gender consistency). Other-gender attitudes predicted gender-biased behavior. These patterns were observed in all ethnic groups. These findings suggest that early learning about gender categories shape young children's gender attitudes and that these gender attitudes already have consequences for children's intergroup behavior at age 5.

Odor emissions from waste management plants have long been an environmental and economic issue, but only recently regional authorities in Italy are regulating this sector by imposing control and mitigation of the phenomenon. Electronic noses, initially developed as cheap, easy tools to detect volatiles, may have the required time-resolved coverage of the odor emission phenomenon in a cheap and feasible way with respect to chemical analysis of air. One crucial issue to resolve is to evaluate the discriminant capacity of a sensor array in-field and under working conditions. In this paper the authors have studied the responses of electronic noses of different technologies to odors emitted from a waste management plant, by integrating results obtained with dynamic olfactometry and gas chromatography–mass spectrometry/olfactometry, in the aim to implement a monitoring system and improve cleaner production technologies. Three most impacting odor sources in the waste management plant were detected: biogas, a by-product of mechanical treatment of municipal solid wastes, with low organic fraction and a sludge pressed and dehydrated from treatment of urban wastewater. The most odor impacting source was the sludge and the major responsible of the odor impacts were aromatics (in particular 1,3,5-trimethyl benzene), aliphatic hydrocarbons, terpenes and sulphur volatiles (methyl disulphide, carbon disulphide, dimethyltrisulphide). Ten Metal Oxide Semiconductors and 32 polymer/black carbon (Nano Composite Array) sensors in two electronic noses, were tested for discrimination source capabilities. Results of linear discriminant analysis and cross validation give 86.7% successful recognition for Metal Oxide Semiconductors, 53.3% for Nano Composite Array and 93.3% for a selection of sensors belonging to both technologies chosen according to the selectivity towards the odor active molecules. The containment of odors could also be achieved by spraying a specific product and monitoring the process using selected sensors of the arrays. The results of the in-field work demonstrate strengths and weaknesses of different construction technologies in the e-noses arrays, to characterize and monitor in-site and in real time odor emissions from waste management plants.

This study was aimed to the development of an integrated approach for the characterization of particulate matter (PM) pollution events in the South of Italy.PM(10) and PM(2.5) daily samples were collected from June to November 2008 at an urban background site located in Bari (Puglia Region, South of Italy). Meteorological data, particle size distributions and atmospheric dispersion conditions were also monitored in order to provide information concerning the different features of PM sources.The collected data allowed suggesting four indicators to characterize different PM(10) exceedances. PM(2.5)/PM(10) ratio, natural radioactivity, aerosol maps and back-trajectory analysis and particle distributions were considered in order to evaluate the contribution of local anthropogenic sources and to determine the different origins of intrusive air mass coming from long-range transport, such as African dust outbreaks and aerosol particles from Central and Eastern Europe. The obtained results were confirmed by applying principal component analysis to the number particle concentration dataset and by the chemical characterization of the samples (PM(10) and PM(2.5)).The integrated approach for PM study suggested in this paper can be useful to support the air quality managers for the development of cost-effective control strategies and the application of more suitable risk management approaches.

Racial disparities are a major public health concern in the United States. The authors examined whether Black and Latina community members’ perceptions of stigmatization and personal feelings about their group relate to immune and endocrine markers associated with health risk, including the cytokine interleukin-6 (IL-6), which coordinates the immune response to infection, the anabolic hormone dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), which promotes cellular resilience, and the catabolic hormone cortisol, which releases metabolic stores in response to threat. Greater perceived stigmatization was associated with higher basal IL-6, whereas greater ingroup pride was related to elevated basal DHEA. These associations remained with adjustment for general perceived stress, experience with discrimination, age, and income. No significant perceived stigmatization or ingroup pride effects emerged for basal cortisol. These findings provide new evidence that perceived stigmatization and ingroup pride are linked to indicators of ...

How does intergroup anxiety affect the activation of implicit racial evaluations and stereotypes? Given the common basis of social anxiety and implicit evaluative processes in memory systems linked to classical conditioning and affect, we predicted that intergroup anxiety would amplify implicit negative racial evaluations. Implicit stereotyping, which is associated primarily with semantic memory systems, was not expected to increase as a function of intergroup anxiety. This pattern was observed among White participants preparing to interact with Black partners, but not those preparing to interact with White partners. These findings shed new light on how anxiety, often elicited in real-life intergroup interactions, can affect the operation of implicit racial biases, suggesting that intergroup anxiety has more direct implications for affective and evaluative forms of implicit bias than for implicit stereotyping. These findings also support a memory-systems model of the interplay between emotion and cognition in the context of social behavior.

