Abstract Despite a rich history of theoretical and empirical work showing that increasing biodiversity results in higher ecosystem function, this research has not made a commensurate impact on the reclamation of degraded lands, where enhancing ecosystem function is of primary importance. In this study, we manipulated plant diversity on heavily degraded mine lands and showed that increasing plant diversity greatly enhanced the reclamation of these lands. We found that high‐diversity assemblages were often associated with more biomass, higher stability and less toxic foliage than low diversity treatments, although the monocultures of Miscanthus sinensis (the most productive species) performed equally well as some of the polycultures. Our results showed that species composition and richness explained most of the total variation in biomass yield of the experimental plots, indicating that both the selection and complementarity effects influenced the positive diversity effects observed in this study. Miscanthus sinensis and legumes (as a functional group) were found to be the main contributors to the selection effect. The plots with M. sinensis tended to harbour fewer soil fungal pathogens than those without it and a similar pattern was observed for the legumes, indicating a poorly known plant–soil fungal pathogen feedback for these plants. This kind of feedback appeared to play an important role also in shaping the positive plant species richness–ecosystem function relationships recorded in the degraded mine land. More importantly, we provide the first evidence that the observed plant–soil fungal pathogen feedbacks were likely mediated by chitinolytic bacteria that release anti‐fungal enzymes. Cellulose‐degrading bacteria that aid in plant decomposition and nutrient cycling also attained higher abundances in plots with higher plant diversity, suggesting the contribution of another kind of plant–soil feedback to the positive diversity effects. Synthesis and applications . Our findings reveal that highly diverse plant assemblages are better able to spur plant–soil feedbacks and that increasing plant diversity is an important strategy to enhance land reclamation efficiency after contamination. Meanwhile, our results also indicate that some plants such as Miscanthus sinensis and legumes should be preferentially used to establish diverse plant communities for rapid reclamation of degraded lands.
This paper implemented the use of countdown timers in online subjective well-being (SWB) surveys via an online experiment. The study involved 600 US residents who were equally divided into two groups: a control group and an experimental group. Both groups were posed with the same question, "All things considered; how do you rate your own life satisfaction?" However, the experimental group was subjected to a 1-minute countdown timer before submitting their responses, while the control group was not. Our findings indicate that incorporating timers into online surveys can effectively prevent participants from mis-responding by distinguishing between their affective and cognitive well-being. Furthermore, the use of timers resulted in more comprehensive responses, as participants were able to engage in deeper reflection on their life and consider a wider range of factors.
Introduction: Urbanization has affected the quality of the living environments. It is important to improve residents’ living environments and promote their happiness. Methods: We use a national and representative dataset targeting the labor force in China, collecting basic information about the work environments, the social environments, and the urban environments. This work employed a linear regression model to investigate the influencing factors of residents’ SWB. Results: The three major findings are as follows: 1) At the national level, residents’ SWB exhibits a notable spatial variability, being higher in the northern regions and lower in the southern areas. 2) The dimensions of the urban environments (housing prices, POI density, NPP, land development intensity and the number of tertiary hospitals), the work environments (work pressure and job satisfaction), and the social environments (community trust, social justice and sense of security), along with sociodemographic characteristics, significantly influence SWB. 3) In China, the impacts on SWB exhibit pronounced regional heterogeneity. The relationship between environmental pollution and SWB is characterized by an inverted U-shaped pattern. Intriguingly, while housing prices negatively affect SWB in the eastern and central regions, the enforcement of housing purchase limits has been observed to enhance residents’ SWB in the western region. Discussion: First, this work show the overall spatial level of SWB in China geographically. And second, this research found the SWB heterogeneity on a regional level (eastern, central, and western regions). Furthermore, this methodological framework provides a novel perspective among the urban, work and social environments on SWB. This work also contributes to inform policy to improve residents’ SWB in China.
We hypothesize that clothes can affect the behavior of the wearer by influencing the person’s identity. We test this hypothesis by recruiting trick-or-treaters during Halloween, a time of year when people wear salient and extreme clothing. Because the tradition of costume-wear for Halloween evolved, in part, to hide one’s identity during “tricks” (i.e. norm violations), it is particularly relevant to measure the effect of Halloween costumes on ethical behavior. We use the dice-rolling lying game as our experimental paradigm with 2×3×2 conditions. First, we vary the stakes to price lying behavior. Second, we run three conditions with different beneficiaries of the report (self, other, and both) to test whether lying for others is perceived to be normative. Third, we prime subjects about their costume to test the effect of costume and identity on ethical behavior. Surprisingly, priming had the opposite effect that we predicted. Rather than behaving consistently with the identity of one’s costume, primed “good guys” lied more and primed “bad guys” lied less. We interpret this as a moral licensing/self-conscience effect. We also find that stakes had no effect, people lied more for themselves than for others, and although there were no direct effects of gender, we found that children lie more when children of the same gender near them lie more. Lying has an inverted-U pattern with age, peaking at age 12.
Characteristics and differences of temperature and back-scattered light intensity in different depths of 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8 and 1 mm for both human Hegu acupoint and non-acupoint tissue irradiated by 808 nm diode laser at the different power of 15, 25 and 35 mW were studied. The temperature and the back-scattered light intensity in different depths of 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8 and 1 mm for human Hegu acupoint and non-acupoint tissue were measured by using the infrared thermography and optical coherence tomography. The result shows few differences in the temperature and the back-scattered light intensity of human Hegu acupoint and non-acupoint tissue before irradiation. The temperature and back-scattered light intensity of Hegu acupoint and the non-acupoint after irradiation were significantly higher, and the temperature and back-scattered light intensity of Hegu acupoint significantly were higher than the non-acupoint areas. At 0-40 min after the irradiation, the temperature and back-scattered light intensity of Hegu acupoint and the non-acupoint area will fluctuate and gradually decrease with the passage of time. From the results above, it is clearly seen that Hegu acupoint is different from non-acupoint both in the back-scattered light intensity and temperature after irradiation, and Hegu acupoint is more sensitive to laser irradiation than non-acupoint tissue.
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