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Previous studies have suggested that bullying may be contagious in adolescents. The present study examined whether ego depletion mediated the association between peer bullying and participant bullying and whether the mediating process was moderated by participant trait self-control. A sample of 2217 Chinese high school students (16.92 ± 0.94 years; 1068 boys and 1084 girls) were invited to fill in the questionnaires. The results reveal that after controlling for gender, grade and neuroticism, ego depletion partially mediates the positive relationship between peer bullying and participant bullying. Further, participant trait self-control moderates the relationship between peer bullying and participant bullying and that between peer bullying and participant ego depletion. That is, the strength of the contagion effect is lower in adolescents with high trait self-control compared to those with low trait self-control. In conclusion, this study provides empirical evidence of the contagion of bullying in adolescents. Limitations and implications for research and practice are discussed.

A thorough exploration of Ecosystem Services (ESs) and their intricate interactions across time and space is a prerequisite for the sustainable management of multiple ESs. This study aimed to systematically evaluate the ESs of the middle reaches of the Yangtze River Urban Agglomeration (MRYRUA) across multiple spatial and temporal scales, thereby enhancing ecosystem management and informed scientific decision-making. Specifically, this study employed the InVEST model, hot spot analysis, a geographically weighted regression model, and self-organizing feature mapping combined with K-means clustering to systematically quantify the spatiotemporal characteristics, trade-offs, synergies, and ecosystem service clusters of habitat quality (HQ), water yield (WY), carbon storage (CS), soil conservation (SC), and landscape aesthetics (LA) at grid and county scales from 2000 to 2020. The results revealed the following: (1) There was significant spatial heterogeneity among various ESs, with an overall spatial pattern exhibiting layered and interwoven variations. (2) Trade-offs predominantly characterized the relationships among ESs in the MRYRUA, with the absolute values of correlation coefficients mostly reaching their nadir in 2010. The interaction strengths between HQ and CS, and between CS and SC, increased with scale, while the relationships and strengths between LA and other ESs were less affected by scale changes. (3) At the grid scale, five types of ecosystem service bundles (ESBs) were identified, whereas at the district scale, four types of ESBs were delineated, including three common types: the WY–LA synergy bundle, Ecological transition bundle, and Key synergetic bundle, and three distinct types: the HQ–CS synergy bundle, Integrated ecological bundle, and Key synergetic bundle. The transitions of these ESBs over the 20 year period generally exhibited fluctuating evolutionary characteristics, with more pronounced fluctuations as the scale expanded. The results improve our comprehension of how ESs are related across various scales and provide theoretical and scientific references for multi-scale sustainable ecosystem zoning management and ecological environment governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The surface symmetry of the substrate plays an important role in the epitaxial high-quality growth of 2D materials; however, in-depth and in situ studies on these materials during growth are still limited due to the lack of effective in situ monitoring approaches. In this work, taking the growth of MoSe2 as an example, the distinct growth processes on Al2O3 ( 11 2 ¯ 0 ) and Al2O3 (0001) are revealed by parallel monitoring using in situ reflectance anisotropy spectroscopy (RAS) and differential reflectance spectroscopy (DRS), respectively, highlighting the dominant role of the surface symmetry. In our previous study, we found that the RAS signal of MoSe2 grown on Al2O3 ( 11 2 ¯ 0 ) initially increased and decreased ultimately to the magnitude of bare Al2O3 ( 11 2 ¯ 0 ) when the first layer of MoSe2 was fully merged, which is herein verified by the complementary DRS measurement that is directly related to the film coverage. Consequently, the changing rate of reflectance anisotropy (RA) intensity at 2.5 eV is well matched with the dynamic changes in differential reflectance (DR) intensity. Moreover, the surface-dominated uniform orientation of MoSe2 islands at various stages determined by RAS was further investigated by low-energy electron diffraction (LEED) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). By contrast, the RAS signal of MoSe2 grown on Al2O3 (0001) remains at zero during the whole growth, implying that the discontinuous MoSe2 islands have no preferential orientations. This work demonstrates that the combination of in situ RAS and DRS can provide valuable insights into the growth of unidirectional aligned islands and help optimize the fabrication process for single-crystal transition metal dichalcogenide (TMDC) monolayers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]