Ideology is a potent motivational force; human beings are capable of committing atrocities (as well as acts of generosity and courage) and sacrificing even their own lives for the sake of abstract belief systems. In this article, we summarize the major tenets of a model of political ideology as motivated social cognition (Jost et al. in Psychol Bull 129:339–375, 2003a, Psychol Bull 129:389–393, 2003b, Person Soc Psychol Bull 33:989–1007, 2007), focusing on epistemic, existential, and relational motives and their implications for left-right (or liberal-conservative) political orientation. We review behavioral evidence indicating that chronically and temporarily activated needs to reduce uncertainty, ambiguity, threat, and disgust are positively associated with conservatism (or negatively associated with liberalism). Studies from neuroscience and genetics suggest that right- (vs. left-) wing orientation is associated with greater neural sensitivity to threat and larger amygdala volume, as well as less sensitivity to response conflict and smaller anterior cingulate volume. These findings and others provide converging evidence for Jost and colleagues’ model of ideology as motivated social cognition and, more broadly, reflect the utility of an integrative political neuroscience approach to understanding the basic cognitive, neural, and motivational processes that give rise to ideological activity.

In middle childhood, many girls go through a curious metamorphosis, in which their earlier embrace of all-things-feminine appears to transform into an identity as a tomboy. We believe this striking shift, observed in girls but not boys, signifies a critical development in children’s socio-cognitive functioning, with implications for their understanding of gender as it relates to their identity and their social relationships. In this article, we review the evidence for this identity shift and present a theoretical account that integrates ideas from social cognition and social development. We argue that this identity shift involves the emergence of public regard and status awareness, with concurrent increases in the complexity with which knowledge associated with gender categories is represented in the mind. We then posit that these changes have important implications for the developmental trajectory of implicit and explicit gender attitudes and stereotypes, and we present a set of predictions generated by our theoretical analysis.

We examined the relation between neural activity reflecting early face perception processes and automatic and controlled responses to race. Participants completed a sequential evaluative priming task, in which two-tone images of Black faces, White faces, and cars appeared as primes, followed by target words categorized as pleasant or unpleasant, while encephalography was recorded. Half of these participants were alerted that the task assessed racial prejudice and could reveal their personal bias (“alerted” condition). To assess face perception processes, the N170 component of the ERP was examined. For all participants, stronger automatic pro-White bias was associated with larger N170 amplitudes to Black than White faces. For participants in the alerted condition only, larger N170 amplitudes to Black versus White faces were also associated with less controlled processing on the word categorization task. These findings suggest that preexisting racial attitudes affect early face processing and that situational factors moderate the link between early face processing and behavior.

Individuals who are primarily internally motivated to respond without prejudice show less bias on implicit measures than individuals who are externally motivated or unmotivated to respond without prejudice. However, it is not clear why these individuals exhibit less implicit bias than others. We used the Quad model to examine motivation-based individual differences in three processes that have been proposed to account for this effect: activation of associations, overcoming associations, and response monitoring. Participants completed an implicit measure of stereotyping (Study 1) or racial attitudes (Study 2). Modeling of the data revealed that individuals who were internally (but not externally) motivated to respond without prejudice showed enhanced detection and reduced activation of biased associations, suggesting that these processes may be key to achieving unbiased responding. © 2011 by the Society for Personalityand Social Psychology, Inc.

Implicit social cognition refers to the mental processes that influence social perception and behavior independently of conscious awareness. To date, implicit social processes have been explained by single-system models of associations among concepts that, while addressing questions of information processing, are generally silent regarding the interface of implicit social processes with behavior. In this article, we present a multisystem model of implicit social cognition based on emerging cognitive neuroscience research on systems of learning and memory. This model describes how different underlying memory systems, characterized by different patterns of learning, unlearning, and behavioral expression, may contribute to implicit social processes. We describe how the memory systems model differs from previous theories of implicit social cognition and how it makes new and increasingly refined predictions regarding implicit sociocognitive processes and their influences on behavior.

A screening monitoring campaign of volatile organic compounds (VOC) was conducted in the main cities of the metropolitan area of Bari, south-eastern Italy, in order to evaluate the impact of the vehicular traffic on the urban air quality. VOC were sampled with diffusive samplers suitable for thermal desorption. The monitoring was planned considering the number of inhabitants and the intensity of the vehicular traffic in each city. The same concentration pattern and the correlation among benzene versus toluene levels in all sites confirmed the presence of a single source, the vehicular traffic, having a strong impact on urban air quality.

Social neuroscience is a young and thriving area of research in psychology that integrates diverse literatures and methodologies to address broad questions about the brain and behavior. But despite the excitement and activity generated by this approach, its contribution to ideas in social psychology is sometimes questioned. This article discusses the ways in which social neuroscience research may or may not contribute to theoretical issues in social psychology. Still a young field, much research in this area has focused on issues of brain mapping and methodological development, with less emphasis on generating and testing novel social psychological hypotheses. The challenges to theoretical advancement, including psychometric and methodological issues, are considered, and a set of guidelines for conducting theoretically-informative social neuroscience is offered. In the final analysis, it is argued that neuroscience has much to offer to social psychology, both theoretically and methodologically, but that l...

Chemical composition data (ionic fraction, carbonaceous compounds and Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons) for PM2.5 were acquired during 2005–2007 years by seasonal sampling campaigns performed at six urban sites in Apulia Region. In addition, an industrial site was considered. Discriminant Function Analysis, Principal Component Analysis and Absolute Principal Component Scores were applied to dataset in order to identify PM2.5 sources and to estimate their contributions to samples mass. Three main sources were obtained for the urban sites: combustion processes, natural sources and secondary particulate. Moreover, the application of Principal Component Analysis on chemical and meteorological data highlighted the influence of temperature and relative humidity on natural sources, and the relevance of pressure on secondary particulate content. In PM2.5, secondary particulate contributed on average with 78% to total mass, while combustion processes and natural sources accounted, respectively, 15% and 6.5% of the fine fraction mass. For this reason the secondary background should be taken into account in order to suggest the efficient abatement strategies to improve local air quality in South of Italy.

To celebrate the first 10 years of Nature Reviews Neuroscience, we invited the authors of the most cited article of each year to look back on the state of their field of research at the time of publication and the impact their article has had, and to discuss the questions that might be answered in the next 10 years. This selection of highly cited articles provides interesting snapshots of the progress that has been made in diverse areas of neuroscience. They show the enormous influence of neuroimaging techniques and highlight concepts that have generated substantial interest in the past decade, such as neuroimmunology, social neuroscience and the 'network approach' to brain function. These advancements will pave the way for further exciting discoveries that lie ahead. © 2010 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.

The present work studied how much the meteorological parameters and the emission sources can influence the particulate polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (Invalid Journal Information PAHs) concentrations in two areas located in Southern Italy (Bari and Taranto). It was found that when the vehicular traffic is the main source of PAHs, there is a negative correlation between ambient temperature, wind speed and PAHs concentration (Bari). This is because these parameters are generally correlated with the dispersion capacity of the atmosphere. In the presence of a large industrial area, the wind direction becomes an important parameter able to determinate large changes in PAHs concentrations. This happened in Taranto where PAHs concentrations are exceptionally high. During the study the seasonal trend of particulate PAHs and PM10 was compared. PM10 did not show a significant seasonal cycle during the year because it is conditioned from a high regional aerosol background, especially during the summertime. On the contrary, particulate PAHs exerted distinct seasonal variation with higher concentrations in the winter and lower concentration during other months of the year. This evidence suggested that PAHs concentrations can be considered a more reliable index for air-quality assessment. In order to identify an index that considers the contributions of other particulate PAHs, it is necessary to calculate the carcinogenic potency of total PAHs (i.e., total BaPeq) obtained by the sum of the benzo[a]pyrene equivalent concentration (BaPeq) for each PAH.

The chemical composition of PM10 and PM2.5 samples collected during two seasonal monitoring campaigns at residential, urban and industrial Apulia Region- sites was investigated. Ionic fraction, carbonaceous compounds and Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons were determined for all samples. High correlations among PM data collected in the investigated sites suggested the regional character of particulate matter. It was also confirmed by five days back trajectories analysis. Moreover, no significant seasonal trend in PM mass concentration was observed in the investigated sites. These results, relevant for the area under investigations, were not observed in the North of Italy and Europe and allow to conclude that PM10 and PM2.5 cannot be considered ‘good’ indicators for the evaluation of local anthropic contributions to air quality. On the contrary, the high levels of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons found in Taranto sampling sites suggested that PAHs can be a better indicator for this purpose. This result is also relevant in order to weigh the importance of industrial area and to suggest right policy control to decision makers.

Anxiety associated with an intergroup interaction is often thought to interfere with the cognitive control of automatic racial stereotypes. However, this link remains elusive, as self-reported anxiety is not typically associated with assessments of control. The present research tested a neuroendocrine model for how intergroup anxiety may affect controlled processing. White participants met with a Black or White interviewer to discuss their racial attitudes and to complete a measure of stereotype inhibition. Baseline and post-interaction assessments of self-reported anxiety and salivary cortisol were obtained. Although self-reported anxiety was heightened for participants in the Black interviewer condition, it was not associated with control on the stereotyping task. Rather, greater cortisol reactivity to the interracial interaction predicted reduced controlled processing. This pattern was not observed in the White interviewer condition. Implications for theories of intergroup anxiety, self-regulation, and resource depletion are discussed.

This investigation considered possible health-related neurobiological processes associated with "emotional approach coping" (EAC), or intentional efforts to identify, process, and express emotions surrounding stressors. It was hypothesized that higher dispositional use of EAC strategies would be related to neural activity indicative of greater trait approach motivational orientation and to lower proinflammatory cytokine and cortisol responses to stress. To assess these relationships, 46 healthy participants completed a questionnaire assessing the two components of EAC (i.e., emotional processing and emotional expression), and their resting frontal cortical asymmetry was measured using electroencephalography (EEG). A subset (N=22) of these participants' levels of the soluble receptor for tumor necrosis factor-alpha (sTNFalphaRII), interleukin-6 (IL-6), and cortisol (all obtained from oral fluids) were also assessed before and after exposure to an acute laboratory stressor. Consistent with predictions, higher reported levels of emotional expression were significantly associated with greater relative left-sided frontal EEG asymmetry, indicative of greater trait approach motivation. Additionally, people who scored higher on EAC, particularly the emotional processing component, tended to show a less-pronounced TNF-alpha stress response. EAC was unrelated to levels of IL-6 and cortisol. Greater left-sided frontal EEG asymmetry was significantly related to lower baseline levels of IL-6 and to lower stress-related levels of sTNFalphaRII, and was marginally related to lower stress-related levels of IL-6. The findings suggest that the salubrious effects of EAC strategies for managing stress may be linked to an approach-oriented neurocognitive profile and to well-regulated proinflammatory cytokine responses to stress.

Some peak PM10 episodes, occurred during PM monitoring campaigns performed on October 2005 and February and June 2006 in Bari town, have been characterized. Moreover back trajectories of air masses and Principal Component Analyses were applied. Three of the peak PM10 episodes investigated were related to local emissions of primary pollutants during poor atmospheric dispersion conditions. The other two peak PM10 episodes considered are related with long range transport air masses toward Apulia region: in one case the chemical characterization and the back trajectories analysis indicate that high PM10 value detected is due to the Saharan dust advection in the Apulia region; in the other case air masses with different origin give rise to high PM10 value. Moreover PM10 daily mean concentrations, presented in this paper collected from January 2005 to August 2007 and obtained by automatic device in six stations of air quality monitoring networks in Bari territory, do not show a seasonal trend for PM10 concentrations, contrary to the PM10 trend shown in the towns of North Italy. This can be explained mostly considering that our region presents generally meteo-climatic conditions that favour pollutants dispersion.

The social neuroscience approach integrates theories and methods of social psychology and neuroscience to address questions about social behaviour at multiple levels of analysis. This approach has been especially popular in the domain of intergroup relations, in part because this area of research provides a rich context for connecting basic neurocognitive mechanisms to higher-level interpersonal, group, and societal processes. Here I provide a brief description of the social neuroscience approach, and then review research that has used this approach to advance theories of (a) implicit racial bias and their effects on behaviour, (b) the self-regulation of intergroup responses, and (c) prejudice reduction. I also describe how the social neuroscience perspective suggests some important refinements to theoretical conceptions of implicit bias, prejudice control, and prejudice reduction.

The present hypotheses were guided by four premises, which were systematically examined in six studies involving 409 undergraduate participants. The first premise, established by prior work, is that trait neuroticism is closely associated with avoidance-related goals. The second premise, however, is that neuroticism may be uncorrelated with cognitive tendencies to recognize threats as they occur, and subsequently to down-regulate them. In support of this point, all six studies found that neuroticism was unrelated to post-error behavioral adjustments in choice reaction time. The third premise is that post-error reactivity would nonetheless predict individual differences in threat-recognition (Studies 1 and 2) and its apparent mitigation (Study 3), independently of trait neuroticism. These predictions were supported. The fourth premise is that individual differences in neuroticism and error-reactivity would interact with each other in predicting everyday experiences of distress. In support of such predictions, Studies 4-6 found that higher levels of error-reactivity were associated with less negative affect at high levels of neuroticism, but more negative affect at low levels of neuroticism. The findings are interpreted in terms of trait-cognition self-regulation principles.

Self-control in one’s food choices often depends on the regulation of attention toward healthy choices and away from temptations. We tested whether selective attention to food cues can be modulated by a newly developed proactive self-control mechanism—control readiness—whereby control activated in one domain can facilitate control in another domain. In two studies, we elicited the activation of control using a color-naming Stroop task and tested its effect on attention to food cues in a subsequent, unrelated task. We found that control readiness modulates both overt attention, which involves shifts in eye gaze (Study 1), and covert attention, which involves shift in mental attention without shifting in eye gaze (Study 2). We further demonstrated that individuals for whom tempting food cues signal a self-control problem (operationalized by relatively higher BMI) were especially likely to benefit from control readiness. We discuss the theoretical contributions of the control readiness model and the implications of our findings for enhancing proactive self-control to overcome temptation in food choices.

The purpose of this paper is to present a research study on application of low-cost solid-state gas microsensors for odour control and air-pollution monitoring in a landfill. The method introduces microsensors based on commercial devices of n-type metal oxides for cost-effective and real-time monitoring. This research provides a comparative study and assessment of the sensor response for odour detection and potential continuous monitoring of methane (CH4) and Non-Methanic Hydro-Carbons (NMHC) in a landfill. This leads to an insight into low-cost gas sensing capability for practical applications. The environmental measurements have been performed by a sensor-array with multiple sensing elements for high sensitivity and broad selectivity detection. This sensor technology may be useful for the development of a portable, compact, wireless and cost-effective system for gas monitoring applications and industrial process control. The results are discussed as the outcome of an experimental work carried in field at a landfill and demonstrate the efficiency of the low-cost chemo-resistors array for odour sensing and environmental monitoring. Additional long-term investigations need to address some drawbacks on sensors stability and cross-sensitivity. © 2014 Elsevier B.V.

Personal (internal) and normative (external) impetuses for regulating racially biased behaviour are well-documented, yet the extent to which internally and externally driven regulatory processes arise from the same mechanism is unknown. Whereas the regulation of race bias according to internal cues has been associated with conflict-monitoring processes and activation of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), we proposed that responses regulated according to external cues to respond without prejudice involves mechanisms of error-perception, a process associated with rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC) activity. We recruited low-prejudice participants who reported high or low sensitivity to non-prejudiced norms, and participants completed a stereotype inhibition task in private or public while electroencephalography was recorded. Analysis of event-related potentials revealed that the error-related negativity component, linked to dACC activity, predicted behavioural control of bias across conditions, whereas the error-perception component, linked to rACC activity, predicted control only in public among participants sensitive to external pressures to respond without prejudice.

Social interaction is a cornerstone of human life, yet the neural mechanisms underlying social cognition are poorly understood. Recently, research that integrates approaches from neuroscience and social psychology has begun to shed light on these processes, and converging evidence from neuroimaging studies suggests a unique role for the medial frontal cortex. We review the emerging literature that relates social cognition to the medial frontal cortex and, on the basis of anatomical and functional characteristics of this brain region, propose a theoretical model of medial frontal cortical function relevant to different aspects of social cognitive processing.

The association between perceived similarity and liking for a romantic partner was examined in college students' relationships over the course of one year. Despite substantial evidence that similarity breeds attraction, perceived attribute similarity was positively correlated with liking only in highcommitment relationships. In low-commitment relationships, perceived dissimilarity was associated with greater liking and with maintenance of liking over time, consistent with Aron and Aron's (1997) self-expansion model. Relationship status (ongoing or ended) after one year was primarily explained by commitment at time 1. However, high perceived similarity appeared to buffer couples against destructive accommodation responses; relatively destructive responses were associated with ended status only when perceived similarity was low.

Regulatory focus theory identifies two separate motivational systems, promotion and prevention, that fulfill different regulatory needs and are differentially related to approach and avoidance. In the psychophysiological literature, approach- and avoidance-related emotions and motivational orientations have been linked to asymmetries in frontal cortical activity. In an effort to synthesize these literatures, we examined the relationship between an implicit assessment of chronic regulatory focus and an electroencephalographic (EEG) index of resting frontal cortical asymmetry. Results supported the hypothesis that promotion regulatory focus would be associated with greater left frontal activity, and prevention regulatory focus would be associated with greater right frontal activity. Discussion highlights how this synthesis may benefit theorizing of the relationship between regulatory focus, motivation, and emotion, and of the function of asymmetrical frontal cortical activity.

We examined the hypothesis that unintentional race-biased responses may occur despite the activation of neural systems that detect the need for control. Participants completed a sequential priming task that induced race-biased responses on certain trials while electroencephalography was recorded. The error-related negativity (ERN) wave, a component of the event-related potential with an anterior cingulate generator, was assessed to index neural signals detecting the need for control. Responses attributed to race bias produced larger ERNs than responses not attributed to race bias. Although race-biased responses were prevalent across participants, those with larger ERNs to race-biased responses showed higher levels of control throughout the task (e.g., greater accuracy and slowed responding following errors). The results indicate that race-biased responses may be made despite the activation of neural systems designed to detect bias and to recruit controlled processing.

The activation and control of affective race bias were measured using startle eyeblink responses (Study 1) and self-reports (Study 2) as White American participants viewed White and Black faces. Individual differences in levels of bias were predicted using E. A. Plant and P. G. Devine's (1998) Internal and External Motivation to Respond Without Prejudice scales (IMS/EMS). Among high-IMS participants, those low in EMS exhibited less affective race bias in their blink responses than other participants. In contrast, both groups of high-IMS participants exhibited less affective race bias in self-reported responses compared with low-IMS participants. Results demonstrate individual differences in implicit affective race bias and suggest that controlled, belief-based processes are more effectively implemented in deliberative responses (e.g., self-reports).

Three studies examined the moderating role of motivations to respond without prejudice (e.g., internal and external) in expressions of explicit and implicit race bias. In all studies, participants reported their explicit attitudes toward Blacks. Implicit measures consisted of a sequential priming task (Study 1) and the Implicit Association Test (Studies 2 and 3). Study 3 used a cognitive busyness manipulation to preclude effects of controlled processing on implicit responses. In each study, explicit race bias was moderated by internal motivation to respond without prejudice, whereas implicit race bias was moderated by the interaction of internal and external motivation to respond without prejudice. Specifically, high internal, low external participants exhibited lower levels of implicit race bias than did all other participants. Implications for the development of effective self-regulation of race bias are discussed.

Guilt, shame, and embarrassment are quintessential moral emotions with important regulatory functions for the individual and society. Moral emotions are, however, difficult to study with neuroimaging methods because their elicitation is more intricate than that of basic emotions. Here, using functional MRI (fMRI), we employed a novel social prejudice paradigm to examine specific brain regions associated with real-time moral emotion, focusing on guilt and related moral-negative emotions. The paradigm induced intense moral-negative emotion (primarily guilt) in 22 low-prejudice individuals through preprogrammed feedback indicating implicit prejudice against Black and disabled people. fMRI data indicated that this experience of moral-negative emotion was associated with increased activity in anterior paralimbic structures, including the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and anterior insula, in addition to areas associated with mentalizing, including the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, and precuneus. Of significance was prominent conflict-related activity in the supragenual ACC, which is consistent with theories proposing an association between acute guilt and behavioral inhibition. Finally, a significant negative association between self-reported guilt and neural activity in the pregenual ACC suggested a role of self-regulatory processes in response to moral-negative affect. These findings are consistent with the multifaceted self-regulatory functions of moral-negative emotions in social behavior.